Why do men behave the way they do?

Apr 29, 2009 Letters

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Dear Editor,
The ongoing national discourse on the subject of domestic violence seems to be side-stepping a very important part of that issue.
Up until now there seems to be no serious effort to look at the problem from the point of view of the man. He is naturally assumed to be the culprit, a drunkard, a drug addict or a natural born demon.
All the prints I have seen and read so far are condemnatory of him. In those cases where he is the victim, very few letters or articles are published, and even in those few, somehow or other the twist is made to justify the attack and exonerate the attacker.
If Minister Manikchand is very serious in her declared and much publicized desire to stamp out this disease, for a disease it has now become, then a more balanced approach is necessary. The band-aid methodology or using a big stick to batter men into submission is not going to work.
Right now if a survey is done, it may disclose that far from improving the situation, her efforts are exacerbating it, for there seems to be more violence on a daily basis.
The Minister’s insistence that every little bit of domestic violence be reported to the police is the worst of advices. Women know that, which is why many will not go to the police except in extreme cases. I will not discuss that aspect of the matter in this letter. The Minister has to show more awareness and understanding that the problem of domestic violence is a very complex one since it involves some of the strongest and most primitive emotions in the human psyche, and in the treatment of it, the appearance of fairness is indispensable.
Minister Manikchand is expending far too much energy on treatment of the symptoms, with little or no discernible effort to discover causes. All those men who put their lives on the line, who actually destroy themselves in the process of destroying their wives, are not madmen. Some do drink excessively, but it may be of the greatest interest to find out why they started.
Why do men behave the way they do? Why do they insist to the point of death – of killing and being killed – that their wives be sexually faithful to them? I will try to look at the issue from the perspective of evolution.
The whole course of evolution has shown that from the dawn of intelligence, from the moment when man first developed self-awareness, he began manifesting a compulsive urge to move in the direction of progress, to get better weapons, to improve his skills, to ameliorate his living conditions, and endlessly to increase his knowledge.
This urge was an attribute of his intelligence and inseparable from it, something over which he had no willful control.
In the bright light of that new-born intelligence, he quickly saw that a blood-bound family was the very key for survival and upward progress, but to achieve that, there had to be certainty of paternity.
The woman had an advantage for she could never be unsure of her progeny. But unless the man sequestered the woman, unless he held her incommunicado from other impregnating males, he could never be certain that the child she bore was fathered by him. And that certainty was the ligament that bound the family into the basic unit of evolving and civilizing society.
So woman was captured and sexual exclusivity enforced. Thousands of years passed. Families became tribes, which grew into nations, each accumulating its own culture, and in every successful culture, female sexual loyalty in marriage became a fundamental law. It was in that setting, it was when, through alternating good treatment and punishment, indoctrination and even divine proscription, she came to accept her role as the wife of a single male, and the mother of his children, that the woman truly became the man’s help-mate in building the home, the family, the society, the nation, and civilization blossomed and flourished.
For many millennia life progressed along this path. The man provided, the woman nourished, and at nights was his faithful companion in bed. The man developed a fierce pride in his home and his family, which gave him social identity and consequence, and of which he became intensely protective. He knew when the day was done he had a place to fill his stomach and to rest his head. Over this long period of time, this setting became incorporated in his genes, became a basic instinct. Any one seeking to disrupt it became his mortal enemy, and if that someone was his traitorous wife giving herself to another man, well    his reaction was unpredictable!
In the twentieth century two great wars and economic imperatives put women en masse in the work force and at the same time scientific methods of thinking began discrediting old values. New concepts of sexual equality arose, one thing led to another, and before long there was the new phenomenon of the liberated woman. She was free to direct her life, which included her sexual activity, whether in marriage or out, because she was equal and worked for her own money.
In this new scheme of things, men were the ones who found it difficult to adjust. Over the evolutionary period in the home they had formed a dependency on the woman. They yet longed for the old ways, and where they failed, many became brutal or even sadistic.
This was exacerbated when scheming predatory women ruthlessly used them, sucked them dry, and then unceremoniously discarded them for another.
Their actions suggest they thought like soldiers who knew they were fighting a losing battle and were going to die, so they did what they thought needed to be done and were heedless of consequences.
That is why I say using the big stick against them is a serious mistake.
The whole Guyanese society needs to be educated in the new rules. What really are the rules in Guyana governing sexual fidelity between married or cohabitating couples? Is sexual exclusivity in marriage a thing of the past? Is the new rule now ‘enjoy with discretion’, as seems to be the case in western countries?
How should a man react if he catches his wife in the very act of adultery? A Chief Magistrate was reported once to have told a defendant who went home and found his wife in bed with another man that he should have gone into the kitchen, make and sip a cup of tea, thereby giving the couple a chance to finish up and for the man to depart. Was he right? I expect the answer is no, but nobody seems ready to give the right answer.
This is where the honourable Minister could help her crusade. The educational process should start. She could begin herself, and encourage responsible people in the society to follow, by writing in the press, telling ordinary Guyanese males how they should behave if, in whatever circumstance, they catch their wives or girl-friends committing fornication. Trying to bludgeon men into submission most certainly will only make matters worse.
Kumar Doobay

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