The Antagonism Of Victims By Our Society

Rape culture has long existed in our society with the lives, safety, autonomy and existence of women in its clutches. In recent times it has been given more (but still not enough) informed coverage due to the technology and evolving presence of communication. Women and victims have long voiced retaliation against this pandemic, but society has gone through even far greater lengths to bury any sound from us into the soil of silence.

Victims of all ages, class and sexuality are still not given a platform of belief, support and audibility. Knowing the nature of our society and its historical preservation of gender based violence, you would think when women come out with their stories of abuse it would be met with empathy and compassion. To my own way of thinking, the prevalence of rape in our society is enough for women to be protected and believed.

As a Nigerian woman sadly I can affirm that this is not the case. Victims and survivors of rape/abuse especially women are vilified by our society and are treated with such vitriol that one would think they’re the perpetrators and not the victims. Similar to the victim blaming, the slut shaming and invalidation of their stories, the condescending treatment of victims is also linked to rape culture.

Let us try to analyze the atmosphere of gender based violence and sexual oppression that has occurred in the past 6 months in Nigeria ; the gruesome rape and murder of Ms. Vera Uwalia Omozuwa, a 22 year old woman who was also a student was met with mixed outrage. Necessary conversations on rape culture, gender based violence and justice for this poor lady was called for by people — mostly women who took to the streets with placards that read: “stop killing us”. Within that time frame so many hashtags trended on social media.

Cries for the end of the violence of misogyny in the country roamed the air, but were they heard?

Not so many months later victims were speaking up and naming their abusers on social medias like Twitter, this was not uncommon knowing full well that the justice system has never been on the side of women and that most victims do not seek to go through the painful and stressful process of reporting their cases to authorities, but simply just want to be heard. The outrage that was received was rather different from that of Ms Uwa’s case. These victims, popularly two women were gaslighted, accused of chasing fame and branded liars. One can draw different lines from this – these victims were not dead bodies and the status of their perpetrators also played a role in society’s reaction to these cases of sexual violence.

One perpetrator was a notable musician and the other was a twitter influencer. The musician escaped accountability by using power dynamics and a corrupt rape apologist system to bully his victim into reaching for a settlement while the influencer managed to gain sympathy from Nigerian Twitter and had an increase in following and engagement. Even after glaring evidence posted against these people to support the claims of the victims, society still chose to stand on the side of the perpetrators.

When perpetrators are famous men the victims automatically take up the role of villains.

We fail to see that anyone can be a perpetrator, even someone loved and admired by all. Rapists and abusers can be family members, social figures and seemingly “good” people. Our choice to also take their sides or sit on the fence can also stem from rape apologism and rape culture. Rape myths that tell us that a lot of women organize themselves against a man and lie about their abuse to ruin his life can have damaging effects on how we treat victims and how we support them.

We fail to see that anyone can be a perpetrator, even someone loved and admired by all. Rapists and abusers can be family members, social figures and seemingly “good” people.

We cannot tackle rape culture or stand up to end rape by placing victims on the evil side until proven otherwise and cuddling feelings of perpetrators.

If we indeed value the lives of women and victims, if we want more victims to be able to boldly speak up, if we want to dedicate our efforts in combating the pandemic of rape in our society we cannot keep throwing victims into the abyss of never ending disbelief, distrust and zero support.