On punches

One thing that has really been irking me in the last few weeks is the negative stereotype that is getting peddled about the men who (accidentally) kill or seriously injure other men with one punch. I mean, I know, the media is telling us that it's only the other guy's story matters and the guy who threw the punch is a "coward", a monster, someone who should have known better. They call the punches that result in such grave injuries a "king hit", a "coward punch". Now, I believe, that had these punches not resulted in these grave injuries, they would have been called an "awesome hit", a "hero punch", a "champion move" or something positive like that. Why do I say that? Because the truth is so often we do glorify violence and displays of machismo like that. It's literally like that saying, 'it's all fun and games until someone gets hurt'.

Now is about the point where people tell me I've got it all wrong, that the men punching other men like this are thugs and demons and simply bad people. They're not people like us, they're different. You know, because the rest of us apparently don't delight in violence in movies, we don't cheer on contact competitive sports, and we haven't been responsible for making "ultimate fighting" so popular on television that we now want to enroll our children into mixed martial arts lessons so they can be the next cage-fighting champion. I know, I know, witnessing violence doesn't make people violent, right? Probably not, but the case is often that art imitates life and not the other way around. It's not that things magically appear on television and we want to do exactly like it; I think its more that television executives observe what the rest of us like and want to put that in television so we can relate and watch their shows (and buy advertised products, etc). Generally, we like to watch what we already like. But I digress... What I'm meaning to say is that the people punching other people are often regular people like us who make very poor decisions,and those decisions lead to poor consequences. These decisions themselves are often predisposed by (usually) alcohol and/or other drugs, peer pressure, and the other unique social pressures men in our society face.

I once heard a woman praising her child for having punched another boy in the abdomen. She was proud of him for having demanded his own respect via violence. She was proud of him because by his behaviour this boy had shown he was becoming a "man". And she was proud of him because  that other child was not her child. Now, this woman is an otherwise very well-intentioned human being and mother, but she has learnt to have the same expectations a lot of us have of how men ought to behave. Men do not sit down and talk about their indifferences, they should fight them out physically. Men should show their superiority and demand their pride be respected by physical displays of strength. Men need to consume as much alcohol as their bodies will tolerate so they are not thought of as "wimps" by their peers. Men should be muscular. Muscular and strong men have a right to pick on less muscular and physically less-strong men. Men in the company of others must always seek to be seen to be the stronger one. These are the kind of pressures men face most days. Even the female partners of men often demand this behaviour of them. For example, how many of us have seen a man who disrespects another man's partner, and then this partner demands that he "be a man" and confront the other man (usually verbally, but with the expectation that use of physical violence is acceptable too). And that's just it, we've created a society where people are taught that violence sometimes is an option, and that option is higher up in the hierarchy of options if you're a man.

The reality is that a lot of us have felt angry at times - and a lot of us have wanted to react violently at times when we were angry. A lot of people have also faced the situation where they were so intoxicated that their usual inhibitions were lowered, where they're more susceptible to make bad choices. Hey, some of these people sometimes punch others too. I'd say more often than not, they are barely thinking of the potential consequences of their actions. I mean, these are normal people making bad choices that are tainted as the big bad demons when one of their punches cause another person a serious injury. There is no point in ruining their reputation either or calling them a coward. But here is where I do lay some blame on the media.

The media knows what we like, what human beings are used to and expect. And we all love stories of villains and victims, of good guys and bad guys, of heroes and cowards. So that is what the media feeds us: a poor young innocent man being a model citizen who is randomly targeted by a devil who attacks him with superhuman strength and intending to cause maximum damage. I'd say that if a person gets punched while they're in church with their eyes closed praying, or while alone in a library, lost in thought, reading a book, then that's pretty cowardly - and, yes, that's exactly like the kind of the story the media sell to us... but it's not usually the whole one.There is never mention that these kinds of things actually usually happen in areas filled with intoxicated persons, in the late hours of night, and what other combustants for social disorder are about. I'm certainly not saying that you deserve to get punched in the head if you happen to want to have some fun out in the town at the early hours of the morning where others are consuming drugs or alcohol, I'm simply saying some situations are inherently more dangerous. This is why our parents warned us about these situations. It's not all about inherently-bad people and inherently-innocent people.

How about if instead of negatively-labeling certain men who get caught up in bad situations, we do something a little more productive?  I don't have the answers, but perhaps we need to start asking better questions. Something like what role does alcohol play in violence? what other factors contribute to violence? how can we better educate men about avoiding violence rather than retroactively calling them 'cowards' and 'thugs'? what would be some alternative/healthier measures of masculinity we can inculcate into our young men to aspire to? These are just my opinions and suggestions, but maybe it needs to be something more of us think about.

On drawing

I've been fascinated for a long time now on how drawing is one of the first abstract things children learn to do. And more than learning it, they almost all seem to love it! And the majority of them are very confident about their skills. But at some point in our early life, most of us lose that confidence and we disregard drawing and visual art as something that only certain “skilled” people, artists, are allowed to do. Why is that?

When children first start drawing, they actually just put squiggles on a page, and when prompted by adults to say what these represent they often have no idea. It’s like the amazing thing to them is that they held a pen/pencil/crayon/whatever, then brought it into contact on a piece of paper, and it left a mark for which they are wholly responsible. It seems that at that age it doesn't matter what you've drawn, but simply that you have created something. Eventually, they are moulded into the concept that these scribblings are not enough, that drawing must be representational. And, fair enough, it is said that these are some of the most unique characteristics about human beings, that we document things visually. So children eventually learn to draw people, animals, and scenes from their lives and their inner world. And they enjoy it. I often ask children to draw pictures for me, and up to a certain age they always tackle the task enthusiastically. But if you ask an adult, one who doesn’t define their job or their hobby as visual art, they all say “I can’t”. Yet what I think they really mean to say is “I can’t draw things so that they look how they are, therefore I refuse to try”. And I struggle to understand why. Why not even try?

Is it teachers that erode children’s sense of feeling equipped to draw? Is it their peers? Is it a general disillusionment in that the world will respect our unique view and representation of the world, because they will judge us? Why do we stop drawing? Why do we become convinced that we are not good at it and so we shouldn't? These are the kinds of questions that I think about.

Pablo Picasso, the artist, is someone I have always admired for reasons other than his visual artwork. See, Picasso was the son of an artist who taught him from very young the techniques of visual art: perspective, light and dark, etc. And he learnt these very well, so much that visual art became something he eventually was able to make a living out of. Now, the majority of us know Picasso as that guy who made those “weird” paintings, those cubist paintings that only vaguely looked like real-life objects – and, yes, that was on purpose. But Picasso himself said that by the time he was 4 years old he could draw representationally, draw like that renaissance painter’s Raphael very impressive and life-like paintings. And he wasn't exaggerating! Yet what I like most of all that he said is this: “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up”. It makes me feel like I am not the only one troubled by questions like this :)

I still draw. Just don't see why not :)

On keeping quite

I've noted myself that I haven’t being writing as much as I used to, and I think that now I know why. I was trying to convince myself that it was because of lack of ideas, but that’s not the real (or at least not the whole) truth. I have been censoring myself. I know, it’s embarrassing but that is exactly what I have been doing for at least the last year.

It’s interesting that I started this blog to put down some of my rants, to share some of my stories, and essentially to say the things that I lack verbal finesse to say adequately. It was meant to be to express myself and my personal opinions. So what happened? I've been scared. It’s true, I have been.

It started because at one point I was asked by someone to not share stories about my romantic relationships because they felt that reflected badly on them. So I held back my feelings (which I am finally realising are solely my property) and tried to eliminate even commenting that I may or may not at a particular time be in a relationship. Then I was dissatisfied with the circumstances of a couple of the last few places I've worked, and yet too scared to lose my job (and suffer financially) for saying what I really think and what I think is wrong. Later I became scared to even comment about any social or political situations that I have opinions on, for fear that my opinions may unfortunately be seen as not simply my opinion but those of “a doctor”. I was at the time reading stories about people who happened to be doctors and also bloggers who were posting opinion pieces, and who later received attention or reprimand from medical registration boards because apparently doctors can only ever be doctors and never just be everyday human beings with opinions. I was scaring myself into thinking that I just wasn't allowed to have an opinion that may not ‘reasonably be expected of a medical practitioner by the public’ or that may not ‘reasonably be shared by my peers’. Yes, I was thinking in medico-legal terms. And I was afraid to post about things that concerned or bothered me about the religious group I attended for fear of it affecting my or my family’s standing and reputation within the congregation.

So what does Vanessa discuss if she can’t talk about love, medicine, socio-political commentary, or theology? Not much. Because those are the things that affect my life the most, the things that I want to talk about. So I almost came to a complete halt of this blog. But I've been feeling very frustrated and very tired in the last year, and I've come to the conclusion that there may be a correlation between my lack of self-expression and the ongoing frustration and exhaustion in my life. So my plan this year is to allow myself to regain my passion for self-expression, and to lose some of the frustration that comes from my self-imposed censorship.

Thank you for your support.

Nothing should come between a woman and her love for... mangoes.
This picture was meant to be an analogy for writing, but mangoes will do :)