I feel sick to the stomach for the state of women and children’s lives in my country and in disbelief of the atrocities currently taking place
The issue is far more deep-rooted than we can imagine -the dark undertones of our society and revealing the evil in our own lives
[Trigger warning: Sexual/child abuse]
I’ve witnessed shady inconsistencies in men my whole life. It pains me to say that most people I know have encountered some form of abuse by men. Whether they were girls, boys, women or men, they’ve all been victims of perverted men in our society.
At the age of 7, I was walking to my school bus stop and I noticed my brother was lagging behind. I stopped for a brief moment to chuckle at his clumsiness when all of a sudden, a man in a grey tracksuit stopped jogging and stood in front of me.
He looked at me and said, “Have you seen a rocket?” and pointed to the sky. I looked up in confusion and when I looked back down he said, “Do you want to see a banana?” and pulled his trouser down and laughed. I started pacing towards the bus stop, numb from what I had just witnessed but completely aware that my innocence was stolen.
At school I was always curious to befriend the opposite gender. I wanted to know the boys that existed outside of my brother.
In attempts to form a bond with them, I was giggled at, pointed at and fat shamed by boys who thought I was ugly.
At 26 now I can understand that those boys were immature and classic bullies but when I put together the “father figures” in my life who objectify their own wives and sisters, the behaviour of those boys suddenly became very clear to me.
I’ve observed men in my own life who are actually moodier than the women they call dramatic.
One moment they’re bringing in platters of sweets and savouries and hampers of gifts for the women of the house.
The next an abusive sentence flows out of their mouth effortlessly for a woman anchor who wore her dress too short at a sports presentation.
As if that wasn’t confusing enough, I’ve been made to sit on laps of men who beat up their wives after a drunken expedition.
And the same men stuffed notes of money and chocolates in my tiny hands to mask the blood on their inhuman palms.
The emphasis on family, traditions and patriarchal roles is where the crime breeds. I cannot speak of the perpetrators in my own family because I will be a threat to the foundation of the society that “shaped” us.
I live with the guilt of knowing the names and the faces of men who have abused their power. I am forced to continue to keep a cordial relationship with them for the sake of family.
I’ve swallowed excuses for these men who rest their hands behind their heads refusing to change.
Who become possessed with anger when cornered, throw their arms aimlessly at any living being holding a gentle candle to enlighten them.
These are men who will say women and children are fragile and wreak havoc at the sight of it. These are the same men who fetishize fragility and inflict a satanic blasphemy to eradicate it from the world.
What’s worse, these men are all around. It’s a universal problem, hiding behind distinguished suits and pristine whites, deluding themselves to believe they know what’s right for people.
They call themselves leaders while exploiting a minor or threatening a female intern to pleasure them for career growth.
“Not all men but always a man” is a quote I came across as I was reading responses from the public. I think men who get triggered by this statement miss the forest for the trees, I don’t think the purpose was to say all men are criminals.
It’s true that violence and injustice can come from any gender but a majority of it happens to be men who hide behind their indecencies.
My hatred towards these specific men is layered with concern for the innocent lives who become subjects of their trauma.
And I wonder why?
Imagine this scenario:
A young boy watches his parents fight everyday. His mind is innocent and exposed to the first representation of a man and woman in his life. The parents were forced to have him to continue their legacy, the marriage was an arrangement/transaction to silence the society.
The young boy watched his father stumble into the house drunk every night, opening the door to find a strange woman he was forced to marry. The mother feeds the son she never wanted to have, with a man she met once before they were sentenced together for life.
The young boy believes he’s safe until the drunk father starts yelling at the mother’s incompetency to serve him as a housewife while he slaves all day. With no real evidence, the drunk father unleashes his anger towards the mother till she bleeds and verbally abuses her existence. She endures the pain without a choice, hopes to stay out of the way and continues to nurture the child as a mother but as a woman, she’s been killed.
The young boy’s mind picks up on a new behaviour, he’s confused as to why his mother who feeds him must be punished. He’s frightened of his father, his instinct of survival is to never be in his sight. But he accidentally falls prey to his father’s violence when his mother’s not around which transforms his fear into anger. His father seeks opportunities to belittle him for being a burden in their lives and is never truly shown love.
Over the years the young boy is now introduced to girls in his school. He sees girls who laugh, play and treated as equals. A girl scores a higher grade than him in class and is celebrated. The father hears about the girl scoring higher than his son, he mocks his son for being useless in comparison and maybe even beats him to a pulp for embarrassing the family. The mother stays silent, she fears speaking up to save herself from being assaulted, she cleans the wounds but the boy pushes her away.
He’s now a teenager and his hormones take over his ability to discern between love and finding a woman to control. He watches movies about how to acquire a woman for his needs, and feels tempted to watch adulterated movies to comprehend his sexual drive. He finds a woman interesting and targets her as an obsession outside of his miserable life at home.
He tries to get her attention, the girl is timid and prefers a gentle approach. Impatience and ignorance fuels the teenage boy and he cannot control himself, the behaviour he consumed as a child itches him towards harmful gratification. He wants to punish her for questioning him, he senses his mother’s weakness in her and wishes to destroy it…and so he does.
This is a scenario to display a collection of common storylines I’ve witnessed over the years. Multiply this into millions of similar stories and the problem becomes quite apparent. I could point out the obvious issues like forced arranged marriages, traditions, societal pressure, extremely poor mental health, lack of services to offer therapy or education, poverty, lack of sex education and much more.
But the core of the issue is the blatant disregard for accepting women as equals and the incompetence to take accountability. These men find pleasure in ignorance rather than sitting with the simplicity of acceptance and equality.
How could they when they believe they’ve had it the hardest? That the world has been unfair to only them? This is what they think, they function from a place of ego and rejection, it’s how their genes tell them to be and trauma takes the narcissistic steering wheel.
We’re nothing but cattle in their big bad wolf fantasies. And the tamers of these big bad wolves are wolves in disguise themselves.
The wolves can continue rotting in their imminent doom, but as cattle, when will we break free from our self-imposed herd mentality?
2Shades Magazine 