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In his novel Lord of the Flies, William Golding recounts how the children who are stranded on a coral island turn into a wild community. Without elders in charge and social norms to rein them in, before long, power, authority and violence emerge among the boys.
Golding's skill in turning a simple subject into one of the greatest pieces of world literature aside, the main reason why this piece is liked and internalized so much is especially the men's extreme familiarity with it.
You don't need to spend your puberty in a boarding school full of boys. That power struggle and open or covert violence manifests itself immediately among your playmates in the neighborhood, in the team, in the small group of boys at school, everywhere.
This is somewhat instinctive and perhaps rather learned. The weak ones are determined in course of the competition for leadership and "natural" violence starts to flow towards that direction.
Being strong, which is the fundamental code of being a man, and imposing it on the weaker one, turns into an entertaining practice among the ruleless adolescent groups.
Don't tell me about human nature, we know very well that all that story is nothing more than the reckless practice of some learned behaviors. The essence of the social culture is one and the same everywhere, be it all-out wars, local lynching campaigns, street fights or domestic violence, it commends savagery the moment there are no rules, which might make us more human.
Yes, let us admit that all these can be collected inside that thing we call "masculinity". Man's violence against man is often the most incessant and brutal one. However, the victim's potential to become the tyrant makes us consider it normal, because we know that in the spiral of violence, "might makes right".
In those male herds, the weak one turns into a "painted bird". At the end of the day, everyone imposes violence on him. Maybe one of them remembers that it can't go on like that. And only then the teenagers swaying between adulthood and childhood may decide in favor of childhood and that very rare and valuable innocence takes the place of tyranny.
The undisciplined instinct, which is taught to be kept alive and forever primed for provocation, is always ready to flow towards the weaker one. This is the reason why the woman, who is morally and materially subjugated to that man at home, can never find her peace which is also left to the mercy of that man. Someone who might be physically weaker and more fragile than us always turns into the natural subject of that violence. Our lovers, wives, mothers and women colleagues at the workplace are often the permanent targets of that rage and quest for power surging inside us.
Isn't it actually the biggest curse of manhood that rudeness, toughness and all kinds of ignorance are defined as "manly"? The violence of men against men as well as the violence of women against women and the violence of women against men are a result of those behaviors and displays of power that have been learned in the very beginning.
We all know very well that this display of power is not limited to physical violence. There are a thousand ways of crushing and hurting a person. Even though social rules promise some degree of peace and tranquility to people, a way of inflicting cruelty is always found. It manifests itself in every single place where there is a quest for power.
Woman also becomes "mannish", and is then appreciated. She becomes a "tomboy", she becomes a "manly woman". We know that when that is the case, competitive women can sometimes be worse than aggressive men...
In most every place where the human species lives in communities, the name of the power is manhood. Let's just call a spade a spade, we have created, nurtured and sustained this all together.
Mothers, who are the biggest victims of this state of manhood, raise those boys. Girls try to stand on their feet by imitating their older brothers. Driving, drinking, surviving in professional life, on the street, among people not "like a girl" but "like a man" is the easiest way out.
If they decide to be like a woman and insist on remaining like that, then they find themselves as the natural targets of men. They cannot help but be viewed and treated not as productive individuals and equal members of the society, but as its reproductive and passive objects.
What is difficult is to be able to stand outside all these roles. Women have struggled hard to both look and behave like women and at the same time be able to demand and achieve everything by putting their heart and soul into life. Some progress has been made in all this time. Millions of women who have said "no" to this also became the antidote of our manhood. What can we say, we are fortunate that they exist... (CE/ŞA/APA/SD/TK/IG)
* Images: Kemal Gökhan Gürses
