Our culture of rape is alive and well

What you need to know:

  • The anonymity that the Internet provides allows people to be downright cruel without any hint of inner conscience whatsoever.
  • Even a woman walking around town naked does not serve as an invitation, until she actually tells you so herself.
  • The psychological repercussions of being mocked and ignored can be significantly greater than cruel posts on Facebook.

The other day on Facebook, a girl wrote that a man, a Zimbabwean living in Kenya, had raped her.

She had met him online and he had subsequently assaulted her. She put his picture up under the status update.

More shocking than her very sad statement were the comments that followed under it.

They ranged from "Were your hands tied?", "Stop saying he raped you if he failed to pay as planned!" and "Go through her profile, she is just seeking attention" to "raping a willing woman is not rape, you deserved it."

It has consistently shocked me how often Kenyans have this surprising tendency to act or speak without thinking. Yet it is not only Kenyans who act this way idiocy is worldwide.

But on something so sensitive, why would someone write that in the comments section?

If this girl was raped or assaulted, or whatever it was, shouldn’t the reaction be one of outrage at the incident, not outrage at the girl?

SMALL, PUNY MINDS

Let us look for a minute at the root problem of comments on a post like this.

One problem is that the anonymity that the Internet provides allows people to be downright cruel without any hint of inner conscience whatsoever. Even on Facebook, you can fake your name and tell people horrible things.

But the main problem here is the rape and abuse culture we insist on perpetuating. Since such people are playing "state the obvious", let me state the obvious.

Very many of the comments showed small, puny minds captured soundly by the threads of a weak and archaic patriarchy.

One person wrote that this girl deserved to be raped.

NO ONE DESERVES RAPE

What does that even mean? Who deserves rape? Is there a set of criteria that we need to be made aware of? Where’s the list?

Was she asking to be raped? Carrying around a placard showing how desperately she wanted to be taken forcefully against her will?

Begging men walking by to take her right here right now?

Some say that how you dress serves as a placard in itself. This is untrue.

Even a woman walking around town naked does not serve as an invitation, until she actually tells you so herself.

Another person wrote that she was seeking attention. That may or may not be true, but that is not the way to respond to a call for attention.

FLIPPING FACTS

If this was indeed a call for attention, then the psychological repercussions of being mocked and ignored can be significantly greater than cruel posts on Facebook.

Then there was the one that insinuated that she is a prostitute who obviously was whining because she had not been paid.

Who thinks like that? Assuming that it was sex gone awry, something that actually happens often, who then flips the facts around to call the woman a disgruntled whore?

We need to stop the rape culture that is being encouraged to thrive around us, on social media, in our conversations, and in what we allow to pass without calling out the abusers.

Rape is not okay. It is not deserved. It is not asked for.

A woman is not a whore because she has an active sex life.

Twitter: @AbigailArunga