Published On:Monday, August 17, 2009

ALTHOUGH woman was created from the rib of Adam -- according to the Book of Genesis -- she was not fashioned in his likeness to be his chattel. Rather she was to be "a suitable companion to help him."

However, from the days of the cave man woman has been battered, bruised, brow beaten and often treated as a not so valuable commodity.

We recall seeing a documentary years ago about a primitive African tribe, which illustrated how women were regarded as just another child-bearing beast of burden in the tribal kraal. A woman was shown hanging, both wrists strapped to a tree branch, straining through contractions to drop her newborn into the waiting hands of the midwife squatting beneath her. The next clip showed her husband, relaxing in a hammock under a shady tree as village men gathered around commiserating with him about the ordeal he had just been through. They wanted to know if he had felt much pain, they advised him to rest after the exertions of birth. He moaned and groaned, and put on a most convincing show of having himself given birth. The straight faced village elders nodded and wished him well. The next clip showed his wife in the field, just hours after the birth, doing manual labour.

Not so many moons ago a clause still existed on our statute books classifying women with children and lunatics as disqualified for certain rights afforded men.

One day -- again years ago -- we witnessed what it meant when a brutal man took literally the biblical words that husbands had dominion over their wives.

At that time a two-storey wooden house, long fallen from respectability, stood on the corner of Shirley and Deveaux Streets -- it is now a Tribune parking lot. In its last days the house was occupied by a poor white family with children tumbling from the rafters. One day we were appalled to see a frail woman standing on the downstairs verandah in full view of passing traffic, her head bowed, her arms hanging listlessly at her side, as her husband stood over her, yelling viciously. Wham! Her head swung from one side to the other as the vicious blow struck her cheek. Wham! The head swung back, as he slammed the other cheek. She stood listless as he continued to slap, first one cheek and then the other, keeping her head swinging like a pendulum from side to side. We have never seen anything so sadistically brutal. The man had dominion, and the simple woman accepted the biblical edict. Although we winced with every blow, she didn't even whimper.

There was no point calling the police. In those days the police would have dismissed the violence because in the words of the old calypso song, you "never interfere with man and wife" -- still very much the attitude today.

On Saturday Mrs Loretta Butler-Turner, State Minister in the Ministry of Labour and Social Development, invited men to a forum to get their opinion on the proposed amendment to the Sexual Offences Amendment Act, 2009, which, if passed, would classify sexual violence in marriage as rape. A prostitute can shout rape, but a wife, has to submit to satisfy the animal urges of a brutal husband -- just because, they are told, the Bible says so. She has no right to protection, for example, against a philandering husband who will give her AIDS. And don't think it doesn't happen. We knew off at least two innocent women whose life ended that way. Nor has a wife any protection against a lascivious drunk who staggers home to demand his conjugal rights.

The problem with quoting the Bible is that it is used by too many who do not read it in context -- and certainly not in its historical context -- and so cherry pick their way through to find verses to support their narrow-minded ideas of what God is supposed to have decreed. A favourite passage is Ephesians ch 5 vs 21-33. However, the only section usually quoted is "wives, submit yourselves to the your own husbands, as unto the Lord..."

Very seldom does one hear: "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it..." And "nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband."

In a marriage, the man is recognised as the head, and the woman the heart. And as any sensible person knows one cannot function without the other -- they are one, a team moving in unison, each respecting the other. This is what marriage is all about. The proposed amendment to the Sexual Offences Act is to protect women from men who do not know the meaning of a Christian marriage.

This proposed amendment is not for men and women who understand and live God's law. It is for the animals among us who think that women were created for their sexual gratification.

Yes, there can be rape in marriage. This proposed amendment is long overdue -- there is no reason for it to remain any longer off the statute books.

And to get a young Bahamian man's point of view on this subject turn to the Insight section of this newspaper and read what Rupert Missick, The Tribune's chief reporter, has to say on the matter.