In 1832 Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov wrote a poem ‘The Reed” about a murdered young lady:
He wanted me to love him – His passion left me cold; He tried to give me money – I did not want his gold. Then with a knife he struck me, And to the ground I sank; He dug a grave and buried My body on the bank.
“With men he was dishonest, With beauties he was sly.”
These are the key words for me in that poem, as in my experience those men, who are treating women badly are also very nasty to other men. While good men treat all people well, including other men, women and children. Therefore any generalizations blaming and shaming all men for poor treatment of women are false and misleading.
As Camille Paglia, for centuries “men have sacrificed and crippled themselves physically and emotionally to feed, house, and protect women and children.” Unfortunately, the pain or achievements of good men often goes unnoticed in the flood of negative stories related to bad men. 😦
Let’s appreciate those men, who care about others and treat other people well. Let’s appreciate those men, who are supporting women and helping them through hard times. Let’s appreciate those men who are empowering women and helping them to develop new skills. Let’s appreciate those men, who come to the rescue when women get caught in dangerous situations. Let’s not forget that those men often risk their own health and their own lives to help out women. On my blog I’ve got a few examples of good men in action – across different cultures and time periods, e.g.:
“We don’t need a melting pot…, folks. We need a salad bowl. In a salad bowl, you put in the different things. You want the vegetables – the lettuce, the cucumbers, the onions, the green peppers – to maintain their identity. You appreciate differences.”
Jane Elliot
“My first exposure to murder,” the Nobel-winning economist Amartya Sen writes in “Identity and Violence” “occurred when I was 11.” It was 1944, a few years before the end of the British Raj and a period of widespread Hindu-Muslim riots. The victim was “a profusely bleeding unknown person suddenly stumbling through the gate to our garden, asking for help and a little water.” Rushed to the hospital by Sen’s father, the man died there of his injuries. He was Kader Mia, a Muslim day laborer knifed by Hindus. He had been asked by his wife not to go into a hostile area of then-undivided Bengal. But he had to feed his starving family, and he paid with his life.
To the young Sen, this event was not just traumatic but mystifying. How was it, Sen asks …, that “… human beings … were suddenly transformed into the ruthless Hindus and fierce Muslims…”? And how was it that Kader Mia would be seen as having only one identity — that of being Muslim — by Hindus who were, like him, out in the unprotected open because they too were starving? “For a bewildered child,” Sen remembers, “the violence of identity was extraordinarily hard to grasp.” And, he confesses, “it is not particularly easy even for a still bewildered elderly adult.”
In his book “Identity and Violence”Amartya Sentakes aims at what he calls the ” ‘solitarist’ approach to human identity, which sees human beings as members of exactly one group.” This view, he argues, is not just morally undesirable, but descriptively wrong.Instead, Sen invokes the myriad identities within each individual. The people of the world can be classified according to many other partitions, each of which has some—often far-reaching—relevance in our lives: nationalities, locations, occupations, social status, languages, politics, and many others, including identity common to all – HUMANS. Because all of us contain multitudes, we can choose among our identities, emphasizing those we share with others rather than those we do not.
Let’s focus on our shared identities and appreciate differences for peace around the world.
“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”
Otrazhenie 