EDUCATING THE EDUCATOR ABOUT GENDER VIOLENCE by John Oluwafemi Olla

I believe it is time to educate the educators on gender issues at this time of advocacy against gender violence.

I am a He4She in my own right but I will never do a bandwagon thing, we seem to forget the fact that there are several forms, violence can take, but uniformly cling to physicality. Financial extortion can be regarded as one, emotional torture, verbal expressions, discrimination… until we start seeing violence from this perspective then we will remain gender violence illiterate.
I have said it over and over again that the gender equality that most people preach, if well analyzed, it will be quite obvious that, it Inequalities of the highest order and it’s like putting the opposite gender in the den of being an endangered species.
I was listen to one the independent radio stations in Ibadan ( SplashFM 105.5 Ibadan ) yesterday and the issue of violence against women was discussed, you will be surprised at what men were revealing in anonymity on radio about brutality they have experienced. Infact one of them said he doesn’t go home anymore.
So, my dear advocates please don’t see gender from the perspective of one gender anymore, please be holistic in your view.
The call for grant, call for international conferences, special ministries, sometimes automatic 30% position allocation are all here in Nigeria, where is the preference for other gender yet we only look at gender violence in the surfaces. So many men are strangers in their homes, violated but we never bother ourselves, looking into it, maybe because of our African culture or because men are physically stronger than women (smh) in a situation where the opposite is the case, what then did you expect?
Me answer: They die in silence, patronize clubs, some will hangout till night falls and so on…
Let me make my standing point clear here, in advocating against gender violence, we should be holistic in our view, not leaving anyone behind, unless very soon we will have a society where a gender is endangered in the process of trying to empower the other.

How sustainable will that be, when we have society where our messages about gender is being interpreted to mean violence against one another?

The National Domestic Violence HOTLINE (Although American Statistics)

1 in 10 men (10%) in the US have experienced rape, physical violence and/or stalking by a partner and report a related impact on their< functioning.
1 in 7 men (13.8%) aged 18 and older in the United States have been the victim of severe physical violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime.
4% of men have been injured as a result of IPV that included rape, physical violence and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime.

1 in 4 men (28.5%) in the United States have experienced rape, physical violence and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime.
Nearly half of all women and men in the United States have experienced psychological aggression by an intimate partner in their lifetime (48.4% and 48.8%, respectively).
Without considering the culture of violence