Activist: Help male victims of domestic violence

He was speaking at a panel discussion at the University of the Southern Caribbean (USC), Maracas/St Joseph, hosted by the group USC Speak Out on Monday.

He related how uneasy he once felt as a strapping schoolboy when a female school employee kept telling him how handsome he was and how she had wished he were just a little bit older.

“I felt so uncomfortable,” Edwards said. “How do you act? This is someone I had to see everyday.” He said gender-based violence (GBV) starts in little things but develops into something worse. He said GBV could include the case of a woman who felt she had the right to rub up her body on an unwitting male. Edwards spoke about an online video-clip of a woman beating a man and angrily asking, “Who’s Sharon?” a scenario which many viewers had laughed at.

“Yet we are not seeing that as equal to a man being abusive.

“If a gay man says ‘my partner is beating me,’ the police will say ‘go from here!’ or laugh at him. He urged that the Constitution be amended to refer to gender to help both gay men and women.

Edwards lamented that while one prominent gay lobby had highlighted that two men were recently killed, probably because to their gender identity, the conversation had ended there.

Edwards later condemned Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley’s controversial remark that he can’t be in every woman’s bedroom to stop GBV so they should choose their men wisely.

He said the PM should have been more empathetic since a man during the courting phase will rarely show his bad side which may be unearthed later.

Further, unforeseen circumstances occur over time that can bring out negatives, such as a man losing his job in a recession.

“We shouldn’t be victim blaming or victim shaming.”