1. The Five Pillars of Female Power

You reckoned without the powers of a woman; they always know what they want and they get it in the end.¹⁴14 Bunmi Fadase, "The 60th Birthday Party that Went with a Bang!", The Punch (Lagos), May 2, 1983, p.4.

Female power exists; it hangs over every man like a ubiquitous shadow. Indeed, the life cycle of man, from cradle to grave, may be divided into three phases, each of which is defined by the form of female power which dominates him: motherpower, bridepower, or wifepower.

From birth to puberty, he is ruled by motherpower, as exercised over him by his one and only “mummy dearest”. Then he passes into the territory of bridepower, as exercised over him by his bride-to-be, that cuddlesome and tender wench he feels he cannot live without. This phase lasts from puberty to that wedding day when the last of his potential brides finally makes herself his wife. He then passes into the domain of wifepower, as exercised over him by his own resident matriarch, alias his darling wife. This phase lasts till he is either divorced, widowed or dead.

In each phase, female power is established over him through his peculiar weakness in that stage of his life. Motherpower is established over him while he is a helpless infant. Bridepower holds sway over him through his great need for a womb in which to procreate; if he didn’t feel this need, he wouldn’t put himself into the power of any owner of a womb. Wifepower is established over him through his craving to appear as lord and master of some woman’s nest; should he dispense with this vanity, not even the co-producer of his child could hold him in her nest and rule him.

There are five conditions which enable women to get what they want from men: women’s control of the womb; women’s control of the kitchen; women’s control of the cradle; the psychological immaturity of man relative to woman; and man’s tendency to be deranged by his own excited penis. These conditions are the five pillars of female power; they are decisive for its dominance over male power. Though each is recognized in popular jokes and sayings, their collective significance is rarely noted.

There is a joke which goes thus:

1st woman: The way to a man’s heart is through his belly. 2nd woman: Aren’t you aiming a few inches too high?

This joke pays tribute to how the womb and the kitchen control the feelings of men. A man can be controlled by the hunger in his belly, and by the other hunger which flares up just below his belly. Consequently, he can be manipulated by whoever controls the kitchen which feeds him, or by whoever carries the womb through which he craves to procreate.

That man abandons the kitchen to woman, and grovels for access to a womb, are not ordained by nature or by god, but result from how woman, who controls the cradle, has chosen to condition boys and girls. We must remember the saying that “the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world”.¹⁵15 William Ross Wallace, in Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, London, OUP, 1964, p.557. That is so because whoever trains a child in its first years shapes it for life. Woman, who rules the nursery, shapes boys and girls for life; and the ways in which she shapes boys make them what they become as men.

Women enjoy two other advantages which are the subjects of popular sayings. It is said that a man comes of age at 60, and a woman at 15; which is why, in the eyes of women, men are babies or, at best, little boys. When Nora Ephron of the USA declared: “Men are little boys”,¹⁶16 Judy Allen and Dyan Sheldon, op.cit., p.82. she was voicing a view held, and frequently articulated, by women all over the world. That men are babies or little boys is why a bride can fool her suitor, however much older than her he may be; and why a wife can rule her husband so readily. Being a baby in the hands of his bride or wife, the suitor or husband is rare who discovers the true nature of the courtship or marital encounter before it is all too late for him; he often does not do so till he is shoved into his grave, leaving whatever he has accumulated, through a lifetime of toil and risk, to his widow to make merry with.

It is also said that when his penis stands up a man’s brain takes French leave. Which is why a woman who wants to rule a man first gets his penis to stand up and salute her.

How did female power acquire these five pillars from whose tops it dominates men? The womb is evolution’s priceless gift to woman; man’s psychological immaturity and his deranging penis are evolution’s special handicaps on man. As if these natural advantages were not great enough, women have artfully annexed the kitchen and the cradle, and turned them into control centres from which to manipulate men.

Of these five pillars, the womb is by far the most important. Because it is of exceptional importance in reproduction, because woman has a monopoly of it, and because of man’s irrepressible craving to use it, the womb has become woman’s supreme headquarters for manipulating men. It is female power’s ultimate base.