Saturday 22 October 2011

I hate the world sometimes

This article is shocking, but well worth a read. This is an issue that does not seem to receive the attention that it should, and any talk of it is limited by restrictive gender roles:
"In Africa no man is allowed to be vulnerable," says RLP's gender officer Salome Atim. "You have to be masculine, strong. You should never break down or cry. A man must be a leader and provide for the whole family. When he fails to reach that set standard, society perceives that there is something wrong."
Men should be just as free as women to express the trauma of what they have gone through. The only time I can remember ever coming across something on this subject was in Cloud Atlas, then I just thought it was something incredibly weird and disturbing that the author had made up.