I wrote about rape (again) for Olisa.tv

You can see links to all my writing published elsewhere here, but I just wrote a piece about rape and victim-blaming over here, in reaction to an infuriating debate I had yesterday.

Victim-blaming is far too common, and like racism, which many people think is defined very narrowly as 'hating Black people', there are some kinds of victim-blaming that are 'benevolent'. A good example would be how parents/authority figures tell girls not to do certain things to 'limit the chances' of them getting raped.

I call bullshit.

"Stop and think, for a moment, what your desire to victim-blame is rooted in, and how much sense it really makes. Victim-blaming, in any context, assuages your fear of the possibility of experiencing a similar fate and shores up your knowledge that bad things only happen to a certain kind of person — a person less intelligent than you, less worldly-wise than you, less obedient, more slutty. 

Victim blaming ensures that you will always feel like bad things can happen to anyone but you (and people like you). If you know better (and you will prove that you do by citing all of the things the victim could have done to ‘prevent’ their rape), then they should have known better. And if they didn’t know better and they got raped, well there you go. Better luck next time!"

Read the whole piece here.

Loving People You Don't Like: Family!

Happy Holidays, everyone. (I generally don't enjoy using politically correct Americanisms, but I will admit to liking this one). Don't you just love Christmastime? 'Tis the season to be jolly, eat too much rice, and dust off all of your coping-with-family techniques. What fun.

Okay, okay, the sarcasm is a bit much; I don't actually dislike Christmas. In fact, I don't really think about it at all; my nuclear family never really made a fuss about it when I was growing up. However, as we've grown older and started our own families, there's been a bit more of a deliberate effort to make time to bond over the holidays. In my experience, there are few things more appealing-sounding than family bonding, and even fewer things that generally tend to go South so quickly. (So I guess what I'm saying is I don't mind Christmas; what I mind is my family at Christmas. *sigh*).

Whenever my family is in one place, it is inevitable that some sort of debate will ensue. We all have very strong opinions, and most of us don't have any issues with airing them. What makes this interesting, for me at least, is that I have a lot of ideological/political positions that my conservative third-generation Christian family doesn't understand, and relating with them around the deeply entrenched beliefs that they have can be intensely frustrating and emotionally draining.

This holiday, the topic du jour was rape. Thanks to Tyler Perry's shitstorm of a movie Temptation, a heated discussion about women's culpability in their rapes (as if there is even such a thing!) was struck up. I pointed out what I believe is the immense irresponsibility of the rape scene. Tyler Perry's films occupy an interesting niche in Hollywood, and so many people of Black and African descent (including my own family apparently), take his films seriously. He has a massive audience, and this is chiefly why I was (and continue to be) so upset over the problematic message about women's sexual agency and consent, among other issues, that this film sends.

In case you haven't seen the film, don't. In the scene I'm referring to, the lead character Judith is on her way back from a business trip to New Orleans with a client on his private jet. Said client has made it clear he is interested in her sexually, and so far she has made it clear she is very married. Still, they've been in Nola, they've danced and drunk wine, she's awed by all his money and good looks etc, so when he comes on to her on the plane, of course she consents to sleep with him, right?

Wrong.

Harley slides over to her side of the plane. He starts touching her. She says "no, get off of me, stop it", repeatedly. She physically pushes him off her. But Harley, as written by my dear friend Tyler, only gets more turned on by her resistance and tries harder. He eventually tells her to stop it, adding in a suitably sexy voice, "now you can say you resisted." Judith stops struggling, and we cut to the next scene where Judith is visibly distressed and disgusted with Harley. She never wants to see him again. She is crying.

This means she was raped, right?

Again, wrong.

In the Tyler universe (as illustrated by a steamy flashback), she wanted it. She calls him first. She is upset that he doesn't pay her attention. She tells him he's the best sex of her previously unglamorous life. She wanted it. She sneaks out of her house under a false pretence for the most bizarrely lit sex scene in the history of weird lighting in filmmaking. So obviously, you know, she wanted it all along.

Dear Tyler Perry, I just have one question. How did we get from "no, stop it" to literally steamy sex in the bath tub?

I find it distressing that it does not appear to be common knowledge that when a woman says no, it doesn't mean yes. It doesn't mean maybe. It doesn't mean 'I want to be able to say I resisted because I'm actually a good woman'. It means no. When the media muddies the waters of consent, they perpetuate rape culture. That scene sends the message to everyone that women don't know what they want, women can be convinced to change their minds about wanting sex regardless of what they're saying about wanting sex, 'good' women secretly want 'bad' sex but can't admit it, men need to help women deal with their guilt about wanting sex by 'reading between the lines' of their refusal and interpreting 'no' as 'yes', men's sexual desire takes precedence over women's consent... I could go on. The point is, that scene makes rape seem okay by invalidating the need for consent.

This is what I was trying to explain to my family, but because of how rampant rape culture is in Christian circles, it wasn't surprising to me that they thought I was the crazy one for thinking there was something wrong with that scene. I wasn't surprised to hear family members say things like, "what does a woman expect when she goes to a man's house late?", "women have a responsibility to protect themselves", "anyone who has been raped will not make the same mistake twice", etc. I have been raped and I blamed myself and didn't want to tell anyone - not even my family - because even at 16 I knew how most people responded to rape. I know there are people who think 'no' is an invitation depending on the context. But to hear my own family, who are aware of my personal experience, confirm to me that they do believe women have a hand in their rapes? It was devastating.

As an adult and an unmarried mother, I've started to explore and adopt a lot of -isms that my family doesn't understand, and until fairly recently I have tried to accommodate their expectations of me by watering down my beliefs, pretending to believe different things and even outrightly lying just so as to not ruffle any feathers or cause them discomfort. More and more, however, I realise that the cost to myself of doing this is far too high to be healthy. One of my friends said to me that I ought not to take their comments personally, yet I don't know how to do that. The dominant narrative about family is that it is always and forever a safe space. This is however not true. Families are made up of human beings, and every human being has the potential to be horrible. This is not to say that my family is all bad, either; I've had a vast amount of support from them at different times in my life. This holiday has just cemented to me that I need to find new ways to deal with them...

Silence(d)

"There are no voiceless; there are only the silenced."
Entertainment Splash came on the radio just as we passed what used to be the Ibadan toll gate, and after the stories about Lupita's Oscar and the imminent AMVCAs, the show moved on to the Obesere rape allegation. The presenters, two male, one female, went over the victim's story: she had been introduced to the musician because he had connections that could benefit her. She went to see him at his house, he made advances that she refused, then agreed to stay in his guest room till morning because it was so late. During the night he came to her room and raped her, penetrating her with a heavy gold ring as well.

I didn't have to wait long for the disbelief. Male Presenter 1 spoke up: "Sorry o, but this lady's story is strange." Female presenter: "Exactly! Why did she stay at his house if he had already made advances? Is she a child? She's 29 years old for God's sake, she can't tell me she doesn't know better." Male presenter 2: "She called it a business meeting yet she was there till midnight? Is she a learner?" They all agreed amid laughter that she was indeed a learner. By the time the show was over the other people in the taxi had more to add: she probably slept with him for money and then cried wolf when he refused to pay her, she just wanted to blackmail him because he's famous, you can't trust these women.

I listened to these comments in unsurprised despair. Rape is a seriously misunderstood and misrepresented concept in Nigeria; it is the most underreported crime in the country, with statutory rape being permissible under customary law and marital rape not even being illegal. A January 2013 poll gives some disturbing insight into the way Nigerians perceive rape, with 'indecent dressing' being listed as the top cause of rape, alongside 'lack of moral values, unemployment and inability to control the sexual urge', and the majority of rapes going unreported due to 'pressures that seek to compel women to remain silent about rape in order to conform to the expected societal standards of women remaining chaste till marriage.'

The sad truth is that Nigeria and its average citizens promote the deafening silence of rape victims: when women come forward with their stories, they are invariably described as attention-seeking liars. And when it cannot be disproved that they were indeed raped, they are responsible for their rapes because of something they did or didn't do. She went out at night. She went to his house. She wore a short skirt. She dated him. She was a prostitute. She was working late. She was going to sleep with him anyway. The list is endless, but the meaning is always the same: these women made themselves rapeable. In doing or not doing so-and-so, how could they expect anything other than to be raped?!

I am a Nigerian woman. I have been raped. It never once occurred to me to report my rapist: I was sixteen, I snuck out of school to see my 26 year old club-owner toaster, I went to his house, and he raped me. I knew without being told that I would be blamed for it, so going to the police never entered my mind. I continued my life as yet another unreported rape victim, because the country I grew up in, with its patriarchal culture and religious fundamentalism, had taught me that I was responsible for my rape, my shame was mine alone, and my truth would not be believed.

Rape in Nigeria is a systemic, institutionalized issue protected by culture, ignored by the law and decried only in theory. We have a culture that tells people that women's sexuality is not valid outside of the context of a man and babies, that men are animals unable to control their sexual urges and women are somehow responsible for this absence of self-control, that women's bodies are public property, that a woman cannot be defined outside of a man's ownership of her, that her chastity is what defines her value as a person, and her marriage is what cements her womanhood. And so a raped woman is, very simply, a woman who has cheated herself, by herself.

She knows her options are limited - almost non-existent. She goes to her family, and she is begged to be silent. She goes to the police, and she is disbelieved. She goes to her lover, and he is offended that someone else has eaten from his pot. She goes to her friends and she is asked why she did what she did to bring the rape on herself. So she goes to no one. She picks up the pieces, cries herself to sleep, reminds herself to calm down every time she passes her assailant on the street or at work or at home, prays it never happens again, suffers through the same cycle if it does.

In Nigeria, the rape victim almost always has no allies, no friends, no support. In fact, she barely exists: a victim is someone against whom a crime has been committed, hapless, innocent, deserving of justice. Nigerian people can almost always find a way to blame a woman for her rape (assuming of course that it even happened at all; you know you really can't trust these women). And if you can be blamed, you are not a victim. If there are no victims, there is no crime. If there is no crime, we do not have a problem.

Nigeria does not have a rape problem.

Hardy Har Har, Tokstarr

Tokstarr, or Toke Makinwa to the uninitiated (ahem), is possibly Nigeria's most ubiquitous media personality. Someone once said that she's like MTN: bright yellow and everywhere you go. I found it hilarious, if a bit harsh. I don't listen to radio, so I don't know what she's like, but I was wandering around on Instagram, and one of her photos is the whole reason for this blogpost.

There's a lot I find very disquieting about the fact that this photo is on her Instagram. Here is a young woman with a significant following posting a (racist?) 'joke' about a 12 year old child having sex...and the punch line is that this child is a whore. To my mind, she must have first found it funny herself, for her to consider it appropriate to share.

Where to even begin?

I'm not Chinese, so I don't know if the play on their language would be considered offensive. But you don't have to be female, or an adolescent, to know that there is absolutely nothing amusing about rape, which is what any kind of sex involving a 12 year old child is. 

More disturbing than the mere fact of Toke posting this picture was the sheer number of 'LOL'ers, many of them female, one of whom even took it upon herself to 'school' the lone woman who took exception to the 'joke'. 

I've noticed that when people take exception to tasteless jokes such as this, they are invariably accused of being too sensitive, lacking humor, or having nothing better to do than make a fuss over nothing. But this isn't nothing. Rape isn't nothing. Paedophilia isn't nothing. Calling a girl (or any female for that matter) a 'ho' isn't nothing.

It wasn't long ago that Basketmouth got serious flak for posting a rape joke on his social media. I however find this joke even more distressing than Basketmouth's, because not only does it make rape seem okay, it goes further to shame the victim by calling her a 'young ho'. Add to that the fact that it was posted and laughed at by women, and one has to wonder just how much of a problem of internalized misogyny we have in Nigeria. I think it is important for any marginalised/oppressed/mis- or under-represented group to be careful about the messages they put out in the world. Having men misunderstand or make light of the very real, very serious issues women face is bad enough; should we have to deal with women doing the same thing too? 

Last year, the Nigerian populace was outraged by the legislature's apparent attempt at legalizing child marriage in the country. I did a simple twitter search, and found Toke's thoughts on the matter.

I wasn't surprised to note her own (mild?) outrage. I just have one question for Toke: are Instagram likes all it takes for you to change your mind about children and their sexual availability? 

Respectability and the Woman II: Sex

slut

slʌt/

noun

derogatory

1. 1.

   a woman who has many casual sexual partners.

   synonyms:

   promiscuous woman; More

Ever wondered why no pejorative for men who have 'many sexual partners' exists? 

Patriarchy is why. 

Feminine agency of any kind is a threat to The Man, but feminine sexual agency is (almost?) the worst kind there is. In a patriarchal culture, the female body exists solely to please men (and procreate) and this is why female objectification, hyper-sexualisation of children, reproductive rights abuse and rape culture, among other things, proliferate.

When people say feminism is about women wanting to 'become like men', they are very wrong, but also right in a roundabout way. They fumble into being right in the sense that feminism is about agency - the right of the female, as a human being, to choose and define the parameters of her life, and to be able to function within those parameters without fear of reprisal and worse. In the patriarchal system of oppression, no one is allowed to be fully human (not even men), but as far as hierarchy goes, men have a much better go of it than women.

For example, sex.

Consider the moral concepts of chastity and virtue. The white wedding dress, if you please. Virginity as a worthwhile pursuit is marketed solely to women; no one ever tells boys that their virginity is their pride, or that their worthiness as a spouse (as a person, in fact) is directly correlated to their sexual status prior to marriage.

I remember being berated by an aunt once for sleeping with a boyfriend because, according to her:

1) I had cheapened myself and was now worthless

2) he could not possibly have an interest in me beyond sex

3) the only way to make a man stay in a relationship is to make him wait for sex till after the wedding.

#pause

She asked me why I slept with him. I replied, "Because I wanted to." I earned a slap for my honesty, and this is why: purity culture (which is actually rape culture), does not allow a woman to enjoy or control her sex life. It simultaneously reduces a woman to her reproductive organs while dissociating her from said organs so that every woman is literally nothing more than a walking vagina, and her value as a person is entirely dependent on whether or not a penis has 'conquered' this vagina. Ergo she has no real value as a person. Ergo she is not a person.

Why is it impossible to consider that, apart from my sexual prowess, a man can be interested in my mind, my ability to hold a conversation, my amateur comedienne skills, my ambition? Why is it impossible to consider that I might choose to have sex because I am a sexual human being, and I therefore like sex? I've heard women say things like, "I have to make him work for it." Again, #pause. This kind of thinking reduces women to inert creatures, prizes waiting to be won, rewards at the end of the qualifying process, as opposed to people with sexual agency.

Women (and our bodies) are not vehicles for men's sexual expression. We are human beings. Complex, nuanced, sometimes sexual, sometimes not, but human. Not vaginae. Not uteri. Human beings. And human beings all have the right to choose what to do with our bodies, including having sex, because that's what makes us human; our ability to choose. 

Disclaimer: this is not an anti-abstinence campaign. I believe that abstinence/celibacy is important, even crucial to spiritual growth. But it should be approached with the right mindset, because when women are made responsible for being the gatekeepers of sexual purity while simultaneously being marketed as meat to men by mass media and cultural norms (polygamy, permissive infidelity, statutory rape in the name of 'child marriage'), the result is what we have in Nigeria and other patriarchies: a rape culture that completely dehumanises women, glorifies the male gaze, reduces women's bodies to sexual disposables, and propagates all forms of violence against women.