Changes.

*exhales*

Rape.

What did you first think as you read the word? Did a friend come to mind? A night out with friends? An uncle? Darkness? Blood? Screams? Tears?

As I typed the word out, I thought of how the word only has four letters. Just four. And how I wish that only four emotions accompanied being raped. That only four tears would render one ‘okay’ after such an ordeal.

This topic, like many people, makes me angry. I wish my vocabulary ran deeper, so I could put a more fitting word. A word adequate enough to describe the feeling that consumes me when the radio says a nine year old girl was raped by her uncle or when the newspaper says an elderly woman was gang raped.

What makes me even more angrier is the way my society tackles rape. In Africa, where I live, often once a girl is raped, it is assumed that the girl somehow brought it upon herself because she wore a dress too short, because she left the house at night or better yet, because she ‘asked for it’.

The point here is that being raped is seen as something that the female is wholly responsible for. It is somehow completely up to the girl to ensure that it does not happen.

My question is, what role does the male..the rapist himself play? Besides delivering to that female, the worst day of her existence?

Why are we not teaching our sons, our brothers and our cousins the art of discipline? Why do we make excuses for them? Why do we strip them of responsibility and instead place a crown of arrogance? Why?

Now, we can sit here.. And blog about it, and read about it, and listen to stories about it at the salon and in taxi’s..but personally, I feel we’ve done enough talking. This kettle has boiled. It boiled a LONG time ago.

It’s time, as a society, we started doing more than we’re talking. And it’s not going to be easy. Anything worthy never is.

But I’m making a vow at the unknowing age of 18 to never condone rape. I’m vowing to cultivate an environment where such is forbidden and non-existent for as long as I am breathing and living.

My son, when the time comes, will drown in my affection. He will love God. He will love Me. And he will Love Women. He will see beyond the lengths of skirts. He will see beyond a drunken, sad and destroyed girl at a party. 

My son will not be a rapist.

N,
xx