The dance of hegemonic masculinities and the 'cult of femininity'

Last night I heard the noises- loud voices of two women screaming at each other. These are my neighbours and it was right by my doorstep. The neighbour from upstairs was confronting my next door neighbour. It was not easy for me not to find out what the natter was just in case someone had been attacked in their house and needed help. Just as I was about to open my front door, I heard part of what it was all about thus I retracked.

Joyce (not her real name) from upstairs was not happy that Annah (not her real name) had slapped her son on his head earlier in the day. She was infuriated and very abusive in the language she used to communicate to Annah. She called her a senseless and useless WOMAN, with no children of her own and nothing useful to do wuth other people's children. The obscenities that Joyce shouted at Annah did not even allow her time to breathe not time for Annah to explain what had happened earlier in the day. I had hoped that if someone was not happy with their neighbour's actions they could just walk to the neighbour and have a civilized discussion about it. It was sad that this was happening. It was sadder that I managed to hear Annah struggle to say the following words: "your son asked another boy to call me a bitch". "So what?", shouted Joyce, "you should not have hit him. I prefer to deal with my children my own way!"

I immediately thought about how we socialise boys into hegemonic masculinities at a young age - to disrespect women and girls. In my opinion, these are the boys that are likely to grow to men who abuse women. They are also the young men who are likely to rape, beat and sexually harrass young women in institutions of learning. This is also how violence against women begins to be normalised- by giving boys the greenlight that it is ok to insult women, to degrade their bodies and abuse their bodly integrity. As women, we are caught up in what I call a 'cult of femininity' that defends these violent forms of masculinities. We do it as mothers of, sisters to and even partners of abusive men. While I do not agree with Annah having hit Joyce's son, I was shocked at how Joyce did not recognize that her son had been completely disrespectful of another woman and that the same is likely to happen to her from someone else's son, who would most likely be emulating her son's behaviour.

As I write about masculinities, I have to say that understanding masculinities is an effort to make sense of relationships between individual males and  groups of males as well as the relationships between males and females. I am more concerned about how masculinities are constructed and thus my concerns in this case of a boy calling a woman a "bitch".