The Tribune

By Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett

I keep hearing well-meaning people say that boys and young men need to learn how to be better people. They need to learn how not to be angry, how not to kill, how not to steal and rape.

Little is said about why they are doing the things they are doing. Apparently they exist outside of community, outside of us. In fact, we are mirrors and creators of their behaviour.

Masculinity and the ways it is performed or acted out are determined by society, not by the individual. Can reporters begin to understand this?

As discussed on numerous occasions, gender is a socially-determined construct that defines how people act either in masculine ways or in feminine ways. The society in which people live determines what behaviour is masculine and which is feminine.

In our society, we have determined that men must be bad in order to fit in. They must act in ways that they see on television and in movies. We do not seem to understand that those representations of life are completely fictionalised and dramatised. All the while, we are teaching young men that they must be this way or that and most of what we teach them is negative.

In fact, we teach most young men that they can do as they wish and nothing will happen to them. They must flex their muscles and wreak havoc around them and they will be celebrated. Yet we decry when they do behave in this way.

We teach people that we must discriminate against anyone who is darker, smaller, poorer, uglier, less educated than we are. We justify this discrimination based on Christian nationalism.

We are a Christian nation and all others are bringing down our standard of living. We are justified in our anger and resentment through our right to do as we wish and not have to worry about anything. Society apparently now says that if we want something then we can take it. We also hear that if we are poor we can exact revenge on society because it is society who has made us poor.

Again, there is no teaching responsibility or owning one’s ‘stuff’.

We teach men that they do not need to be responsible. So how can they learn to be responsible if we do not teach them? Where does that learning come from? Masculine behaviour is determined by the group in which a man or a group of men function, not by one man individually.

When we speak, however, we state things like, “Those young men are so violent, they are the reason the country has a problem”.

Where did they learn this behaviour if not from the same society they inhabit?

We blame women when they get raped, yet we tell men if you want that, take it. Where is the line? Where does their behaviour stop being about them and really become an indictment on our flawed lessons? We teach them to kill, yet complain when they do. We tell them they must be strong examples of masculine prowess and then condemn them when they are, but also celebrate their prowess. As a society, we are in an awful mess of teaching one lesson but expecting men to learn something different.

We tell men from the ghetto that they will never amount to anything other than drug dealers and murderers, and we are shocked when this is what they do. Later, we hear people on the radio and television saying that men must learn to behave with respect and regard. We only teach them disrespect and disregard.

To be honest, we teach such powerful lessons that it is amazing that there are as few criminals as there are.

We tell people that all Haitians are the same and that they deserve to be treated as if they are dogs. We show them how to discriminate against Haitians because they do not belong in this country. We demonstrate how we can remove their rights from them and abuse them, disregard their humanity, and then we are concerned when we have an entire group of young people who are born to Haitian parents in the Bahamas and feel that they belong here and resent the fact that they are treated like dogs.

We then say that they are all criminals. What is the state doing to make them criminals? What is the state doing to stop them from being criminals? What is the state doing to promote human rights?

In many households, dogs are abused, kicked, neglected, scalded with hot water or oil, pelted with rocks; they are hit by cars because they are in the way. We then expect them to be loyal to us and not to bite Sadly, they still tend to love their owners, notwithstanding the abuse heaped on them. People are capable of a little more thought than that, but we treat them the same way and expect them to continue to be nice people. How can a society be so cruel yet expect others not to be cruel in return?

The country has become a place where tourists are treated like demigods, women are treated like chattel, men are taught to hold no responsibility for their actions and are then told that they should be beaten with the cat o’ nine tails and incarcerated when they behave exactly as they are taught to.

Apparently the only way out of this is by hanging. Perhaps that is why progressive politicians offer that women cannot be trusted and will spitefully accuse their husbands of rape – just because they are nasty – say that all immigrants and migrants must be flogged before they leave the country, and young black men must learn to be better human beings, but we tell them that they will be gun-toting thugs because they are too dumb and brutish for anything else. After all of this, we lament the social dysfunction around us. Are there any other suggestions?

• bethellbennett@gmail.com