Ronald was telling me more today about that poor man whose children were killed by their mother. Ronald has been around to comfort his friend, the grandfather of the children, a few times. Ronald has now become particularly sensitive to what he’s started to call the toxic man-bashing that goes on in our society. He worries about the effect the continual subliminal messages his four-year-old son gets are having on him. I asked him what he meant, and he said that in the last week while he’s been watching TV with his little boy before his bedtime, there were instances his son saw of a man being kneed hard in the groin by a woman, a man being punched hard on the nose twice by a woman, a woman spraying pepper spray into a man’s face because he spoke to her twice, and ‘funny’ videos of men being hit painfully in the groin by objects, all to canned laughter. There was also a well-known female so-called personality roundly proclaiming that of course a man she was indicating was a sexist, as all men are sexists, once again to general laughter. He said the view that women are respected less than men is a classic case of the emperor’s new clothes. He said his little boy believes everything he sees on TV and so thinks that that behaviour is unacceptable towards women (right) but acceptable towards men (wrong). I was shocked. Ronald says he now swaps the genders in instances like that before judging how funny they are. I’m going to start doing that.
Also, in the case of his friend’s tragedy, he was commenting on how there was little sympathy for the dad in the press and social media. No on-going stories in magazines about how brave he is, about how he needs support, no crowds marching in the street demanding justice for the suffering father whose life is essentially over. Only a comment on a popular news website, confirming there was no known history of family violence, as if that would most likely have been the reason. Not only that, but no suggestion that a woman chasing her young children around the house and killing them in a terrible manner constituted family violence. In fact, there was no mention of her terrible modus operandi anywhere, unlike some recent graphic descriptions accompanying stories, repeated many times, of how a father had killed a child. There was even a suggestion that maybe the husband could have done more to support his wife’s mental health issues. Swap the genders on that one. He was remarking on how different the media is when reporting on ‘murdering fathers’. I’ve never seen him so angry about anything.
Then Ian rang me at work. He never does that. I think he must be missing me, or missing something, anyway. He asked me how I was, and I said I’m fine. He happily chatted a bit more, and then hung up. What’s the matter with him? Couldn’t he tell I wasn’t fine?