Geisha Kow­lessar

A burst of laugh­ter from women watch­ing a video pre­sen­ta­tion at yes­ter­day's Vi­o­lence Against Chil­dren Con­fer­ence prompt­ed a male par­tic­i­pant to harsh­ly crit­i­cise the wom­ens' be­hav­iour, say­ing every day men were be­ing fi­nan­cial­ly, emo­tion­al­ly and psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly abused by women.To­day is the last day of the three-day con­fer­ence at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain.

The tongue-lash­ing by Bri­an Brad­shaw hap­pened dur­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion by be­hav­iour change con­sul­tant Frank Dol­ly on the top­ic of bul­ly­ing. The pre­sen­ta­tion showed a staged in­ci­dent where a young man was bul­lied in­to sur­ren­der­ing a box of chick­en and chips to an­oth­er youth.That youth in turn was bul­lied and slapped by an­oth­er man who snatched the meal.

Brad­shaw, a mem­ber of Men Against Vi­o­lence Against Women, said the laugh­ter was a "first class ex­am­ple" of how men's pain was triv­i­alised."Had it been a re­ver­sal of the role in the video peo­ple would have been cring­ing. Some would have been cry­ing and chok­ing... we don't have safe spaces for men and boys to talk about the bul­ly­ing, the abuse, the in­cest," Brad­shaw said.

He al­so brand­ed so­ci­ety as hyp­o­crit­i­cal be­cause it was on­ly when cer­tain things hap­pened to peo­ple or the chil­dren of peo­ple of a cer­tain ilk did is­sues like bul­ly­ing come to the na­tion­al agen­da.Say­ing many men are al­so sex­u­al­ly vi­o­lat­ed by women whom they trust, Brad­shaw said those were not gen­der prob­lems but rather "hu­man prob­lems."

Brad­shaw, who said he was al­so abused "to some de­gree" by a woman, added there were women who emo­tion­al­ly abused men in the worst way par­tic­u­lar­i­ly by in­sult­ing their anato­my."Women are the num­ber one per­pe­tra­tors of emo­tion­al abuse... the amount of things a woman can tell you to emas­cu­late you, to de­stroy you... it's painful.

"They tell you, 'you like a pen­na­cool in hot sun. What make you sure those chil­dren are yours? I have faked my or­gasms all these years.' Women are ex­perts at emo­tion­al abuse and this is more dan­ger­ous than the phys­i­cal abuse. It's not about de­fend­ing men it's about hu­man rights."Some women, he added, were al­so re­spon­si­ble for fi­nan­cial­ly abus­ing men when they de­mand­ed, "my mon­ey is my mon­ey and your mon­ey is my mon­ey."

And there were those women, Brad­shaw charged, who knew how to con­trol men, us­ing sex."Women al­so played dead­ly sex­u­al pol­i­tics... vagi­nal pol­i­tics in the bed­room as a way to con­trol their men," Brad­shaw said.Asked to ex­plain what he meant Brad­shaw said that was us­ing sex as a weapon of "pow­er and con­trol big time" in the bed­room.

Cre­at­ing more non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions was not the way for­ward to as­sist men but rather cre­at­ing "spaces" for them to talk about their prob­lem."We have to en­cour­age crit­i­cal think­ing. No­body deals with the is­sue of peo­ple grow­ing up in dif­fer­ent de­mo­graph­ic en­vi­ron­ment and hav­ing dif­fer­ent ex­pe­ri­ences. We are un­der this myth that we are all one," he said.

A woman in the con­fer­ence then apol­o­gised for the laugh­ter, say­ing she un­der­stood the mes­sage in the video was very se­ri­ous but the man­ner in which the scene was played out sparked hu­mour.