By Ifedimma Onwugbufor
Dominant discourses about gender issues, over the years, have concentrated on abuses that are male gender specific. However, gender equality must address adequately, and encapsulate all areas of gender manacles before any judicious headway will be achieved in gender dialogues.
Only then will it be established that some abuses are actually responses to mistreatment which are originally meted by persons that with time, appear to become victims. For instance, a woman who emotionally/mentally abuses her partner, domestic staff, and other persons, might eventually drive her victim into becoming the villain – the abuser. Many women are physically attacked because of longstanding emotional abuses which they had inflicted on their victims over a long period of time.
As soon as you become afraid of saying or doing certain things because you are unsure of your partner’s reaction, that person is an emotionally abusive partner.
According to Mark Judge’s article on “Women Who Emotionally Abuse Men” (2017), you will recognise an emotionally abusive woman by certain features which include gaslighting (telling lies about a situation and making the other person seem crazy), using sex as a weapon to get back at the partner, emotional blackmail, silent treatment, verbal attacks, expecting too much, bullying, and being generally cantankerous.
In fact, it has become fashionable among some feminists to think that a woman who emotionally abuses a man with whom she is in an intimate relationship is a hero.
This may be attributed to the toxic masculinity of the female gender, despite her physical weakness which is pacified through emotional outbursts, hence abuse. Having established how females perpetrate abuse in intimate relationships and/or marriages, it is clearly possible to find other females who, by virtue of physiological factors, pull off verbal and physical abuse, in addition to emotional/mental abuse.
Women are obsessed with employing the services of domestic helps, popularly referred to as ‘house girls.’ Do you know why? Because these are the ‘wretched of the earth’ on whom these women can conveniently assert their power by unleashing violence, without being questioned and less likelihood of being indicted.
There are more women who mistreat their domestic helps than the ones who are fair and compassionate to them. Have you wondered why these women do not extend such cruelty to their younger siblings? Why do they mete out such neglect to children of poor relatives, and not the rich ones who visit their homes on vacation or for other purposes? The important question is, why are children from lowly social class so badly treated?
Again, why do many women treat kids who are not biologically theirs differently? There is a likelihood that a woman will treat her stepchild badly, than a man will treat his stepchild – the story of Cinderella comes to mind. It goes to attest that this is a general issue of gender psychosis which cuts across all cultures. Besides mistreating stepchildren and domestic helps, more women have been recorded as inflicting pain and emotional bruises on children as teachers, nannies/caregivers, nurses etc.
First off, a case which was shared in the social media not too long ago, reveals a middle-aged Nigerian woman who slammed her female domestic help, about ten or eleven years old, on the ground many times because of a mistake that was pretty hers.
Not only did she inflict bodily harm on the child which is life threatening, she spent over 30 minutes on the same spot, bombarding the girl with verbal abuses while knocking and shoving her.
Threatening a child who seemingly moved in with a family better placed than hers, means a lot to such a child. This is because, the child leaves the bosom of her ‘poorer’ family with high hopes, believing in her new benefactor’s promises. It is therefore, tantamount to ‘emotional homicide’, when, at every turn, this child is treated with unkind words or threatened with the possibility of being thrown back into the penury from which she thought she had escaped.
Emotional abuse will never be admissible. This is because of its far-reaching consequences which are usually ineffaceable. Victims of emotional abuse are mostly suicidal, and with little or no encouragement, monitoring and psychological rehabilitation, they end up becoming monsters, emotional blackmail freaks, multiple abusers, murderers, etc.
It may be because of this that many women are not mostly found in careers which involve self-control. Women who are admitted into the Armed Forces, for instance, that deal with instruments of coercion such as guns, which, when misused will result in untold tragedies, are subjected to extra emotional stability test..
Which explains why women were not admitted into the Force many decades back, until that changed not long ago. It may be an acceptable fact that with the advancement of technology which makes it possible for persons to be trained, commissioned, and tracked, it is difficult for any professional misdemeanor to go undetected.
Beyond female commission into the Force, only few women were allowed to become kings in oral cultures, and even in literate cultures, there is a conscious attempt to bar women from sensitive positions of authority in traditional and corporate environments. This has been and is still frowned at by feminists whose fight against female marginalization is aimed at ensuring that females are well-positioned in corporate structural hierarchies.
Gender parity has occupied public attention for more than two decades, especially after the Beijing Women Conference of 1995. The declaration resulting from that conference irrespective of cultural and social constructs, was accepted by all participating countries. In as much as gender inclusiveness is endorsed by most countries of the world today, feminists and proponents of gender equality and parity still have a lot of work in their hands.
The fact that women are the most offenders of emotional abuse makes it imperative for proper funds, effort, and dedication to be invested in educating women on handling their masculinity. The femininity of men have not been found harmful to others occupying the same space, but women’s masculinity when toxic, times without number, endangers the psychological well-being of persons around them. Against this supposition, love and affection, power, vulnerability, danger-induced dominance of the human Id, constant exposure to toxic masculinity, etc., are the many factors which erupt masculinity in women resulting in emotional and sometimes, physical abuses.
Ifedimma Onwugbufor is a lecturer, social critic, and author of seven books.