When a dog bites a man, it’s no news but when a man bites a dog, that’s a breaking news. Some women have turned their husbands into punch bags, they are professional men-beaters!’ This was the reaction I got from an elderly man during a discussion on the international day for the elimination of violence against women. The United Nations observes international day for the elimination of violence against women on 25 November. This observance raises awareness of the continuing toll of gender-based violence. According to research, violence against women and girls is one of the most prevalent human rights violations in the world. Globally, it is estimated that one in three women will experience physical or sexual abuse in her lifetime. Back to the conversation, at a point I was speechless, my mind was agog with bewilderment. The reality is that some women are highly insensitive, of course there’s no tenable excuse for such but what bothers me is why would a man engage in a physical combat with a woman? I got the answer from the book; Art of War written by Dr Cindy Trimm, a best-selling author, key note speaker and former senator of Bermuda. ‘…I recently had a friend tell me about something he had read in an essay about ‘Seeing’. The essay told about operations in the 1950s that were giving sight to individuals who had been born blind.
These people were various ages, from small children to people in their fifties and sixties. The operations had surprising results. While they enabled the eyes of these people to operate normally for the first time in their lives, the people did not immediately begin walking around as any other person might. Instead they saw everything as color splotches and light and dark places. Everything appeared flat, they had no depth perception, and anytime something went out of sight behind another object(a dog going behind a chair for example), they were initially shocked. The world they had known over the years was very different from what they now perceived’’. Oh I see!!! What I saw was that in the world of the blind, light is abnormal. The way we see or perceive things/situations is largely based on what we are familiar with especially our environment. An abuser sees his victim as worthless and weak and desires to take advantage of such a person. I wonder why men who commit such dastardly act of beating a woman, don’t beat their mothers. You may agree with me that in this clime it is an abomination for a man to beat up his own mother but why is it not an abomination to beat up any other woman? What is the difference between the woman you inflict pain on and your mother?. You need to see every other woman out there as your sister and mother.
At the root of every violence is uncontrolled anger. In reality anger is nothing but an emotion however a lot of people have not come to terms with the fact that anger has a positive side. It is an emotional outburst that signals dissatisfaction or disgust for a thing/somebody. Every human being experience anger. We are imperfect beings living in an imperfect world, God alone is perfect and even God the Almighty gets angry but biblical principles admonish us; Be angry but sin not! We need to learn to consciously seek positive ways to utilise anger and take positive steps to address the things or people that makes us angry. I believe that while it is okay for government to establish drastic measures to punish men and women who take laws into their own hands by inflicting pain on others, I am concerned for the next generation. We need proactive mediation. Research has proven that most abusers were also victims of abuse be it sexual or physical, they suffered neglect and the only language familiar to them is violence as a self defense. Violence of love can quench the fire of gender violence ravaging our world.
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