By Drew
I turned 40 in December. I’m young enough to use phrases like ,“No cap” and “On God” but old enough to remember when we all collectively decided to be criminals, as a nation, and were perfectly fine with it.
Oh, not you?
You’re not a criminal you think?
Exhibit A…..
I’m at an age where I’m living out the words of my parents. Their advice and wisdom to me rings true. My father’s advice was, “We are protectors, never predators”. I have lived my life by those words……sometimes. I am guilty of beating the dog shit out of one particular woman….
Lately its been feeling like Bahamian men are predators and, if you let Bahamian women tell it, they have ALWAYS been prey in a country that does very little to protect them and it’s time we address this.
Unless you live under a rock, you would have heard about the unfortunate murder suicide that took place over the weekend. Y’all got up in arms. Writing think pieces. The whole country was livid. Keep in mind, prior to that incident, a woman got beat up by a man AND THEN RUN OVER but then Shaback and Ms Daisy went to Dubai and y’all was like…
We, as a nation, have the collective attention spans of goldfish. Oh, we’ll beat the internet bad with faux outrage then go right back to business as usual with no action. The sad part is it took 3 separate incidents in succession for us to be like…
These are not “troubling times”, beloved.
This is the norm.
If you have an alive parent and you’re reading this then they can tell tales of abuse. Shit, I’ve heard older people in my family casually tell those stories like they’re giving someone a recipe for guava duff.
That shit glides off our parents and grandparents tongues way too easily for us to think this is new. The average person reading this can finish sentences that end in some type of violence against women…
“So she was at junkanoo in this short skirt and we was walking through some guys and….”
“My girlfriend was walking to her car near a ghetto liquor store and this guy came up behind her and…”
“This guy from the club was following me and my girls all night then followed us home and then…”
How sad is it that every woman reading the above knows how to complete these sentences with a story that they’ve either experienced or know someone who has.
We are numb to it. We ignored it all like we ignored Hubert Minnis showing the nation how strong his core was mid-pandemic.
Know who causes abuse? Abusers.
Know what’s the leading cause of rapes? Rapists
That’s it.
That’s all.
Now what these men are going through and their personal trauma and mental issues ARE something that need to be addressed and looked at and dealt with but as a country we have to start there. We have to stop with victim blaming and deal with the original sin: A man hurt a woman.
Let Jesus and Harrison Thompson figure out the rest.
With all this shit going on Harrison must feel like Basil Dean during Hurricane season…
Victim blaming on this island is literally a culture.
Someone gets raped?
…and keep in mind, actual women with vaginas will echo this sentiment which, if we’re being fair, is another issue. I saw A LOT of women in comment sections, concerning the unfortunate demise of that young lady over the weekend, barking the same nonsense as the men. But I wasn’t shocked. Keep in mind WOMEN voted in this country for their children to NOT be citizens if the father were foreign.
Remember that the majority was lead by this crew….
These women have to realize that they are perpetuating a dangerous narrative and niggas out here are NOT smart enough to understand nuance. So if you, a woman, co-sign the nonsense coming from them then please know you’re emboldening them even more.
We ALL have to agree this is a problem if we ever hope to fix this shit. And ladies, y’all have allies. And not just the fakewoke niggas on Facebook who say this on the timeline…
…then in y’all dms like….
No, I mean real allies.
I’ve been in several group chats where, once we stopped sharing porn and laughing about how bad the Packers are at closing out a season, ALL of my friends were livid. This is not a joke. I don’t have one male friend that wasn’t genuinely upset about what happened last weekend. The groupchat had private school niggas talkin SPICY.
Niggas who grew up with name brand cereals and the good lunchables with the snickers was extra all weekend but their hearts were in the right place.
But those are MY friends.
I don’t fuck with niggas who hit women, don’t take care of their kids, rape, abuse….none of it. And that is something ALL men need to start doing. Stop coddling niggas who do this shit because you’re co signing their actions by even being their friend. You think if we found out Nal was a bad father that we would let that shit abide? And Keep in mind Nal is a piece of shit…
And I am not an ally because I have 4 sisters and a mother. I hate when niggas try to qualify defending women with, “As a man with a mother and nieces…”. Beloved, I get the sentiment but maybe let’s just protect our own because it’s the right thing to do while still keeping a ready sword for the women we love. We can’t teach our sons to protect women solely because they have them in their lives. Because there’s a shitload of people reading this article and NOT reading this article that will prey on the physically weaker sex…
…and this is where I have to address the feminists and fake feminists. Y’all know them fake feminists……don’t play dumb…
Ladies, can we have a VERY uncomfortable conversation?
A lot of you won’t like this.
Sigh.
Ok.
Y’all are not as strong as us physically. You’re just not. I know Serena Williams is a beast and I know you been killing it with your trainer and getting in shape and good for you! And I know you watched your cousin Brakeisha “beat plenty man” but, beloved….you’re not Brakeisha.
I know a lot of you may have been offended when I said “weaker sex”, but know I don’t mean that you’re less smart or anything even remotely in that light. Equality is a must across the board. Equal opportunity, equal pay, equal respect….equality all around. But physically you’re just not as strong as us…that’s science. I say all that to say this: We HAVE to teach our sons to NOT hit women. We HAVE to teach our sons to respect women, no means no, never abuse your power and NEVER abuse a woman physically or otherwise.
Without question those are things that MUST happen for us to break this cycle.
But, unfortunately, that’s not the world we live in RIGHT NOW. We all agree that we have to raise young men to be kind, peaceful and gentle with our women. So, can we also agree, that for the times we are in, that we also have to train our daughters to look out for toxic traits of young men that were not raised to be kind, peaceful and gentle? I remember before I went to college in Canada my mother sat me down and said to me…
I was a large black kid. That was sage advice. She was trying to avoid me getting into REAL danger and REAL danger isn’t nuanced and woke. It’s like Tourism: We hate we have to depend on it but until we figure out a better way….
…then we have to deal with the world as it is now. And sadly our world, our little Bahamaland, is not a safe space for women. It’s just not. We have to train our sons to be better but we also have to train our daughters to be aware. To watch for signs of danger. And, I know, some of these niggas are monsters and wont show ANY signs until it’s too late. That’s how monsters operate. I’m just saying that sometimes the signs ARE there and we have to teach our daughters to see those signs.
Also know that when we ask, “What happened to lead to this?” when situations like last weekend happen, it’s not to qualify what the young man did. There’s a difference between a man saying, “Well what SHE do to deserve that?” and “What lead to this?”.
Imagine you go home to your on fire house and the fireman is just like…
No, a fireman would go through the debris and try and figure out what caused the fire AFTER putting it out.
We have to be able to find out what leads to these things so we can solve them.
We have to be able to communicate.
We have to talk to each other.
We have to let women feel and know that they are safe with us.
Because, as it stands, we have quiet male allies that are terrified to even broach these conversations because a minority of women think all men are like that monster last weekend. And we have a majority of men on this island that gave those women reasons to THINK we are all like that monster last weekend. We have to meet in the middle….and talk, learn, listen…whatever it takes.
My father’s advice to me was to be a protector never a predator. I forgot to tell you what my mother’s advice was. It was simple, “If you ever see a woman being physically mistreated by ANY man, pick up a brick and break it across his skull until he learns his lesson”.
Consider this my first brick.
If you are suffering from abuse, physical or otherwise, please reach out to the Bahamas Crisis Center and seek help. If you need someone to talk to, and you have the money, I have been given permission by Lightskin Therapy Jesus (Harrison Thompson) to post his information below. And if there is anything anyone here at 10thYearSeniors can do….we are not therapists, but we have the necessary connections to get you help if need be. We’re more than sports and my stupid articles I promise.
Be safe tho
Bahamas Crisis Center Hotline: 328-0922
Harrison Thompson Office: 356-7983 or 4
