On Ruger, Sexual Assault; 13 Reasons Why.
Well hello, Welcome to my thoughts.
Hi guys. I hope you all are doing well. This piece is a bit deeper than I’ve done before but I had to. Cardi B actually reminded me and made it mandatory that I do this and it is something I’ve wanted to do for a while.
What is Sexual Assault?
My friend told me a story of how she was standing with male friends one and suddenly a friend of her male friends appeared and hit her on her butt. She was obviously upset about that and her male friends were quite perplexed. They didn’t know what this stranger guy had done wrong. They were even more confused when she said the guy had ‘assaulted her’.
It made me think, what exactly is classified as assault?, do people really not know when they’re crossing the line? (or you know this was another classic case of sexism). It also made me really angry and is a huge part of why I’m writing this today.
Different forms of sexual assault include:
1) Child Sexual Abuse;
2) Domestic Violence; As at 2021, Nigeria still doesn’t recognize marital rape as a crime because apparently the wife gives away her right to consent or not once she becomes the ‘property of her husband’
3) Elderly Sexual Assault
4) Groping
5) Rape
6) Sexual Harassment
7) Mass Sexual Assault.
* And yes, what that guy did to my friend was assault.
I think that there’s so much awareness surrounding SA but it’s still not enough awareness. Whenever there’s an SA case, I see people making very insensitive, inaccurate, baffling points. I’d like to just share a few points and address some of those disturbing takes.
1) The Victim\ Survivor Is Never At Fault.
I think this is the most important thing to note in an SA case. I have noticed a repeated pattern in SA cases of victim-blaming. People would make up any excuse to justify SA.
They’d say, “I feel sorry for her but why was she the only girl in the company of boys.” , “Why was she dressed like that?”, “Why was she out at that time?”… They’d always find something that explains why the assault, something that the victim should have done better, something that shifts some of the responsibility from the abuser.
Well , I am here saying there is no justifiable reason for assault. You become an enabler when you try to look for one. In an assault case there’s only one wrong person and it is never the victim.
2) The Victim Can Be Male/Female. The Abuser Can be Male/Female.
SA on females gets so much awareness — rightly so- but I think that sometimes people forget that SA is not limited to a gender. Anyone can be assaulted. Anyone can be the abuser. A case of SA on a man is not less than a case of SA on a woman.
You’ll find a lot of times that the same people who are so sympathetic to a female victim of sexual assault are quick to make judgemental and hateful comments to male victims of assault. They’d be quick to say, “He is a man.”, or “Men enjoy it. You can’t really assault them.” or “How can a man boldly say a woman overpowered him and still call himself a man.”
Apart from how insensitive these statements are, they also enforce ancient stereotypes that ‘all’ men are alpha animals who should feel no pain, who can’t bleed, cry or show weakness. This is such an unhealthy take and is a major reason why men suffer abuse in silence. The way society makes light of SA on men baffles me, they are hardly taken seriously and that is upsetting. A difference in genitals does not reduce the emotional and mental impact of SA.
Anyone can be assaulted, and again it is not the fault of the victim nor does it determine their worth. In the case of the man, it definitely does not make them ‘less of a man’.
3) Again Anyone Can Be Abused.
In 2020 there were a slew of trending rape and assault cases. I did not use any social media save for WhatsApp at the time, so I mostly got my news from WhatsApp statuses. Everyone would become outraged (for differing reasons) about an SA case and it would be the discussion for a week or so.
One day a friend posted a story of a guy who had accused another guy of raping him. They captioned it something along the lines of, ‘ Your business. Who sent you to be gay?’
I don’t know the full story (I didn’t hear any other person talk about it), but I remember being upset because it was such an insensitive thing to say. They didn’t support the lgbtq+ community and that’s their business honestly but to say something that callous to someone who had such a traumatic thing happen to them when they could have remained silent was mind-boggling.
Anyone can be assaulted. Anyone of any gender, sexual orientation, religion, political stance, age, physical attractiveness, race, skin color, nationality etc. It does not matter if you do/don’t agree with their lifestyle, when someone comes forward with their assault case, you should see a human who has been wronged. If you cannot say something empathetic then keep shut.
4) Rape Is Not A Gender War.
I’ve noticed that one of the first things that happens when there’s an SA case is that the genders become divided. If the victim is female, the male population online become defensive waiting to type ‘Not all men’ under everyone’s takes. If the victim is male then they’re there waiting to type, “Men get raped too. Where are the feminists?”
Too many times I have seen an assault case quickly spiral from the assault case to a battle between men and women with each person picking sides based on gender instead of who is right or wrong. SA is not a time for ‘bros over hoes’, or whatever the female variation of that is. I think that we all need to realize that before we are male/female, we’re humans. That it is not okay to get unduly defensive when awareness of what a particular gender faces is made. That before the gender of a victim is someone who has had a great wrong done to them. .What they need is empathy not a clash between penises and vaginas.
5) In A Case Of Male Assault, It Is Not The Time To Drag Feminists (or women generally).
Recently a popular Nigerian singer, (Ruger), was assaulted while he was performing live. A female fan grabbed his crotch. It was disgusting, uncalled for and it was obvious how lax our rules are because that lady walked scot-free.
I went on Twitter for more information and was unsurprised to see the same drama happening again. “If this was a woman, the tl would be on fire.”, “Women would not comment.”, “Where are the feminists? They won’t talk now.”
I found it ridiculous that instead of using their medium and voices to raise awareness on SA on males (as females do when the tables are turned), they chose to spend time dragging females and deflecting attention from the matter at hand, adding nothing to the matter at hand, expressing no sympathy.
Should there be more female outrage over male assault cases? Yes, frankly there should be more outrage generally from both men and women over assault on males. The case fizzled out in under 24 hours.
I however find it funny that the patriarchy is calling out feminists for ideals the patriarchy created that the feminists are trying to abolish. Society created the ‘indestructible man’ idea, it sold the ‘boys would be boys’ as synonyms for predators idea, so it’s not actually a wise opinion when you call out feminists. It just shows that you haven’t taken the time to understand what feminism is.
There’s a new wave of ‘we’re the actual victims/oppressed ones’ that guys are playing now to invalidate female problems. When what they really should be doing is also creating awareness on male issues, like debunking myths surrounding violence, assault on men and male mental health. They spend so much time complaining that female campaigns are getting all the attention while actually doing nothing attention worthy.
6) You Cannot Compare Assault On Females To Assault On Males (and you really shouldn’t).
Let’s go back to Ruger and some reactions I saw on Twitter. He was groped by a female. I think one reason the case fizzled out quickly was that there was no real argument about this lady’s actions. The general consensus was that this lady had done something wrong and so the outrage was that she did not pay for her crime.
So there were these guys who were saying, ‘This is what men face. And their abusers get away with it. If it were a woman now-”. Pause. If it were a woman nothing. For every woman that gets justice for her assault, there’s several women whose abusers have gotten away with worse. The reason why there’s so much awareness about sexual assault on women is because of how imbalanced the ratio of assault to justice is.
Ruger was groped and that was a really terrible thing to happen. We can however empathize with Ruger without comparing it to female SA because it is not comparable.
You would hardly see a woman complain with any heat about being groped, groping is normalized in our world. Groping is what you expect as a girl when you stand in a crowd trying to rush into class, there would be that one guy whose aim is not making a front seat or any seat at all, it is squeezing girls butts and there’s nothing you can do about it and you know.
My mum told me a story that happened to her when she was younger. She was coming back from work, walking on the streets, minding her business, this guy comes from nowhere and puts his hand up her skirt because ‘her skirt was too short’. She tells this story to us as a joke, ‘oh then my I wore mini-skirts so this guy thought he had the right to assault me’. If she had put this story on the internet then there would have been people (male & female) who would say, ‘Well the skirt was short so can you blame him?’
There might not have been prolonged outrage for Ruger but there wasn’t any debate either. No one said, ‘the snug leather pants he wore made his crotch look enticing. We can’t blame her for touching.” We all agreed that hers was a vile, bottom barrel behavior.
Assault is assault and everyone can be assaulted but we can shine light on assault without comparing.
7) Victims Of Assault Can Take Their Time To ‘Come Out’.
One of the most shocking viral stories this year was the Greenwod scandal. I was discussing with someone about this and he said, “I get that what Greenwood did was bad, but why did she have to say it now and wreck his career?”
My answer, “Why did Greenwood assault her? If Greenwood didn’t assault her Greenwood would still have a career. Greenwood wrecked his career.”
So many people’s way of discrediting a victim’s story is judging the period of time between when said assault happened and when the victim decides to share the story or report the case.
I think that without experiencing SA one can’t fully grasp the emotional and mental trauma abuse leaves on the victim. Especially in a world where you’re likely to be blamed for your own assault. Processing that, healing enough to be able to relive the trauma and leave yourself naked for people to pass judgement does not just happen in a day. Grief, healing are non-linear and vary from person to person. Someone might be ready to fight at 2 months while a year later some other person still can’t talk about it. Sometimes victims have been psychologically manipulated that even when they are out of their abusers grasp they cannot speak of it.
It does not matter how long it takes them or why it took them so long.
8) The Victim Is Right…until proven wrong.
When someone come out with their assault story, people are hesitant to take sides. ‘What if they’re lying?’
People would keep this energy even in the face of evidence until there’s an actual court conviction.
Sometimes why people don’t want to take the victim’s side is because of how others react to assault cases. People think that part of expressing sympathy to a victim is by bullying the alleged abuser. So if it turns out that there was no assault, the world feels guilty for the grave disservice they’ve done. I think we can show empathy without hate speech and death threats. I think that what a survivor really needs to know is that they’re heard and not dismissed.
I also urge you to not be the overly suspicious person who decides to play detective instead of being emphatic even in the face of a black and white case.
9) Why In The World Would You Lie About SA?
One of the most psychopathic thing one can do is make up an assault story to trend or for revenge on someone. Or for monetary gains.
It is a heavy crime (and should be treated as such), because not only does it make light of something as serious as SA, it invalidates the struggles of actual SA survivors, and makes it harder for them to receive receptive spaces to share their stories.
You cannot have consensual sex, have a bad fight, a nasty breakup and then decide you were raped. You cannot defame a person like that and jeopardize their career out of spite. It is mean and insensitive to people who were raped ‘non-consensually’.
10) SA on Men; Don’t Be A Hypocrite.
There’s hardly any conversation about SA on men. When it comes to them things get a little blurry. I don’t think some guys even know exactly how they can be assaulted. Men are seen as sexual animals, ‘they’re always ready’ sort of thing and that has birthed a lot of misconceptions when it comes to sexual assault on Men.
When I first started writing this piece, my knowledge of SA on men was limited to the two stories I’d heard this year. It only occurred to me today that men can actually be raped.
So what is Sexual Assault on Men. Well it’s exactly the same as SA on anyone really. Any sexual contact without consent.
So where does being a hypocrite play in? Remember my first story about my friend who had her ass hit and it was assault. In secondary school a scene played out all the time, the girl would hit the guy on his ass or pinch his nipples. The guy would threaten retaliation, the girl would say he couldn’t dare and then a tom-and-jerry chase would begin. The guy of course would not retaliate because we all know you can’t just hit girls private parts. In the event that it was a daring guy and he actually retaliated then he was at fault. How dare he, right? It always baffled me. Why should the guy’s body not get as much respect as the girl’s body demands? I decided then that I was not going to touch any guy in anyway that would make me feel uncomfortable if it was reciprocated — without consent. So yeah it doesn’t matter if their bodies betray them and respond to your touch and you think you’re actually doing whatever for their pleasure, if you don’t get consent then yes you are assaulting that guy.
There’s a lot of reasons why men don’t come out with their stories of assault.
They are not taken seriously. They are made to feel like less than society’s standard for men. There’s also double standards where an abused man may actually be wrongfully accused of abuse by his abuser, and his abuser would be believed. This is sad, It’s because the stats don’t favor men and the man is more likely to be the abuser. I’m urging us to be kind when a man shares his assault story, to not rush to discredit his story. To just show empathy.
11) If You Don’t Get A Yes, Then You’ve Not Gotten Consent
“I don’t know.”, “I’m not sure.”, “I’m a bit undecided.”
Take everything, (statements, body language), that is not a yes as a no. It’s actually basic self-preservation. If you don’t get absolute consent, you’ve given someone a case against you. Don’t settle for on the fence no matter how desperate you are, because it will come back to bite your ass. And yes, you will be in the wrong.
12) The Fear Culture, ‘Not All Men’, Schools Should Do Better.
There’s a lot of awareness when it comes to SA on women. A lot of it however is trash advice, victim blaming and instilling fear in women instead of emphasizing on self-control in men.
There is this fear culture surrounding assault on women that refuses to hold men(abusers) accountable for their acts, but chooses to blame women, ‘if you’d been more careful’
I attended one of such SA meetings (and it scarred me) in 2020. A bunch of female professors had planned a girls only SA seminar. I do not know why SA events are mostly girls only, this is an area schools and everybody should work on. Don’t advice your daughter and leave out your son. You should teach your daughter that she has a voice and her consent is necessary and you should teach boys to respect when they don’t get consent.
At the seminar this female speaker started her speech with ‘Boys would be boys’. A sentiment I object to. Boys would be what you raise them to be and right now it is a sense of entitlement, lack of self-control. Society uses boys will be boys to absolve boys of any responsibility and absolve themselves of the responsibility of parenting them, thereby creating monsters.
The fear culture is that instead of tackling the problem, that a lack of discipline and a strong sense of entitlement makes men behave badly. People would say, ‘don’t wear revealing clothes, it entices men, it just makes them become savage beasts and they cannot be responsible for what they do if they see female knees or- god forbid- cleavage”. Which is bs because Muslim women covered from their hair to their feet get raped. Little children with no breasts get raped.
I remember this woman was maybe a counsellor and she gave some examples of active cases,
*She mentioned a girl who had visited a male friend and was raped by the friend. She warned us not to visit male friends. I thought of how stupid it was that instead of mentioning that boys shouldn’t rape their female friends we had been banned from yet another thing.
*She mentioned a girl who was raped by her step-father and then proceeded to talk about how they had to handle the case carefully so that the mother’s marriage won’t be disrupted. Even though the mother is married to a rapist.
When you’re drilled with that daily, when you realize that you cannot trust any one not your step-father, not your uncle (in fact studies say you’re more likely to be assaulted by someone you know than someone you don’t), not your male best-friend. You begin to live in fear. Then when girls say we cannot live with this hold men have over our lives, our bodies, our choices. Certain men type “Not all men.”
One day I spent the night at my best friends hostel and I had to walk back to my hostel very early in the morning. I enjoyed my walk except for every time a man passed by, then my heart sped up and I remembered how defenseless I was, and I thought of how if anything happened to me people would point out that I should not even be out walking at that time. If you have not felt pure terror just walking on every man’s street then you don’t have the right to type ‘Not all men.’ or any of it’s insensitive variants.
Another friend of mine told me a story. She was hungry and decided to go get dinner. On her way to the canteen these guys accosted her, insulted her and then refused to leave her alone. No matter how many times she said to, they followed her. When she made it to the canteen they waited outside and she had to call a male friend to come pick her up because she was scared. If you have the privilege of walking ‘to and fro’ at any time of day or night without anyone bothering you, or if they bothered you it was someone you could easily take out, then don’t get defensive when women are talking about what they face. Women live in fear and it is unfair and it should not be.
In conclusion, SA is a serious crime. SA can be committed on anyone by anyone. Consent is very necessary. Let us remember to be kind towards SA survivors and not be judgmental. Consider this post a needed reminder. Have a lovely time, till next time.
p.s I have been typing for about three hours straight because I wanted to post this to end April. I realize that it’s May now but I’m pretty sure it’s April in some country so we’re going to pretend we’re working with their time.
Forgive all grammatical errors, typos. We’ll blame it on the fact that I’ve been typing for a while, my back is about to break in two and my brain is half dead.
Also I realize that I did not give thirteen points to go with my title, but I’m leaving it because I can. Ciao guys.
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