Festivals, Rape and the dehumanization of women

 Yours truly grew up in delta state.

Growing up in a small town where everyone knew everyone, there were times when our parents told us that such and such festival was coming up, we shouldn’t step outside.

There’s the Eni Festival.

The ophia festival.

The Oko festival.

There’s the midaka festival.

There’s the emete festival.

I know their names but don’t know what they are about except the “ore emete” which is a festival that celebrates virgins, I never been out to the festival , I just know what it’s about.

On festival days, we can be in our compound with our gate locked playing outside, no harm came to us.

So, imagine my surprise when I heard of the Ozoro rape festival.

I had always been taught that festival grounds were dangerous to young girls, I didn’t know that the danger could come into your house. Imagine men breaking to shops, hostels, houses in the name of festival.

And this incident started throwing light on some things that the women around did on festival days that I didn’t understand as a child.

If a woman had an unavoidable reason to go out, she would carry a baby on her back. She could borrow a neighbor’s child just to step outside. I just learnt that it is because any woman outside that’s not a “nursing mother” will be raped.

I have never been raped.

I came close a few times but escaped. 

I reckon I escaped because of my quick wit, the fact that the intending rapist was just one person and we were not as secluded in those instances.

I cannot imagine what these students from the Ozoro are feeling. A group of over 12 guys abusing a lady in the name of festival.

Imagine going to school and being a victim to institutionalized rape. It means the institution already decided that you are wrong. It means no one will sympathize with you, it means you can’t get justice, it means the rapists believed in that moment that they were right and that they had a right to your body. It can turn a person into a serial killer, the rage that would brew in you.

And this is culture and tradition institutionalized by men. The patriarchy for no clear reason decided to set up a festival where rape of women is the only reason for being.

And this is why I always say that patriarchy hurts everyone.

It might not hurt you today but it will hurt you before you leave this earth.

Imagine fathers who have been upholders of patriarchy getting the news that their daughters have been raped in a patriarchal festival dedicated to the dehumanization of women.

Imagine young boys finding out that their mothers were raped by idiots who broke into their homes using the immunity of a rape festival to perpetuate evil.

Men are so quick to say women are emotional because women get frustrated at their lies, women cry and women express pain.

But they forget that anger is an emotion. Rage is an emotion. Sexual arousal is an emotion. As a matter of fact, the inability to control yourself is in and of itself an emotional breakdown. so we have men who cannot control themselves in anger, who cannot control their sexual urges, who are not emotionally regulated in anyway calling women who regulate their emotions emotional.

But I digress.

The fact that men saw it fit to continue a tradition that dehumanizes women is disturbing.

And just the thought that arrests will not be made after the mass rape of hundreds of females stirs in me an anger that I cannot explain.