“How can a man rape a woman without her consent?’ The Kiang man bellowed. “If you don’t love a man while accept money and gifts from him?” another bemoaned. ‘Girls and ladies nowadays are immoral and of easy virtues’, he pontificated from his corner. ‘It is all about the way they dress and the materialism which preoccupies their minds’ the guy on the sofa moralized.
They all have an opinion on the moral character of the victim, not on the rape, and how she contributes to the rape. They all are trying their best to minimalise the impact of the rape on the victims and to find justifications for the rapist. They all blame the victim for the rape, their willing collaborator. ‘
He is just a womanizer”, you hear them say so. They see rape as an exciting and even glamorous act, not an experience which painful; distressful, and humiliation for the victim. They think rape is just a crime of sexual passion, motivated by uncontrolled sexual urges on the part of the rapist and representing no more than a somewhat unpleasant encounter for the woman or girl involved. All too often statements like these are used to diminish the woman’s or girl’s belief that nothing untoward happens to you unless you do something to deserve it and that rape is always invited or welcomed by the victim.
They engage in ‘distorted rationalisation’, an inverse moralization of evil. Let’s agree for the sake of it that she is a lady of easy virtue; eats from his hands; accepts his gifts and money; visits him on more than one occasion and have hanged out together.
Does that justify rape? Should that make a person take advantage of another and sexually abuse or exploit her? Oh yes, she should or could have refused, rejected the offers. But she did not? Does that make the rape justifiable? Do you really understand the stratagem of a sex predator, through a process known as ‘GROOMING’? How the predator prepares the prey for possible abuse: from building trust, to making the victim emotionally and financially dependent, to giving gifts and money to have make the victim think she is a ‘willing accomplice’ then using manipulation and bribery to get the silence of the victim? Do you know how trust is built? Worming oneself into the life of a potential victim; pretending to be a philanthropist; gaining confidence; be at the beck and call of the victim, even at the dead of night; buying the trust of relatives and friends…. Sex predators us elaborate schemes and machinations and know how to buy the silence of both the victim and those who are supposed to believe her story.
Know this: sex predators are not always knife-wielding strangers. Majority of rapes take place indoors, and are committed by someone known to the victim. Most girls and women who are attacked find themselves unable to defend themselves in any way. This does not make them willing accomplices, as many find themselves labeled.
Rape does not always involve the use of physical force but there is always absence of CONSENT According to Ray and Fay ‘consent’ is active not passive, and is only possible when there is equal power. Forcing a woman or girl to give in, even if there is no physical resistance from her, cannot be regarded as consent. Similarly, if the woman or girl cannot say “no” comfortably then her “yes” cannot have any meaning and if the rapist is unwilling to accept a “no” then the “yes” of the girl or woman cannot have meaning. There cannot be consent when the element of fear is introduced into a situation.
It is very difficult to for anyone to accept that a person he or she knows, trusts and look up to could be a sex predator. This is because in your mind’s eye, a sex predator or exploiter is the ‘mad sex fiend image’, your concept of a rapist. So the further a particular abuser is from that image, the more difficult you will find it to believe that your friend can be an abuser. ‘Surely someone I trusted couldn’t have done that to me’, you will cry out. Truth is that sexual abuse is a betrayal of trust and rapists are always trusted by their victims. And rape takes place out of the public glare.
Rape is an absolute and total violation, not just of the woman’s or girl’s psychological boundaries, but her actual most intimate physical boundaries. Unlike in a housebreaking, where the goal is access to the woman’s or girl’s possessions, in rape, it is the woman or girl herself who is defiled and, unlike in housebreaking, the defiled goods cannot simply be discarded and forgotten. Thus, when we engage in victim blaming and throwing innuendos, we are all the more pushing the victim from disclosing. But much more, we are telling the victim is ‘she is responsible for the crime’. If a woman feels confused about her guilt and responsibility in the attack, then she will clearly be reluctant to expose herself to the criticism and harsh judgment of others as is always the case.
To seriously combat rape in our society, we must begin to interrogate and lay bare the falsity and emptiness of thoughts and arguments, held by defenders of perpetrators of rape and other sexual abuse, that the girl’s or woman’s morality is more important than the crime committed against her. We must all have the courage of our conviction to condemn and denounce perpetrators and identify more with the victim.
Sexual violence against a woman or girl anywhere, is a threat to development and justice everywhere. Dante has warned us that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of moral crisis maintain their neutrality. Men and women of good will certainly side with the victim.
An excellent article on a very sad subject, esp in the light of the degree of child rape across West Wfrica 🙁
The Gambia, our people, our culture, our thinking, our norms, how we view girls and how we treat our women and mothers have a lot to do with how we as a society view rape.
For example.
We know the Imam is sexually abusing the girls in his care. We act like we do not see.
We know the husband is sleeping with his wife’s younger sister living with them. The wife pretends it is not happening. The neighbors act like they are blind and it is not their business.
Beatings by husbands of wives and children
Insults by husbands
Neglect
Abandonment
Starvation and
Social isolation
All the above are pervasive in our society and accepted as norms, designed to disempower women and make us vulnerable.
Point is Mr Njundu, you don’t have to force kiss, force caress or force penetrate a woman’s vagina or anus to RAPE.
The way we behave day in day out towards our women and girls is complicit in SOCIETAL RAPE.