This is War
WARNING:
This is my personal Facebook wall. I have the right to say what I want to say without infringing on the rights of others. So far I've not insulted anyone with what I said in the previous post, but I will in this one if you force me to. For those who say that they could not believe I could say what I said in the previous one, don't worry the, the feeling is mutual—I couldn't believe that you couldn't understand what I said.
Here are some prior warnings if you want to read the post:
1. If you didn't like my previous post on this topic, you'll like this a lot less.
2. This post will be long.
3. All the data and statistics I might quote are accurate to the best of my knowledge.
4. Please make sure you read the post well and make your independent research before attacking me. I was calmer in the first post, I might not be so in this one.
5. It's actually possible for you to read this post and pass, or to save yourself the headache, just ignore this post when you get to this stage.
6. If you still want to continue, then it's fine with me...
Dan Brown in his international best-selling novel, INFERNO, said that "the darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis."
While I'm not sure if he was the first person to make that statement, I have been fascinated by the statement since I came across it.
I don't know if you believe in the literal hell, I'm not sure I do either, but there's one hell I am afraid of experiencing—the hell of having your conscience stare at you in the face every night because you didn't do something you were supposed to do, something you knew was the right thing to do.
I said in my previous post that guys who focus more on the fact that some girls say that all men are rapists than the actual issue which is the fact that a significant percentage of men do rape are part of the problem. This caused an outrage from many people; many of them did not read the post well, some did but chose to argue blindly without proper checking of facts.
A lot of them misunderstood what I said. I would not have tried to clear the air, but I have realized that we need all hands on deck if we are ever going to win this war. That's the only reason I'm clarifying what I said.
First of all I WILL NOT RECANT what I said. But I'll try to point out as many misunderstandings of my previous post as I can.
1. I support girls who say that all men are rapists.
That is totally wrong! In the second paragraph I made it quite clear that I do not support that statement. All men are not rapists, hell, I'm a man and I am not one!
But are majority of the rapists men? Yes!
Are majority of those raped women? Yes!
The reason I said what I said is that the girls who have been sexually molested by men (oftentimes more than once) do not know the men who are rapists and those who are not. It's not like there is an inscription on our foreheads that say "Hey I'm a rapist" or "Hey, I'm not a rapist". Some girls live in morbid fear of men because of the possibility of being molested. That's worrying, if not for you, then it's worrying for me.
2. I said that if a girl accuses you of rape you should not defend yourself.
Holy Moses, I never said that! Why is it hard for some people to read properly?
In the sixth paragraph of that post, I made it quite clear that you have to defend yourself if you were accused of raping someone.
You might now argue that I used a quotation mark in the statement. That's because majority of the rape allegations are true (don't worry, for those who are looking for hard facts and statistics, I'll provide you with them).
And before you misconstrue what I said in the last paragraph, I said majority not all of the cases.
It seems that some people do not understand that someone making a general statement is different from someone actually accusing you of something. To say something (in this case a gross generalization) is different from someone accusing you of something.
I've made it simpler for those who will argue without facts again. Here are the dictionary meanings of the two words:
SAY: One's stated opinion or input into a discussion or decision.
ACCUSE: (transitive) To charge with having committed a crime or offence.
As you can see, I never said anything like what some believe in the second point above.
3. I said that if you focus more on the fact that some girls say (erroneously) that all men are rapists than actually seeing the point that a significant percentage of men do rape, then you're also a rapist.
This would have been laughable if it was in another circumstance.
What I said is this: "but for a girl to (probably) say that all men are rapists and it becomes a problem to you, then my brother, you're part of the problem."
The sensible thing to do is to ask me (or yourself): WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?
The problem here is that you are among the rape apologists.
Rape has two horrible aspects—the actual rape and the rape apology. Both are equal in their horror. I don't want to go into the details of what rape is, but I will try to analyze the problem of rape apology.
Rape apology (from my point of view) is the act of trying to justify the act of rape using any means, and in the process making the victim to be at fault.
If we can, for a moment, forget the shocking inhumanity of rape apology, you'll see that the act of justifying rape is a calculated thing.
Rape apologists have three categories:
a. those who directly blame the girl by asking questions like: why did she go to the guy's house? why did she accept his money if she wouldn't give him sex? (There are many other things they say, but that's not the aim of this post);
b. those who pick undue offence at the statement that all men are rapists;
c. those who bring up the fact that men are also raped.
I want to talk about the third set of people.
MEN ARE ALSO RAPED!
Yes, we are!
But bringing the above statement whenever the case of the rape of a girl is mentioned is like saying "hey, men also get raped, so why are you complaining?"
Are you trying to say that since men also get raped, it's alright for women to also get raped, after all the equation is balanced? (of course, in mathematics an equation is balanced when something that happens on the left hand side also happens on the right hand side of the equality sign.)
Even if you think of it that way, it's still not balanced. According to a study made by NCBI, about 10% of boys are raped before they are twenty in Nigeria while about 25% of girls are raped before they are twenty in Nigeria. (I'll include the link to the data at the end of the post.)
However this post is not about checking to know who gets raped the more or to judge rape apologists. My main concern is that rape is on the increase in our land and it is up to us to speak up.
I do not support rape of any sex. Contrary to what most of you would believe, I hate the rape of men the more. But why then does it seem like I attack the men?
Because the greater percentage of rapists are men! The percentage of men who rape women are more than the percentage of women who rape women; also the percentage of men who rape men are more than the percentage of women who rape men.
Brothers, is it not something to worry about?
I am more concerned with the rape of girls because it's the one we have more data on. That's not to say that I do not care about the men that get raped, but we have to start somewhere in the fight against rape; that's what I believe.
If you ask me, I would tell you that my idea of justice is capital punishment for ANYONE who is guilty of raping someone. By anyone I mean both male and female perpetrators. If capital punishment is not possible, then at least the person should be forcibly made sterile.
It's this kind of approach that can curb the menace we are facing right now. A few days ago I heard that a fifty-eight-year-old man raped his seven-year-old daughter and she contracted HIV from him. This happened in Onitsha.
These news, dont they bother you? It's not just about saying that you condemn rape, lend your voice to the fight; these are your fellow human beings that are robbed of their dignity, and in some cases their lives.
Let's start this fight now, because if we don't, the next generation will grow up thinking that raping people is a normal thing to do.
How do we fight this? Talk to your friends, your brothers, your fathers, your colleagues, your mothers, your sisters, post on your social media handles, cry out!
Something is wrong and it's up to us to fix it.
Daalụ nụ.
Thank you.
I am Somtoochukwu Benedict Ezioha.
REFERENCES
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics
2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_by_gender
3. https://warifng.org/rape-stats-in-nigeria/
4. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6306988/
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