My wife beats me

MANY persons would have witnessed a St Thomas wife roughing up her husband on live TV aired Tuesday, after the man, appearing without his voters’ ID for the general elections, refused to do the legal alternative and swear to the presiding officer.

The fellow, a tall, bearded man, who said he only swore to God, was draped up and dragged away by his chubby wife, who berated him for acting the fool.

Shamed, and begging for the cameraman to stop recording, the man left with his wife, whose final insult was directed at the camera man, whose instrument she smacked at, and cursed him for pointing the camera in her face.

While the stories of battered and abused women are many and over-reported, men like these, who bear physical or verbal abuse from their spouses, no matter how seemingly insignificant, often have to do so in private, because of the social stigma attached to reporting it.

In fact, the police, while saying that they have not had any reports of men being beaten by their spouses, were quick to admit that it was not because incidents of this sort do not occur here in Jamaica, but rather because Jamaican men are proud and would not admit that their women are beating them.

“You wouldn’t find males being abused going to report it out of shame. What we have are the regular stab wounds or injury. We have men in court with cases of injury but I’m not sure if these are as a result of spousal abuse since we have no figures to substantiate this,” a Constabulary Communication Network officer said. “Individual stations may have different views.”

A police corporal from the Spanish Town police station, who did not want to be named, said that two years ago, he had two incidences of men coming in to report beatings from their wives.

“But is two drunkards them. Wives can only beat men like those. No real man would sit down and take that,” the corporal added.

“You will have some cases yes, but those cases are very rare, definitely not as much as you would have men beating their wives. Women don’t really try that wid real man. You mad!”

Another policeman told of an incident in Portmore, St Catherine, though not reported, where the husband came home drunk in the middle of the night, used a pipe in the house, left it running and went to sleep. When his wife woke up and found the house flooded, “she grabbed a stick and gave him a decent flogging,” the policeman laughed.

He also told of another known incident where the husband came home, again drunk, to find that his wife had not prepared any supper for him. He proceeded to boil an egg but fell asleep. It was a loud thunderous sound that awoke both himself and his wife as the egg exploded and hit the ceiling. He also got a proper beating.

While the credibility of the Internet is questionable, the responses to one of many such questions asked on the international question and answer forum Yahoo Answers some months ago highlights the general attitude towards the problem of female on male domestic abuse.

Said the questioner: “My wife beats me often by developing some argument, even if I keep my mouth shut. Couple of months back she beat me on my birthday with a clock. Now I am attending physical therapy classes and taking medication as still there is pain in my left arm. The funny or tragic thing is, a few minutes after beating me, she’ll start crying, saying things like, “oh I am really sorry, I have been so arrogant and I should not have behaved like this with you”.

The range of responses to another fellow in a similar situation included: “Try cutting off ‘her’ balls. Maybe see if they can be implanted on you”; “For God sakes man you’ve got to fight back, try a sock filled with coins”; “You could work out, and then kick her ***, or lie in the foetal position and wait (crying helps)”; and “When she is sleeping at night, smother her with a pillow. Make sure you wait until she stops breathing though”.

In a law review article Disabusing the definition of domestic abuse: how women batter men and the role of the feminist state, Linda Kelly, a Professor of Law at Indiana University School of Law, Indianapolis, said that the term ‘domestic abuse’ “immediately conjures up images nationally spread through such highly publicised events as the murder trial of OJ Simpson, hit tunes like Tracy Chapman’s Behind the Wall, and movies like Farrah Fawcett’s The Burning Bed – that of men being the aggressors.

“After a long history of hiding domestic violence behind closed bedroom doors, everyone now knows all about the existence and prevalence of domestic violence. Or do we? The images we associate with domestic violence depict the male as batterer and the female as victim. Yet, despite the critical importance of first acknowledging and then eradicating the male abuse of women, an equally important but untold story remains – women can be batterers. Men can be victims,” Kelly said.

Mention ‘battered men’ to Jamaicans and the first reaction is usually laughter, followed by scorn.

Indeed, even those men who suffer some sort of verbal or physical abuse write if off as being a joke, or to the tendency of Jamaican women to being sweetly agressive.

But for David, who asked that his name be changed, his girlfriend isn’t just aggressive, she’s evil.

“It started with just name calling. I wasn’t working and she would class me as ‘wutliss bwoy’ and point the children to their ‘wutliss puppa’, every chance she got,” he said. “One Friday night I was playing dominoes with my friends and she came over and pushed me off the chair and told me to go home. I laughed it off.”

He said after he eventually got a job, the verbal abuse stopped, but then whenever they argued, she would throw things at him, at one point throwing a phone at him which cut his forehead and left a scar.

“I’ve never hit her back, because I’m not that type of person, and I don’t want to leave her, because she would never let me see the children again,” he said.

The doctor says

Psychologist Dr Leachim Semaj said one to two per cent of women border on having some sort of psychological personality disorder. This disorder is associated with very bizarre behaviour, he said, and 50 per cent of women charged in the US with domestic abuse have been found to suffer from this disorder or what is known as psychopathic disorder.

“A lot of women will think about it (beating the man), but because men tend to be bigger, the feeling is contained,” he said. “It is estimated that for every 100 domestic cases, 30 per cent is violence of women against men, but most go unreported.”

Violence against men however, is more than physical, Semaj pointed out. Before the physical, comes the verbal and the emotional.

“Ninety per cent of the time verbal abuse precedes physical abuse. The woman will trace the man and tell him all sorts of dirty things about his ability or inability – whether this is true or not,” Semaj said. “Some men take this quietly, while others will argue back.

There is also the element of displacement, where some women, if they are unable to physically get to the man, will take it out on his car by hitting it, damaging the windscreen etc, or walking pass it with a key scratching it from one end to the next, or writing the name of the other woman on it (if cheating is the case). Or she will throw his clothes out and set them ablaze. All these, Semaj said, are forms of abuse.

“More men have had the experience of women physically mashing up their things than physically abusing them,” he said.

He notes that the majority of men would not retaliate but look at her as being mad and walk away.

“If we should look at abuse in this light and not just in view of the physical abuse only, then 40 per cent is man against women while 60 per cent is women against men with most of this being displaced violence, which goes, unreported,” Semaj said. He said there are four main reasons why men put up with the abuse from their spouses:

1. He genuinely loves the woman

2. He wants to keep the family together

3. Self esteem – he feels grateful to have gotten such a woman. Especially since an abusive woman is extremely nice when things are ok

4. It is an embarrassment to leave because if he does the truth will come out.

The psychologist said the same advice applies to abused men as to abused women – first time she tries a thing, leave.

He noted that in abusive situations, most men will try to restrain the women or ‘tek weh himself’ rather than hit back.

“You don’t win any prize if you beat her and you certainly don’t win any if she beats you!” he theorised. “If you go to the station to report that your woman beat you they would probably chase you out of the station.”

And while abused women have support groups, men are left with nowhere to go and no one to turn to, thus forcing them to suffer in silence.

Sometimes, all he has is turning to very close family or friends when the situation becomes unbearable, Semaj said.