Long Distance: When the Fairy Tale Ends
Image: Raw Pixel It starts with a long distance relationship that wasn’t working. Adon and Jason try to make things work and just when they think they are in a good place, Jason has an accident that makes him fall in love with Amara. When he returns to his senses, it is to find Adon is with child. For his best friend? The answer shocks him. He tries again and somehow, they end up together again. And then reality strikes. Jason looked at Adon as she slept. She was beautiful! Like the first time they shared a bed, he marveled at how innocent she looked when she slept. She wasn’t the strong woman who could take on anything and anyone who dared to cross her. No. When she slept, she became…normal. He smiled…and let his gaze trail down the length of her body. She had filled up after the birth of their child. He paused. When he promised himself to her a little over two years ago, he didn’t know how easy it would be to love a child that wasn’t his. He thought he was going to struggle to find affection for Karla. But from the moment he held her in his arms, he knew that he loved her; almost as much as he loved her mother. One of Adon’s breasts had escaped the top of her bustier and he felt the stirrings of desire beginning to harden him. He wanted her; bad. But he knew it was a bloody waste of time. Frustrated, he got out of bed and headed to the bathroom. He was tired of cold showers and bloody getting himself off. His resolve had gone to shit and if things didn’t improve soon, he was going to have to seek satisfaction outside his home, his bed and the warm body of his wife. *** Adon heard him go to the bathroom. She knew what he was going to do. She remembered the first time she heard the grunts from the bathroom. She remembered how ashamed of herself she had been, how inadequate she had felt. And every time she heard the familiar thud of the closing bathroom door, she felt worse. Not today. This time, she was pissed the hell off. Not at him of course. At herself! Why couldn’t she get past this?! It had been more than three years?! Why couldn’t she let herself accept another man, even one she so desperately loved? Well today, it ends. She got out of bed and went to the bathroom door. She knew if she knocked, she would lose steam. So she opened and barged in. *** Jason was shocked at the intrusion. He had been scrolling through porn sites looking for something to excite him and nothing was working. Tonight, he knew the only release he wanted was inside Adon. He was sick and tired of getting off by himself. He hated how he felt whenever he did that and he just wanted to be with and ease into the woman he loved. The woman he loved was right in front of him, breasts about to bust from her transparent bustier, hair a mess, and a determined expression on her face. He raised one eyebrow as she dropped her panties. Before he could so much as get up, she was on his lap, kissing him with a fervency like he had never seen. Jason didn’t even need to think about it. He kissed Adon right back. *** Adon was breathing hard. So was Jason. His was more labored, but he didn’t get up from atop her body. Every time he drew breath, Adon could feel him become angrier. She didn’t want to cry, but the tears had a mind of their own. As soon as Jason felt the tears on his shoulders, he pulled away from Adon. He thought of the crazy frenzy with which he took her from the toilet seat to their bed. He thought of slowing himself down, even though he wanted to bury himself in her immediately. He had gone through the motions; caressing her, kissing her all over, watching her spasm with pleasure as his tongue worked its magic. And then he saw himself, hearing her beg him to take her, placing himself above her at the entrance of her core, preparing to go in gently…and meeting the same thing that had been happening since they got married two years ago. Her body stiffened and she wouldn’t let him in. And like the previous times, the more he tried to get in, the tighter she became until she was in excruciating pain. Adon pulled the covers around her as she watched him pull on his boxers. ‘Baby…’ ‘Don’t. Just don’t.’ Adon got off the bed and went to him. ‘I can take the pain. Please, just do it. Baby, pl-‘ She stretched her hand to touch him. He turned to her in rage. ‘And do what?! Rape you?! Is that what you want?!’ Adon stepped back, appalled. Jason turned away from her and pulled on a sweatshirt. He quickly pulled on pants and slipped his legs into some trainers. Adon hadn’t moved. She watched him through the haze of tears as he walked towards the door. ‘Baby…’ He stopped, refusing to look at her. ‘I am sorry Adon. I can’t do this anymore.’ And he walked out of the bedroom. It was 1am in the morning. Adon felt her heart stop. *** Jason didn’t return home for a week and Adon was beside herself with worry. She didn’t call him though. He didn’t call her either. She consoled herself with the knowledge that if something had happened to him, someone would have contacted her. So Jason was fine. Which meant that he stayed away because
Women Do Not Fear Getting Robbed.
Trying to stop an attackImage: Vox They fear getting raped. Play this scenario in your head. It is late at night. The streets are poorly lit. The occasional car passes by but beyond that, it is quiet. There is a slight breeze teasing the earth and flirting with the skirt of a woman walking down the road. Her steps are brisk…increasing ever so slightly as she walks to her house just around the corner. She just wants to get home and off these streets. As she turns the corner, she sees a man lurking in the shadows. What do you think her first reaction is? Let me help you. Shock. Rush of adrenaline. Crippling fear. And hope that he is a friendly face. But almost instinctively, her hands go up to protect her breasts, not her purse. If he is a friendly face, she breathes a sigh of relief and becomes thankful that there is now a man on the road with her. Nobody will try to attack her. If he is someone she knows but doesn’t have a relationship with, the fear stays. She ponders why he is out late and whether he will attack her because she doesn’t say ‘hi’. She has to make a choice; either say ‘hi’ and deflect any possible attack or continue the status quo. Either way, she has to go past him on her way to her house. When she passes him, she will keep stealing glances behind until she gets home, constantly worrying that any footfall (real or imagined) is him springing to attack her. If however, the man is not someone she knows, the fear grows. Every step she takes becomes leaden with the choking fear that she will be groped, attacked or the worst, raped. How about this? Play this same scenario again, but change one thing. There isn’t one man lurking in the shadows; there are three, maybe five men. What do you think would happen? Even if the girl woman knows all the men, she would still feel uncomfortable walking past them on her way to her apartment. But if she doesn’t know them at all, she has two choices; feign a calm that she cannot possibly hope to feel and walk past them or dash into a run to up her fighting chance. When you think about it, you see that she has another choice; go back to where she is coming from. Even if it isn’t as dark and lonely, women don’t feel secure walking down streets. It is common place to see women cross the road to the other side when a group of men are coming. Why is fear women’s instinctive response to seeing a man or a group of men on the road? For one, men constantly attack women…and most of the time, these attacks are sexual. Let me give you an example. When I was in the university, I started a routine of running in the morning for an hour; from 5am to 6am. I would jog from my house off campus to the school field, do some laps and then walk home. I always ran with a male friend and didn’t think much of my safety. A week after we started, my friend said he wasn’t running because he had an early day. So I went on my own. I had not walked two minutes when a man came out of nowhere, grabbed my right breast and squeezed hard. Before I could snap out of the paralysis that held me bound, he ran off. I was so shocked that I couldn’t be angry. Two minutes away from my house! In another instance, I was returning from work late at night – which in the real sense was about 9pm – when a guy grabbed my buttocks and attempted to grope my breasts. When I challenged him, he said I wore a short skirt and so he had a right to do so. When I attempted to fight him off and saw I would lose, I ran away, spraining my ankle in the process. My view is that, even if I was wearing a hijab and face mask, I still would have been attacked because I was alone on the road at night. Many women have reported being groped and raped while walking the streets. And when I say reported, I don’t mean to any constituted authority because many of those people make such situations worse. Another dimension to this is rape during a robbery. A lady I know was about to get married and went to stay in a hotel with a couple of her friends. In the middle of the night, their room door bust open to reveal a couple of dangerous looking men. Seeing that the people occupying the room were all women in various stages of undress, the men tried to rape them. According to them, by some sheer act of faith, and I don’t mean fate, the police arrived just before they did. Someone I know wasn’t so lucky when we were robbed way back in 1998. She was pulled out from one of the compounds around us and raped by the men whose guns stayed pointed at us as we waited for some sort of help to come our way. Women who have been robbed on the highway also tell something similar. Armed robbers would attack buses plying our roads to various states and would only think of raping women, not necessarily robbing them. Even recently, armed robbers attacked a National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) camp in the Nigerian city of Port Harcourt and in the female hostels, it was reported that many women were raped. These men were not interested in their possessions. They were mostly interested in their vaginas and the power their guns (or whatever arsenal they have) avails them. Let us flip the scenario I described in the beginning. It is late at night. The streets are poorly lit. The occasional
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
I Was Attacked…and I Refused to Be Broken!
I got attacked! This is a true story…and it happened to me. I live in a ghetto; a smelly, overpopulated area with mostly uneducated and unemployed young people. If you are wondering why I stay there, all I can say, it is not a matter of principle. On August 23, 2015, I went to church in the morning, hung out with some members of my department and our Head of Department’s family, went out to eat, went to the office, did my show, waited for the bus and then headed home. As I headed home, I reflected on what a wonderful day it had been. I noticed that the clouds were cooking up a storm. As my friend would say, ‘It was about to rain domestic pets’. When we got close to my junction, the driver asked me if I wanted to drop at the first one or the second one. I felt the first one would be better since the rain was about to pour. My friend asked if I was going to be okay. I said yes and alighted. The winds flirted with my dress and I bent down to pull it lower. I started walking home. Most people were running. I was in heels so I wasn’t going to run anywhere. It was dark and windy and I really didn’t want to fall flat on my face. So even though it had started drizzling, I kept walking. Soon, I was the only one on my street…or so I thought. I am very perceptive. I was three houses from my house when I felt a sense of impending danger. Even though I could not hear foot falls, I knew there was someone behind me. When I feel something like that, I usually slow down because I read that speeding up in such scenario is a demonstration of fear…and like animals, humans can smell fear. I looked back just in time to see my attacker bring his hand around my face. I moved away just as he caught my breast. Somehow, I did not feel any fear. Instead, I was consumed with anger. In fact, anger doesn’t describe what I was feeling. It was more like burning rage! It clouded every other reasonable emotion and I used my bag to hit the guy while still managing to swing a blow. He was caught off guard and he took a couple of steps back. Seeming to have been renewed, he came forward again and this time, I threw my bag, one of my phones, shoes and other things I was carrying to the ground. I pulled my dress up and spread my legs. I became a totally different person. I asked him to come and fight. He seemed afraid. I kept shouting that he should come. He kept going back and forth but not daring to come any closer. I had become a banshee and in retrospect, I wouldn’t have recognized me. I started calling my friends and he asked if I was calling anybody. I kept saying he should come in the crazy manner with which I started. The calls weren’t connecting so I knew I was on my own. I prepared to defend myself. Seeing that he wasn’t approaching, I hissed and started packing my things. That was when I saw the second attacker. This time, I knew I had to run! I could not possibly fight two people! I turned and started running but my turn was a bad one so I slipped and fell. Then, for the first time that night, I felt fear; real fear! I imagined what would happen if I remained there and with the active imagination I have, it was enough to spur me up. Strength that could only have come from GOD came upon me and I got up and ran! I left all my things there; my safety my first point of concern. As I ran, I kept shouting at the top of my lungs ‘Neighbors! Neighbors!’. It wasn’t until I got to my house that I realized no one came out. As soon as I got to my compound, I started banging doors, telling them to come out. Only one man did as I ran back to the streets. He didn’t even bother to follow me. I went back to the spot where I fell and started gathering my stuff. I was pumped on adrenaline and I really just kept going. That was when the third attacker – who was much bigger than the first two – came out. I waited until I was done then started running again. The attacker followed me all the way to the front of the house and turned back when he saw people at the gate. I bust past my neighbors and ran into my house. I went straight to the kitchen and took my knife. The rage had returned and all I could see was red. When I charged out again, the first neighbor to respond had locked the gate. I was livid! I went into a rant, wanting to get out there, the rage fueling my movement. I had such murderous rage! I wanted to face my attackers and just bury the knife in them! My female neighbors came out and asked me to stay inside. After a few seconds, I went back into my house. That was when I started really thinking. The attack started at about 9:05pm and by the time I got back to my phone, it was about 9:15pm. In less than 10 minutes, I had been attacked by three men; an attack which could have been much worse if GOD had not given me strength to fight back and run. I learned some things from the attack. A) In the face of trouble, GOD gave me bravery I would never have had on my own.B) Your life can change in the shortest possible time, shattering your cocoon of safety and grand delusions of protection.C) I was three houses away from
Rape Cases… And The Apologists Who Make It Worse
Mateus Souza for Pexels I am overly sensitive about the plight of women and children: women because they are at the mercy of society’s dictates and children because they are quite helpless and need protection. I am also known to easily get into a rant about issues that touch me, be they direct or otherwise. As a result, I can be totally jaded when issues surrounding women are brought to fore. Having said that, I want to say I’m totally normal and clear-eyed as I type this piece. Also, I hold responsibility for every word that appears here. On twitter a few months ago, a guy said women who got raped had themselves to blame. The sky turned red for me at that point and I couldn’t see past the bloody curtain. I asked how women could cause something of such life-altering magnitude to happen to themselves. He said provocative dressing was a reason why women were raped. I asked him to explain how women who wore niqab were then raped; how they used their ‘provocative dressing’ to seduce their rapists. (PS: A niqab is a piece of cloth worn by some Muslim women to cover the whole face except the eyes.) He said that women who wore niqab were never raped. At that point, I knew I was talking to a dunce! Rape has never been about the victim. It has (and will always be) about the power the rapist wields or want to wield. That power doesn’t care about the victim. It chooses anyone and proceeds to mete out untold pain to them. Women who have been raped…in fact, everyone who has been raped, has had to coil up in shame and hide. They cringe from the sheer effects of it. Most rape victims are so scarred after that they totally clam up and shut off sexual relations. It seems that the more violent the rape, the less likely the victim is to talk about it. Society has also effectively found a way of putting the blame at the survivor’s feet, thereby increasing instances of shame-laden silence. So, when a woman in a niqab doesn’t come out to say she has been raped, that doesn’t change the fact that she has been! Back to the deliberately dense dude. Seeing that he was unwilling to get off his obviously dead horse, I asked him to tell me how a three-month old baby could have dressed provocatively enough to make a man rape her. I also asked him to explain how a 4-year old could have provocatively lured a man to dip his finger in her vagina and fondle her until she bled; how a 13-year old who kept screaming, ‘Uncle stop! Please!’could have been the wanton seductress. He said in such cases, the rapist was sick and needed psychological help. I gave him a good tongue lashing, insisting that a man who raped kids was no ‘sicker’ than a man who raped grown women! I’ve heard of totally good girls who got raped on their way from school, church, the office etc. I’ve talked to girls who got raped by that close ‘friend’, brother, cousin, uncle and even father! I’ve seen pictures of girls who boarded buses in India, who got gang-raped by as many as seven men, leading to an eventual death. How did these girls ‘seduce’ their attackers?! How did they provocatively lure them?! Now, if rumors are to be believed, the Chibok Girls who were kidnapped by the Jamā’at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da’wah wa’l-Jihād insurgent sect – or Boko Haram as they are widely called – are being constantly raped and married off to their captors. Can one of those rape-apologists tell me how those girls wantonly sought their abductors/rapists?! It is bad that society makes it hard for women and children who have been raped, but that you attribute the rape to the actions of the survivor is pure wickedness! Can you imagine the pain that comes with forced entry into a vagina or anus? Can you imagine how dreadful the act is to the survivor, not just physically, but emotionally and psychologically too? Do you know how many victims have had to commit suicide, or led totally lack-lustre sex lives because of that one incidence of rape? Do you know the trauma rape victims suffer…and keep suffering for life?! The time has come for people to stand up for those 2-year olds whose ‘uncles’ forced their penises into their vaginas. We need to fight for the 8-year olds carrying babies of their own; babies whose gene pool is the same with their granddad. We cannot continue to shut up while 13-year-olds are married off to 65-year-old ‘grandbands’ and most especially, we need to bring to justice all the sons-of-a-gun who force themselves upon women and children! Rape is a crime against the humanity of the victim. Sometimes, these victims become survivors. Other times, they never heal from the trauma. However, at no time is a rape the fault of the survivor. It begs to be repeated. At no time is a rape the fault of the survivor…no matter what they wear, say or do. As for all rapists and rape apologists, I feel castration is a fitting punishment but not necessarily enough. I hope the justice systems gets you and punishes you appropriately. #EndRape
