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
Lazy Youth
Photo by Retha Ferguson from Pexels I always hear stuff like, ‘There are no jobs in the country.’ In the past, I would have agreed to this. Now, not so much. I think there are jobs in this country…they just might not be the ones you want or are worth. You see, I used to be surrounded by many people who are above 25 who did not think they should apply themselves and work. They would sit all day at home doing nothing. They did not work, study, or keep themselves abreast of news and development stories from across the world. They spent almost all their time watching movies, goofing around or basically, wasting away. I remember one family that I used to know. They had all been through various levels of education, but they stayed at home rather than worked. The first daughter was different though. She would wake up, cook, clean, cook, do laundry and whatever else she needed to do. Then she would plait the hair of women and girls who came to visit her parents. She worked, but it was mostly free labor. It meant all that energy was for almost nothing. She was still dependent on her family for all her needs. Her siblings on the other hand? Pheww! They defined the term, ‘lazy’. They only seemed to watch television, eat, and sleep. When I lived with them in the same compound, I used to wake up early, head off to work and sometimes, return to the house very late. On one of my days off work, they were surprised to see me at home at that time. We got chatting and they chastised me for being a workaholic, saying they hoped I was paid lots of money. I laughed; I definitely wasn’t. They then said, ‘Don’t stress yourself oh’. For some reason, I remember being so mad at the statement. Don’t stress myself?! Really?! I wanted to retort that maybe they should stress themselves, apply themselves to something more productive than sitting around all day. But I stayed silent. As if to force me into talking, they went further to say they would only work hard when they expected to collect allowances of not less than a hundred thousand Naira. At that point, I got up and left. They had almost no value to add to any organization. They didn’t care that they were older and should be planning out their futures. They were content letting their parents fend for them; parents who were themselves old and barely surviving on retirement checks. I was, to say the least, quite disappointed with their entire outlook on life. I remember my first job after I graduated from school. The pay wasn’t even enough to cover transport expenses, so my dad had to take me halfway to work so that I could always have a little money. I didn’t need the job; my needs were pretty simple at that point. But I needed the independence! I didn’t want to ask my dad for things like sanitary pads or new underwear. I didn’t want my parents buying me clothes when I was a full-grown university graduate. And though the job was way beneath my pay grade, I took it and gave my best to it. I particularly want to address religious leaders, as their parents were Pastors and Preachers. Many of you use your ‘office’ as an excuse not to work. You ‘are doing full time ministry’ as you say. In my opinion, your everyday life should be your full-time ministry…whatever the faith you profess. That being said, get up and work! Write a book. Own a business. Work in a company. Do something other than live off the tithes, gifts and offerings of members who have decided to work. It is yours, no one argues that, but your congregation will respect you more if you were as industrious as they are. In fact, because leaders always lead by example, any religious leader who doesn’t work will have more unemployed people in the congregation than employed ones. I know first-hand that any religious leader that works has over 90% of his flock being hardworking. It really is a simple formula. We all need to work! It is not compulsory that it be a white-collar job in that plush office and with that fat bank account. Only a small percentage of the population will get those jobs anyway. Sometimes, taking a lower paying job can present an opportunity for greater improvement. Plus, it beats not having money and being dependent on people; especially if you are an adult. Done ranting! PS: This post is not to negate the economic factors that make living (and working) in Nigeria really tasking; because they are there. It is to address some of the entitlement of many young people who are not willing to put in the work to improve their lives.
Women Are So Much More!!!
Image: Pexels. I have, for months now, been staying in my lane and avoiding some issues that could easily rile me up. I have been learning to bridle my tongue to avoid dishing out words I can’t take back. But today, that will take a back seat! I’m literally going to war! I am a feminist and I am ever ready to jump on all issues relating to women. I could go on and on about women’s rights and what we deserve. So it is fitting that I go on this rant. I was in a bus heading to town when this lady in front of us tried to reverse. She reversed smoothly, albeit slowly, and went on her way. As we watched disappear into the distance, another passenger started ranting about why women shouldn’t drive. I wondered what he was about. He sounded so angry that people began to complain. The conversation in the bus was crazy! The aggrieved passenger was hell bent on proving why women shouldn’t drive. All through, I was saying, ‘Lord JESUS, help me get down ‘jejely’ without insulting anybody’. I did! When I got home, I wanted to put the incident behind me. I almost succeeded until I read a Facebook post where a guy said he hated seeing women act like bosses when, in the end, they would all end in the kitchen. He thought he was funny when he typed the hash-tag, #KitchenBoss. I went at it a bit with him and he kept going on about women picking up western cultures and not respecting men. I told him respect was earned in ALL cultures and a woman shouldn’t have to respect a man just because of his penis! At this point, I was still trying to be good and reign in my tongue. I went on to do my midday show and asked the listeners to describe a woman who was accomplished educationally, in her work and career but who couldn’t cook. Out of the over 150 respondents, more than 120 said a woman who couldn’t cook was a totally useless person and an incomplete woman, backing it up with statements like ‘It is the destiny of a woman to end up in the kitchen’. By this time, I wasn’t pretending anymore! I was pissed the fuck up! I was angry and just about ready to spew venom! I tried to put it out of my mind until my colleague, while discussing an issue, said a married woman was her husband’s ‘property’. I asked, ‘Property?!’ and he reiterated his statement. At that point, I knew I had reached my tether’s end. I just couldn’t stand it anymore! This is 2019 for crying out loud and people still have the ideology that women are the inferior members of the human species. With all the campaign about equality, with all the manifestations that women can be and do so much more, men (and some women) still think we are nothing but beautiful bodies with little brain capacities! Women are cracking codes in genetics, flying to space, becoming engineers, soldiers, doctors, prime ministers, presidents, bloggers, artists, I.C.T experts, pilots and men still think it is okay to call us properties?! We are taking charge and working in just about any field and yet, we still manage to balance family life. In spite of all these, silly arguments about what women should and shouldn’t do still abound?! I’m most disappointed that we are held to impossibly archaic standards in today’s fast changing world! There are still things women can do on a general note that men CANNOT do and yet we still get to be discriminated against?! This is appalling! Well, like I told the ‘Facebooker’, I will say this to all chauvinistic, patriarchal and misogynistic men out there. ‘There are women who will be far more important in this world than you could ever be or hope to attain. You can either join the fast moving wagon of progressives or remain in your circle of ignorance’. Either way, you WILL NOT deter us.’ And to women, don’t let NO ONE tell you that you cannot aspire for more than the kitchen. Your multi-billion-celled brain was not created to just shuffle meal timetables for the month. Women are so much more than that!
