I have a man’s mind,

But a woman’s might.

— Shakespeare

Now, those are words that every man should take seriously, listen to, heed, take note of, digest and lock away in his consciousness. And yet, there are men who do not believe that to be so. There are still men who cling to the archaic notion that women are not only the fairer sex, but inferior to men.

Oh yes indeed, those men still exist, and I daresay some women too, who simply cannot shake off those mental chains of low self-esteem and inferiority complex.

So can you believe my dismay, angst, bemusement when a friend of mine casually blurted out, “Men are superior to women in every way.” If I wore dentures they would have fallen out, the way my jaw dropped open. I couldn’t believe my ears .Was I hearing right, that there are men who still cling to the tattered fabric of folly that women are inferior to men?

To think it is one thing, but to voice it is another. As you may know, or you may not, I have been a champion for women and their rights for decades on these very pages. So much so that I’ve been accused of ‘selling out’ and letting down the side, just because I have admitted to being in touch with my feminine side.

I have always loved females, and while growing up, most of my friends were girls. In fact, at one point in my life my best friend was a woman, that’s how close I felt to the opposite sex.

So to have someone say that women are inferior to men sort of took the wind out of my sails, so I am behooved to set the record straight.

Underestimating women, that’s where I’m going today, right after these pointed arrows to what I had to say about ‘Target practice’.

Hi Tony,

It would seem that old Cupid would have had enough practice, and should keep striking the target. It would be those targets that are practised upon and are not the intended marks, would leave with broken hearts. “Cupid’s arrow is straight and sharp, never misses its mark, but it leaves one hell of an exit wound.” — Anonymous.

Eros

Teerob,

I must have been target practice all of my life, for I have been shot so many times by Cupid’s arrows that I have the puncture wounds to show, but never found love. Maybe I thought that they were Cupid’s arrows, but in reality, they were just thorns, for everywhere I turned, makka juk me.

Lorna

When I pressed my bredrin to explain why he thought that men were superior to women, he cited examples that men were bigger, stronger, taller, and make better marksmen. Marksmen? Well, make that sharpshooters.

Of course, men are bigger, taller and stronger than women, and of course most women prefer that their spouse is taller than them, but that doesn’t make them inferior and men superior. And the example of men being better marksmen… er sharpshooters, than women is so far from the truth.

Among the greatest snipers in World War 2, was a woman, Lyudmila Pavlichenko, a Soviet sniper credited with 309 kills. Then there were Roza Shanina, Natalya Kovshova and many others, all outdoing their male counterparts when it came to killing people from a distance with unerring accuracy.

The Israeli army is known to have highly trained female snipers who are far better than the men. Closer home, our very own all female sharpshooting team has done our country proud by not only out shooting the men here, but also going abroad and outscoring males from all over the globe.

Female pilots are among the best in the world, and in fact the elite top gun fighter pilots in the USA are women. The top mathematicians involved in the US space programme employed by NASA were women, black women too. A movie was even made about them, Hidden Figures.

Katherine Johnson’s name is now well known as one of NASA’s ‘hidden figures’, African-American women whose pioneering work was a key part of America’s success in space. She along with her colleagues Mary Jackson, Dorothy Vaughn and others were referred to as ‘human computers’.

But apart from shooting and flying fighter jets, women continue to excel and outdo men in many fields of endeavour. On a personal note, I discovered that during my early career in the media I much preferred to work with females rather than men, and even today I still prefer to deal with females in organisations rather than men.

Females just seem to get the job done far more efficiently than the men do. But then again, that could just be my affinity to females fuelling my feelings and rising to the fore why I’m so drawn to them.

But their track record vindicates my bias, and I stick to my affinity. That being said though, they are by no means perfect, and the bad ones are really terrible, but on the whole their work ethic is vastly superior to that of most men.

Women have a knack of knowing what someone is about, even as the man is oblivious to what’s happening. How many times have we heard a woman say, “There’s something about him that I don’t like, my spirit don’t take to him.”

That inner voice, that instinct, that intuition is what guides many women and, by extension, their male partners. Sometimes it even works against her own man, for she knows instinctively what mischief he’s up to even before he does the act.

“OMG, how she find out bout Keisha… I thought I was being so careful.”

No matter how careful you are, the female intuition is superior. “That’s right, the woman is smarter, that’s right,” are lyrics from the old calypso song by Harry Belafonte.

I say let us put man and a woman together

To find out who is smarter

Some say man, but I say no

The women got the men beat, they should know

And not me, but the people they say

That the men are leading the women astray

But I say that the women of today

Smarter than the man in every way

That’s right, the woman is smarter

That’s right, that’s right

‘Never underestimate a woman. A loud voice of a man may threaten a woman, but the silence of a woman can shake the consciousness of a man.’

‘A good woman can only take so much. Don’t underestimate her desire to be happy, even if it means moving on without you.’

‘Never underestimate the power of a woman’s intuition. Some women can recognise GAME before you even play it.’

‘Never underestimate a woman’s ability to find things out.’

There are so many sayings about so many examples of the power and perhaps superiority of women. And yet many men still cling to the old beliefs and choose to ignore them. Those men who choose to ignore those signs or believe that they don’t exist are often doomed to suffer the consequences.

Even the superiority of women is manifested in their ability to deceive men. Strong, powerful, muscled men have all fallen victim to the so-called ‘inferior’ women who pull the wool over their eyes and deceive them in ways that they could never imagine.

“Man, she give me jacket, not one pickney is mine, clean me out and gone, I never saw it coming.”

Back to Harry’s song.

Hey, you meet a girl at a pretty dance

Thinkin’ that you would stand a chance

Take her home thinkin’ she’s alone

Open de door

You find her husband home

I was treatin’ a girl independently

She was makin’ baby for me

When de baby born and I went to see

Eyes were blue

It was not by me.

So many men are walking around with children not of their loins, but given to them to raise and care for under the guise and guile of a so-called inferior woman. Some are discovered, but many are never revealed, a secret taken to the grave by a so-called inferior woman.

So don’t let a woman’s size fool you. It was Toulouse Lautrec who sad, “The measure of greatness is not found on a yardstick.”

Not because someone is big and strong means that they are superior.

The notion that men are superior and women are inferior is not only politically incorrect, but archaic, antiquated, flawed, and has no place in modern society. Just take a look at our universities with a preponderance of females, look at the workforce and the countless women who survive, despite great odds, overcoming challenges that would break many men, then look in the mirror and tell yourself that men are superior. Never underestimate a woman.

More time.

seido1yard@gmail.com

Footnote: Boys’ and Girls’ Champs is over, and what a spectacle it turned out to be, clearly the biggest and best of its kind in the world. Congrats to my alma mater Kingston College (KC) for our 34th win and to Hydel, who won it for the first time ever. My stand out performances were the blistering unprecedented 10.92 run by Alana Reid of Hydel and the 9.9 by Bouwahjgie Nkrumie of KC, in the 100 metres. Many Olympic athletes cannot do those times. Also, that girl, who fell near the end of the 3,000 metres steeplechase but got up and won, was outstanding. Congrats to ISSA, JAA, the organisers, for a well-run championship, to the coaches and support staff, the athletes, who left it all on the track, the commentators, and to TVJ for excellent coverage.