The Tribune

By Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett

FATHER’S Day has come and gone again and such discourse about celebrating our strong fathers did surround it. We still seem to be locked in a culture of patriarchy and misogyny without thinking about real paternity. We know that we like to be called ‘Daddy’ and we celebrate men that sire children around the place as if they were sharing rice. Culturally though, we do not celebrate them being involved in their children’s lives.

In fact, we expect men to be absent from their children’s lives because to be involved and engaged in child raring apparently makes men soft.

At the same time, we talk about male underachievement and bemoan the fact that women are ‘taking over’. We are less willing to spend money on educating young men than we on educating young women. We encourage young men to leave school, get a job and help pay the bills, and we ask that they demonstrate their masculinity by having many girlfriends and producing babies with them. We do not expect them to pay for those babies, though.

This is one driver of HIV, but we do not care about that. We do not discuss safe sex responsibility because a man is a man and the woman must be responsible for everything. These trends all seem very contradictory. It is also this kind of image we seem to create of a loveless and domineering God who is quick to wrath, but the Bible speaks to an all loving and forgiving God.

These messages simply do not compute.

Our society is flawed but happy. We apparently celebrate all the bad, and complain when the crime takes over, murders are out of control and poverty is increasing. We honour criminals and bad men, but criticise honest men who work hard to make a living.

Meanwhile, we are happy to downsize the real workforce as illustrated with the latest announcements that BEC and BTC will cut positions that will result in around 300 fewer real jobs in the country.

Will Baha Mar suddenly absorb all of these skilled people and populate the shallow sea with commensurate positions?

Or are the male heads of households to earn less, have fewer benefits and serve with a smile because they can do nothing else?

We are talking about undermining a group of people who are already teetering on the verge of collapse because every message that Bahamian society sends goes against positive male identity and all in favour of cruel, self-indulgent and absorbed fatherhood.

We are producing young men who live violence in their homes at the hands of visiting partners. They see women being treated like objects, subjected to domination because society subscribes to the belief that women are the property of the men with whom they happen to be in a relationship; and a man who don’t put licks on his woman, ain’t no real man.

There is a constant cry that we need more men to become teachers. Why would men go into a profession that deems them as less than?

Why would they choose to take on the role of educator when it cannot pay the bills and keep a roof over the family’s head, unless they are on a hardship island?

We also see teaching a ‘soft’ profession; so any men who teach must be soft, though this is not the case.

The cultural currency ascribed to the role of teacher, just like parenting, is one of nurturing, and so ‘unmasculine’.

What role do we really want men to play in our society and which men are we talking about?

There remains an image of masculinity that the father of a particular position and class must take care of all the ‘children’, yet he cannot nurture his own children, nor can he be kind. He takes care through violence and fear. When we call our leaders fathers of the nation and ‘Papas’ we are subscribing to a dictatorial, patriarchal and colonialist mentality when massa was the boss of the world and could solve every problem.

Solving problems usually meant whipping his subordinates.

This is the way we perceive Bahamian fatherhood; men can beat but they cannot nurture. We must tremble in fear when the father enters the room.

Surely this image of father does not fulfil the role of father. It simply uses the name. Why are we so determined to continue to perpetuate these damaged and damaging hierarchies when we are very aware of the trauma they create?

While men continue to rule the country with complete disrespect for the people whom they are meant to be serving, we allow them to push us around with absolute disregard for our own well-being.

They promote images of masculine entitlement and irresponsibility that project the same image to those who lead they follow.

They choose to disdainfully charge us for their services but do nothing to answer to their tax payers.

Much like massa in the great house, the population has allowed the role of father to be co-opted by men who have no love for their children but see them instead as a cheap units of replicating themselves and for supporting them in their retirement.

Patriarchal masculinity and fathers who are unable to show love, who rule through domination and fear, (they deem any demonstration of affection or kindness as ‘unmasculine’), only works to promote the kind of lawlessness and violence that continue to grow and cause social chaos.

They have taught us well.