Photo credit: The Conversation
There’s recently been some recounting of the gory details of, mainly, sexual harassment by some randy pastors.
But when we really look at it, it’s not only pastors that engage in such acts.
A lot happens within the academic community, the civil service, the business world, and so on. We were told sometime ago of the ordeal faced by wives of dead policemen before they could collect their husbands’ benefits.
And men are not necessarily the only aggressors. In quite a few cases, women too have been on the stronger side.
But then, because our society is structured in a way that mostly gives men all the advantages, the men are mostly the aggressors.
In the western world, the situation was so serious that it gave birth to the #MeToomovement which is basically against sexual assault and harrassment.
This has somewhat brought some reprieve towards some women who had been sexually molested. A lot of them had the satisfaction of seeing their erstwhile aggressors being convicted.
They got justice!
However, my own feeling is that in view of the fact that the act is not about to stop, isn’t it possible that we’re not looking at the root cause?
I’m of the opinion that, even though I’m a man, our society is just too favorable to men.
It is historic!
Let’s start from the prevailing ideas about God. There’s a feeling that He’s a male. Must we bring sexuality into our ideas of God?
Since most prehistoric cultures were basically agrarian, they felt men were more useful than women. So, they preferred the boy-child to the girl-child because they erroneously believed boys were more powerful.
We could go on and on!
In Africa, until recently, if a lady had not given birth to a son, the family would be feeling she had not yet produced a heir that would inherit the family names.
It was as bad as the fact that in some cultures, women couldn’t inherit landed properties.
Against this backdrop, I’m of the opinion that we’ve had enough of focusing on the girl child. We really need to start focusing on mentoring the boy child.
This is because today’s boys are tomorrow’s men. I’m of the belief that if we fail to train them, we wouldn’t stop having all these misbehavior by men!
PS: The misdeeds that have already occurred must be frontally attacked by the authorities!
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