BATTERED MEN, SPEAK UP FOR YOURSELVES!

I returned home from an evening out with my boys- in our culture we call each other “Wachia/Waiya” only to find a raging sumo-wrestler look-alike standing at my doorway, arms around the waits, shaking one leg, and a stern gaze fixed on my lean frame as I hesitantly approached; “Where have you been you scoundrel of a man?” the Sumo wrestler look-alike asked sternly. I bowed my head in shame and fear, tried to fix my hazy sight on the swaying ground and shiftily told her that my friends Adano and Jibril had misled me and assured her that I would not repeat the mistake.

Now, the mistake was that I had stayed out late catching up with the ‘boys’ on a Friday evening and ‘forgotten’ to return home early. That did not amuse the Sumo look-alike in front of me. The mention of Adano and Jibril, my friends who she detested because they had ‘taught’ me to talk back at her, seemed to fire my wife’s rage.

If I thought my meekness and the fear written all over my rattling body and face would rescue me from what followed. I was seriously mistaken because the Sumo look-alike heaved her full weight forward and landed on me with Chuck Norris kicks, Mike Tyson punches, and police slaps until I lost the alcohol in my head, before my consciousness melted away. I was done for, as a younger me would have said in years gone by.

When I came to my senses, I was lying peacefully in bed. My eyes were not swollen from the bare-knuckle punches nor were my ribs aching from falling down the stairs or stopping flying Chuck Norris-like split-kicks. I was intact. No body part ached. But there was a distant throb in my head to remind me that I may have had a brush with some sort of hell.

I had not been the victim of a beating, and the woman I live with has no resemblance to a Sumo wrestler. In fact, she is the most beautiful woman that has not lost the charm and appeal she had when I met her five years ago. All the foregoing happened in a bad dream. It was a nightmare for me but it is a reality for many men out there, men who suffer silently, men who undergo serious physical abuse at the hands of women they love and trust, men who are abused yet have no recourse for justice because they cannot dare to speak up and reveal their suffering.

At any time somewhere in the world, probably in the neighborhood of where you are reading this, a man is being painfully humiliated by the woman he loves. Punched and dehumanized, he is still not expected to scream or wail weakly because society does not expect, or more precisely, want men to cry, or shed tears. Society expects men to be masters of their feelings and beyond emotion. Even when being beaten by a bigger and stronger woman, which many women today are- some of them are Tae Kwon Do, Kung Fu, and Tai Chi experts – a man is not expected to reveal his suffering or pain. Society has trained him that being beaten by a woman is an embarrassment ‘real’ man do not shout about from rooftops.

The battered man has pent-up feelings, is traumatized and not in control of his feelings; uncertain of the steps he should take in life. It is a man who has no capacity to show or speak love because he believes his emotions are ugly and should be concealed; it is a man who cannot react to inspiration from women, a man who cannot cope with the loss of loved ones when it occurs because he cannot let a tear roll down his cheek. It is a frustrated man who often resorts to acts of violence in order to reconcile himself, albeit primitively, with his feelings. He is a lost man.

Indeed, society’s refusal to accept that many men suffer violence from their spouses contributes to growth in more violence as some men keen to assert their perceived male superiority resort to extreme forms of violence. This may lead to a higher incidence in the use of lethal weapons such as guns, machetes, clubs, and other crude weapons – in domestic fights. And death by a loved one’s hand in the home may result.

A battered man may no longer care for the people he loves because they are the ones who inflict physical pain on his body and mind; he does not have love because no one gives it; he has no sex life to talk about because what he does is done under the duress of a pestle-wielding-Sumo-wrestler-like-woman who has taught him to hate and despise himself through her actions of physical abuse. He has lost his manhood.

On the other hand, Men should take control of their households. A man should remain walled. A man should not marry an older woman. A man should never surrender their independence to their wife. Take control of your marriage. Be the leader. Your wife should never show any sign of masculine energy in your house, for example, making decisions that are primarily in your masculine domain.

Remember, the world today is effeminate, you will suffer in your marriage if you do not take control of your life, marriage, and household.