July | 2016 | anika254

i am a man…has that sunk? no?

lets try that again… I-AM-A-M-A-N…now? yes? okay…that said. i will go on to say that we are a weird lot! i mean yes women are complex and all that other gibberish ….but we…we are down right weird. and for a simple intensively mediocre reason too.

sample this…

so a guy will pass by the bar to take one for the road (make that four…) with the boys…talking about how he is the man at home…how his wife cows at the day he will fly off the handle. we work so hard to maintain a fleeting heir of bravado and macho-ism before the boys. see…this goes on for a bit up until one day will taking a few more bottles his wife comes breathing fire on him right there in front of his boys and drags his sorry self out of that joint a shadow of his earlier macho en-semblance…

now that example is relate-able to…may be because you have seen something similar on tv screens in commercials, movies and sitcoms.

but here’s the thing…did you know that that kind of thing actually does happen? did you know that over the past few decades the number of men being physically and sexually abused is almost staggeringly equal to that of women experiencing abuse (a 10% difference as of 2010). men are weird because they never report these cases.

what for? and be ridiculed by society? report for who? so that i can be called a wuss?

on saturday the 16th day of July we held a forum at the Creatives Garage along ngong road and discussed ( with very reasonable discourse) how much this problem is affecting men and boys and the general boy child faction as a whole.

now…let me be abit boring and give you learned folk afew facts…

Fact 1.

“men made up about 40% of domestic violence victims each year between 2004-05 and 2008-09, the last year for which figures are available. In 2006-07 men made up 43.4% of all those who had suffered partner abuse in the previous year, which rose to 45.5% in 2007-08 but fell to 37.7% in 2008-09.” (source: http://www.thegurdian.com)

and because i am not boring like that…i will splash a few pictures here and there just to keep you posted on how lit the forum was…kapish? okay!

her name is Nimo..she works at Gender Violence Recovery Center Nairobi Womens Hospital. A psychologist by proffession and she specifically handles GBV against and on men and boys….i think she is cute 🙂

Fact 2.

‘abused men’ are constrained from occupying the position of victim and are consequently denied the compassion and support available to ‘abused women’.

Dr Simon Josolyne

Clinical Psychologist

fact3.

Domestic violence is usually portrayed as a problem for women at the hands of men. This is not always the case as men can be victims too, very often female on male violence is ignored or just not taken seriously.

Dobash and Dobash (2000) in Hester et al (2007) claim that women who are violent

to men is often as a result of self defense after years of violence at the hands of their

partners. This being the usual belief puts men off reporting abuse for fear of not

being believed so more often than not men suffer in silence rather than have their

indignity exposed resulting in being emasculated and humiliated.

By Suzanne Baines.