Call it what it is: A crime of violence
Some rape case out of the thousands that occur daily triggered this write up but I can’t say which exactly. Is it the video of a 3 year old girl with badly injured vulva, the tweet by a lady saying she was raped on the first day of 2020, the 19 year old South African that was raped and killed in a post office, the video of a man who had an altercation with a woman, brought out his genitalia and threatened to rape her or the survey carried out asking for opinions on whether there really is something called marital rape? Perhaps it’s the combination of all that pent up rage; the rage I feel when I remember 10,000 girls are said to be raped daily in Nigeria, when I remember a few percentage is being reported for fear of victim shaming, when I remember even fewer percentage of those rapists get penalized.
Rape isn’t what happens only to “bad girls”; girls that stay out at night, girls that wear short dresses, girls that thread lonely places or because men can’t control their sexual urges as we have been made to believe by the society. On the contrary, it’s a crime of violence exercised by rapists on their victims. It’s a display of brutal power. It’s a crime that befalls any Woman unlucky enough to be a victim. Yet it’s a “special” crime.
It’s special because it’s the crime where people blame or even punish the victims while protecting the perpetrator, where protests are made before it’s recognized as one, where pieces have been written just to call it what it is. I dedicate this to Nusrat Jahan Rafi, 19. She reported her head master and filed a sexual harassment complaint, she was called to withdraw her complaint and due to her refusal, she was burnt to death.
I look forward to the day when a woman will not be judged for being raped, when she won’t be asked a myriad of questions to determine how responsible she is for the cruelty that befell her, when her rapist won’t be absolved of his crime by marrying her, when she won’t be a victim of “honor killing” because being raped “dents” the family reputation. Perhaps it will be when the sheet of “tips to avoid rape” is finished or when their ink of stupidity is exhausted. It may even be when she’s seen as an equal human with feelings rather than an object that is owned, used and discarded at will.
