Debating Gender Violence

The publication in 1986, of Jamaican educator Errol Miller’s The Marginalization of the Black Male, started a discourse on ‘male marginality’ in the Caribbean and has provided a context for a regional backlash of sorts against the women’s movement.

Below, we re print two perspectives on the problem of gender violence in Caribbean societies. The first is a letter published in a Trinidadian newspaper; which typifies a growing anti-feminist sentiment in the region. The second is a female newspaper columnist’s reply to the letter.

Violence against men is a problem too!

There is so much talk about violence, especially against women. However, I think we, as a society, need to redefine the term violence.

There is a lot of violence against men too, but no official stance has been taken on their behalf. I believe that this is because violence is seen only as physical contact, with the intention to do harm. This definition does not include verbal attacks, mental bondage, deliberate ignorance of problems and other subtle forms of suppression.

I have never denied that domestic violence and rape are real problems. Feminists would like us all to believe that they are the only problems, or at least the most serious. Violence is violence, regardless of the gender of the perpetrator and the victim.

Male bashing in the media is violence because it serves to dehumanize men. A lot of us think that male bashing is only a form of humor It is not. It is a subtle form of control that lowers self-esteem of men and boys.

Can a boy perform well at school if his self-esteem is low? Every Friday night impressionable children watch Xena. What is being fed into the minds of our boys?

Vagrants have been on the streets as long as I can remember, and the numbers are higher than ever. Has anyone wondered why the majority of vagrants are men?

Suicides are far too common among our men. Men are dying and what has been done so far? At least people have acknowledged that something has to be done for women in abusive relationships, but we are at square zero when it comes to suicides among men.

Our boys are failing in academic in-situations that don’t know how to cater to them. Nobody wants to alter the academic structure to give boys and girls the opportunity to perform at their best, yet there is talk about equipping schools with computers. What good is technology if we have boys falling out of the system into a life of crime, frustration and a quick death? We are distracting people from the real problem.

Let me quote some feminists and you decide if there isn’t a desire to totally destroy men by many feminists.

“I feel that man-hating is an honorable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them.:

“I claim that rape exists anytime sexual intercourse occurs when it has not been initiated by the woman, out of her own genuine affection and desire.”

S. Sinanan
Cunupia, Trinidad

I don’t think so, Sir!
The letter writer [who I’m assuming is a man] was put out by all the attention to violence against women during the week devoted to highlighting it. Though he doesn’t deny that domestic violence and rape are real problems, he writes, “Feminists would like us all to believe that they are the only problems, or at least the most serious” he says there is a lot of violence against men too, “but no official stance has been taken on their behalf.”

He says, “male bashing in the media is violence…which lowers the self-esteem of men and boys”. This, he finds, has contributed to the existence of a high proportion of male vagrants, male suicides and male under-performance at academic institutions.

“Every Friday night, impressionable children watch Xena. What is being fed into the minds of our boys?” he asked worriedly, obviously distressed at the sight of scantily clad women fighting back in the popular television series. For a start, S. Sinanan, at least it’s the same as what’s being fed to the girls. It hasn’t always been that way, has it?

Women and girls have not always had access to the same kinds of information as the men and the boys. It’s only in our recent history they were even allowed to be part of those academic institutions, which had been constructed and designed with men in mind. The statistics from all the institutes of learning show that the girls are doing better than the boys; that they are applying themselves more seriously in all areas and are achieving better results.

That information should not be painful on its own. But I agree it is alarming in light of what it represents about the ability and preparedness of males to cope with a more level playing field.

It is alarming in light of the dreadful figures of violence against women. Every day, it seems women are being hacked down like so many tree trunks in a massive logging drive. Don’t you find that a serious enough problem? You don’t feel that we should discuss it? Find ways to deal with it? All this violence against men that you wrote about – who are the perpetrators? Women? You were right about one thing. Violence, regardless of the gender under attack is serious. But it is more men who are beating and killing men and women, isn’t it?

And I don’t think you should see the solution to this abhorrent and chilling state of affairs in the negation of domestic violence and rape as serious issues.

Your letter conveys a feeling that you think women are getting away with murder because their attacks are being highlighted and their deaths are being reported under a gender-sensitive subject heading. There are others who share your view, but I think you should consider that to deny the existence of one problem is no to solve the other. Women are being killed nearly every day, Mr. S., over maters like burnt food and unmade beds. They are being stalked and chopped by jealous lovers who sometimes end their own lives when their butchery is complete.

So men are suffering from low self-esteem because they see the simplistic action-packed images of the “warrior princess” Xena on their TV screens. So what do you propose we do? Turn the volume off women’s screams so we can continue to hear only the male voices among us? We’ve heard those for all our lives. We, and generations before us, live in a world that has been structured by men, for the empowerment of men. That would has flawed us so that we do not even know ho to assert our rights. We submit ourselves to the most violent treacheries of the spirit of equality.

We’re now finding our voice, Mr. S. and aren’t you just a little sad for us that, after centuries of toiling and raising children silently, of keeping families together, the shouldn’t that emanates from that long-locked-away voice is not a liberated one, but a blood-curling scream of pain?

You think it is wrong that these women have been given a forum to voice that pain? Men have long held the podium, and if they are pitched into a crisis because of emerging womanhood, then must she shut up and retreat? I don’t think so , sir.

I think the way forward should not be along the lines of man against. Woman. I think we have advanced form time when it was necessary to gain the basic recognition of right through aggressive and confrontational postures. It should now be a joint project of men and women working together to find ways of accommodation each other’s differences.

So instead of wasting time with trivial digressions that contribute absolutely nothing to finding a solution to the crisis that manifest itself in violence against women, why don’t you battered men put your heads together and try to come up with some workable ways to end it?

I’m sure that would go a long way towards raising your self-esteem.