Ending Violence Against Women, Queen Latifah’s U.N.I.T.Y and Closing Long Distances
Hey Roommates! This past week has been…extra! We almost wanted to hide under a rock for a few days. Of course we couldn’t find a rock that would serve us breakfast in bed, with strawberry dipped in chocolate and masseuses kneading all the knots and kinks out of our very weary shoulders and body. So…we worked! Thankfully, last week marked the start of the United Nations 16 Days of Activism; a series of activism-filled-days starting on November 25. As observed globally, the campaigns began with the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and will end on December 10 with the commemoration of Human Rights Day. We joined in the campaign by demanding an end to violence against women and girls in our #OrangeTheWorld series. We will continue to lend our voices to the upholding ALL human rights for every race, gender, class or religion of people in the world. We also produced two new podcasts on The Review. Though we didn’t plan it, both reviews were around themes and people from the same era; 90s hip hop messaging. We reviewed Queen Latifah’s U.N.I.T.Y and Straight Outta Compton, the biopic about hip hop group, Niggas With Attitude…or as they are popularly known, N.W.A. Guess what? We finally finished our LONG DISTANCE series and received some major feedback about the what happened to the characters. Some people loved what happened to Adon and Jason while others were so pissed off, they wanted to explode. Yes! We are calling you out! You know yourself! How do you think the story should have ended? Share your views in the comments section and let us discuss. And oh! If you haven’t read the series, what are you waiting for? (Ramat, Remimah, be nice! Just drop the link hereinstead of being petty.) Anyway, that was our week. What do you want to see in the new week? Use the comment section to tell us! Thank you for being a part of our crazy! We wouldn’t rock if we didn’t have you! Read all we shared below and have yourself an uber fantastic week! · Here Comes the Bride (Part One, Two, Threeand Four) · Ending Violence Against Women · The Review: U.N.I.T.Y by Queen Latifah; · Why Do Men So Easily Harass Women? · Rape Cases; · Feigning Innocence; · I Was Attacked…And This is My Story; · Zireme’s Story: A Glimpse into Child Abuse and Marriage; · Good Christian People (Part Oneand Two); · Making Itoro a Woman; · The Review: Straight Outta Compton; · Do Sex Workers Deserve to be Abused? · Long Distance: The Finale. Best Regards, Ramatu Ada Ochekliye, Founder, Shades of Us
Do Sex Workers ‘Deserve’ to Be Abused?
Image: Indonesia Expat Disclaimer: This post has lurid details of sex. I was scrolling through my timeline on Facebook when I stumbled on a post which, under other circumstances, would have thrown me off. The thumbnail was a naked black girl on all fours with what I could deduce was sperm on her face. Normally, I wouldn’t watch such videos and would report it to Facebook to be taken down for being a sexually explicit content but the caption stayed my scrolling fingers. ‘Ghanaian girls are suffering abroad.’ Lot of thoughts ran through my head; was this a rape video? Did it talk about human trafficking? Was this a human rights issue that we should be talking about? And so I knew I had to see the video. So I clicked. The video was roughly five minutes long and it was the most chilling thing I had seen in a while. From what was said in the video, I can summarize it thus; The girl saw an ad asking for adult film (porn) actors who could deep throat. She went to the film makers and they agreed to shoot. The scene required that she has sex with two white men. The video started with the girl choking on the penis she was trying not to suck anymore. It was obvious watching it that she was in grave pains. This was expressed in the tears running down her face and the sheer look of sadness in her eyes. This was the point where the person with the camera started talking. ‘You said you could deep throat. Did you think you could just waltz in here and collect our money when you couldn’t do what we asked? You have just wasted our time you fucking bitch.’ It wasn’t what he was saying that got me angry. It was the condescendingly calm tone with which he was talking that nearly broke me. You could tell that the man didn’t think he was talking to another human being on equal footing. It is the same tone you would expect a member of the Ku Klux Klan to take when addressing a black person. I knew at that moment that the girl’s underperformance was not the issue. These were full blown racist men who wanted to demean and dehumanize a black woman. As if to punctuate that thought, the men started slapping the girl. It didn’t end there. They spat on her face and other parts of her body. They were doing all these while still penetrating her from behind and trying to get her to suck their penises. When the girl tried to hide her face in the pillows – something I think was a mix of shame and pain – the man behind the camera asked that she look into the camera. In a classic good-cop-bad-cop move, one of the other men slapped her face and the third guy slapped her buttocks. She looked at the camera, crying, and the camera man zoomed in on her face just as a large plop of saliva landed on it. She flinched but maintained her gaze on the camera. The man behind the camera continued to talk, asking her why she thought she could just come in and take their money. When she didn’t respond, one of the other men slapped her again to prod her into speaking. She spoke, through her tears, in what was the only words to come out of her mouth. ‘I don’t know.’ At this point, it finally dawned on the men that she couldn’t suck their penises anymore. So they decided to, for lack of a better word, ram her as roughly as they could. Bad cop 1 told her to touch her toes and started pounding her as hard and as roughly as he could. My spirit broke when I saw her move an inch away each time the full length of his penis entered her vagina. He taunted her, asking ‘where are you going you cunt?’ When he was done, the other guy – who was now wearing her wig – took over. He tried to get her into a position that had her buttocks jutting out at him but she kept falling; from what I would think was exhaustion. Angry, bad cop 2 removed her wig from his head and tried to force her to wear it while simultaneously slapping and pushing her. And the video came to end. I was so ashamed at what I had seen. Not ashamed because it was sex but because I just witnessed the dehumanization of another woman – a black woman – by men who thought it was okay to do so because they were offering her money. I was ashamed at the conditions that made a woman believe that this was the only way out. I was ashamed at being unable to do anything to improve the straits of the woman whose shame I had just witnessed. I went into the comment section, hoping there were many people who were as outraged by the video as I was and were willing to do something about it. I was shocked by most of the response I saw. While many agreed that it was barbaric to have kept on ‘sleeping with her’ when she was in pain, many pointed out that it was hard to feel pity for her because she chose to do the ‘job’. Others even said she deserved it because of her ‘lack of morality’. Some people asked why she continued to shoot when she couldn’t take the pain and that was the point that caught me. Why did she continue to stay? Why didn’t she end the shoot?! Whatever answer you choose to look at, one thing is clear; she obviously needed the money. And that there is the problem. I agree that she chose to do the work, but staying when she was being abused, demeaned and forcefully penetrated showed that her need for the money far outweighed the pain she
Making Itoro a Woman
Female Genital Mutilation or in simpler terms, violence against women and girls. Ekong Itoro clenched her hands in the anticipation of the pain that would jolt through her in a few minutes. She breathed in quickly…and then slowly, making sure to count to five before letting each breath out. Her back was already drenched in sweat from lying on the pile of clothes in the very hot and fetid room. She could taste the blood at the back of her throat from pressing down on her teeth to keep them from clattering. She could also feel the warmth dripping from between her thighs; thighs she held together tightly as a final act of defiance before she was forced to spread them wide open. Her mother and aunties all told her it would only hurt for a minute. She desperately wanted to believe them but the screams of all the girls who had passed through this room revealed their bare faced lie. Those long, sad and broken screams sang a song of sorrow night after night until Itoro could barely sleep. When she finally managed to get some shut eye, she was jolted awake from nightmares of the girls walking out of THE room. She had watched girl after girl enter the room and come out wailing in pain. She had heard the screams of those classified as ‘not strong enough’ as they waddled in anguish. She wished her family didn’t live so close to Nne-ekami, the old gnarled woman who ensured all girls a certain age went through the traditional rites. She wished her window wasn’t directly opposite Nne-ekami’s small, worn out hut. She wished she didn’t notice Nne-ekami checking her out, waiting patiently like a vulture at the site of a dying child. But Itoro knew that she could wish all she wanted and nothing would change what was about to happen. As per the customs of her people, she must be circumcised after her first expulsion of blood. The other vulture-like old women began to enter the room. There were four of them. They were there to ensure no girl ran away from what their culture demanded. They were a people of upright character and they would not allow any girl ‘bring shame to her family and their people’. Itoro would have scuttled away if there was room to. Instead, she closed her eyes and dug her nails deeper into her palms. She swore she wouldn’t cry but the tears started falling by themselves. She unclenched her hands to wipe them away only to be hit with the smell of blood and death that she associated with Nne-ekami. Itoro didn’t know when a gasp escaped from her lips. She opened her eyes and standing right in front of her was Nne-ekami holding a dull, jagged razor blade. Itoro had never seen anything more menacing in her life. The razor refused to glint, somehow mirroring the dire circumstances of what was about to happen. She wished she could die rather than go through this moment. For some reason, the things the other girls had told her started coming back. ‘It is the worst feeling I have ever felt in my life….’ ‘I begged God to take my life…’ ‘After the circumcision, my nyash swelled up and was smelling for days. They had to use leaves to get the swelling down…’ ‘When I went to urinate, it was like someone put burning charcoal in my nyash…’ ‘When my husband sleeps with me, I don’t feel anything…’ ‘Nwaha died after they cut her. What a lucky girl…’ And Itoro started to scream. She was not just screaming for herself. She was screaming for all the other girls who had been a visitor in this room. She screamed for mothers who went through this and still demanded their daughters suffer the same. She screamed because there was no one who was going to speak up for the women of their community; not their king, not the men and not the women either. ‘I see this girl wants to bring disgrace to our people. I have not even touched her and she is shouting like a pig.’ Nne-ekami looked at the other women. They knew what to do; even though no word was said. On either side of Itoro, a woman held an appendage. Two of the women knelt on Itoro’s hands, sending a shot of pain right through her arms and all the way through her spine. Like a well-planned routine, they clamped their hands over Itoro’s mouth as she trashed even more. The other two women pried her legs wide open at awkward angles until Itoro thought she would die. Nne-ekami patted Itoro’s thighs and smiled. She pinched her clitoris and held it firmly in place. Itoro could sense all her nerve endings on edge. Then came the grating voice. ‘From today, you shall be a proper woman. Don’t worry, we have all gone through this and this will make sure that you don’t become a prostitute. Don’t worry ehn.’ And then she cut. Itoro thought her hands nearly pulled out of its socket was painful. She begged God to kill her when her leg was pulled painfully apart. She thought suffocating under the sweaty, smelly hands of these women was horrifying. But nothing – absolutely nothing – prepared her for the pain that shot through her entire being when the razor sliced through her super sensitive clitoris and labia. Nothing prepared her for the white hot fire that was sent to her body from the hands of Nne-ekami. When her eyes rolled back into her head, she was glad to welcome the nothingness that numbed her excruciating suffering. Ekong Itoro was only eleven years old when she saw her first period. It seemed fitting that one so young should only live for eleven years.
Ending Violence Against Women
Image Credit: BBC – AFRICA’S A COUNTRY There is a concerted effort to keep women ‘in their place in society’. It doesn’t matter if it is in the seeming free societies of the Europe, Australia, America or South East Asia; the strict societies of the Middle East; the budding developments of Africa; or the backwater towns of each of these regions. The common factor is that society has carved out a place for women and girls and when they refuse to stay in ‘their lane’, they are most often met with violence. Even worse than that is the number of women who stay in ‘their place’ and still suffer the debilitating effects of violence; domestic abuse, rape, female genital mutilation, overbearingly hard labor, child marriage, improper healthcare leading to extremely painful childbirth, maternal mortality and more. Violence against women has become a disease that has been permitted to stay; a disease that is fueled by patriarchy, misogyny, bigotry and the pervading view that women are less than men. Since the dawn of time, many women have accepted their lot in life and have never questioned the status quo. When some women stand up against the injustices that society metes out to them, they are met with resistance from men, which is expected, and from women too, which is just sad. We admit that men are not the only proponents of patriarchy and the irony isn’t lost on anyone. This means that in ending violence against women, the mandate has to go back to women. Women have to be taught that; 1. We are human beings first and thus, equal to men. We are not by nature of our gender less than men; be it physically, emotionally, mentally or psychologically. Some of our physiology may be different but we are inherently equal; 2. The ONLY thing a man can do that a woman CANNOT do is provide sperm. In like manner, the ONLY thing women can do that men CANNOT do is carry a child from fertilization to term and produce milk to suckle the child. These two things are purely physiological; 3. Women are emotional beings who are logical too. Just as men are. It is pure fallacy to think that women are ONLY emotional and men ONLY logical. This ruse has been used to keep women in ‘their place’ when it comes to leadership, governance, family direction and the likes; 4. Women CAN and WILL do any and everything they set their minds to and shouldn’t believe otherwise. She can be an astrophysicist or a housewife. Women have the brain capacity to do it all; 5. Women are not to be corrected with physical abuse. There is no cause – just or otherwise – for hitting a woman. When she does wrong, she should be told she has done wrong and allowed to learn from her mistakes. Flogging, beating, slapping, cutting, hitting or punching her is NOT ACCEPTABLE! Under no circumstance is spousal abuse right; 6. It is not a woman’s fault that she is raped or sexually assaulted and abused. It is the perpetrator’s fault. The entire blame lies with the abuser. A woman does not invite rape by dressing in a certain way, or by being on the bus alone, or by wearing make-up, or by putting pictures on her social media platforms, or by walking home in the dark, or by hanging out with that male friend, or by refusing her husband sex or by trusting that uncle (or brother, father, family friend, teacher or anyone she knows) and a woman definitely doesn’t invite rape by having her own opinions and standing for them; 7. Women have every right to have and hold their own opinions, whether similar or vastly different from popular norms, without fear of harassment and abuse; 8. Women have a right to inheritance and ownership of property without being harassed by male family members or in-laws. The home wives live in with their husbands and children is as much theirs as it is their spouses. No one has the right to evict them from their homes in the event of the demise of their husbands. Adding to that, women are not to be treated in barbaric and unfair manner to prove that they are not culpable in their husband’s death. People die! deal with it; 9. No woman should have to face ANY FORM of female genital mutilation. Every organ on the body has its use and function and beyond that, it is not beneficial to any woman to have part of or all of her external genitalia removed in the guise of enforcing sexual purity. Female genital mutilation is a totally unhealthy, irrelevant and an unnecessary procedure and must be stopped globally; 10. Every woman is as sexual a being as men are. A woman’s urges and desires does not make her a ‘whore’, ‘prostitute’ or even loose. If a woman who chooses sexual freedom is to be labelled, men who do same should be labelled too. The wanton double standards have to come to an end! Some women, like some men, have higher libido than others and THAT IS OKAY! A woman has the right to explore her sexuality without fear of being labelled or worse, attacked. She has the right to make her own choices of chastity or sexual freedom without being forced to tow a line; 11. Women ARE NOT PROPERTY! They are not to be bought and sold like goods in the open market; whether it is for marriage or for forced prostitution. A woman is a full, living, breathing person and selling her not only demeans her humanity, it speaks of character so vile it has to be purged. No woman should be a slave to anyone and; 12. EVERY WOMAN is entitled to proper healthcare from birth until death. She shouldn’t have to die from diseases or childbirth because her family or spouse do not believe in modern medicine or the importance of hospitals. Malaria, typhoid, diarrhea and maternal mortality are things we
