#ChooseToChallenge - What leads to a man assaulting a woman or a child?

Juleus, feel free to post about this in the community. The discussion is invaluable.

I believe the blog category on Caribbean Data would be ideal, especially if you can also link to articles from the region such as that from which you quoted.

Excellent points made by all parties in that discussion, Juleus!

Our societies are largely unaware of the harm caused because we are underplaying the value of regional research into the issues. Even then, the issue is hard to raise and engage in dispassionately due to the high emotions involved and the strong value placed on our matriarchs.

Here in Trinidad and Tobago, reports from children's advocates revealed that abuse is perpetrated by female caregivers (largely physical and verbal) and many of grew up having been 'disciplined' physically by moms, aunties and grannies with all manner of items. It seems so 'normal' that we don't link the emotional damage and scarring in later life to the abuse that was passed off as discipline.

Thankfully, things are changing and with the passage of laws to give effect to the UNCRC, there has been a shift towards more enlightened parenting, more reports of abuse and neglect and more interventions by Courts and social workers than ever before.

Keep up the good work!

@Adrian Alexander posted:

Thank you for your comment, Juleus. I assure you there is no intent to direct the conversation in any particular direction.

The phrase is a colloquialism commonly used here in Trinidad and Tobago whenever the issue of SGBV is being discussed. I have heard it used by both men and women, especially recently amidst the anger at the murders of two women in our nation.

I do agree that the issue is extremely complex. We in the region have to address it with open minds, including having those difficult discussions surrounding the violence our boys experience at the hands of female caregivers which remains as unresolved hurt into our adult years.

In another forum, I was highlighting the need for us to acknowledge that all forms of the behaviour defined as gender-based violence in the UNCEDAW are unhealthy and should be addressed, regardless of the sex of the actor or the person to whom it is directed.

Good discussion!

Yes, this phrasing, versions of which are used in Jamaica too, assumes/suggests that the woman is always 'the victim’. And when we speak of GBV here, in the region, we rarely talk about emotional/verbal abuse. Put that into the equation and we’ll have a much clearer picture of the scale of women’s violence against men and boys in the Caribbean. In many ways, emotional verbal/abuse is just as egregious and harmful as physical abuse by men. In some cases, it is worse.

I had a conversation about this in Interviewing the Caribbean Journal (Vol. 5, No. 2, UWI Press) with Professor Opal Palmer Adisa and Dr Michael Abrahams. Here’s a bit of it:

JG: I think too that we need to take a more balanced approach to discourses on gender-based violence in Jamaica. As someone who struggles to form healthy intimate relationships with women, I feel that there is a strong correlation between boys' experiences of violence at the hands of women and the violence they commit against women in later years. In the past couple of years, we have been bombarded with reports about Jamaican men who have killed their partners. In discussions of this issue, we’ve heard all sorts of parochial narratives about patriarchy, and not much has been said about how unchecked ACEs predispose both men and women to high levels of violence. We cannot fix what we don’t understand. A part of the work we need to do is to help people acquire the right vocabulary to talk about the nexus between trauma and unconscious revenge and violence. We need to counteract the deeply entrenched narratives we have about childrearing with more informed and empowering understandings of child abuse and human development.

OPA: A number of feminists have been analysing relationship between boys and their mothers. Most feminists do not demonise men. We understand that men are not our enemies but potential allies, which is why I wrote Until Judgment Comes, stories of men and their mothers. After interviewing close to a hundred men, I realised that men were more often abused by their female teachers and mothers than by anyone else. As director of The Institute for Gender and Development Studies, I advocate that we work with both victims and perpetrators, otherwise the cycles of violence will continue.

MA: We speak about gender-based violence, and the first thing that comes to my mind is a man beating a woman. To be honest, most of the victims are women, but it is important to talk about the other side of it as well. Recently, I asked a group of boys at a prep school to tell me what was their major problem, and they said bullying. I was surprised to learn that most of the bullying came from girls. Normally, you think about boys bullying other boys, or girls bullying other girls, or boys bullying or sexually harassing girls. But these were real concerns for the boys. They talked about girls being unkind, boxing away their food, hitting them. And one boy said, “just because boys are not supposed to hit girls, they think they have the right to hit us”.  This is a conversation we need to have. A lot of men are traumatised by their mothers or female caregivers. It is not uncommon for women to find themselves as single parents, to be frustrated, angry and bitter, and a lot of this is taken out on their children. If your mum is treating you like that, it becomes your template of what a woman is supposed to be like. When you are small you can’t fight back, but when you grow older the women you get close to become collateral damage. The trauma mothers inflict on their sons comes around not onto them but onto other women. I think we have to step back look at it dispassionately, and address both sides, because women have to take some of the responsibility.

Thank you for your comment, Juleus. I assure you there is no intent to direct the conversation in any particular direction.

The phrase is a colloquialism commonly used here in Trinidad and Tobago whenever the issue of SGBV is being discussed. I have heard it used by both men and women, especially recently amidst the anger at the murders of two women in our nation.

I do agree that the issue is extremely complex. We in the region have to address it with open minds, including having those difficult discussions surrounding the violence our boys experience at the hands of female caregivers which remains as unresolved hurt into our adult years.

In another forum, I was highlighting the need for us to acknowledge that all forms of the behaviour defined as gender-based violence in the UNCEDAW are unhealthy and should be addressed, regardless of the sex of the actor or the person to whom it is directed.

Good discussion!

I find your framing of the question a bit off-putting. Why does the man need to be “big, hard-back”? It’s as though you are trying to direct the responders into a particularly one-sided, anti-masculinist way of thinking/responding. I’m pro-feminist, but I understand that we need to have serious conversations in the Caribbean about the circularity of violence and how all of us are in some way culpable. Men, yes. What we don’t say enough about is boys' experiences of violence at the hands of women and girls and the violence they commit against women in later years. This issue is more complex than many of us know or would like to admit.