Mark Wignall | The frail male ego and violence

A man meets a woman and something 'clicks' and sooner instead of later they become sexually intimate. Without the woman knowing it, or the man telling her so, once she has, without coercion, consented to allow the man repeated contact with her most precious part, in the mind of that frail man he now owns her and has a right to decide who she gives in to.

Such a man is likely to snap if the relationship ends a year or two or 10 years later. But long before that happens the woman is likely to know that he has a violent streak. She 'chats back' to him and he slaps her across the face with, 'A who yu a chat to gal!' And she stays and hopes that he will not do it again. It only gets worse.

If there are children he will be violent with them, too, and sparing them no quarter. Years ago a man told me of the moment his woman decided to move out after 12 years of hell with him. Yes, he admitted that he beat her regularly because, 'A so yuh affi deal wid dem terrorist gal'.

With a van outside and her possessions being loaded on and the house becoming increasingly emptier (she had bought most of the furniture) he realised that he had paid for her dentures. 'As she a leave mi just hold har dung an tek di teet outa har mout. As far as me concerned, mek har new man buy har new teet.'

When a 'normal' violence-free relationship grows sour and it is obvious that the end is near, each partner tries to carve out one last ego-restoring move. The weaker one, usually the male, will pretend that he is the one instigating the move when deep down, if any sentiments of love linger, what he really wants to do is bow down, grasp her by the feet and say, 'Please baby, I love you, I need you. Don't go!'

And then there are the really dangerous ones who will either explode or sink into a seething silence with a tragic eruption coming later. I cannot fathom why or process the terrible reasons that could lead to a man cutting a woman's throat and that of her offspring and then taking his own life. Is it that his frail male ego had gone totally berserk, or is it that he was never, in the first instance, fit as a human being to be in a relationship with a woman?

HURT BY LOVE

In the 1980s I knew a man - a highly intelligent man - who only dealt with prostitutes. As he told me, the hurt he felt from being in love and not having the love returned in full drove him to cash-on-delivery sex. "They are honest and they never tug at your heart string," he said.

Too high a percentage of our Jamaican men are purveyors of violence and are incapable of respecting a woman to the point of maintaining a fairly stable relationship. They want to philander and if she returns the favour it is box-down-and-kick-up time. Add to that the increasing financial independence of our women and the mix becomes ego threatening and toxic.

The same set of circumstances that creates a gunman - lack of a good education, horrible parenting and destructive community mores - will create the man who repeatedly beats his woman, tells her sorry later then slaps her around next week.

The community will not forgive the man who is considered 'soft', especially in the aftermath of the woman checking out. The community adds fuel to the fire.

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