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Beliefs and attitudes towards male domestic violence in South Kivu

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par Ndabuli Theophile Mugisho
University of KwaZulu Natal - Master 2011
  

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4.3.2 Masculinity

The participants to this research conceive masculinity in different ways:

Comanda: I am a man and the wife must know that. That is the role of our masculinity that society has given us. We men are endowed with power over women in the world and here it is the same.

Dondo: I can marry as many wives as I can but this is not allowed by the wife. She is just a woman and she must be under man's control and not the opposite; the force of a man is the many women and children around him. We control women in everything.

Dira: We who `have many offices' must know how to rule them. To have many wives is not an easy thing. The wife owes respect and total obedience to men in the home. Lack of this will surely lead to conflict and violence. Man is the only person to redress family members because his force is natural.

Fikiri: I am a man in my family and everyone must feel I am `Mwanaume' (a true man). This gives me joy and happiness. My power and masculinity are inherent in me; they come from God, so why not to use them?

Discussion

During a focus group interview, Comanda states that the main factor that pushes South Kivu men toward violence in the homes remains masculinity, power and the environment. On the same issue, Martin et al. (2002:562) state that men's masculinity is a key factor that different ethnic groups use and share for abusing family members.

In South Kivu, it has been found that men perceive their masculinity in terms of number of wives and their capabilities to control the family (Bahige, 1994:329). According to Dondo and Dira, polygamy reflects the man's power and maleness. This infers that with many wives, the husband will produce many children. Dira says that a man should have many `offices' but he seems to forget that this is challenging.

Men perpetrate violence towards family members with the aim of expressing their masculinity but they disregard the consequences that follow. The ideas of masculinity shape men's violent control and insist on the different forms of domestic abuse over family members and women, in particular. Vuningoma (2003:99) confirms that maleness over the wife and the children in a home hinders their rights, joy, cohesion and trust, which is another way of abusing them. This means that man's esteem and reverence is fostered by masculinity, which sometimes obliges him to be violent in order to be feared. This is what Comanda calls the wife must know that he is man.

Fikiri is the microcosm of the participants who support men's masculinity. Most men feel happy to be considered as full and real men in their homes. Those who lack such an acceptance may feel compromised and incomplete, which is conducive to domestic brutality. Men often digress when reasoning in a way, for example, `a woman is not a person to fear or women must feel man's masculinity'. In fact, the literature underscores that some men perceive maleness in connection with the use of violence in the home, and that this provides the perpetrator with joy when behaving coercively in the home (Boonzaier, 2008:192). To some writers, there exist some men in society who easily connect their masculine personality and the use of violence, mostly beating (Arias, 1999:63). Domestic violence is therefore

regarded as just a symbol of the male status that is built around intimidation, battering or use of force over family members.

On the other hand, South Kivu men know that they are in a male-dominated society where they control every level in politics, economics and religion, just to name a few. Men are the ones who define the fundamental social ideologies (Olson and DeFrain, 2000:203). In fact, men in such a society live the realities of being a man and besides, they have feelings and impulses that are inconsistent with manhood. In case the husband develops worries of not having his strength and dignity, Gelles (1997:98) says that this would make him repress his emotions and attitudes.

Domestic violence takes the pattern of coercive assertion of power to express `bwanaume' or maleness. Such attitude portrays how men are very proud of applying violence towards family members, particularly the women. In fact, domestic abuse is a typical influence that family members cannot get rid of, which means that no family member must oppose the man's violent attitude. Sungura (1999:43) confirms that the assumption that some African women allow their husbands to abuse them by battering remains a strong indication that women support men's violence provided that they preserve their family unity.

4. 3. 3 Power assertion

In addition, a coercive attitude of asserting power over family members depicts how South Kivu males centralise their violence in the home, particularly over the wife for domination. The attitudes below were collected in both focus group and in-depth interviews; they depict what is stated above:

Fikiri: I think that sometimes, we must compel family members to do our will. Such control makes them respect us. Some of us just think that we only want to abuse family members and particularly our wives. No, that is the power of being man.

Joco: Yes, if a man has a large family, it won't be easy to manage them; this requires the application of power. Being a man is also how much power of controlling them you have over your family.

Golo: I am a man but I think that women are weak individuals who need men's
protection. For me, maleness means that we consider women as our mothers and

sisters who must be respected and be listened to. They are beautiful people God gave to men to help them and not to make them suffer.

Discussion

Based on the above opinions, during an in-depth interview, Fikiri and Joco confirm and explain how South Kivu men impose their power to family members. Fisher et al. (2000:37) consider power as a relative and essential component that gives influence and talent to an individual to intimidate. As man is the head of the family, his power will influence coercion and this affects everyone in the family.

Managing a big family is not easy. But for Joco, force must apply to redress family members. Power does not necessarily refer to using active physical force. Accordingly, Melgosa and Melgosa (2008:128) confirm that the head of family may just listen to family members' claims but this cannot change his attitude. In this way, hard power has been applied over family members whose influence is weak. Some respondents informed us that such power is supported by societal, customarily rules and norms, making man's word the most valuable and final in the family.

The available literature tells us that men are sometimes socialised to think that they can never dominate and give up application of force toward their family members (Wood, 2009:146). Molesting a wife is easy since this is not outrageous and not a big mistake. Some respondents avowed that no single man can avoid this because no man is guilty for using his power in the home. Rude (1999:9) compares this to the `husbands whose violent reactions are all often seen as inevitable, understandable and somehow pardonable.'

In an in-depth interview, Golo contradicted violent opinions among family members. In his views, women are weak creatures who need protection from men because they are valuable people to men. To Paluku (1998:67), using hard power towards mothers, sisters and wives is abominable as it hinders their total development. Such abuse brings shame among family members because beating one's parent is a taboo as it breaks communication in the home (Vuningoma, 2003:99). In fact, this implies that man's power should mean that men do not

submit women to be like slaves to masters and that collaboration is promoted in the family because the latter makes a unit. Participants opposing domestic violence drew an example from the Bible that God always takes care of women and that He always favours them because he intervened two times to rescue the beautiful Sarah, Abraham's wife from rape (Genesis, 12:14-20; 20:1-7).

South Kivu men's beliefs regarding domestic violence in the province need to be looked at one by one in order to understand their reasons of applying violence in the home.

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