I sit here unsure of why I am writing this. I have been a voluntary rape victim therapist for a while now so it is not unusual to have a male victim every now and then. Maybe the difference this time is because the guy in question is a close friend of mine who knocked at my door at 2.00 pm Friday last week. I was getting final touches on my house with my backpack on my back ready to get out. I opened the door irritated. I hate this idea where my flat mates feel chatty when I have matters to attend to. But this time, the face that greeted me was one of resignation, hurt and disgust. The face of a man irritated by his own skin. The face of a man who loathes himself. I know that face too well. I have seen it one too many times; only from the other gender.
He is my flat mate. Three doors from me. He was chatty, happy and very gutter minded before then so it hurt me to see him like that. Those are the times you ask a god you don’t talk to often enough to give you strength and wisdom and a know-how of how to handle the situation. He had been raped two hours prior. He had not bathed. He had gone to the police station at Githurai and they laughed at him for reporting “free” sex. I was distraught. I am equipped to deal with the aftermaths of sexual abuse but that is a bit hard to do when it is one of my friends.
I talked to my friends at school and they told me to tell him to go to the gender desk at the police post nearest to the crime scene. He was there, I told them. They shrugged and that was that. End of that “disgusting” discussion.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I counseled him. But like most of us, I know that justice is something he will never get. He just got another personality that society will always judge him with long before they know his name. He got initiated to a community that lives at the shadows of the shadows of the “mainstream” society. A community that can love him but cannot shield him from the harshness of a society that will always judge him as immoral for being the victim of a crime to which he did not chose to be a victim to.
The story on TV today about a sodomized 14 year boy at a national school (Maseno) over three days away from his home (in Kware county) made me feel the pain of that boy. After watching my 27 years old friend brood for days, deem himself a lesser man, break up with his girlfriend of 3 years because she could not understand how a grown man like him could be sexually immoralized by another grown man, I could understand the pain of that boy. To KTN, it was another rating piece, a money slate, a story for prime time. To me, it was the pain of that boy, the fact that he did not have immediate help and the school keeps shielding the perpetrators of this highly sensitive crime.
It made me think: he was in a school with protected sodomites, how many more kids are sodomized in silence because they are not brave enough to rut out? How many boys will loath themselves in silence maybe till death? Parents take their children to school to become better people, to add knowledge or to wait to grow up. Whichever the case, no parent takes their child to school, more so a national school, to be sodomized or to become sexually frustrated.
But our society is bipolar. We are up singing about how we will fight against rape against our girls and assuming that sodomy is not rape because men are the strongest sex/gender. We forget that sexual violence is not a plate of spiced tea. We forget that even the strong fall. We forget that some actions do not choose gender. If it is wrong in one way, it is wrong in another. It’s not about the person on the receiving/ perpetrating end: it is about the consequences.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not against the feminist. I was one until I got my first male client: mercilessly violated, lost, troubled, incoherent, inaudible and scared shitless. Until it took me over a year to get them to open up, to accept what they had gone through and to learn from the rest of us who had collected their lives together and moved on. I became a gender specialist, fighting for the rights of both genders.
I think it is time that society realizes that it is no longer about the girl child alone. Life doesn’t end with women woes. What about these helpless boys, “weaker” men, non-muscular men who are abused by both men and women? Are they less of human beings because they are weak in a gender considered dominant? I think not. They need us, as a society, to embrace them, to stand with them, to fight with/for them.
It is time that the government and NGO’s (is maendeleo ya wananume an NGO? What do they do?) embrace reality and stop being gender biased. It is time to accept that women are as strong as men and men are as weak as women. It all depends with the perspective you are looking at it from. Only then will our security gender desk understand the difference between rape, sodomy and consensual and coerced sex.
Until, then, keep out of trouble if you can.
SEX, C-WORD AND EVERYTHING THERE ABOUT
We all go around collecting vocabularies from everywhere. “It is human tendency to,” or so my linguistics 303 teacher, Mr. Njiiri, used to make it sound. Problem comes in when people start to make uninformed assumptions about words and what those words represent or when your nephews and nieces come up with ‘big’ words they want definitions for (coz you become a walking dictionary when reading as much as a single sentence is too much word for people around you).
So, three weeks ago, the 10 yr old was all about condoms and sex. What they, are she knew; why people ‘argue’ about them she did not. She wanted an explanation.
“You know aunt, the catholic popes (like they co-exist in numbers!) say that condoms are unfit for human consumption (wait did she just say ‘human consumption’?) and thus should not be used. They said that god said to fill the world! Then everyone else says to use them. Is doing sex that bad that everyone has to argue about it?”
The 16 yr old wanted to know what postinor2 is because all her friends are talking about it and she cannot get the hung of it. The friends, she said, say that one has to be prepared by buying them before having sex, just in case.
You are wondering where all this came from, right? I was too until I heard my neighbor curse the media for showing uncensored pictures of a woman giving birth on prime time news and having to answer ‘embarrassing’ questions. I figured out, if they are going to find out these things from the media, they might as well hear a more appropriate version from someone close to them.
Explaining contraceptives (what they are, types, methods, age, effects and stereotypes) was easy. Explaining sex was not! Apparently, taking E-pills is easier than using condoms! Why? The explanations I got, only the gods will save this society!
The 16 yrs old niece and her counterpart the 18 yrs old uncle agreed that using a condom is like eating tropicals with the wrappers on. They both had disgusted faces when the 18 yrs old asked, “Who does that?”
They also explained that ‘kavukavu’ (skin on skin) is the real deal as it adds to the joy and the intimacy involved. (SMH.) “Having sex with a wrapped penis is like kissing when both of you are on either sides of a fence,” explained the 16 yrs old.
“So, are we talking about things you have already done?” I asked trying very hard to hide my surprise.
“Of course.” The answer was unanimous.
“When?” I asked.
“Fourteen.” The 16 yrs old replied.
“Twelve.” The 18 yrs old confirmed.
None of them showed remorse. In fact, they were so proud of themselves it hurt.
Are you in the same boat as I? When our MPs were busy discussing free condoms and arguing about sex education to primary school kids, the kids were busy engaging themselves in extracurricular activities armed with all the wrong information!
Getting them to at least start using condoms was a huge task. They did not care about AIDs. After all, there are ARVS! (at that point I had to get myself a glass of iced water) Pregnancy on the other hand was unfathomable; none would dare risk it!
The worst part was to get my other family members to talk to their kids (and little siblings) about sex. The mentality that it is a bedroom issue still exists in this 21st century. Much worse is that it is treated like a plague. Thus, ‘cool’ kids are googling it and acting all professional sexologists: comparing notes and spreading the wrong gospel to their peers.
I realized then that it is never too early to teach your kids about coitus. The earlier the better: after all, you don’t want those off guard questions in the middle of a charity fund drive, or do you? That marked the start of our two weeks evening class. By day three, I had a class of twenty kid; because the older two (16 and 18) spread the good sex-class gospel to their peers, who came against their parents wishes, subjecting me to the wrath of ten moral strapped couples! As we went through the classes, I found myself wondering why no one taught me this things and when exactly I had become a sexpert. Why no one was teaching them if they were this willing to learn and until when they will hold off the AIDs menace if we continue to behave like they are our little saints.
The answer is simple. We are all huddled up in our childhood where sex and anything sex related was taboo. It no longer is. If you want to get your child safely to adulthood, teach them about sex as early as you can. Take them to the nearest VCT. Be honest about everything. Use charts or cover your face (so they won’t see you blush) if you have to.
An informed child is a wise child. An informed society is an empowered society. Forget those moral steps. Teach them what they need to know. After all, if you do not, aunt google will…and so will the media: giving them all the wrong information at the very least.
T's AND Q's: MY LENS. 