VIOLENCE AND ABUSE GO BOTH WAYS

There is an expatriate view of violence in this country that is completely naïve and designed to lump all the blame on men. There is a lack of awareness that violence, abuse, mental torture, starvation and total lack of care are practised by both men and women.

Gender based violence and HIV in PNG - KEITH JACKSON'S PNG ATTITUDE

8 Jun 2010 ... KEITH JACKSON'S PNG ATTITUDE. WORDS & IDEAS FROM THE PAPUA NEW .

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Those of us who have been in this country many years have witnessed violence between men and women.

I have seen a man get our of a taxi, run to a woman standing with her two children, punch her in the face like Mohammed Ali in a heavy weight title fight, grab the children and jump back into the taxi. She had dropped to one knee and was sitting on the ground holding her head.

There is a woman in our area who regularly bashes her husband in public view and has to be pulled away from him. He has no chance against her violence and size. He seems such a gentle person. She is a violent ugly bully. He does not fight back.

I once saw a man punch a woman sitting on the ground in the market selling fruit. Finally she stood, reached for his belt and was about to tear his testicles from their roots. He turned white, pulled away and disappeared into the crowd. Crushing testicles is a standard fighting technique among women in the highlands.

I suffered for two years at the hands of my children’s mother. She was a kind and loving lady for the first 8 months. Then once we moved to Port Moresby, she suddenly took the violent mind control approach of highlands women. At every moment, I was having sex with other women.

On two occasions, she ran away with my elder daughter and I had no idea of where they went. This was all because of her mythical accusation that I had a girl-friend in the same block of flats. My food was never cooked after a hard days work. My washing was not done ready for the next day. I had to cook and wash my clothes.

She bashed me every week. If I defended myself in any way, she would run crying to her uncles that she was being attacked by a violent white man. She presented herself to her uncles that she was a poor, loving, kind, gentle mother being brutalized by a violent, womanizing white man.

She destroyed my twin-cab by putting sugar in the petrol. I was subjected to 2 years of vicious mind games and violence.

Her approach to men is typical of Eastern Highlands women, so I am told. The strategy was to take over total control. I took her to the PNG National Court and ended up having custody of my daughters. Her fairy stories about sex with women and violence did not hold water.

So we read the gay interpretation of violence towards women in the report of Business Against HIV/AIDS. Expatriate gays and lesbians are committed to blaming the men for everything. That is only part of the story.

Violence in PNG is about anger, mind games and jealousy. Women may commit themselves to stopping their men from adultery, even if they are completely innocent. A white man is vulnerable as he does not have the back-up of wantoks. They are all overseas.

If innocent, the violence will intimidate a man from every having any sex outside of the highlands woman who brutalizes him.

My children’s mother left us after she had me sacked from a wonderful job. I kicked her out and kept the kids but gave her fortnightly money to keep her quiet. No kids – no money.

She had accused me of sex with the woman next door and trashed the luxury apartment we had been given by my new employer above the service station at Ela Beach. That was the end. She was playing games as reflected in the fact that she did not confront the woman. Indeed, she did not confront any woman.

She was deadly dangerous. Several times, she went to men and told them I was having sex with their wives. That could have ended in my death. But obviously, she was not taken seriously. No angry husband ever confronted me.

But there are men who fight harder than women and regularly brutalize their wives. There is a problem at times that women refuse to do what is reasonably expected of them.

The husband comes home. No dinner is cooking and wife is playing cards. That is a key cause of nightly war. She is telling him that she will cook when she is ready. She is saying she is the boss. We have a battle for control here.

Many highlands women will never argue without a rock in their hands. One way to stop a husband from driving out of the house yard is to throw a boulder through his front windscreen.

Highlands women can become experts in vicious mind games with men. The trick can be to permanently accuse him of sex with other women.

She can give a caring man a vicious track record of being a womanizer. In this way, she can refuse to look after him until he ceases being a womanizer. But what if it is all false? This is a take-over bid for the woman to be the boss. Violence is on its way.

We all assume that with a man fighting a woman, the violence started with the man. That may not be true. Many men may be defending themselves.

This woman used to tell the story of a womanizing white man who lived with her aunt in the highlands. One night he came home from womanizing and put his arms around the aunt and was stabbed in the heart with a long knife.

He died on the spot. The aunt was sentenced to one month prison. That poor man may have been innocent if the story was true. Many highlands women are experts in telling lies and producing anonymous fake witnesses.

Someone saw him driving with a woman in his vehicle. Someone else saw him at a restaurant with a woman. Who? I am not saying. That sort of nonsense can go on forever.

We hear the false story of a man refusing to give money to his wife. That need not be true. It can be that a village woman will sell vegetables in the market and give her husband false advice on her income.

She makes K60 a day and hides K40 from the husband. Some women may have hundreds of kina stashed away. Her husband has no idea. Women can live cheap with family particularly on a diet of tinned fish and garden vegetables.

Of course women can be badly treated by men. But we must not be tricked by misinformation about men. Tell the expatriate dykes and they will believe anything particularly if it is anti-men.

I have attended a workshop for men. So many men complained that they had never seen their working wives’ pay slip. It is always off pay week when they ask. Or the company has delayed the pay.

But the wives know exactly the pay week of working husbands. They know exactly their take home pay. Many wives regard their pay as theirs. The husband’s pay is for the house. The husband never knows the working wife may have hundreds of kina hidden away in a bottle.

There is often no equity between men and women in PNG. Both work to prevent it from happening.