Are Guyanese men more deadly than terrorists?
By Yvonne Sam
Each time I read about yet another female killed at the hand of her male partner——-be the union legal, consensual or common law I undergo a complete mental shutdown. In other parts of the world guns and bombs are issues of critical concern and discussion. In Guyana it’s a totally different story. In some countries feral husbands put their intimate partners in hospital beds, while others put them in psychiatric institutions. In Guyana they put them in graves.
Therefore, arguably in Guyana husbands are incomparably more deadly than terrorists. If we really want to talk about the safety and security of females on homeland then the government needs to refocus its efforts on eradicating intimate partner homicide. It is blatantly obvious that nothing thus far has been efficacious. What has the experts yet to discover about this deadly phenomenon?
What has escaped their scrutiny in attaining a rationale? Justification of the killing by alluding to a solitary, central variable such as jealousy and male possessiveness is simplistic and partial at best. Despite the fact that male possessiveness, along with anger and jealousy all play a role in the full range of factors that engender a readiness to kill an intimate partner, it is more precise to consider the motive for murder in terms of conditions that are advantageous for the development of murderous violence, instead of in terms of one central personality variable.
Explaining away the brutal horrible behavior of Guyanese men as arising from love is in no way a justification for their actions. What is needed is to try to understand (without one iota of worry as to whether our findings are politically correct) the real state of mind that leads these perpetrators to kill their partners. Despite the fact that love is a moral, altruistic and well-intentioned emotion, there are some idealized notions about love that are from realistic. People are ready to use each other in the name of love and some people are prepared to die for love, and in the same vein women want to leave their male partner in the name of love—all with dire consequences.
Love songs daily inundate our lives with their words being no more than superficial clichés about love. The danger arises when these same clichés are adopted wholeheartedly with absolutely no attention to reality. Love then becomes a loaded gun. Murder a deliberate act, now becomes the end result of emotional ripeness that created mental readiness. It is plainly evident that the perpetrators perceived their attitude toward their victims as one of profound love.
However, recent research conducted in England has laid bare several alarming societal issues. Most importantly, they found that the majority of women are murdered by jealous, possessive, and controlling men. The ideas of entitlement bound up in masculinity are, in some cases, deadly. This sense of entitlement is so prevalent in the masculine culture, and this is where the real problem lies. We need to find out the root cause or from where and whence did Guyanese men acquire their sense of entitlement, and send notice to them that from hence things are going to be different.
We must get hold of the perpetrators, domestic abusers even if it entails corralling and get them into a program where they are under constant rigid surveillance and control, and which brings then face to face with their actions and forces them to face up to the way they think, before they go on to murder their next victim. They need to fully comprehend, denial, remorse and empathy, and start working through it. It is imperative that programs be immediately put in place and maintained wherein femicide perpetrators can go and talk to someone before they murder. As for the young people we need to start teaching them from a very early age about relationship break ups and how to deal with them, taking into full account the known fact that generally men deal with breakups worse than women.
Case in point refers to 17 year old Joshua Baveghems who in 2015 mercilessly bludgeoned his 14 year old teenage girl friend Angela Mc Allister with a spade. Such a dastardly and inhumane act was carried out after he accused her of infidelity. What a displaced sense of entitlement! He was recently sentenced to 12 years imprisonment. [see Kaieteur News Report here] Reports state that he has taken up boxing and hope to represent Guyana on the international stage. While wishing him well, I sincerely hope that the authorities simultaneously box him into a reformatory program, based solely on the ironical link between committed crime and new pastime.
I am calling on the appropriate authorities to take a serious look at the wave of home grown terrorism plaguing our land and the terrorists who carry out the heinous acts against selected members of the population. We have seen the acts!. We have the facts!, and as the eunuch asked Philip, “ What hinderest us to spring into action?”
And indicative of the wider problem…. One example is the lyrics of The Police’s Every Breath You Take. The possessive, jealous male is such a present figure in pop culture. But we shouldn’t be condoning or encouraging this mindset, because that is what many of these murderers have in spades.
Yvonne Sam.
Comments
Yvonne this time you have really nailed the problem by stating the true facts. I do hope that the Guyanese, government people and by extension the world sit up and pay attention. Keep on telling it as it is.
Every country has mad nasty men living there controlling women .
My grand mother next door neighbour in Essequibo likes to lock the food away and starve his mentally ill daughter. He is freaking sick himself terrorising poor innocent people .
Yvonne Sam’s song choice sums it up perfectly: “You belong to me,” the singer says.
Why Yvonne restrict this issue to Guyanese men. Are we different from other men worldwide. Men kill women almost everyday in America for whatever reason. Let me go in my memory bag for a weird one.
In Saudi Arabia men are known to kill their wives on mere suspicion of infidelity. In some places in the Muslim world men are known to kill their daughters, who have been raped, for bringing “dishonor” to the family.
So you think women don’t kill men out of jealousy/love. The normal killings are plentiful. Let me tell you of a weird one. An hefty six foot woman(call her Mary) in New Amsterdam in the 60’s was in love with a sexy married woman (call her Rose). Rose husband was in the way. One early morning when the husband was returning from his work as a watchman, Mary waited for him on the Canje bridge, grabbed him bodily off his bicycle and threw him over the rails into the river. Never heard from the husband again.
Women also kill other women out of jealousy/love over men. Don’t say you don’t know of any.
In the final analysis we are writing about human behavior on which there are volumes of literature.
Albert get real and stay real. I am certain that if you paid attention you would see that Ms. Sam mentioned about the fate of women in other countries. She was merely relating to that country of yours where the rate is high. As for female victims or female perpetrators ask yourself if Ms. Sam would not be well acquainted with the prevalence of same. Incidentally, I did some background on Ms.Sam and on examination of her background I discovered that she is a University graduate of two top professions from a top University.Besides that she has also resided in England, U.S.A and now Canada. Figure and configure before you disfigure.
@ Albert, own up and stop deflecting and projecting this issue onto the other.
Perhaps ISIS and/or the West will do Guyanese women the favor by recruiting Guyanese men into their organization. All we ask in return is than you ensure they do not return. EVER.
So what if Guyana becomes like the Greek island Lesbos. Women get along much better among themselves when men are taken out of the mix, unlike men. And hooray for population control!
Perhaps this violence stems from Guyanese males being repressed homosexuals. Guyanese men protest TOO much about gay acceptance. Perhaps, too, this violence stems from the frustration of these closeted gay males under the guise of exhibiting their so-called “manliness”. YEP! A real “manly” lot they be – beating up on the very women they’re hiding behind.
I remember my mom used to talk about about Burnham’s wife hand always in a cast from the violent beatings he inflicted upon her. Fast forward to the current Guyana govt. Military men are an emasculated lot, prone to drunkenness and pressured to indulge in wife swapping. None of these bode well for their spouses. The highest rate of domestic violence are committed by military males against their spouses, so it is safe to say that with the high percentage of military types in Guyana’s govt, domestic violence against women will not only increase, but become the norm.
It is sad that you hear of young women groomed by older men so that can advantage of that person. Women who come from poor backgrounds or have indeed lived with violence are the ones that go on a toxic relationship.
If find that some Guyanese men are extremely aggressive but this could be from watching the father beat the mother and watching the father molest his own kind .
I am sad that this is still happening and probably worse by what they can view on the internet together with drugs
Of course there are women who turn a blind eye to what the husband is doing because they need their wages and to put food on the table
Honestly what a messed up world we live in.