Muted Men

It all started with a tweet from a lady I respect and admire @KirtyBisset (Nov.16) that read, “Shout out to the fragile men.” I then replied to her saying that her tweet speaks to me my heart and that I wanted to write a blog about this very thing and she encouraged me to go on and do it. I’ve been wanting to speak about the silencing, disrespect and abuse of men and how this has been ignored for far too long. My final wakeup call was when I realised that gender violence doesn’t really have a preference to which gender it will choose, it just violates.

I have been reading up on this for years and my interest comes from a multitude of seen and heard stories amongst people I know. I know men who have been assaulted by women whom they had trusted and loved. I have watched women in my family abuse men physically or verbally. I have seen this reaction come out of anger and I have seen it come from pure malicious intent of trying to provoke a man just to see how far they can go. My greatest traumatic experience that will forever remind me of how severe this is when my beloved aunt (because I love her dearly) killed her boyfriend. Which as it were it wasn’t the first time, they were in an altercation only this incident left her a murderer. We don’t talk about this at all in my family till this day. My aunt later passed away of internal injuries she incurred while in a holding cell where police took turns beating her up. She died a few months after the murder took place.

I have since listened to my friends retell their version of their abusive relationships either same-sex relationships or heterosexual relationships. I also listened as other women told me how they have had to rescue their women friends from abusive relationships or fetch them from police stations. I’m yet to hear of a guy say he was rescued by another man from the firing fists of women. We can equate it to the fact that we are not there yet, or that humiliation of a man’s pride and ego is a real thing. All I’m saying is that with the alarming rise in men committing suicide we should now ask ourselves when will we listen and actually hear men and believe them when they too say they are in abusive relationships. Just a footnote, abuse doesn’t just start and end at physical it can be sexual, marital, emotional and verbal, economical, intimidation and many other.

Now with the 16 Days of Activism coming up, we have gained momentum, but just not enough, on the idea that women and children are the victims in South Africa who need protecting, which is very true. However, we skipped the part where men and same-sex violence is actually on the rise (it also is gender based). It really starts small in this country, everything starts small and it is ignored. By the time there is actually a problem it’s out of control. It is so sad to read on articles and discover how men are treated in a way that further degrades them and in a way that humiliates them entirely.

There are many instances where we need to overcome the violence for women and children in this country. Many instances where we need to protect and cover our sisters and our children, but we should never forget the men who are silently suffering. Remember what Yehuda Berg said, hurt people hurt people.