THE MALE CONSTITUENCY, NEEDS URGENT REPAIR, AND CULTURAL REVIVAL PT. II 

THE world has gone through a metamorphosis scientifically, economically, intellectually and socially. The male is the gender made obsolete in so many areas of what he understood only years ago as his workable economic realm. We have not gone beyond newspaper articles like this one among many others to seriously address the tough discourse required to deal with this nor any of the other factors impacting on this issue. High on the list of preferences is his control of the management of the home, and the cultural creeds, customs and unwritten contracts he is by tenet obliged to fulfil. It is in the pursuit of that fulfilment when rendered inadequate, that other serious problems come into being, for example –‘Case Study’: Girls have been taught that to have a well constructed furnished home to accommodate friends and relatives is an ideal. That no compromise is allowed for discussion and digression towards an alternative mode, nagging, indirect remarks and even tearful postures in full-view isolation, that are protest designed- with remarks like, “ah really looking at me life and the years ah waste” directed at the perceived failures of the male adding to the build-up that manifests in two ways: a desperation to fulfil or if not confident enough to analyse and interpret and ignore, then secondly leads to a mental self-destructive retaliation from a collapse of self-esteem, leading to the escape to, and imprisonment to alcohol or drugs, or the alternative of an aggressive defence of self-value, that leads to another woman. Most times a terrible idea, as he is unaware of the agenda of this perceived ‘safe-haven.’ Or he may toy with this definition of the fallen man, the worse would be a victimised retaliation, of frustration that explodes into another lose of rational, into a fatal domestic encounter.

Anthropologist Dr. Herbert Gayle of Jamaica in 2012, did a study on the perception of fathers in that country, that is also relevant here and in the broader Caribbean, where as that study implies, men are seen as providers and protectors, the ancient format of the male warrior- raider bringing home his loot, where nurturing especially the male youth was his charge, while the females lay with the mother. That age has gone as that study indicated, providing, nurturing and protecting are all pivotal to the couple and children across gender towards the next waltz in life.

As no time before have the impact of conspicuous consumption and the decline of strong male political leadership been more pronounced than since 1992-2014, these factors where there was no leadership to talk to men, that represented ‘Male values’ in a country faced with severe unemployment, where the alternative employment was the self-destructive lure of drugs, back-track and human trafficking, and this had seeped into mining, logging, the country had slipped into an unprecedented level of lawlessness, life had become cheap. On March 10, 2011, Stabroek News, a letter by R. Small “Male on male violence cannot be divorced from domestic violence,” alluded to the silence of some religious groups as well as a broader landscape in assessing what by all means is today a ‘National problem.’ The problem may well be, that in addressing the root causes for problems that are cultural, sub-cultural and custom of practice acceptance, the professionals may not be aware of, or are speculative without hard knowledge of areas and subcultures they were brought up to view in contempt, and also held grudging admiration for at the same time. I have written on how the courts seem oblivious to sub-cultural norms in sentencing young men who kill other men who had practised or attempted to practise a homosexual act on them. That in roots culture if such should happen, then the term is applied, “Youth man duh man hold yuh down, yuh got fuh do, wuh yuh got fuh do, fuh redeem yuh self” harsh, but it is a creed and regardless of the uppity views of lawmakers, it will be adhered to, so in the public interest it should be understood.

One of the crucial and complex realities of earning today will be the phenomenon of home-run businesses. The problematic issue will be the question of accommodation for a business area in the home, which will demand design based on what the nature of the business is. This new realm will command and depend on the architect’s unique application to create, rather than seek on-line designs to accommodate small and medium-sized homes for Guyanese with studios and built-in bookcases. This would prevent the clash between couples and space allotments, I have visited some small houses since 2013 at exhibitions, and they didn’t even cater to the homework studio for children. I had a JP that did work for me [he’s deceased now] in middle road Le Penitence. He was looking forward to a home he was building, because apart from the fact that old South Georgetown houses are predominantly cottages and small, this was where he operated. He would quietly fret that every time he displayed his files on the small coffee table that he had converted to a desk, his wife, as soon as he left for work, would put them in the drawer and place a vase with artificial flowers on the table on an embroidered centrepiece, he didn’t have the space to buy and fit a small desk. In the world before us for men, we have got to redesign and create a new space for survival, applying a realistic and functional culture, this means we must wrestle with the present and reshape it, to preserve our physical health and sanity.

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