The war women face

Sometime last month, Chinese tennis superstar and former doubles world number one Peng Shuai disappeared from the public eye. Ordinarily, it would not have been an issue in a country where people disappear all the time at the behest of a recalcitrant, repressive and repulsive regime. But Peng Shuai`s disappearance did not go under the radar not just because she is known beyond the borders of China but because shortly before she disappeared, she had accused 75-year-old former China premier Zhang Gaoli of sexual misconduct on social media.

Her disappearance forced the United Nations, the United States, the Women Tennis Association and a raft of international athletes to pound the iron curtain and question the vast, deafening wall of silence that China is.

For many years, in many countries around the world, the MeToo movement in its many variations gathered steam from within like a volcano before making a sudden, forceful eruption that coated many public figures and celebrities in the scalding lava of gravely embarrassing accusations of sexual misconduct. The United States was forcefully shaken by the movement and former United States President, Mr. Donald Trump, found himself in its crosshairs until the last second of his troubled time in office.

The MeToo movement has had many illuminating moments in many countries where briefly, light illuminated the darkness of lies to provide a spark to pierce the pangs of silence.

From China to Cambodia to Canada to Chile to Congo, women have been abused for generations. From Nepal to Nicaragua to New Zealand to Norway to Nigeria, men have been mostly responsible for the abuse, the thing between their legs proving such a demanding task master.

In Nigeria, the news is always noxious with horror stories of rape, even of toddlers. The other day, a magistrate court in Rivers State, played host to a pair of 14-year-old secondary school boys arraigned for having forceful carnal knowledge of their 14-year-old classmate.

At the root of the rot which is redolent of a country corrupt for its cannibalization of compassion and charity are so many superstitions and illusions. With each skirt forcefully shred, it is the revolting nakedness of a putrefying conscience that is exposed.

Patriarchy is a chief culprit – that ancient, obnoxious divider by which the society is stratified and its different members cast into different castes. So, from birth, children are taught that the girls belong to the boys who will eventually marry them

In many countries of the world than one would care to count, patriarchy – that sharply defined tendency, mentality and reality that stratifies societies according to sex – holds sway reducing women to second-class citizens and leaving them vulnerable.

In the realm of legislation, a weak legislation is worse than no legislation at all and there is no doubt that in Nigeria, weak legislations have contributed condiments to the cooking pot of ancient scandal that rape is.

What do rapists get in Nigeria? Mostly, wrapped gifts of muted congratulations, innocuous slaps to their wrists and lasciviously subdued salutations to the offending phalluses. Because laws are weak beyond belief in punishing the heinous crime of rape, many rapists instead of spending extended periods in jail are left with adequate time and facilities to plan and execute their next attack.

So, there is rape and those who in many ways are complicit in the attacks, especially against children. As young children are introduced into the shark infested waters that the society is, one of the first things boys learn is to ogle girls who find out when they complain that it is something they have to live with.

Our schools have also become alarmingly unsafe. There, men wizened with age but burdened with an unquenchable libido bother young female students for sex. To balk is to fail and to budge is to become trapped in a vicious cycle of sexual gratification.

In a world where women are raped, rapped into silence and their wounds wrapped in shame, those who perpetrate these heinous attacks on human dignity and womanhood have no place in any serious society. They pose an incalculable danger to the innocence and bodies of children. Perverse pedophiles must no longer be allowed to prey on the pubescent with their poisonous phallus.

No society can describe itself as happily and truly safe unless criminals and criminals alone feel unsafe in the society. A situation where the majority sex feel unsafe is utterly unacceptable.

So many of the sexual stereotypes that scandalize women are reinforced by an inordinate desire to raise the glass ceiling even higher. The goal of protecting women cannot be achieved until the society is made equal for all and opportunities are equitably distributed.

Without these, the wolves will continue to prowl.

Kene Obiezu,

keneobiezu@gmail.com

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