Rape on my mind!
I slept with thoughts of the act of rape on my mind and woke this morning with the thoughts too.
I’ve had interactions with ladies who have been raped, but this week I’ve had to interact with three that are dear to my heart.
In dealing with them, because of my training now and my perceptible powers, I sensed clouds around them. You know how you sense something is amiss, but somehow you can’t place a finger on it.
How did I sense?
I have come to know when a hug is given halfheartedly, a hurried act to extend a warm hand, but just short enough to allow for that detachment within that creates a shell of retreat.
When I was able to ‘pierce’ through the wall to get them to a place of divulgence, my heart was torn.
I’ll spare you the details. Personally, I don’t understand (perhaps, never will) how a man finds pleasure in forceful, unconsenting sex. It’s because for me, I love to fuse with my woman during sex. It’s not just sex, it’s the motions, the art and science of the rhythms called lovemaking.
While I may not exhaustively list all the reasons men rape women – ego massage, peer pressure, rejection and many others – this is a call to my dear men (and sons in the making) concerning our women.
Beyond the physical, rape does a lot of damage to the emotional stability of a woman. It leaves a gulf too difficult to cover in many years. The spillover of some of these effects are seen in marriage.
A lady recovering from effects of rape may shrink back in embarrassment when you touch her hand. She may reject all your well-intentioned requests to take her to lunch. She may not consider leaders in whatever capacity as worthy of being listened to.
There are so many. The end result can be cracked marriages when the spouse can’t just understand the frigidity during sex or withdrawal from the public or inability to deeply communicate.
My dear men, we have work on our hands to do.
It scares me when I walk the streets and see young boys and men who are derelicts, desiring love and care, but left to fend for themselves though ferocious means at the car parks and dark street corners.
Such men may never consider the dignity of a woman worth preserving or elevating. It’s truly worrisome. I wish I can have all the money in the world to remove them from the streets, reform their minds and instil progressive codes into their subconscious.
My dear men, I say it again : We have work!
Yes, a lot has been said about protecting the women. If you truly dissect it, the women live all their lives with this fear of men and still end up marrying men. It’s a dangerous thing to merge untrained men with trained women within the walls of marriage.
When my friend, Queenette Itsemhe Enilama, who is working so hard to raise legendary men of honour, told me the depth of the depravity of this dimension, I shivered. She’s someone whose heart yearns for raising gallant men.
It’s a danger because the male species aren’t being looked at because all the tablets of precautions and advice are thrown at women to gobble up. We end up raising clueless men.
Dear men, we have work!
Let’s start from our families. It starts with me teaching my son Best not how to be a man in masculine terms, but about the dignity of humanity and the respect for all – male and female alike.
It starts with our dismantling the patriarchal system that tends to mash women underneath and quash their voices in the comity of local communities.
It starts with us expunging religious dogmas and teachings that alienate women from pulpits and keep them in perpetual servitude to the whims and caprices of “ordained men.”
It starts by destroying the clamour for silence when rape is reported. For it’s by maintaining silence that we give power to the offenders, quash the honour of the victims, and crown rape with adorable vestments.
Can we? Yes, we can.
You can start by doing so today after reading this post!
Start by knowing that humanity is in all of us and we are bound by one thing – the red blood that flows in our veins irrespective of colour, creed, religion and political affiliations.
Start by letting a friend read this and by tagging your friends so that together we can create a narrative that can help humanity.
I love you!
Curled from his Facebook page.
***Emeka is also an Ambassador of Walk Against Rape Nigeria***
Comments are closed.