Maroc - NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - 10/12/2025 09:37

Men must end this violence

IN THE middle of 16 Days of Activism to End Gender Based Violence, and just hours before I wrote these words on December 8, Angel Lutchman, 43, was reportedly murdered by Shazard Mohammed, who was just 29 years old, leaving her two children without their mother, even though she obtained a restraining order against him two weeks ago. Newsday reported that their relationship lasted for only about a year and included repeated and known abuse. On November 23, 36-year-old Romona Victor was found beaten to death alongside the suicide of her partner and alleged killer Rodney Ramsumair. On November 18, Avanelle Abraham, 38 years old and mother to a son, is believed to have been flung from a vehicle before being shot in the head. Her family did not believe it to be a robbery, urging “young women to be cautious and pay attention to the people around them all the time.” Between these two femicides, on November 30, a 25-year-old South Oropouche woman was allegedly kidnapped and raped by her ex-partner and children’s father who also physically assaulted her. And on November 11, a 24-year-old woman was raped by her ex-boyfriend following her decision to end a ten-month relationship. This violation included instruction to someone on the other end of a call to harm her father at the same time as she was being sexually assaulted. These stories in less than a month are just part of the estimated 840 million women globally who have experienced male partner or male sexual violence in their lifetime with painfully slow progress to reduce such violence. They are hardly the only stories of men’s murders, sexual assaults, and physical assaults of women – whether as part of home robbery or take place at a bar or because they began to communicate online or were promised help with school supplies for their children or just on their way to work. Indeed, the press reported that a 17-year-old girl was abducted and raped by a PH taxi driver on her way to school on November 21. Story after story confirms that living in Trinidad and being in heterosexual relationships or just being a woman can be a gruesome reality – neither private nor public spaces are safe. The newspaper reports over 2025 are horrific – women discovered in shallow graves, in a drain, in their homes, in bushes, and on the side of the road – with Trinidad being described in terms of a “bloodbath” of women in February this year; a bloodbath that has not yet ended. I’ve written about such violence repeatedly over the years – offering analyses and recommendations. At times like this, I write just to say these women’s names and to affirm the tragedy of losing them to men who took their lives away. Action is being undertaken everywhere – police training, national action plans, marches, panel discussions, victim support, shelters, workshops, and speeches, but is any of it transforming those men likely to rape and kill women? Women are imprisoned in a world of men who do what they will with women when they choose, regardless of who or where women are, as if they are nothing. The problem is not all men, but that any man could at any time decide he is one of them. Prevention is necessary. Co-ordinated social and psychological services are vital. Effective state protection is a must. Yet, simply put, men must stop. Stop killing women. Stop raping them. This is what it means to make the world safer for women. What is men’s responsibility for themselves and other men? Why are men not leading the movement to end such extreme and continuous violence? How does making this a "women’s issue" stop us from seeing this as a problem of harmful masculinity – a problem created by belief in men’s rightful power over women. Where are all the men’s voices whom we should be hearing? Men are less likely to be violent to women when it is not tolerated by other men and when men take responsibility for tackling the issues men face, whether hurt, jealousy, anger, low self-esteem or mental health and substance abuse challenges. However, change is not possible without also refusing to excuse men’s disregard for women’s pain, and their willingness to control through harm. Men will not do better unless men do more. Surely, this is not asking too much when the newspapers are littered with the stories of women whose bodies and lost lives show us just how much is at stake. Diary of a mothering worker Entry 570 motheringworker@gmail.com The post Men must end this violence appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.