Skip to main content

Superwoman


The biblical god stopped his creative spree with the manufacture of Eve. Eve put an end to god’s creative imagination apparently. At any rate, Eve was quite a force to reckon with: she changed the history of the entire human species. She upset the entire divine apple cart.

It’s a different matter that men used this tale to control women for millennia. The fact remains that women were essentially superior to men. Probably one of the major purposes of the Bible was to rein in that superiority and set up man as the patriarch. Not only the Bible, but also lot many other scriptures elevate man to a higher pedestal and subjugate women to the missionary position.

When Nietzsche regarded Jesus and Buddha as effeminate in contradistinction to the macho conquerors in history, was the philosopher missing a point? I think so. The conquerors have lost the limelight and the effeminate Jesus and Buddha have ruled the hearts of the faithful for centuries.

Nietzsche’s great error was to associate the gentle virtues of love and compassion with women and ascribe the tougher ones like assertiveness and domination to men. That association was one of the many perverted creations of man. If the woman was given equal opportunities, if she was not relegated to the biblical labour room with the sole tasks of bringing up babies and pandering to men’s egos, Nietzsche’s Superman would as well be a Superwoman.

If Nietzsche lived today, he would surely create a female Zarathustra. Today’s women have proved that they are in no way inferior to men. On the contrary, some of them have proved to be superior by virtue of their better dedication and readiness to toil.

So there is really no need for dedicating any particular day to women. The women’s day – national or international – is as obsolete today as the gargoyle. Soon the world may need to dedicate a day to the men folk; the poor creatures seem to be fast losing out in the ratrace to capture the pies in the skies.

Even as a commercial opportunity, women’s day is quite redundant. Any day is woman’s day now. Any day is good for a tango and its tangible delights. Just order the goodies online and have the fling on the go, on your way to your own paradise – feminine or masculine. We are all supermen and superwomen now, all of us, if we want to be.

PS. Written for Indispire Edition 264: #takebackwomensday



Comments

  1. I agree any day is a woman's day! Loved this post! You have a way with words :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. So men are 'the poor creatures seem to be fast losing out in the rat-race to capture the pies in the skies'... loved that. I guess it is the same with examinations, job opportunities, and promotions where 'categories' are finding an in-road even for 'general' candidates. Where does this end?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's the point. Where does this end? Our notions are perverted and policies skewed.

      Delete
  3. What is redundant is that contradistinction made by Nietzsche. Why comparison anyway? Both genders are complementary to each other. The problem lies with those who cannot understand this symbiotic relationship between both the genders. The last few lines well delineate this. Unfortunately, the majority of the so called thinkers cannot even perceive this idea clearly. A very well written blog driving home this point as well.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It is only in the latter half of 20th century women were given some sort of equality which changed the entire social structure and outlooks.Nietzsche lived before that and he took the given reality as the basis of his argument.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Florentino’s Many Loves

Florentino Ariza has had 622 serious relationships (combo pack with sex) apart from numerous fleeting liaisons before he is able to embrace the only woman whom he loved with all his heart and soul. And that embrace happens “after a long and troubled love affair” that lasted 51 years, 9 months, and 4 days. Florentino is in his late 70s when he is able to behold, and hold as well, the very body of his beloved Fermina, who is just a few years younger than him. She now stands before him with her wrinkled shoulders, sagged breasts, and flabby skin that is as pale and cold as a frog’s. It is the culmination of a long, very long, wait as far as Florentino is concerned, the end of his passionate quest for his holy grail. “I’ve remained a virgin for you,” he says. All those 622 and more women whose details filled the 25 diaries that he kept writing with meticulous devotion have now vanished into thin air. They mean nothing now that he has reached where he longed to reach all his life. The

Unromantic Men

Romance is a tenderness of the heart. That is disappearing even from the movies. Tenderness of heart is not a virtue anymore; it is a weakness. Who is an ideal man in today’s world? Shakespeare’s Romeo and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas would be considered as fools in today’s world in which the wealthiest individuals appear on elite lists, ‘strong’ leaders are hailed as nationalist heroes, and success is equated with anything other than traditional virtues. The protagonist of Colleen McCullough’s 1977 novel, The Thorn Birds [which sold more than 33 million copies], is torn between his idealism and his natural weaknesses as a human being. Ralph de Bricassart is a young Catholic priest who is sent on a kind of punishment-appointment to a remote rural area of Australia where the Cleary family arrives from New Zealand in 1921 to take care of the enormous estate of Mary Carson who is Paddy Cleary’s own sister. Meggy Cleary is the only daughter of Paddy and Fiona who have eight so

Yesterday

With students of Carmel Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving…? It was one of my first days in the eleventh class of Carmel Public School in Kerala, the last school of my teaching career. One girl, whose name was not Margaret, was in the class looking extremely melancholy. I had noticed her for a few days. I didn’t know how to put the matter over to her. I had already told the students that a smiling face was a rule in the English class. Since Margaret didn’t comply, I chose to drag Hopkins in. I replaced the name of Margaret with the girl’s actual name, however, when I quoted the lines. Margaret is a little girl in the Hopkins poem. Looking at autumn’s falling leaves, Margaret is saddened by the fact of life’s inevitable degeneration. The leaves have to turn yellow and eventually fall. And decay. The poet tells her that she has no choice but accept certain inevitabilities of life. Sorrow is our legacy, Margaret , I said to Margaret’s alter ego in my class. Let

Octlantis

I was reading an essay on octopuses when friend John walked in. When he is bored of his usual activities – babysitting and gardening – he would come over. Politics was the favourite concern of our conversations. We discussed politics so earnestly that any observer might think that we were running the world through the politicians quite like the gods running it through their devotees. “Octopuses are quite queer creatures,” I said. The essay I was reading had got all my attention. Moreover, I was getting bored of politics which is irredeemable anyway. “They have too many brains and a lot of hearts.” “That’s queer indeed,” John agreed. “Each arm has a mind of its own. Two-thirds of an octopus’s neurons are found in their arms. The arms can taste, touch, feel and act on their own without any input from the brain.” “They are quite like our politicians,” John observed. Everything is linked to politics in John’s mind. I was impressed with his analogy, however. “Perhaps, you’re r