The Tribune

Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett

We have taken to referring to most young men as being violent, and a threat to national security.

To be sure, there is an unprecedented level of crime and violence on New Providence and most of it reverberates from particular quarters.

It is interesting though, that if we stop and think about it, most of those violent quarters, or what has been referred to as the ‘native quarter’ by current politicians and colonial governments, to read Franz Fanon, we see this boldly in his discussion.

Yet no one challenges the use of these terms or why these quarters are producing violence. We simply accept that what the authorities say is so. These young boys are terrible and the young women breed too much. They act independently of each other and the rest of society, according to officialdom. However, when we examine international studies, we see that the trends we are experiencing are not unique to our small islands but are transnational.

When we talk about men and their irresponsibility, do we not stop to examine the ways leaders carry themselves? They seem to think that their performance of masculinity, the same performance they decry in the ‘poor folk’ as being unacceptable, is admirable, exemplary, cool. They can attack people in public, they can draw blood with words, they can rain down hell and brimstone on their adversaries, and they can even break the law and nothing will happen to them. They pay no consequences for their actions.

However, get a poor boy from Nassau Village, Kemp Road, Quakoo Street, John Close or somewhere in Pinewood or Jubilee, and we will see the difference. Sure, they are not as educated in conducting scalpel-like incisions with their tongues as are their leaders, but it the same monkey and the same circus. We are quick to condemn the young men for being troublemakers, uneducated and unsocialised, when all they see around them is that kind of behaviour, only in a different costume. A large number of the self-proclaimed saviours of the people are like the worst kind of junkyard potcakes.

They attack and destroy, but claim no responsibility. They breed and multiply, womanise and strut their cocksure feathers, but preach the gospel and all we can see is their underwear as they stand in the pulpit, and people tweet about whose is bigger than whose (local masculinity defined).

These are the exemplars of masculinity. Their example is of the worst and very kind of dangerous, irresponsible and destructive self-assured, self-aggrandising masculinity around. In a study produced about trauma and mental health in some South African towns and cities, the researchers demonstrate that links to violence lead to this kind of dissociative and irresponsible behaviour and no medical intervention, usually because most people who live in the heavily affected areas cannot afford it. Similar studies have been conducted in the region, but we refuse to use their findings or adapt their best practices. Further, the cocksure and hensure leaders who espouse seriously flawed beliefs about violence, especially condoning and celebrating gender-based violence have a great deal to answer for.

Their leadership style has aggravated an already serious problem in our society. They lead by their flaws. Why define woman and girl beating as acceptable when we understand that in homes where this is practiced, it becomes a cross-generational trend? We can show that verbal abuse is as corrosive as physical abuse, except when our leaders indulge in it. We expect women to take blows from the celebrated masculine males we promote, but this causes huge national debt and negatively impacts national mental and psychological health as well as national productivity and income. We move the so-called ‘poor people’ to the worst land, the worst housing, the worst areas, they inhabit the spaces with the worst environmental damage and contamination, such as carcinogenic smoke and dust from fires that then light their homes. Officialdom sends them to areas with the worst education, unless they are exceptionally self-motivated to leave their conditions, and we wonder why they behave violently?

Further, officialdom tells them that they must evacuate during these disasters, and many refuse because they have nothing and nowhere else; they will lose everything in these poorly thought out and planned impoverished areas, someone benefited from. We still blame them for their poverty, especially the women. Many times we tell them, pick better men. They have picked the best men, the only men, and usually the men have picked and then abandoned them. However, we blame the women. Then officialdom says that they must improve nourishment.

We blame women for breeding and raising all dese no good chirren on dey own. It ain de men dem fault. We blame women for not being in the homes when their children are home because ‘they workin’. We blame women for poverty and not teaching boys to be good citizens. We blame women for not studying with their chirren dey raisin on dey own. We blame women for allowing their daughters to be raped. We blame women for not sending their children to school, or not buying them clothes, for not combing hair. In a country where more women than men are employed in the informal sector; where women are paid less than men, where employers can and do fire women for becoming pregnant, refuse to pay for maternity, and in homes where the level of education is low, the tendency is to have a baby more often than insurance will pay out benefits, it is not surprising that more women than men live in poverty.

More single-women-headed homes will be in the ‘worst’ areas. Has officialdom not connected the dots to why things are so bad? Do they not see their behaviour and their policies having the most significant impact on those who can barely take care of themselves? If we examine, for example, the famed breadbasket that officialdom boasts about where things are meant to be cheaper and price controlled, we see that the same $3.85, pushing up the amount slightly, that is said to feed a family will only feed them the worst food. The breadbasket is filled with the worst foods that have the lowest nutritional value. This most directly negatively affects women, and women are the most socially damned because they are not looking after their families. Lard, flour, sugar - most probably white sugar - margarine, corned beef, have been shown to be poor sources of nutrients other than fat. Fat does not allow children to excel in life. In fact, the same boasted about breadbasket creates the same deeply criticised high proportion of non-communicable diseases that plague our communities, especially our poor communities, and cause our health bills to rise.

All of this negatively impacts public expenditure and is a result of public policy produced by the same officialdom who stand back and condemn women and irresponsible men for the problems in society, yet they flip birds and practice murderous deceit with charismatic nonchalance and impunity. So much for irresponsible masculinity!