I am Afraid of Confrontation!

Click to read the article in Turkish / Kurdish

When I agreed to write such a piece for bianet, there was something important I had not taken into consideration. Attempting to write on "male violence" means confronting the dark, strange and buried moments of your own personal history as well. Saying, "It'll be a piece of cake, I'll talk about displays of masculinity and be done," does not cut it.

I even considered delegating the piece to a student, whose punishment would be to write "I'm afraid of confrontation" a hundred times in his notebook. I am afraid of confrontation, and I cover up my fear with my anger. I am afraid of women, and the more I am afraid, the more I am filled with hate. I am afraid of masculinity, and the more I am afraid, the more I turn to violence.

I tried writing "I'm afraid of confrontation" to fill up a whole page but could not. I think I got afraid of that too.

In the end, I dared postpone the "deadline" for submitting the piece and jumped into the well of confrontation.

It is 1975.

I am seven years old.

One Sunday, my dad decides to take me to a soccer match.

Thermal underwear, woolen undershirt, warm sweater... I am dressed to withstand the winter of Ankara. We make one transfer to get to the May 19 Stadium. The crowd outside gives me a thrill. I salivate staring at the meatball sandwich stands even though I was fed to the brim at home.

The moment we enter the stadium I am fascinated. It is just so big... I have this hope that I'll see Fenerbahçe. "It's a second league match," says my father. That is a bit disappointing. But whatever. I am still enjoying myself, after all we are "doing something" with my father.

We take a seat in the bleachers. It is not easy watching a game in the stadium. I try to figure out where to look and what to get excited about. About ten rows behind us is a rowdy group with flags. My father, who is watching the game with a calm expression, jumps up at one point yelling at the players, "How could you miss that?". I immediately mimic him. I jump to my feet and emit a deep sigh, "Ahh!". Watching a game calls for this, I guess.

Our disappointment at the missed goal annoys the rowdy group. That means they support the rival team. One of them says something to my father. He does not turn to look at them. But it is easy for me to see that there is something wrong. Five minutes later when we rejoice over a goal, the storm breaks. Two people charge at us, one says, "You're lucky you have that kid with you" and the other spits at us. My dad turns red. He is holding me with one hand and making sentences that contain words like "gentlemen, please, that's rude". I do not remember if there was a scuffle or what curses were hurled. All I remember is that we left the stadium before the match was over.

My story of "doing something" with my father gets drowned that day in the spit of those angry men.

Many years later I wanted to talk to my father about that day. I was curious about what he had felt at that moment. He did not remember it. He recalled us going to the match, but not why and how we left the stadium. Apparently, a man's mind deletes those moments when he is "defeated" by other men.

My story of "confronting something" with my father was deleted that day by the doctrine of power of an angry male community.

Another incident from those years stands out in my trip down memory lane.

We are playing tag on the street. One of the boys—I think his name was Abidin—who is four or five years older than me suggests we play Dr. Kimble to make our game more film-like. It is a reference to a very popular television series of the time. Someone is to be the fugitive Dr. Kimble, and the other, the man sworn to catch him, will be Police Lieutenant Gerard.

I proudly accept the role of Dr. Kimble. I manage to run for a while. But in the end I get caught. Abidin, as Lieutenant Gerard, does not stop at catching me. He says I must also be given a punishment.

They tie my hands at the wrists with clothesline, which I do not even know how they found. Then they hang me by my hands from a drainpipe jutting out of the apartment building wall. They leave me hanging there and just take off. I remember quite clearly how much they enjoyed hanging me, how they laughed. Oh memory, how cruel you are!

I know the rest from what I was told. My sister, seven years my senior, saw me like that on her way back from school. Hanging from a pipe, face wet with tears, blood settled in the wrists, half-stunned, and having pissed a little in his pants. She immediately got me down and took me home. Then she took off her school uniform, "put on her pants" and went back out. She thrashed Abidin and a bunch of other kids, beating them black and blue in the middle of the street.

To protect me from male cruelty, she had rushed in like a man. She put on pants, swore, used her fists, and responded to violence with violence.

In all frankness, my sister's "one-man army" story has always been told with pride among the family. For years I walked the path of life with the comfort of this feeling of power. After all, I had a sister powerful enough to beat up all the Abidins I would encounter.

My father, on the other hand, did not remember the incident at the May 19 Stadium. He left this world before we could have that confrontation talk.

I kept thinking about these two incidents for days as I was working on this piece.
On the one hand, a story that strives "to talk and explain", and on the other, a story that "responds to violence with violence".

Well then, which story's narrator am I today?

I know that you have to explain and tell, in order not to reproduce that language of "hegemonic masculinity". First to yourself, then to everyone else. You need to understand it to be able to tell it, and to understand it you need to confront it.

Now let's take out our elementary school notebooks and write over and over again for pages and pages: "I'm afraid of confrontation!"

Only then will we begin to overcome our fears, to confront ourselves, to understand, and to narrate that which we have understood.

Right away. Right now. (YK/ŞA/APA/PU/IG)

* Images: Kemal Gökhan Gürses

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