“Male, I am ashamed today to be or not to be.
Seeing your pleasures gained with bleeding stains.
The pain and agony that satisfies thy libido insane.
Hardness to limp life gone in a blink.
Age no bar, nor relation is, and oh male your
image is getting marred.
The day is not far when
Family, friends and society will scorn when a male is born because of some prick-ing thorns.
Amit Abraham
Violence against women and girls (VAWG) is the foremost broad shape of abuse around the world, influencing one-third of all women in their lifetime. Such viciousness takes numerous shapes (physical, sexual, enthusiastic and financial) and is established in women’s political, financial, and social subordination. Assault and intimate partner violence (IPV) are found in all social orders, with changing predominance, and socially particular shapes of VAWG may be locally common, such as honour killings or female genital mutilation (FGM) as well as a range of harmful traditional practices including child marriage, bride abduction, bride price, acid throwing and burning. Be that as it may, women’s encounter of such violence is far from uniform because it is formed not as it were by patriarchal standards and education, but moreover by other shapes of imbalance and separation connected to variables such as course, ethnicity, age, sexuality and disability.
This violence however, creeps into our homes, workplaces, streets, organisations, society and our minds due to attitudinal biases and cultural dynamics. We watch women and girls get harassed in public transports and places and do not take action, let alone speak. We become active bystanders and not witnesses by trivialising these deeply rooted problems by deeming it as a ‘daily hassle’ or the infamous ‘men will be men’. Refusing to intrude when the wrong happens, trivialising these occurrences and continuing to suffer from oppression sows only enough weed in our minds, and consequentially breeds a more conservative reflect of these ‘daily life’ instances in our homes. Yes, this is where it starts!
It is now broadly acknowledged that strategies to end violence against women and girls must incorporate work with men and boys. In later a long time, the multiplication of intercessions including men and boys has been spurred by a crave to address men’s part in violence execution and acknowledgement that patriarchal standards of manliness are involved in violence. As commissioned by United States Agency for International Development (USAID), in its 2008 report to the United States Congress on Response and Policy Issues with respect to International Violence Against Women, the Congressional Research Service identified “The Role of Men and Boys” as the first of its current and emerging areas in violence against women research, prevention, and treatment.
Men’s Intervention, Women’s Embodiment:
The science of the Y chromosome isn’t a satisfactory clarification for male violence and oppression against women and girls, for there are incredible worldwide contrasts in predominance and social constructions, and person contrasts between men in any one setting. But a developing body of observational investigates and program mastery has created in later a long time tending to the associations between social developments of manliness, presently poisonous manliness/toxic masculinity. Social developments of sexual orientation nearly continuously bestow a tall social esteem on men than women. Male violence against women and girls is born out of their male privilege, whether since men feel entitled to use violence and abuse against those who are ‘less’ than them, or since they fear the loss of their privilege or feel incapable to live up to the societal demands related with being the dominant sex. In numerous social orders, boys are raised to be men learning that violence may be a way to illustrate their manliness and demonstrate themselves to be “real men”, often at great cost not only to the women and girls in their lives but also to themselves.
Men struggling to live up to the standards and ideals of manliness because of social exclusion and poverty, and men who had been traumatised through harsh childhood and violence in adulthood have excessively fallen prey to this vicious cycle of violence perpetration, generation after generation.
The social construction of masculinity and male violence driven towards inequitable gender attitudes. Hegemonic masculinity is established in anticipated hones or privileges that stream from hegemonic standards of men who are solid, intense, in control over women and their bodies. Men ought to fundamentally reflect on their socialisation, power, privilege at the cost to themselves as well as women and girls who conform to the norms of hegemonic masculinity. Hegemonic masculinity is not simply about men’s domination and institutional restrictions, but also the subordination is those whose gender identities and sexual orientations do not conform to the hetero-hegemonic ideal.
The recognition of the importance of Male engagement strategies to end Violence Against Women and Girls is part of a broader acknowledgement of the roles that men and boys must play in work to establish and maintain gender equality.
Why work on Men and Boys?
– Because they have women and girls.
Not all men hone violence against women but all women live with the threat of male violence every single day. Violence is central to patriarchy, and the forms of systemic violence are interconnected.
Women’s vulnerability to male violence has long been associated with their economic disempowerment or with their physiological built that deems them as ‘physically fragile’ or the ‘weaker sex’.
Sexual exploitation of women is believed to occur due to their appealing ‘feminine’ figures and consequentially, they’re asked to ‘conceal’ and ‘cover’ themselves, the problem with men here lies neglected as the onus is shifted on to whose revealing ‘more skin’.
It is evident that men and boys are abundantly involved in instigating violence against women and girls and it starts from one home and ends in another. The onus is therefore on us to work on males for them to head towards ‘positive masculinity’ by identifying, training, and supporting other men to be positive role models for their male peers. Focusing on their personal change and education that’d seek to mobilise men to take actions in support of women’s empowerment in their communities. Probing them to enforce organisational standards and policies, institutionalising prevention of and response to violence against women meanwhile developing an equitable attitude towards women without social exclusions and stereotypes by establishing alternative justice mechanisms.
When the quality of education in a school is diminished, you either change your wards’ school to provide him/her with a better and standardised edification. Or you strive to incorporate improved teaching into the education system for satisfactory pedagogical benefits that all the students could avail at once. The same applies to the social construct and the conditioning we take from it that further reflects on to other individuals.
It’s time we set eyes on our boys so that the safety of our girls can be envisioned. In order to prevent Men and Boys from becoming the part of the problem, we ought to engage them consciously and thoroughly in the ‘problem’ to nip it off the bud.
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