THE evil that men do lives after them: that's how this column ended last week and in the light of so many horrible crimes against women and little girls, committed by men or for men's titillation, those words seem apt.
But the quotation (from Shakespeare's Johns Caesar) doesn't end there: "the good is oft interred with their bones," it adds and in our reaction to recent events we do run the risk of burying all men beneath the onslaught of our indignation.
It's hardly surprising, then, that they are feeling the pressure. They have been chastised, satirised and pilloried. Now in their defence they may well hit out: they may vilify those women who call them to account as radical feminists: may dismiss others as nuns who know little of the world. Or they may, as Shay Healy did in a recent newspaper article, acknowledge their transgressions and argue for a new departure.
But where to go? It is not easy to breach the walls when you're feeling under siege, and if, as a man, you find your castle under attack both from the enemy without and the demon within, where is the peace of mind that can save you from your own worst thoughts?
Recent research on male depression has highlighted the fact that the incidence of suicide among Irish men aged 15-34 has increased fourfold to a level three to four times higher than women in the same age group. And this is out of a total statistic of 400 people taking their own lives each year. True, clinical depression afflicts three times more women than men; but men, we arc reliably informed, arc more inclined to suffer in silence than to seek medical advice. Is it, perhaps, that to admit to such weakness is to acknowledge a sense of personal failure?
Men may traditionally have been the ones with the education and the money, but at some cost. Somewhere, some time long ago, when the original rules of the game were being written, there was a trade off: men traded their human potential for position and power and, in return, society ensured that women reinforced this by assigning them a role as homemakers. But times have changed. Why arc we caught unawares then that, when sensitivity is called for, men turn in desperation to suicide?
I do not seek here to justify this or any other violent action which men commit. I couldn't. I would ask, however, that we be a little more proactive in our analysis of the impact men have on us and on the society we both co habit. Is it doing mankind justice to say that all men are stubborn, deaf and smug about their world view? In our moral outrage, let's not forget that there are many good men in this world, men who have a very deep respect for the women and children in their lives and who, as fathers, sons and husbands, when reading accounts of violence and violation, have felt responsible and are shouldering the guilt of their sex.
It is for those men that we will echo the welcome given to news that advances in modern technology will soon help HIV carriers to be fathers - even if we have reservations concerning the possible infection of their partners. It is for those men we will allow ourselves be open to the fact that the legal situation on the custody of children following marriage breakdown is being reviewed in men's favour - although we may still worry about the welfare of some children.
It is for such men that we will try to understand the hope they feel following the decision to amend the country's adoption laws in order to give fathers of children born outside marriage a say in their adoption but again with one proviso: that the offer of a loving home should never be denied a child simply for the sake of it, or to spite the child's mother.
For women, having so long been victims at the hands of men, should feel empowered to empathise when men feel victimised by popular consent. Dwelling on past injustices to women may only serve to encourage in other women an attitude of entrenchment And how would such an attitude benefit us? When we find ourselves digging in, might it not be into our own graves? Women should show, instead, that being considered the "weaker sex" is only in terms of physical might not moral fibre. We should accept the apologia of those men who make it. To paraphrase Gibran in The Prophet: how shall you punish those whose remorse is greater than their misdeeds, who also are aggrieved and outraged?
While society acknowledges and tackles atrocities against women we must move forward. The history that is all their stories will never be forgotten as long as one human being, man or woman, chooses to remember Let not women be the ones to cast the first stone.
My mother taught each of us to realise and accept that every man is some other mother's son. When we think about men, then, when we write about them, picture them in our mind's eye and blame them for all the ills of this world, let us remember the women who battled with pain and suffering to give them life. Let us not waste our energies in recrimination. Let us attribute blame where it falls, surely, but let us at the same time give praise when praise is due.
Just as we will point our fingers at the evil ones, let us also embrace those men who are trying to be better. For both men and women are capable of sowing the seeds of justice. How can any of us argue, therefore, who should be first among equals?
