…In a world of double standards and indifference

LAST Friday this conversation began about male driven domestic abuse and violence- not a deniable reality, but not the whole truth as cited references demonstrated. The reality is that all humans are flawed- male and female, including the modern different gender references. Humans react based on how we are raised, apart from the doctrines preached.

In Guyana, there are two distinct opposing old world cultures that function within the same space, though they are not discussed-that of matriarchal and patriarchal,and they are innate to our domestic behaviour.

From childhood, males do not complain about being beaten in school. My godfather would ask “Why am I feeding you?” That translates into: go fight the other guy until he decides it’s better to become friends. If you can help bigger boys with their long division they teach you fighting skills… it’s a word and a blow or a ‘jumbie lash’ – that’s the collective philosophy given to men from childhood, as agreed upon by society.

As we become men and choose wives or they choose us, we understand our responsibility to defend and provide. We expect loyalty, though we learn the hard way that when our aunts and big sisters encourage us to be polygamous “Because the girls like us”, that it has consequences, sometimes long-lasting. There is also the fact that female relatives assume some kind of entitlement and scheme against that certain female that they can’t control who is depriving them of that needed support, thus they proceed to undermine, adding sophisticated subplots to the stage the male assumes he’s in control off. The other dark side is when he is chosen by the ultimate huntress and becomes the token male or trophy husband, but within this article, we must move on.

Despite the facts of male-driven domestic violence and the severity acted out by the courts, other initiatives are required for a greater understanding. With the mandate enforced by women that a man is not a man if he cannot provide, regardless that charities may be extended to other family members based on his efforts, nowhere is there evidence that hard knock discourses are directed to females on necessary conservatism.

That discourse should engage the nature of infidelity and the consequences of the dark edge, where sanity becomes questionable, with fatal results. The latter part is twofold as I can point to more than two men I know who were suspected of being victims of domestic poisoning and were rushed to cremation, one resided in Canada. By the time his mother could acquire her visa and ticket to travel, he was cremated after a funeral was agreed upon.

There are no wholly righteous human beings, but with our diverse species, certain patterns are set. Chronicle, Friday, July 7, 2017, again, Sociologist Patricia Sheerattan indicated that young men are under pressure: “Boys will tell you that their girlfriends want brand name things which are very expensive.” October 26, 2011, Stabroek News, F. Skinner wrote an interesting letter titled: “In Guyana men are deprived of their ability to earn and maintain their status as head of household” and a survey by the Ministry of Home Affairs in August 2013 was delivered by Louis Dobson declaring that ‘Jobless 18-25-year-old men are the main perpetrators of city crimes’. This translates across the nation as we have witnessed and some, unfortunately, have experienced.

I went to school with Lawrence Dougall. I didn’t see him for some 35 years. I saw his younger brother and upon inquiring was told a troubling story,that Lawrence lived with a woman at Enmore on the East Coast but worked as a cane cutter at Diamond on the East Bank. Apparently, he rode his bicycle to work occasionally. He collapsed one morning while riding through Ruimveldt. He was dead before he touched the ground.

The problem of career choices and earning ability with both males and females rests with the lack of economic diversity developed in our nation. Our school system once had a syllabus that developed artisans, seamstresses, artists and encouraged music, drama and sports. It was probably realised that efforts to diversify were not in stream to accommodate the expansion of these programmes, so where do the school and the home environment take our children? The nation celebrates multiple passes at exams, but toward what?

Most private sector businesses are family owned and our academic scholars are overqualified anyhow. Public office is driven by a fixed progression to elevation and not by certificates. But here I’m referring to a one per cent of our students, for many others who join the workforce the ‘jobs’ are exciting for the first year then the fear of economic independence emerges, with no exposure to the hobby careers that can redirect interest through secondary economic stimulation through functional development, which can even serve and salvage retired males.

A wider school landscape was initiated by Minister Roopnaraine with the introduction of music before he became ill. Other areas were hinted to with the intention of widening the scope of the narrow restrictive tunnel of options that education retrogressed into during the previous two decades. The diversity of interests referred to, is not knew. There were the cottage industries that flourished before the saturation of money laundering merchandise coupled with visionless political leadership reversed those local economic options and the epidemic of domestic violence was unleashed.