5. Love: Male and Female

Love makes men lame and tame.³⁴34 Jan Knappert, ed., An Anthology of Swahili Love Poetry, Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1972, p.87.

Love is not blind. It has four eyes; it has night vision; it sees well by day and night.

Male pundits usually talk as if love had the same effects on women as on men. They seem to overlook the small fact that men and women are not identical but complementary, and that the effect of a current on the opposite poles of a magnet may also be opposite. With a folly typical of those who imagine themselves as the norm, male pundits refuse to heed those few women who have told what love actually does to women; and they insist on projecting unto women what is true only of men. As a result, many famous sayings about love mislead by not indicating that they apply only to men.

For example, according to Ambrose Bierce, love is “a temporary insanity curable by marriage”;³⁵35 Ambrose Bierce, The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary, ed. by E.J. Hopkins, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983, p.215. for the sake of accuracy, he should have qualified that by the opening phrase “In men,”. Similarly, when Francis Bacon remarked: “It is impossible to love and be wise”,³⁶36 A.K. Adams, ed., The Home Book of Humorous Quotations, New York: Dodd, Mead, 1969, p.210. he should have added the opening phrase “For a man,”. Likewise, the saying “love is blind” should be taken as shorthand for “a man in love is blind to his best interests”. None of these remarks applies to women. A woman in love is far from insane; she is anything but unwise or blind to her interests. On the contrary, her first sigh of love is like a whiff of smelling salts which clears her head, leaving her with four eyes and night vision; it instigates her to a ruthless pursuit of what she wants. That woman is indeed most rare for whom love is a beclouder of the eyes or a confuser of the head.

Love acts on men and women in opposite ways. To see that, let us compare examples of a man in love and a woman in love. When he was hit by some woman’s love harpoon, Willie Carter Spann, nephew of the then US President, Jimmy Carter, put the following advert in a newspaper:

To Susan Lynn: I love you so much I would crawl thru 9 miles of broken glass and razor blades to sniff the truck tires that haul your drawers to the laundry. I would fist-fight a gut-shot polar bear with my hands tied behind my back for a few moments alone with you. I love you, marry me. Willie Carter Spann.³⁷37 Quoted by Herb Caen, in The San Francisco Chronicle, August 20, 1980, p.35.

A fellow’s mind has to be unhinged to become a geyser of such foolishness! Hopefully, the marriage he was asking for would cure him of his madness.

In contrast to the mush-headedness of the love-smitten man, here is Barbra Streisand’s portrait of a woman in love. In her hit song, “Woman in Love”, she declared:

I am a woman in love And I’ll do anything To get you into my world And hold you within.³⁸38 Barbra Streisand, "Woman in Love", in Barbra Streisand, A Collection of Greatest Hits... And More, CBS 465845 4.

Is that not a portrait of a clear-headed huntress, resolute and resourceful? Was there ever a clearer declaration of intent to hunt down and fetter and enslave? Is it any wonder that any man in his right mind would flee from a woman’s love like freedom-loving Kunta Kinte from a slave catcher?

To compare Willie Carter Spann with Barbra Streisand is to realize that love is a disease of the heart terrible for man’s liberty, but an excellent pep pill for a woman hunting for a slave: when love smites a man, it turns him into a dazed prey; when it possesses a woman, she becomes a clear-eyed, calculating huntress coolly stalking her befuddled prey.

Not only does love act differently on man and woman; the word itself means quite different things to each. When a woman tells a man “I love you”, she means “I want you to feed me, house me, clothe me, fuck me, get me great with child, and take me as your burden until I catch a better slave”. This utilitarian view is aptly expressed in a moonlight song by Nigerian maidens in which they describe their lovers as “the axe with which I split wood”, then as “the tree that bears money”, then as “the key with which I lock my door”, then as “the girdle with which I girdle my loins”.³⁹39 "Moonlight Love Song", by the Ora of Bendel State, Nigeria, tr. by Oje Odihirin, in C.O.D. Ekwensi, ed., The Festac Anthology of New Nigerian Writings, Lagos: Federal Ministry of Information, 1977, p.46.

In contrast, when a man tells a woman “I love you”, he means “I am eager to be your slave, and ready to do anything I can to make you satisfied and happy”. Which is why, when a woman hears a man say to her “I love you”, her joy is great, for she understands him to mean that he has been knocked out by her chloroform of romance, and she can safely tie him up with social ropes, tether him to her nest with legal chains and, while he is still sprawled out in love’s delirium, begin to make a toiling jackass out of him.

The Kiswahili poets are among the few male pundits who have gotten things right: they specify that it is men who are made lame and tame by love. As one of their songs put it: “Love makes men lame and tame”. Commenting on that song, Jan Knappert writes:

In a few brief words, the song paints a vivid picture of what happens in the streets of Mombasa in the middle of the night. Painted girls wander about, looking for their prey. Woe unto the man who is caught in their snares by their enticing looks and their luring words. Love covers him like a rash, like shivers of fever. If he is rich, he will ruin himself to please that cheeky little creature; if he is a man of power and influence, he will humble himself for her, there in the open street, to win her favours, and receive little in return except impudent words. The men are like birds caught in a snare, struggling in vain to free themselves.⁴⁰40 Jan Knappert, op.cit.

Given that love makes a man lame and tame, is it any wonder that a woman fires the harpoon of love at a man when they meet in the cockpit of courtship?

A visitor from Mars may be struck by the nonsense which a love-smitten man utters, and by the eagerness with which an otherwise sensible woman listens to such nonsense. For instance, he will tell a woman that she is the most beautiful woman in the world, and she will give every appearance of believing him. All you need do is look at the ugly duckling to know that she is no such thing, and that not even in her utmost vanity does she believe the deluded fool. Why then does she pretend to take his gibberish seriously? Well, when he tells her, with a shine in his eyes and heat in his throat, that she is the most beautiful woman in the world, she automatically translates him to mean that he considers her the most beautiful woman in his world. That he has been reduced to saying that shows her that he is sufficiently desperate with passion to become like putty in her manipulating fingers. And that, for her, is the vital aspect of the matter.

Another nonsense which is often spouted by love-smitten men, and is eagerly awaited by man-hunting women, is a declaration of everlasting love. Everlasting? Now, now, nothing is more absurd than promising to feel love for anybody for ever. No woman in her right mind (and bear in mind that women are quite down-to-earth) believes that a man could feel love for her for ever, or even till death puts an end to his ability to feel love for anything or anybody. Women know the world is full of changes, and that the emotion of love is one of the most ephemeral. So, when a sensible woman craves a declaration of eternal love from a man, and gives every impression of believing it, what really does she understand by it?

A woman mentally translates this foolish man-talk into reasonable talk, and understands it to mean that, in the overcharged state of his psyche, the fellow is ready to promise her anything, even things over which he could have no possible control. This is what makes the statement delicious and exciting to her ears. If he can promise an eternal feeling of love, it means he is ready to pledge himself to do something much more within his control, namely, life-long voluntary servitude to her. Now, if she could only get him to make the latter declaration in public, before suitable witnesses, her man-hunt would be successfully concluded. For then the fellow would be publicly bound to husband (i.e. slave for) her for the rest of his days.

However foolish it may sound, a man’s declaration of eternal love works on him like an oath of loyalty: it psychologically binds him to carry out the obligations imposed on him by his love for her. After all, a man is taught to take his oaths rather seriously, especially vows made to his mother or mother-surrogate. Assuming that his training by his mother is effective, he is not likely to abscond from his obligations to her surrogate, not even after the love he felt at the time of the declaration has long evaporated.

When next we find a woman extracting love-struck nonsense from a man, we should not consider her absurd. No woman believes such nonsense literally. She knows perfectly well that they are lies, and exaggerations, but they give her proof that he is sufficiently out of his mind to promise her anything, including what she really wants from him: life-long nest slavery. Furthermore, feelings and oaths aside, we must note that, given what a man means by “I love you”, his “I’ll love you for ever” means “I’ll slave for you for ever”. And that is surely welcome music to a slave huntress’ ears.

A Martian observer might also be amazed that men appear blind to the predatory core of bridal love. As any clear-headed observer can see, between puberty and menopause, a woman is driven by her nesting instinct. For nest-making, she needs the services of a hardworking provider and strong protector. This biological need gives the nest-making woman’s love for her chosen man its predatory and exploitative core. It is this uninviting core that the mush of sentimental love is designed to conceal. But conceal from whom? Certainly not from the woman, but rather from her intended victim who might otherwise flee for his dear liberty.

Man, in his sentimentality, may refuse to acknowledge that the love felt for him by the woman who loves him is, at its core, a slaver’s love for her slave. Those who doubt that should consider a woman’s proverbial reaction to her spurned love, or to a mate who deserts her nest. When she cries “seduced and abandoned”, her rage is that of a lioness whose intended dinner has run away. When she cries that her husband has deserted her, her fury is that of a slaveholder whose slave has run away. If he has run off with another woman, her rage at the other woman is that of one slaveholder at another slaveholder who has kidnapped her property. Were men fully conscious of the predatory nature and exploitative purpose of a nesting woman’s love for her man, they might be found each day praying: “God save man from the love of woman!” That men do not is a measure of how sentimentality thoroughly beclouds their brains.