Pledge Of Loyalty

I had a debate with a lady friend some time ago. She was saying that women and men are equal in every sense. But I disagreed. She argued that these days women can do practically anything that men can—that women have shown their abilities in administering nations; they have proven their abilities in the field of science, business etc. They have even commanded flights into space.

I can easily agree with her based on those arguments, because those are facts. However, women by nature are not generally the same as men. Physically they're weaker than men. In the world of sports, in terms of speed and strength etc, men still rule. Some things, like in the battlefield, women can hardly ever replace men—not even close. In the event of a soldier getting injured in combat, one man can carry that injured friend for miles to safety. Whereas it would take 4 women, probably taking turns, two at a time, to carry that one injured soldier. And they'd probably suffer immensely while performing the task too.

There is also what I'd call the way how the brains work. Many of my readers are familiar with this particular subject which I've discussed several times in this blog. Women generally think differently from men. I am not saying that they are stupid—far from it! Some women I know are very, very clever; they're brilliant. Yet when it comes to something practical in life, they're generally not as good as men.

They are of course some seemingly simple and logical habits which they don't have. Survival instinct, if you like. For example, putting things back to where they belong. Women can't seem to understand that it pays to put things back to where they found them. So that the next time you need to use the screw driver or the nail clipper again, you don't have to turn the whole house upside down to find them.

BUT! women are people too! And there are many things that men can't do which they can. For this reason, I treat them as a complement to the male species. I think it would be quite difficult to get some things done without a woman's touch.

However, some people out there are still treating women as objects. And as objects, they can also become a weird kind of collateral. In this case, women are used as the collateral to pledge loyalty to a political party. Reportedly, if the party member jumps to the opposing side, he pledges to divorce his wife. It's kinda scary that this thing is still happening in Malaysia. I wonder who was the chap who first came up with this brilliant idea.

To quote the words of Shah Alam MP, Khalid Samad as reported in The Star:

"...all elected representatives from the Islamist party had vowed that they would divorce their wives with talak tiga if they quit or jump party...

...that way no PAS representative would jump party because they appreciated their wives and families."

I am attracted to the last line above. One has to wonder how was it that Khalid's so sure that his people "appreciated their wives"? Unknown to him, he may have just provided an ingenious way out from a living hell at home for some of those people!

Furthermore, I'm also wondering if the women members would also divorce their husbands when they jump ship. Somehow nothing's been mentioned about that.

I seriously hope that there was some sort of error in the news report. Otherwise we're all screwed.