A guarded taboo
Absolute entitlement to respect for the elder males has opened the doors for an evil that we all pretend doesn’t exist
The writer is a consultant pharmacist at Medicine Shoppe International and has worked as a senior pharmacist with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre, US. She has also worked as a civil servant with the Government of Pakistan
In most societies, especially Muslim societies, respect is not earned by elders, it is demanded. It’s a privilege that the elders, especially male, are entitled to by virtue of their age. This concept is supported by religious teachings and strong cultural traditions. It is a fact that wisdom comes with age and experience.
Our homes also carry the same traditions. Older people are most respected, particularly men. Female members of the family command less respect in general. If they are young females, then they come last. This absolute entitlement to respect for the elder males has opened the doors for an evil that we all pretend doesn’t exist. Young girls are easy targets of incest abuse in such male-centric societies.
A study shows that when men are to be dominant and aggressive, it leads to hyper-masculinity, male peer support for sexual aggression, development of rape myths and adversarial sexual beliefs.
The biggest trauma of this kind of abuse is that the little girl is at the beginning stages of developing her value system and trust models. At the point where male family members are role models, where her innocent mind only knows trust and love. Then, what happens when she goes through the betrayal, shame and fear. She is still desperate to remain attached to her caretaker and doesn’t want to lose the support system because she knows if the secret comes out she will face immense contempt of the family.
Roland C Summit, professor of Psychiatry at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Centre, California, US, summarised many of the adaptations made by victims of incest in his article titled ‘The child sexual abuse accommodation syndrome’. He describes the secrecy that surrounded the abuse; the helplessness and powerlessness of the victims; their entrapment in a terrible situation and their accommodation to it; their delayed conflicted and unconvincing disclosure of their circumstances; and the likelihood of retraction. With painful irony, their adaptation to the abuse that they cannot avoid leads to behaviours that undermine their credibility if they later complain about their circumstances.
Even in United States statistics on these cases are extremely hard to pinpoint due to lack of reporting resulting from the shame associated with abuse. Aside from the misdirected shame, the victim is under humongous burden to keep it a secret because of the fear of disrupting family dynamics or experiencing blame from family members. By 1986, Diana E H Russell, a feminist writer and activist, wrote in her book The Secret Trauma some form of incestuous activity, ranging from minimal to brutal aggressive, was found in approximately one in 20 families that included daughters and their natural fathers, and one in seven families in which daughters resided with stepfathers.
Discussing the psychiatric impact, psychiatrist Richard P Kluff writes in his Psychiatric Times article that few circumstances confront the psychiatrist with more complex, painful and potentially-problematic clinical dilemmas and challenges than treatment of the incest victim and management of the situation in which incest has been suspected or alleged by one member of a family, and denied, often with both pain and outrage, by the accused and other members of that family.
The difference between our society and the western society is that when the incident is reported by the child to a family member or any responsible adult, immediate action is taken. The child protection services get involved along with other agencies. The child is either transported to safer environment if immediate family member is a threat. If the current environment is deemed safe, they make sure that the child will remain safe in the custody of parents.
On the other hand, in our society, when a girl tells her mother or a family member that her male relative did something to her, they won’t believe her or will ask her to stay quiet and to not tell anyone else. There is always this taboo; something you never dare to talk about, a knowing that the man is always right because of his dominant position; being the provider of the family. For instance, a mother will prefer to kill her one daughter to save the family of eight children and keep her husband happy so she can feed the rest of the family.
We are weak people, we don’t have the courage to stand up for the right cause, and we are not even ready to acknowledge that there is a problem in society. We like to put on a perfect show of respect in front of everyone because our society is pretentious and rotten. The government should establish more effective child protection service department in collaboration with other agencies to give protection to victims. The media needs to play an active role in creating awareness and it needs to be open. There should be a system to empower and educate girls to protect their fundamental rights, their very existence.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 13th, 2019.
Our homes also carry the same traditions. Older people are most respected, particularly men. Female members of the family command less respect in general. If they are young females, then they come last. This absolute entitlement to respect for the elder males has opened the doors for an evil that we all pretend doesn’t exist. Young girls are easy targets of incest abuse in such male-centric societies.
A study shows that when men are to be dominant and aggressive, it leads to hyper-masculinity, male peer support for sexual aggression, development of rape myths and adversarial sexual beliefs.
The biggest trauma of this kind of abuse is that the little girl is at the beginning stages of developing her value system and trust models. At the point where male family members are role models, where her innocent mind only knows trust and love. Then, what happens when she goes through the betrayal, shame and fear. She is still desperate to remain attached to her caretaker and doesn’t want to lose the support system because she knows if the secret comes out she will face immense contempt of the family.
Roland C Summit, professor of Psychiatry at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Centre, California, US, summarised many of the adaptations made by victims of incest in his article titled ‘The child sexual abuse accommodation syndrome’. He describes the secrecy that surrounded the abuse; the helplessness and powerlessness of the victims; their entrapment in a terrible situation and their accommodation to it; their delayed conflicted and unconvincing disclosure of their circumstances; and the likelihood of retraction. With painful irony, their adaptation to the abuse that they cannot avoid leads to behaviours that undermine their credibility if they later complain about their circumstances.
Even in United States statistics on these cases are extremely hard to pinpoint due to lack of reporting resulting from the shame associated with abuse. Aside from the misdirected shame, the victim is under humongous burden to keep it a secret because of the fear of disrupting family dynamics or experiencing blame from family members. By 1986, Diana E H Russell, a feminist writer and activist, wrote in her book The Secret Trauma some form of incestuous activity, ranging from minimal to brutal aggressive, was found in approximately one in 20 families that included daughters and their natural fathers, and one in seven families in which daughters resided with stepfathers.
Discussing the psychiatric impact, psychiatrist Richard P Kluff writes in his Psychiatric Times article that few circumstances confront the psychiatrist with more complex, painful and potentially-problematic clinical dilemmas and challenges than treatment of the incest victim and management of the situation in which incest has been suspected or alleged by one member of a family, and denied, often with both pain and outrage, by the accused and other members of that family.
The difference between our society and the western society is that when the incident is reported by the child to a family member or any responsible adult, immediate action is taken. The child protection services get involved along with other agencies. The child is either transported to safer environment if immediate family member is a threat. If the current environment is deemed safe, they make sure that the child will remain safe in the custody of parents.
On the other hand, in our society, when a girl tells her mother or a family member that her male relative did something to her, they won’t believe her or will ask her to stay quiet and to not tell anyone else. There is always this taboo; something you never dare to talk about, a knowing that the man is always right because of his dominant position; being the provider of the family. For instance, a mother will prefer to kill her one daughter to save the family of eight children and keep her husband happy so she can feed the rest of the family.
We are weak people, we don’t have the courage to stand up for the right cause, and we are not even ready to acknowledge that there is a problem in society. We like to put on a perfect show of respect in front of everyone because our society is pretentious and rotten. The government should establish more effective child protection service department in collaboration with other agencies to give protection to victims. The media needs to play an active role in creating awareness and it needs to be open. There should be a system to empower and educate girls to protect their fundamental rights, their very existence.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 13th, 2019.