Rape: Why are thou rampant?

A lot has been said about the causes of rape: porn addiction, provocative dressing, sexualisation of the media, etc. I am glad to inform you that none of these is a cause of rape. Let us unravel this together. In my years of research on rape culture and gender politics, I have come to the understanding […]

A lot has been said about the causes of rape: porn addiction, provocative dressing, sexualisation of the media, etc. I am glad to inform you that none of these is a cause of rape. Let us unravel this together.

In my years of research on rape culture and gender politics, I have come to the understanding that there exists a uniform and underlying trend in the different cases of rape examined. This underlying motif is the obsession about masculinism fuelled by the asymmetrical power dynamics between both genders. Confused? Let us unpack this.

More often than not, the urge to rape a lady/girl stems from the perpetrator’s conviction and certitude to overpower the victim. The rapist’s conviction of his ability to subdue his victim exacerbates the urge to exercise this supposed supremacy. The impulse to rape a lady is a sexualised form of expressing male dominance over women.

You may want to argue that provocative dressing induces sexual arousal. Undauntedly, yes! But no, it does not incite sexual violation. A conversation with convicted rapists revealed that less and less of these rape cases were stimulated by provocative dressing. Let us take a look at some scenarios.

1. Guy asks a lady out, she refuses, he rapes her.

2. Guy and lady live in the same neighbourhood. The lady is the classy type. The guy despises her poshness. He rapes lady.

3. Lady’s house is robbed and she is raped.

4. Girl lives with distant relatives. Man of the house preys on her innocence and serially abuses her.

5. Guy and lady are going out. He lavishes money on her and believes she should reciprocate with mind-blowing sex. She refuses and he rapes her.

In all these scenarios, one thing is common; which is the tendency one gender has to exert its will regardless of the other gender’s willingness or reluctance. This is the basic idea behind the rape culture: the desire to get hold of a woman irrespective of her stance. This obsessive desire is premised on the certainty of getting some cunts from a woman with the use of male physical supremacy.

Come to think of it, do males not dress provocatively too? With the upsurge of penis-revealing pants, do girls not get sexually provoked too? Will it be justifiable if girls begin to rape boys indiscriminately on the basis of provocative dressing? Did your mind just tell you that this is impossible? Oh yea, it did! Wonder why? Your mind just told you it is impossible because it is an extremely rare case for a lady to overpower a man.

Now, the key word is OVERPOWERING. Are you still in doubt that rape is essentially an expression of power and dominance? Perhaps, the seeming minimisation of male rape is borne out of the rarity of female dominance and not because girls are not sexually provoked too.

Did I hear you say porn addiction is a cause of rape? Oh no, but girls watch porn too. There are girls who are addicted to pornography. Why do these female porn addicts not rape boys too? Oh, I remember! Only a few girls can overpower a man.

Rape, no doubt, is an expression of obsessive masculinism reinforced by the asymmetrical power dynamics between both genders. Rape is the sexualisation of male dominance and control over women.

Oh, I did not mention marital rape, right? More than power dynamics and domination, marital rape reeks of a sense of ownership and subjugation – the belief that the man owns his wife and that she must be accessible to him any day and anytime according to his wish and desire. The trivialisation of the emotions and opinions of the female in a marital relation sustains the idea of the impossibility of marital rape.

Rape in whatever manner of manifestation is a gruesome dehumanisation of the woman person.

Saheedat Tobi Adetayo teaches logic and critical thinking at the Centre for General Studies of the University of Ibadan (UI) and is a PhD student of the same university. – [email protected]