CONSENT IS NOT IN THE WAY I WALK, TALK OR DRESS.
Logging in to my twitter or Instagram account has become a dreaded activity for me. Once I step on the streets of Twitter, I am hit in the face by one shocking news or the other. COVID-19 cases are rising steadily, and rape cases have become a heated topic of discussion across social media platforms.
#JusticeForUwa #JusticeForTina #StopRapingWomen. These are a few hashtags that have been trending on social media for the past few days. Many more hashtags have popped up all over social media over the past few weeks, advocating against rape, and for justice on behalf of rape survivors.
The rape accusation of Tife by Sansa on twitter, the brutal rape and murder of Uwa in a church in Benin, and the gang rape of a 12-year-old girl by not one, but 11 men in Jigawa are just a few examples of the violence against women. This has led to an outrage. People are tired of seeing these rape cases over and over again. When will women be free to live their lives without fear? When will consent be taken seriously, and understood for what it really is? One common thing about the trending accusations and counter-accusations is that there seems to be a lack of knowledge about sexual consent.
The concept of consent, like every other aspect of sex education, has always been shrouded in a cloak of secrecy, particularly in Africa where the mere mention of sex and anything sexual makes people uncomfortable. Consent is, therefore, a greatly misunderstood and misconstrued topic. This is evident when issues of rape are brought to social media and people begin to ask irrelevant questions like “what was she wearing?”, “why was she there alone?”, “maybe she actually wanted it.” There is also a common belief that consent cannot be withdrawn, and expecting a man to stop during sexual intercourse is considered to be unfair to the man.
There has never been a more appropriate time to talk about sexual consent. With the outbreak of the COVID -19 pandemic, which led to the restriction of movement and total lockdown in 90 countries around the globe, 4 billion people have been forced to stay at home, many of them with their sexual partners (UNWomen, April 2020). However, even with the current COVID-19 outbreak, the concept of sexual consent remains undebatable.
These biting realities, therefore, prompted YouthhubAfrica to commence a process of finding out what people think or understand by sexual consent through a perception survey that clearly shows the knowledge gap among men and women when it comes to sexual consent. The Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on Sexual Consent was one of YouthhubAfrica’s responses to the knowledge gap on sexual consent. It aimed to educate people about the importance of giving and receiving consent before and during sexual activities. The MOOC was designed to provide a detailed introduction to sexual consent through practical and interactive sessions.
As expected, many people came with interesting views of what they believe and what society has shaped consent to be. “How do I give sexual consent?” “Why should I ask for consent from a lady who traveled for more than 12 hours by road to visit me?” “Can there be non-verbal consent?” “Does our law recognize and criminalize marital rape?” “Can consent be withdrawn during sexual intercourse?” These are some of the many questions raised during the MOOC. However, through the detailed content of the online course, YouthhubAfrica was able to correct these falsehoods, myths and fallacies that characterize the concept of consent, and in three weeks no less!
Many relevant issues concerning consent were raised during the course of the MOOC. The facilitators, Bukky Shonibare, Sodfa Daaji, and Olusegun Medupin were able to provide a clear understanding of what sexual consent is, how it can be obtained, and cases when sexual consent has been given or withdrawn. The laws, international, regional, and domestic that exist on sexual consent were also explained in detail. Emphasis was also placed on the role every individual has to play in protecting women and girls during emergency situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic the world is currently facing.
The gaps left unfilled during the classes were bridged by weekly closed webinar sessions that had experts like Osai Ojigho, a lawyer, human rights activist and the country director of Amnesty International in Nigeria, as well as Lansana Wonneh, the Deputy Country Representative of UNWomen, who attended to the participant’s questions. At the end of the three-week training, we are happy to say that out of the 376 persons who registered for the course and the 184 persons that actually started the course, 93 people completed the course, and have now been sent forth to educate others on what consent really and truly means.
It is truly amazing, the extent to which the concept of consent is misunderstood. We realize that we have our work cut out for us, but we are determined to ensure that in the nearest future, misconceptions about consent will be a thing of the past.
