Dear Editor,
Some of our child protection laws, and the skewed situation which claims a higher calibre of mature thinking in favour of females, might be inadvertently contributing to the continuance of these same undesirable sexual encounters, both presently and for generations to come. The result is that intimate relationships often have gaping age differences, both legal and illegal, with mostly the females being younger, of course.
Despite the works of the likes of Professor Errol Miller, Dr Herbert Gayle, and Dr Alton Barrington Chevannes in highlighting the gravity of the marginalisation of males, we fail miserably to appreciate it. So, while in sixth form, when my classmate publicly told me that he would not trust me to be alone with his younger sister, who was about seven years our junior, I wrote it off as all-boy school gimmickry. However, I came to see what he saw allegedly in me. Several of my female batchmates and colleagues repeatedly took tentative “jabs” at us males, who in my college programme were outnumbered by females 7:1. I remember their mocking giggles, renditions of Bounty Killer’s
Wutless Bwoy, and just constantly being underrating and their prophecies of doom on us. I was just only lucky to get to marry my girlfriend, an “outsider”, whom I had started dating as a college graduate, and she, just a year out of high school, as she ascended to a diploma, then a degree and a higher-paying job than mine.
The true tenets of marriage should serve as a balancing act in any disparity between males and females, and rescue males — as it did me — from being labelled and ending up as perverts and paedophiles as we seek affection which is not as burdened or disrespectful as that which we often get from women of like age. It is in this regard that we should consider lowering our age of consent and, as in Islamic dominated territories, put laws in place to make men and girls who are fond of each other able and obliged to marry. After all, isn’t this one of the biblical reasons given for marriage?
Andre O Sheppy
Norwood, St James
astrangely@outlook.com
Some of our child protection laws, and the skewed situation which claims a higher calibre of mature thinking in favour of females, might be inadvertently contributing to the continuance of these same undesirable sexual encounters, both presently and for generations to come. The result is that intimate relationships often have gaping age differences, both legal and illegal, with mostly the females being younger, of course.
Despite the works of the likes of Professor Errol Miller, Dr Herbert Gayle, and Dr Alton Barrington Chevannes in highlighting the gravity of the marginalisation of males, we fail miserably to appreciate it. So, while in sixth form, when my classmate publicly told me that he would not trust me to be alone with his younger sister, who was about seven years our junior, I wrote it off as all-boy school gimmickry. However, I came to see what he saw allegedly in me. Several of my female batchmates and colleagues repeatedly took tentative “jabs” at us males, who in my college programme were outnumbered by females 7:1. I remember their mocking giggles, renditions of Bounty Killer’s
Wutless Bwoy, and just constantly being underrating and their prophecies of doom on us. I was just only lucky to get to marry my girlfriend, an “outsider”, whom I had started dating as a college graduate, and she, just a year out of high school, as she ascended to a diploma, then a degree and a higher-paying job than mine.
The true tenets of marriage should serve as a balancing act in any disparity between males and females, and rescue males — as it did me — from being labelled and ending up as perverts and paedophiles as we seek affection which is not as burdened or disrespectful as that which we often get from women of like age. It is in this regard that we should consider lowering our age of consent and, as in Islamic dominated territories, put laws in place to make men and girls who are fond of each other able and obliged to marry. After all, isn’t this one of the biblical reasons given for marriage?
Andre O Sheppy
Norwood, St James
astrangely@outlook.com