“STOP?THE?MALE?BASHING?” asked Conchita Moseley. “Why should we?”
The NATION?Facebook reader, responding to Canon Noel Titus’ call for us all to step away from the male bashing, offers with animus an explanation to her rhetorical question.
“This is 2011 and we are not back in the times when men made the law that women are inferior.”
Greta Marlin surmised that “just about every country bashes the male species, but I believe it is all fun and games”.
Whether it is for merriment or on account of reprisal, male bashing must be seen as a no-no. More importantly, it must be recognized as a manifestation of violence upon the person – domestic violence, if you please.
It is not unknown that women, when in a frenzy, can be the consummate dispensers of bashing that can leave some men abashed and trembling in their boots.
This is no less pain-inflicting and horrid than the man who strips his partner of her dignity by insult and invective.
It all comes parcelled in domestic violence, which neither MESA’s chairman Ralph Boyce nor Bureau of Gender Affairs director Patricia Hackett-Codrington will certainly countenance.
The flippancy with which some women speak of male bashing and the constancy with which the authorities keep reminding us of the evil and futility of violence against women speak to a social disruptiveness that can no longer be of this age.
The trouble is that with a growing tendency to settle disputes with the hand – or whatever is in it – rather than the head, changing mindsets in the domestic setting could be a formidable challenge.
We empathize with Ms Hackett-Codrington.
“A lot of difficulty,” she says, “lies in the fact that people are unable, don’t know how to resolve conflict. And in the power struggle, with the inability to resolve conflict, the only thing to do is take out the other person.”
Ms Hackett-Codrington’s solution is to help people manage all the anger within them; get them to understand that other people have rights and that they must be acknowledged.
“. . . Men have rights, women have rights.”
In conjunction with the Bureau of Gender Affairs director’s programme it would be most useful to have our violently inclined reminded of the words of Jesus.
“For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies . . . .” (Matthew 15:19)
Thought always precedes the violence against the woman – and the male bashing.
