By Bassey Ubong
What should the world regard as the supreme purpose of the female specie of mankind on earth? This question flows from the eternal question of what should be considered the purpose of the existence of human beings on the earth plane.
Answers are as many as fertile brains, which imply the impossibility of a consensus on the purpose of creation and the existence of the human species.
Philosophers talk of essence, or what people turn out to be or make of their lives as well as existence, which refers to human beings as real entities in the world of space.
Human beings first exist before they, through their choices, turn out to be what their choices and actions make them.
Above facts take form when we consider some of the things we see in our daily lives as we go about the difficult and intricate business of living.
In the context of this piece, the simple, but complex question arises: how do women see their purpose in life, given their existence as reality?
In specifics, do women see themselves as agents of creation, or agents of destruction?
I submit with full conviction that the female specie of mankind are created to be co-creators with God and to function as primary agents of sustenance of the human race. Because they bear and nurture life, women should appreciate their focal role on earth, and by extension, the universe.
If we stand on the platform of the myth of creation in some religions, human beings were first created and kind of ‘deposited’ at a defined space by an omnipotent Creator. After this non-scientific event, further effort to populate planet earth has been via the union of biological units from the female and male species.
Later, Christian mythology presents the case of virgin conception and birth. Without doubt, a theory, which for all time, will be challenged by scientific minds, it has held for nearly half of the world’s population and for millennia. This peculiar case generates an argument on the possibility of production of human beings without the agency of the male specie.
The alternate argument implies the impossibility of production of human beings without the agency of the female specie, because, to date, no human being has been confirmed to have dropped from the sky, or resulted from the male seed being developed in another medium to bring about a new human being.
In fact, a trending social media video tells the story of blood sample taken from the place devotees laid Jesus of Nazareth during the Passion centuries back.
The narrator in the video claims the absence of male genes in the blood sample. Until universal confirmation, this development remains in the world of myth, but a strong possibility.
Scientific effort in the 1970s generated the concept of invitro fertilisation (IVF).
Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards worked together to produce the first test tube baby named Louise Brown. She resulted from the fertilisation of male sperm with female ovum in a petri dish, but successful fusion transferred to the uterus of a woman for further development to the point of delivery. This meant and has continued to mean failure of science to develop a baby which can grow outside the womb of a woman to the point of delivery.
Louise Brown of Britain born in 1978 has two sons with her spouse of which both children were conceived through the natural process.
Based on the argument of the impossibility of production of a normal human being outside the body of a woman, an argument can be made for acceptance of the role of women as co-creators with the Universal Creative Intelligence known by various names as God, Allah, and Almighty Creator, among others.
No one can doubt the possibility of scientists in one laboratory or the other engaged today with development of artificial spermatozoa. If this becomes reality along with the development of artificial ova, what may be difficult will be the provision of an environment for the dozens of cell divisions to create organs in a baby, all of which the woman, and by extension, a woman’s body, provides.
Should women ignore this incredible role in the architecture and divine plan of the universe? The primary essence and rationale for existence of the female specie of mankind, we argue, should be to create and nurture. Anything outside those two are repugnant to rational thought or adjuncts.
No argument can provide acceptable explanation, for instance, for use of the feminine biological provisions for the purpose of destruction of another human being, in say, consensual relationships which appear to be rife around the world.
The power of the female gender continues to amaze and in several instances overwhelm. It appears a deliberate effort has been made, by men as expected, to undervalue and in most cases limit the potentials of the women.
In an effort to carry out an extensive revision of my 2006 play titled: “Queen Asaari”, I came by several realities, which attest to the potentials of the women folk when such potentials are activated and actualized.
I have been baffled by men who, for instance, keep their wives at home as full time homemakers, or stop their female children from participating in higher education or education at any level. I see it as destructive ignorance and unforgivable error of judgment.
By the 1980s, my father’s three female children had acquired university degrees when several Nigerian families had no university graduates of any gender.
For the records, my research indicates the existence of more goddesses and their powers over and above those of the gods. How many Nigerians know of the deity Osun as female? In Akwa Ibom/Cross River geopolitical entity, the most dreaded deities are female – Anyaang Nsid, Atakpo Ndem of Uruan, Anansa of Calabar, which we hear shook the Nigerian Navy when a ship named in her honour changed name to NNS Victory, and Obuma the goddess of thunder at Calabar, which has a naval ship named in her honour.
While the thought for this piece developed, my mind went to Ms Monica Lewinsky, the young intern who would have inflicted the most fatal blow to the revered office of the President of United States of America in 1998. The young woman went out of her way to entice a man who, it must be accepted, had a soft spot (how many men are free?) for the female specie of mankind and had minimum self-control.
Books have been written, several television series have been packaged, several radio and television talk shows and newspaper columns are in archives in the United States and Britain about the scandal that rocked the Presidency of Mr. Bill Jefferson Clinton, 42nd President of the United States of America.
At the end of furor, Ms. Lewinsky went the path of her predecessors – sad, unfulfilled, notorious, rather than popular, single, but still searching, and with little to show for her grip of the world’s limelight for a time.
Polly Vernon of the US Guardian newspaper (International edition) of August 8, 2004 wrote with a curious title, “All power to the kiss-and-tell girls” and used such uncomplimentary adjectives as ‘defiant,’ ‘cynical,’ ‘manipulative,’ and ‘greedy,’ to qualify girls who conduct intimate affairs with men – in most cases celebrities – and after few or several fatal meetings expose the seedy things which happened during the life of the relationship.
The writer, a woman, sees some cases as retaliation when ladies are ditched by arrogant and mindless bigwigs in spheres from sport to music and film to politics. The writer believes the girls wanted cash or publicity, or both, or the power which such scandals bestow on them, despite the potency of their actions towards destruction of their quarries.
Mr. Ken Starr, a solicitor, pushed the young woman and when he passed on in 2022, attracted minimal publicity.
No one should applaud anyone, male or female, who uses fellow human beings for fun and dump them the way people dump the husk of corn after the juicy seeds have been eaten. But neither should anyone clap for anyone who commercialises the weakness of fellow human beings. No high profile subordinate should generate a scandal based on a consensual relationship when it goes sour. This position has nothing to do with sexual harassment which, whoever has involved self – male or female – should expect just sanctions.
I read of recent about Monica Lewinsky’s consistent arguments on the consensual nature of her relationship with Mr. Bill Clinton. She rejected attempts by money-minded persons to get her to place her case in the group of sexual harassment on argument of the age gap between President Clinton and herself. But she feels the President should have known better and exercised greater self-control, despite her attempts to seduce him. Imagine her decision to store a dress she wore while the President held her. The DNA test on the samples of the man’s reproductive seeds told the story in full, both by way of authentication of the relationship and the premeditated angle to her action.
Take the most infamous case in Nigeria to date which involved a girl with a high profile pastor in a hotel room. The girl collaborated with persons who positioned video cameras to show the pastor’s head on a sordid act while her head remained concealed. Can anyone be more destructive via a premeditated action?
The pastor’s career should be considered as ended, but as TIME magazine once showed, with examples, no kiss-and-tell girl has had a story with a happy ending.
To date, Monica Lewinsky lives off her parents at the age of 48, her businesses have failed, and monies from appearances and books were used to pay legal costs. Our argument on the reason for her failure rests on a simple premise – girls and women are created to create and nurture with no provision for destructive acts.
Kiss-and-tell goes on all through the social ladder in every society. Domestic assistants (male and female) run affairs with their masters and mistresses and go on to place such indiscretion in public space. Agreed the gap in social strata should keep men and women from intimate relationships with their staff, but every human being, including servants, have the will power and freewill to choose.
Joseph in the Bible ran away from his master’s wife and paid for it by way of a prison term of about twelve years. But his discretion took him to the high office of the Prime Minister of Egypt, a foreign country at the young age of thirty years.
The pros and cons as to the justification for kiss-and tell acts will continue. But supporters of girls need to consider the essence of creation and existence of the female specie of humanity. It would be wrong to regard females as co-equal with God, but in the process of creation of human beings, females are to date indispensable.
Men can be dispensed with if the concept of virgin birth gets factored into the discourse, more so every student who went through secondary school knows the biological concept of asexual reproduction with the form known as parthenogenesis. This mode occurs in lower creations and involves creation of new beings without fusion of male and female gametes. Either seed can generate a complete offspring, but in human beings we argue, the completion agenda must be in the system of the woman.
Girls and women, while you manage undisputable cases of sexual harassment, bear in mind the need to exercise the essence of your creation. Every system provides for management of incidences of sexual oppression and predatory tendencies of men and women. But for women in particular, to build and to nurture are divine, natural, and attract blessings, while to use the female physique to destroy are unnatural, condemnable, and does attract sanctions from God and the society in the short or in the long term.
Dr Ubong, a writer and public policy analyst, lives in Uyo
