The Tribune

By DR IAN BETHELL BENNETT

THE country has beat out, and I mean that literally, the other Caribbean countries for the most glorious dishonour of being one of the most sexually violent places.

The country has now beaten out Jamaica for this position.

Where are we heading? For one, we should now see how damaging our attitudes towards women are. We should also see the result of those attitudes in the real world.

Yes, men believe they should control their women, but women may not share the same belief. Men also believe they should own their women; some women share that belief, others may not.

How do we know the difference? Do they wear signs? Or are we creating a society where all women must be beaten and forced into sex because our society thinks this is normal behaviour?

We are certainly creating a violent society where men can slap women around if they wish to be their own person or if they choose not to have sex one night.

The police have admitted that there are more sexual assaults than they declared.

So, when the hospital announced that their records did not match up with the police statistics and that sexual assaults, according to their records, were higher than the police statistics, they were being factual.

This, however, is not news. We well know that violence is out of control in the country from the high levels of domestic violence to the extreme levels of bullying in schools and on the way to school. Bullying is also displayed everyday in the political arena.

Many Bahamian public figures use violence as their response to any criticism and they use bullying to ‘encourage’ the outcomes they desire.

Sadly, the Bahamian public responds favourably to such behaviour. The result of such modelling is the increasingly high rates of violence and rape in the community.

This article draws on two studies, one conducted by the Crisis Centre recently and the other report was prepared for the Inter-American Commission on Women in Washington in 2008.

They both examined attitudes of youth to relationships. The Crisis Centre study by Donna Nichols et al. , published in the International Journal of Bahamian Studies (2014) surveys more than 1,000 grade ten and 12 students.

Both studies underscored the ineffective methods used in schools to promote healthy sexual activity and intimate relationships.

The Crisis Centre study highlights the alarming percentages of youth who believe that women should be ‘taken’ whenever men feel like it.

This resembles rap music, possibly the only genre of music that outrightly degrades all women of its ethnic group. It promotes the abuse and domination of women by men, otherwise known as misogyny.

Obviously, the attitudes of public figures and popular culture as witnessed through so much rap music and so many music videos has had the impact of promoting unhealthy gendered norms. When 87 per cent of male students think that a woman must submit to her husband and 85 per cent of women agree, it shows that we have a problem.

Nine per cent of boys think that a woman should be slapped by her ‘man’, but only one per cent of women feel the same.

Firstly, we see that we have great conflict. Secondly, women seem to be telling men that if you are a man, you must dominate me. Society encourages this misogyny. The culture says that men should rape women and then boast about it.

The Dark Ages have not been left behind in a country that does not believe in a woman’s right to pass on her citizenship to her children. It promotes sexual domination of women by men and also skews the idea by saying that despite women being more actively engaged in the workforce than many men, men believe that they should be the head of the household.

Ninety-seven per cent of young men think they should be the head of the household, and 58 per cent think that they should discipline their wives.

This is scary! Obviously, we have not left behind the 19th century philosophy that a man can beat his wife with a stick that is no thicker than his thumb. The world has moved on since then, why do we insist on remaining in the Dark Ages?

Society tells the youth that men have the right to dominate women. In fact, if a man does not dominate his women, he ain’t a man. If a man is feeling beat down, he can force himself on a woman and prove his masculinity. His act of domination, which is in fact an act of violence, is proof of his masculinity. Many men feel that because their wives make more than they do, they are less of a man, as the statistics show, a man must be head and being head means earning more than the woman. Many Bahamians argue that women should be inferior to men. He has the right to demand sex when he wants it. This means that the woman does not have the right to say no. This means that she is his property. Tragically, antiquated-thinking governments have perpetuated this kind of thinking. Yet, they hide the high numbers of sexual assaults and rapes and ignore the enormous rate of domestic violence. When a man lives in a home with a woman who earns more than him, what happens?

Why does that give him the right to rape her? By a woman agreeing to marry a man, apparently, she throws away her ability to be her own person and becomes his property with which he can do as he pleases.

If almost 46 per cent of men think that their wives should have sex whenever they want it, and only 16 per cent of women share that belief, there is a massive breakdown in the way intimate relationships are experienced.

Obviously, a woman will not always be inclined when a man is.

So, does that give him the right to rape her? Apparently, our leaders believe that this does and culturally this belief is endorsed.

Sadly, we seem to celebrate the alarmingly high rate of sexual violence in the country. What happens next? How do we expect our daughters to live in such a violent, misogynistic world?

Why do we celebrate misogyny and berate women with such abandon? Is this really what the Bible says?

• iabethellbennett@yahoo.co.uk