Men, have you seen them? Of course you have; they are practically everywhere. They have two arms, two legs, one head and basically all the typical features consistent with that of a human being. So what really makes a man, ‘a man’? Is it his role in the family? His position in the society? Or maybe it’s just the anatomical addition of that ‘thing’ that sits between his legs.
The first male figure most women encounter are their fathers. A lot of women don’t know that many of their ideologies about men, first come from their fathers. The second male figure is sometimes their brother(s). During a woman’s formative years, these two characters are responsible for the development of both her foundational perception and psychological comprehension of men. Unfortunately, these men are almost completely oblivious of the ‘power’ they behold. The words that proceed from their mouths, the way and manner in which they show love and care to these women (daughters and sisters) are very strong factors that come together to create a notion of who the man is to a woman.
In our world today, growing girls (future women) are bound to come across two types of early male encounters; the abusive father Vs the loving one, the stubborn brother Vs the kind one, the wayward (male) cousin Vs the level headed one. These men do not know how their actions affect the women around them. They are mostly unaware that their way of life affects the little girl that cohabits in their world. For some of them who rarely take cognizance of this, they are quick to resolve that a young woman, (like Esther, Bisi, Voke) is too small to understand what is going on around her. But Oh! How ignorant can they be!?! How negligent they have now become, expecting these things to wash away with time. I read somewhere that scientists have been somewhat able to estimate that if the human brain’s memory capacity were to be measured in bytes like that of a computer, it would be capable of holding all data seen, heard and experienced to a capacity of 100 terabytes to 1 petabyte; now that’s a lot of space.
As a woman progresses through the stages of life, she continues to meet more men. Classmates, schoolmates, neighbors and male friends from her church or mosque are all men she is bound to come across; I said it before, these men are practically everywhere. Note that as a woman grows, she is not impacted by every single man she meets. She is much older and can begin to form more meaningful bonds with specific men in her life. She is going to have male friends, male acquaintances, male classmates/colleagues, not forgetting the boyfriend and of course the toasters association that would be very present and sometimes remain present even after she is married.
However, whoever a woman decides to bond with, contributes a little ‘something something’ to her previously formed perception of men. It’s almost as if the girl’s idea of a man is a pot of soup and each meaningful bond she forms, is similar to someone adding a little salt, a bit of pepper or curry and at other times it’s a little sand or cement, to that pot of soup as the case may be.
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