Strength versus brains – the raging battle of the sexes is on

Aug 15, 2010 News

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By Michael Benjamin

Whenever a group of men congregate for a street corner lime or a rum shop gaff, women always bear the brunt of their jokes. This group was no different and Joe had taken center stage, his voice rising 10 decibels. He was reciting an earlier fracas with his wife one night prior. “Who me?” he pronounced pushing his chest in the air, “I had she pon she knee begging last night!”
His friends were thoroughly impressed until one of them requested additional details. “So what was she saying?”
“She telling me dat I mus come from under de bed,” was Joe’s sheepish response.
While this joke has been making its rounds for quite some time, and while it is true that some women do take the rolling pin to their men, the statistics reveal that even though members of the ‘fairer sex’ are the ones at the wrong end of domestic brutality, they somehow manage to leave the ring in the better shape than their mate. Almost on a daily basis, newspaper reports relate the sordid ‘battle of the sexes’ episodes that oft times leave the woman dead or permanently maimed.
Many read these reports, sigh in exasperation and return to their daily chores because oft times they feel far removed from the situation. Then one day the proximity gap closes considerably and the dead woman happens to be your neighbour or close friend. It is now time to perk up.
Incidences such as these suddenly take on immense proportions because the dead individual is someone whom you know, have touched, loved and generally fraternised with. You now question your immortality, unobtrusively paying keener attention to the behavioural patterns of the man you have vowed to love until death.
This is the irony; the warring couples had earlier, sometimes a mere few months, vowed to live in sickness and health, but most importantly, “Till death do us part.” Obviously the men are applying a literal interpretation to this section of their vows, and whenever their spouses, after a prolonged period of abuse and embarrassment decide to walk out of their lives, they, the men that is, decide to end the relationship in accordance with their marriage vows.
The psychologists, sociologists and other relevant professionals may give a more profound prognosis of the problem but sometimes it is the street corner conversations that provide the most practical solution to the elimination of these scourges.
Almost every man has been socialized to believe that women are the weaker sex and a woman’s power is in her tongue. So, at any given time during spousal confrontations, the ‘weaker sex’ may be heard ranting and raving with no corresponding response to her epithets. Men are more wont to remain silent during the abusive sessions (though there are men who can match the females, word for word, during these verbal confrontations). Some men have developed unique responses to these outbursts. They simply leave the house, allowing the situation to cool off. By the time they return, the woman would have emitted her fill of verbal abuse and the situation returns to normal.
The flip side of such responses, are the men who assert their dominance and lash out so as to get some ‘peace and quiet in this house.’ The latter reaction is often the beginning of a history of domestic abuse and the women have several choices at their disposal. They either shut up, which quell the man’s wrath, or call the police and have the courts settle the matter. Many women have lost their nerve at the bottom of the Court steps and have ended up begging for a chance for the men they initially wished to prosecute. Many have lost their lives because of such lack of judgment as they return to the abusive relationship. Only this time the men decide to ‘done the dance’ rather than face the courts once again. Recently ‘done the dance’ includes the men taking their own lives.
Women are strange creatures! They may discover their men in extra-marital relationships and literally tear off his head. When their passions cool they apply antidotes and bandages to that very wound. If the man transgresses again, she would rupture that very spot all over again.
Men have been heard to pronounce that “after God is swar.” This simply means that some men employ the gift of gab to pacify their women whenever they are faced with volatile confrontations. So it would not be uncommon for a man to relate to his friends that, ‘Yo know she fall fo de swar!” This simply means that the woman had fallen, hook line and sinker for the concocted lies the man utters in order to squeeze out of a tricky situation.
Eileen Cox, the popular consumers advocate, recently related to me the initial woes women experienced while attempting to assert themselves into the mainstream. She is among the few women that bucked the wheel and today women have become more empowered to perform functions once thought to be uniquely men’s roles. Admittedly, with such new adaptations, women have become brazenly independent. Washing the pots and pans and remaining in the home to care for the children are now archaic endeavors. The women are everywhere, in the gold fields; driving taxis and mini-busses; climbing the electrical poles; within the clergy and at the pinnacle of the judicial structure. The men are threatened; their macho bravado has been ruptured to the extent that their role as head of the home is seriously questioned.
While the argument for the women may appear sound, there is a flipside to the issue and while the females are complaining of physical abuse, the men are bellyaching about emotional abuse. This is simply the act of undermining an individual’s sense of self-worth and/or self-esteem, and may include, but is not limited to constant criticism, diminishing one’s abilities, name-calling, or damaging one’s relationship with his children. A story making its rounds relates that Ms Jones, being dissatisfied with her husband’s input in the home, would become verbally abusive just as soon as he walks in from work. “I does look at Jackie and she husband how dey does live nice, nice, not a quarrel, not a fight. Every weekend dey does go market together and he is such a gentleman, he does fetch de basket to and from de market fo she.”
I ent know wha I really marry; I shouda listen to meh mother ……” and the tirade went on every day.
The husband would sit quietly as his wife fumed, As the Guyanese parlance goes, if she could have turned into a bird and listen to Jackie and her husband behind closed doors, she would have done a double take.
“I does observe how Ms Jones and she husband loving like tail; Dah man don’t walk behind he wife everywhere she go like if he is a cochore. He does just put de money in she hand and go bout he business. Is men like y’all does get blow till up to y’all neck and y’all don’t even know.”
The two scenarios simply outline two families poking their noses into the other’s business without the benefit of the facts, and arriving at far-fetched conclusions. I do not wish to offend but I have always pronounced that women are their own worst enemies. My mother always says that it takes two people to get you angry; one to say ill things about you and the other to tell you what was said about you.
In the meantime, the police have their hands full as the battle of the sexes rage. I have decided to hold my peace. Women are gentle but they can be more deadly than their male counterparts. Furthermore, they know just how to beat the judicial system. A certain woman I know was accused of killing her husband, a professor at a renowned University. The prosecution’s case was that she pushed her husband into a lake knowing that he couldn’t swim. After three weeks of trial, she got off scotch free. She told the jury that as she was about to save her husband when he shouted to her, “I’m thinking, I’m thinking.” She omitted to tell the jury that she was well aware that her husband spoke with a lisp.
Women—you can’t live with them; you can’t live without them.

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