content tagged with 52 Men 52 Weeks

To this day, in the newspapers, TV channels, universities where we work or anywhere really, we have not voiced, questioned, or worried about the inequality between men and women.

For instance, what good is it if a man, who commits violence or despises homosexuals, makes a criticism of masculinity? Or, the big question: “Why would men, who take the biggest share in patriarchy, criticize masculinity?”

In our eyes, women were valuable creatures who needed to be saved by the good men from the hands of bad men. We used to play the game of “saving the Princess”. Gökçen, the beautiful daughter of my uncle would either be the princess or "the daughter of the Chancellor” kidnapped for a substantial ransom…

Why can’t this horrible environment get its act together? Why can’t the sports press turn into a field where women journalists can have a place? Why is the number of women, who work in the press tribunes or in the sports fields as photojournalists, on the decline?

As if society, politics and, of course, state mentality do not otherize women enough, a meaningless anger against women is also being injected into men at home, at school, in the military and at every level of society.

It is not easy to be done with coming to terms with manhood. Since the things that we think we have accumulated can disappear very fast, it is impossible to say, “I have overcome it”. It is a reality that needs to be confronted continually, over and over again.

On the other hand, male dominance and male violence are not absent; they are even on the rise; yes. Because men are nervous. There are women everywhere, who demand to have a say in decision making, know to say no and do not refrain from saying it.

In that case, fatherhood means making room for oneself by pushing women to motherhood. And this room, where the notion of power reigns freely, is an unbridled sphere which does not exclude violence.

… and so on and so forth… Some may know, that’s how things were back then. When the girl insisted, I pushed her, the friends accompanying me took them away. And that love had ended then and there.

Because we know that in the spiral of violence “might makes right”. In those male herds, the weak one turns into a “painted bird”. Maybe one of them remembers that it can’t go on like that.

Our objection, if we have any, remains muted. There is no doubt that the weakness of our objections provides the necessary conditions for this hegemonic form of masculinity to reproduce itself.

Did I make you uncomfortable? As I have said, we have to confront not only the things that we have done, but also the sins that have filled our imagination. I have to confront the acts of every creature who destroyed women and children with his manhood.