No...Not Everyone Has an Ugly Past!

There was a huge irony to the responses (e-mails) I got in respect of the piece I wrote on Sunday, 05/25/2014 about "My Twisted World", The Manifesto of Elliot Rodger. http://www.femiolawole.blogspot.com/2014/05/my-twisted-world-manifesto-of-elliot.html

Straying away from the actual story, most of the folks reacted to my conclusion that chivalry was dead partly because of the present-day “instant-coffee”, internet age process where “boy meets girl on a social medium in the morning and by evening, they are in bed…”

While the men were unanimous in their agreement with this view, almost every woman took it personal with “...everyone has an ugly past, arising from a learning phase in life. In no time, my current wild days will be over...and so, men ought to learn to overlook the ugly past to treat a woman with absolute respect…”

Really!

In the first place, the now common notion that “everyone has an ugly past…” is completely wrong!

I do have an ugly past arising from the so-called learning phase in life. But first of all, I’m not proud of it because I knew very well that back then, I was deliberately reckless. And secondly, merely because I chose to be reckless does not give me any moral justification to now lump all the people out there together as having “ugly pasts.” No, not everyone has an ugly past!

For example, there are some “baby-boomers” who, way back then, chose to imbibe great moral virtues while guys like me were going about life with reckless abandon. I am only fortunate to have survived in my reckless past. But I do know several individuals who didn’t. They have been physically and emotionally scarred for life!

And talking of an "ugly past", right now across the world, the dark, ugly pasts of many women are being exposed all over the social media with dire repercussions. In Nigeria, for instance, several young, newly-married women are being subjected to gross verbal and physical abuses at the hands of husbands who have suddenly come across or got sent unsolicited “obscene materials” about their wives’ “ugly pasts”.