THE RETROGRESSION RATHER THAN EVOLUTION OF MALE VALUES

THE recent conflict between two students of different genders raises the question of values, in this respect, since the prevailing person was male, and the obvious overcome was female. To me and many others with whom I had discussions, the scene, regardless of what provoked it, from the consequences, it did summon the comparison of then and now with respect to hostile male-female confrontations during my boyhood. Bearing in mind each area resonates its own norms however within a specific cultural group, those norms do not differ greatly. I have both rural and urban experiences and wish to draw from an experience I had at school. I had an altercation with a female fighter in my class when I was younger. She threw a punch and I blocked it. I held her hand and when she threw the next one, the teacher intervened. Two male friends came up to me and asked me “Why yuh didn’t manners she?” I reminded them of the guidelines we all knew: “If yuh knock a girl yuh was a A…man.” They said that applied to girls like Dolly and Olivia, “not them who think dem is man.” They called a bigger boy after I enquired in the jargon of the day if I should “ cuff she and Judo she.” Richard, the bigger boy emphasised “No, yuh can’t cuff in no sensitive areas , or kick. No! yuh don’t cuff or kick girls, put two slap pon she,” I was thus instructed.

I was raised in a cultural philosophy to defend the females of my family and stand up for female relatives of good friends if they appealed for help, or were in danger. Jokes weren’t made about people’s mothers that didn’t lead to a fight. I grew up in a matriarchal society that acknowledged the guidance of good mothers, to the point where there’s a saying, “Mother gone, family done.” Off course, there were anomalies: I saw bad men beat women with helmets, kick them, all because some younger thug with suave held the lady’s attention despite their payroll money.

I also know of aggressive, cantankerous sisters: one spat on a young man, he slapped her, she went for her brother and the young man and his brother murdered her brother in a most horrible way outside of Lenno’s shop on Cooper Street. So nothing human is perfect, but certain base values triumphed and retained a balance. That recent school event is indicative of a social interception. The young lady appeared defeated and two other young men were standing observing and not neutralising the conflict. They did nothing, why? They were participants too. If a murder had happened, they would have been the number two and three accused. Thus, this cannot be concluded without participation of a senior enlightened welfare officer or officers that understand the cultural dynamics that have declined among both adolescent genders through social and invasive values.

The police are trained to uphold and effect our laws, but this is not only a legal thing. It’s a developed, negative interaction and the context of its manifestation already has a timeline; from pornographic videos being made of young women in school on substances, to outright physical assault. This requires serious interception. Many young people were subject as either witnesses or heard in their homes the cries of female relatives shot with pellets and teargassed by policemen under the past administration.

A young pregnant woman living on Wellington Street was kicked by the late Leon Fraser in an after-hours protest where the Strand Cinema was attacked. She was not part of the protest. Janet Jagan’s remarks were reprehensible through its indifference. Herod in her home village was shot by members of the joint services. Rohee, forever an offensive specimen, responded that “If deh don’t wan hear, deh gon feel,” In 2009 [my Creolese]. In the overall crime and collapse of law and order in Guyana over the preceding years, ‘Fine man Rawling’s’ sister was not a criminal. There was no evidence that the relationship with her brother was anything other than biological; yet her random execution was sanctioned.
Female slapped by minister; senior policeman rumoured as wife-beater; attempting to kick wife out of entity organisation; pivotal fake wedding of senior figure. Women have been on the downside of recent social-political strife as well as too many domestic murders. Lack of demonstration of the true sanctity of male-female relationships did not profoundly exist during the past administrative era. Transferring subliminal messages of gender disdain, which became public gossip here, there and everywhere, with influences to the most vulnerable, four years of proper visual conduct cannot redeem the tremendous damage done, so it has to intensify now through various tools.

In matriarchal culture, women have no religious or philosophical barriers; they were open to fist fighting brothers sharing street methods and techniques to sisters identified as having a certain potential. I’ve always advocated with other writers that Holmes Street in ‘Tiger Bay’ should be a living museum of the old waterfront days, preserving stories like the power of women like Doris Struthers, a fist-fighting, six-foot-plus woman, who ran a Tiger Bay bar-plus, and would fist fight any sailor. I have always known of women who were every ounce female but were fighters: Annabelle, Norma Sergeant, Yvonne, Grace, Corn-hero and many others, but from the male perspective they were women, and there was no urge to put them down. There were interesting grassroot folk characters that enriched a difficult world where survival was enveloped by wit, conflict and confrontation and the means to establish that respect is due.

My eldest attended Richard Ishmael and did well. There were always human challenges, but not like what has developed over the past years, with serious drugs (ecstasy) peddled to schoolchildren and an apparent ineffective redress by organisations tasked with intercepting behaviour patterns and sub-cultural value intrusions not in their interest. If you are reading this article, it means that collective thoughts can be transferred to actions. Let’s start within our own tribe. One of the first lessons I was taught as a teenager, was, “know how to treat girls cause yuh got sisters.” This recent display of unmanliness is not our custom; it must be treated as the retrogression it is.

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