VICTIM SHAMING VICTIMS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT

So a few days ago, the three matatu crew who stripped a lady naked in Githurai were finally sentenced. The violent robbery aside, it is the sexual harassment act that got the years in jail and a death sentence.

Opinion has been sharply divided on the matter, with some saying it is too harsh for a “small matter”, and others blaming the woman for dressing too provocatively. Would you still say it is a small matter if it were someone close to you? What of the loss of dignity? The woman suffered by being stripped for all and sundry to see?

In many societies around the world, regardless of whether it is patriarchal, as ours is, or more developed ones like the west, victims of sexual assault are always blamed. You are made to feel like you brought the problem to you by the way you dressed. You are treated with disdain when you go to law enforcement to report and the general population makes you feel like an outcast.

This practice is called victim shaming. It is used to remove blame from where it should be - with the sexual offender. By blaming the victim, the sexual offender is left to go scot free. Saying that a woman’s dressing attracts rape is bogus. It comes from a very misogynistic way of thinking, which views women as less human and with less thinking capacity.

Sexual assault, in general, comes from a system where women are viewed as less human and as sexual objects whose only use in life is to please men and give birth. Sexual assault is a weapon used by emasculated men who in their warped thinking need to subjugate women to reassert their masculinity. The idea that a woman’s dressing invites rape has been demystified by so many cases so many times.

In Iraq, thousands of Yazidi girls and women, some as young as eight have been sold into sexual slavery by ISIS. (They are an ancient Middle Eastern community who practice religious beliefs that are mostly a combination of Islamic and pre- Islamic ancient beliefs.). They have undergone and witnessed untold horrors.

So for those who continue pushing the over-exploited lie that a woman’s dressing invites rape, did these innocent people from a highly conservative country, who were modestly dressed, as per their customs, invite rape by their modest dressing? What of the children raped by UN soldiers in the Central African Republic? Or the cases of Japanese women raped by American soldiers stationed in Okinawa? Closer home, did the hundreds of women who were raped by British soldiers In Laikipia invite it upon themselves?

Rapists are going to carry out their evil intentions whether you cover yourself from head to toe or walk around naked. They should be treated like the criminals they are and people should stop looking for excuses for them. We are humans, not dogs. There are always willing sexual partners, so for someone to force themselves on somebody else and then blame the victim is prehistoric.

A real man or woman is confident in their masculinity or femininity and does not need to laud anyone, especially of the other gender to reassure them of their masculinity or femininity.

You may not like what somebody else is wearing but you should respect their choice. I do not always agree with or like what fellow women are wearing, sometimes I find it too overexposed, but I respect the right of an adult to choose what they want to wear.

It is no man’s place (unless it’s a father, with his underage daughters) to tell a woman what or what not to wear. She is an adult, of sound mind. Whether, she wants to wear, a miniskirt or a burkini to the beach, to wear a veil or hijab or not, it is her decision.

We have bigger problems. Famine, war and disease, yet idle men are still obsessed with controlling a woman’s body and mind? It is all about power and control. Misogyny is still alive and well.