This acceptance of male power tripping behaviours as normal shows just how indoctrinated it is and how we continue to be slaves to patriarchy, writes Ruta Mave.

There is a car accident, the father is killed instantly and the son is rushed to hospital for life saving surgery. As they are prepping the boy, the chief surgeon looks over the boy’s vitals and injuries then suddenly announces “I can’t perform surgery on this boy because he is my son”. How can this be? The father is dead, is it the boy’s stepfather? Perhaps the surgeon is mistaken? No, the correct answer is the surgeon is his mother.

The common and automatic assumption that the chief surgeon is a male still lies within our community despite the great strides in achievements of women throughout history and to this very day.

We talk about and espouse the virtues and values of equality and equity for women in our society, we wave them as flagships for females holding leadership titles within our parliament, but alas they are just faces without form or function.

The recent headlines of the absentee general secretary of our National Olympic Committee, Owen Lewis, being appointed Secretary for Education over highly qualified, educated, bilingual and competent women is another stake in the heart of progress in the Cook Islands.

The fact that as the Minister for Sport Mac Mokoroa, who is also the Minister for Education, knew and allowed Lewis to milk the system for his full salary from CISNOC, while working offshore, full time in and for another country, is all we need to know how alive and well the boy’s network is.

What is most alarming is there is no cloak and dagger behind closed doors and secret handshakes for this to happen. Their arrogance of ‘just watch me do what I want with who I want and you can’t stop me’ is not the worst of it. The worst of it is that people, women especially, are so conditioned and jaded by these behaviours, despite not liking it, they shrug and say ‘oh well that’s how it is, how it has always been and how it will always be. I can’t do anything about it, so why bother’. This acceptance of male power tripping behaviours as normal shows just how indoctrinated it is and how we continue to be slaves to patriarchy.

Luisa Peters-Tongatama, the Teachers Union president, has spoken of the process involved and her being a little disappointed when the opportunity to give a real Cook Islander the job was ignored by Cabinet. She has responded and she has been applauded for doing so and for being transparent in what the expectation and process was for the new appointment moving forward, and whilst people pat her on the back for doing so, they are also whispering how much longer will she be in her job, or how will she be shut out or shut down from here on in.

Taylor Swift said most succinctly in an interview “…the most rage provoking element of being a female is the gaslighting that happens when for centuries we have been expected to absorb bad male behaviour silently of whatever any guy decides to do. And often in times when we, in our enlightened state and emboldened state, when we now respond to bad male behaviour or to somebody just doing something absolutely out of line, when we respond, the response is treated like the offense itself. You are made to feel like the offender, when you try to have any kind of defence.”

Gaslighting behaviour of men consists of repetitive and brazen actions towards women to manipulate and control them in the relationship.

They will use outright lying, manipulation of reality, scapegoating, coercion, denial, minimisation, blame shifting, withholding, causing confusion, criticism projection and narcissism. Men create this environment until the women doubt themselves their reality and their ability.

People we are being gaslighted. Wake up.

Mediocre men used to gaslight Taylor Swift but she turned the tables on them. For every criticism or bad behaviour she now receives, she turns it into an Emmy winning song. Taylor Swift has played the capitalist game better than any man. Her latest Eras tour has grossed over $1.2 billion, the US credit her with propping up their economy by injecting $5 billion through her fans purchasing flights, accommodation, food, petrol, etc.

Her success comes from her changing from being a victim and passively accepting it, to taking power from their bad actions. making it public in song and fish slapping their faces by winning Time magazine Person of the Year at 33 years old.

She is an icon and she is the role model we should learn from about how we should stop accepting bad behaviour from these men taking all the privileges without the performance as normal. Time for woman to demand the credit they deserve and not accept the blame.