Move towards positive masculinity

Now the question is: Which male political, religious, or community leader will step up and say that we need to eradicate gender-based violence by respecting women? —123rf

IN the past month, with the shocking reports of violence in our schools, many of us have been experiencing various levels of trauma.

My heartfelt condolences go to not just the victims of violence and their families but also to the families of perpetrators. I cannot imagine the grief that parents go through when their children die. But there must surely also be immense grief when their own children commit these heinous crimes. What a shock it must be to find that your child, still unable to drive or vote, is capable of rape and murder.

For those of us of a certain age, our memories of school have rarely been one of outright violence, although bullying did occur, usually in the form of verbal viciousness. But we had never heard of the sort of violence – bullying, rape and even murder – that our children are now going through.

Many people have leapt to provide both causes and solutions to prevent these terrible things from happening in our schools. Most have advocated for punitive measures such as the cane. This seems to satisfy a thirst for violent revenge for some people and although it can be understandable for the parents of victims, what of the parents of potential perpetrators? We also have parents who take teachers to court for allegedly inflicting these same punitive measures on their children.

Which is it? Does caning truly work to make children better people, or does it normalise violence as the way to solve problems? Just take the example of the Gaza genocide: Does the intentional obliteration of a people through the most violent means bring peace to the region? Quite clearly, without justice and human rights, no real peace is sustainable.

Similarly with our attempts to solve the problem of violence in schools. I am amazed that the affected school decided to give metal detectors to teachers to inspect their students with. In essence, they are admitting that there is something about that school that produces child killers, hence the need for such equipment. It’s like American schools installing sophisticated metal detectors and security guards to ensure that their students don’t bring guns and knives to class. It rarely occurs to them that the problem is not in specific schools and with specific students but a society where violence is normalised and guns are easily obtained.

I am also bewildered by how quickly the Education Ministry announced that “Character Education” will be introduced in our schools, presumably to ensure good behaviour in our children. But what sort of character are we talking about?

Some of our leaders are hardly good character role models themselves, finding any excuse to accuse others of wrongdoing. They shout and scream in a violent manner and then pretend to be righteous. Some of our law enforcement personnel too are hardly restrained in the way they interact with the public.

We are sadly mistaken if our children are not watching all this and absorbing the lessons from these “characters”. If you disagree with someone, shout them down. Or better still, get them arrested. Flex your muscles against the weakest people you can find. Find fault, pick a fight, do everything to make people pay attention to you.

Neither do our male leaders always show respect for women. It took us years to have a Domestic Violence Act, to amend the Federal Constitution to include gender in Article 8, to have an Anti-Sexual Harassment Act and to allow Malaysian women to pass their citizenship to their overseas-born children. Why did it take us so long? Is it because men don’t see female citizens as equals?

Then we shouldn’t wonder why our boys don’t respect girls. All the most recent cases have involved female victims. That alone should tell us something about the society we live in. How ironic that we blame “the West” and then use their methods, like metal detectors, to try to solve these problems. Blaming others is shirking responsibility. These are local problems that need local, compassionate, evidence-based interventions.

We need to look at these issues through a gender lens. One of the most urgent problems we need to deal with is toxic masculinity, which is defined as “a set of attitudes and ways of behaving stereotypically associated with or expected of men, regarded as having a negative impact on men and on society as a whole”. Our boys are exposed to messages, whether online or in real life, that are destructive and that can lead them to feel entitled to engage in violence against women. Never mind Andrew Tate, we have our own versions here and they’ve been around for a long time.

But there are ways to create positive male role models and change these attitudes and behaviours. In Africa, a Positive Mascu-linity movement is on the rise with the aim of shedding harmful stereotypes and promoting “emotional intelligence, empathy, and respect for gender equality” among boys. The movement promotes, through influential male role models, a new definition of what it means to be a man, and in so doing decreases unprotected sex and violence, thus saving the lives of both boys and girls.

If we want to import anything, this is what we should import: a Positive Masculinity movement where prominent men clearly say that respect for women, and indeed any living thing, is what makes a man, not violence. We can use the same media that have exposed boys to negative messages to promote these new ones.

Some of our boys and men think that strength and violence against others is the way to show power, especially when there are very little consequences for them. However, as Uncle Ben said to Peter Parker, “With great power comes great responsibility”. It is surely the responsibility of those in power to promote these positive messages.

Now the question is: Which male political, religious, or community leader will step up and say that we need to eradicate gender-based violence by respecting women?

Marina Mahathir is tired of the kneejerk ‘solutions’ that some people are so quick to provide while doing nothing to create an environment that is more just for all genders. The views expressed here are solely the writer’s own.