El Osas Iyalekhue : THE VAGINA WAGE : A DEMONSTRATION OF FEMINO-SUBJECTIVE THINKING.

An age old premise says women are the weaker sex. I do believe in this premise and my pro-help-the-weak-sensibilities are at the alert. This is why it is necessary for me to reiterate that women offer a lot to society, and yet get nothing back. It is on this premise that I am divorcing my He-man ego to willfully posit that every woman in the world should get a free monthly allowance just for being a woman. Yes, every Government in the world should pay its women what I now call THE VAGINA WAGE. Something I feel should not be denied any being that has a vagina. To do justice to this argumentation, I will start from the phenomena of birthing. By a tragic machination of creation, the specimen called the woman is doomed to give birth to a good measure of blood once in a month. This birthing of blood is called the menstrual cycle. This cycle of blood leaking has its intrigues which dominates the life of the woman for three to six days. The down side is that some women stink like shit in this period. Some go through the ordeal of looking for where to change a pad due to heavy flow. Some women get the embarrassment of being stained and getting pride breaking glances in public places. On an occasion, I saw a young girl’s pad fall off.  It was a bizarre moment that feltlike a dramatic engagement where a zealous tragic writer threw a scene into the happy work of a comic writer. The street went abuzz, while the victim-girl grew slimmer in her mind. That vaginal mishap had an un-pretty effect on the poor girl. Whoever advised her to wear a skirt. The vagina blood leaking, the smell, heavy flow, and pad falling is something to pity women for, but no, in an revolutionary fit of invention, the male capitalist took advantage of the woman and invented the pad and tampon. Upon her vagina dilemma, he needed to make money out of her and make it seem like he was doing her a favor. On an objective ground, let us agree he did. But if he makes lot of money from the vagina every year, what does he give back to the owners of the vagina? After all the principle of Corporate Social Responsibility says give back to the society you are taking from. Women, has any sanitary pad company given anything back to you? Hell no. Plus come to think of it, calling that product sanitary pad is a cunning wayo way of saying a woman’s vagina is dirty; because the word ‘sanitary’ connotes sanitizing; and one can only sanitize what is dirty. Ha ha ha ha, dirty minded men inventing clean products for the dirty vagina. The subtext in this paragraph is that all companies worldwide producing sanitary pads should be taxed to facilitate THE VAGINA WAGE. Other profile in the issue of giving birth in the vagina dilemma is the birthing of children. This natural phenomenon simply emphasizes that in marriage or premarital unprotected sex, the specimen called the woman cannot enjoy sex for free. A belly-protruding-nine-months-implication brings home the point. But it doesn’t end there. The woman’s vagina has to go through a painful vagina expansion crisis that sends the woman through a fit of pain to birth what is in the protruding stomach. Sometimes the vagina even tears, like a piece of rag. And then the doctor patches it. Guys imagine someone patching your penis. Hmmm. If not for anything, we should pay women THE VAGINA WAGE because all mothers of world male presidents experienced that vagina expansion crisis while birthing their presidential sons. That point when their presidential heads came tearing through to come into this male dominated political world. I won’t bother going into the difference between the first sex experience of a man and a woman. We all know who takes the pain; welcome to theatrical moment when the proverbial head of a camel goes through the eye of a needle. Woe betides a virgin woman! Painting the gory pictures of the vaginal existence cannot be complete if one does not bring into fore what is known as the vagina risk. Possessing a vagina exposes a woman to being easily infected by diseases. Who hasn’t heard of toilet infection, or yeast infection or fungal infection? All these abysmal diseases for the sheer sakes of possessing a hole called vagina? Come on. Well the riskier side is that women are more open to viral diseases, simply because of the hole called the vagina. Unfortunately, a lot could go wrong for women because of their vagina. They could get raped, deceived, molested or harassed, because of their vaginas. Just a common vagina; sometime I am forced to call it a tunnel of doom, a body part that can cause plenty palaver. In the end, this article is not for mere literary amusement, but to raise a form of pro-she woman fight. So ladies and (only) gentlemen, join me as I launch THE VAGINA WAGE STRUGGLE… TO BE CONTINUED

El Osas Iyalekhue writes and directs for film and stage, among his plays that have been staged are Bush Path, November The First, Walking the Aisle of Dreams,  Dancegeria, Wedlock Is Not For Gods and The Phantom. El Osas Iyalekhue is set to shoot Rage, a movie about human excesses. For stage he is set to stage BREAKING MATRIMONY.