End the scourge of marital rape

Today, I want to focus on one taboo subject – marital rape. As Kenyans, we need to break the psyche of hypocrisy and taboo.

In the olden days, sex and sexuality were openly taught and discussed in Kenya’s pre-colonial communities. Among the Akamba, for example, during circumcision – which marked the beginning of the end of puberty – society offered the youth a rich sex education.

That’s why among other things teenage pregnancies were few. And it wasn’t because pre-marital sex was unheard of. It was because there were various techniques of avoiding unwanted pregnancies.

All this rich knowledge was either lost, or delegitimised by colonialism in cahoots with the Church. White colonialists, and later their Black African apprentices in the Church, demonised the African worldview and actively worked to collapse its cultural ecosystem. That’s how we became mentally enslaved and beholden to our tormentors.

Today, our children grow up in families that are stuck up and a school system that’s archaic and steeped in fake Victorian morality. We have left many of our children to their own devices. Neither parents nor teachers talk to our children about sexuality in affirming ways. It’s considered “dirty” or “impolite” to even raise the subject. And yet we all know the central role that sex and sexuality play in the life and development of each human being. How then is it wise to leave one of the most crucial identities of the human person in a sea of ignorance and stupidity? How do we expect our children to educate themselves about sex and sexuality? This is a road to damnation.

Ignorance is the devil’s workshop, if I may use religious imagery. We can’t as a country be ostriches by pretending that we “see no evil, hear no evil, or speak no evil.” That’s how our people have developed an unhealthy relationship with gender, sex, and sexuality. We are not raising responsible citizens among the genders. We raise boys and young men to believe that they rule the roost and that girls and young women are their playthings. That the female gender exists to please, labour for, and serve the male gender. To put it simply, we bring up our boys to believe that girls and women – even their mothers and sisters – are chattel, or property for their use.

Unfortunately, the Church and the Mosque have ingrained in their penitents the belief that the woman is the lesser half who must be led and be subservient to her master – the brother, the man, the husband. And because a woman is a “thing” that’s owned, it must do as the owner commands or wishes. This is where the scourge of marital or spousal rape – the act of sexual intercourse without the spouse’s consent – finds comfort. As a matter of law, having sexual intercourse without the freely given consent of the other party is either sexual assault, domestic violence, or sexual abuse. Usually, in a marriage, forcible sexual intercourse is an act of physical violence. It’s a common form of violence in marriages.

My educated guess is that virtually all Kenyan women whether married or not have experienced a sexual assault – by which I mean rape – at least once. Such rapes are committed by intimate partners, husbands, male relatives, strangers, and even ex-partners. Their effect is to traumatise the victims, depress them, and even drive them to suicide.

What’s worse is that in marriages where the female often relies on the male for economic support – and is afraid of social censure if she leaves the abusive relationship – the female is trapped in a situation akin to enslavement. Society views a broken marriage as the fault of the woman. The “bad” mother or wife is the tag reserved for a woman who runs away from an abusive marriage.

Most men in Kenya wrongly believe the wife’s consent to sex was granted at marriage either upon the exchange of vows or the payment of “dowry” which is usually an exchange of money or goods for the “girl.” This is today a simple commercial transaction devoid of its traditional meaning. I have seen men bargain almost to the death on what they “must” receive to give up “their girl.” It’s sickening commercialization of Kenyan women. It’s part of the conspiracy why women suffer in abusive marriages in silence. We need to introduce gender studies up and down our educational system.

- Makau Mutua is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Margaret W. Wong Professor at Buffalo Law School, The State University of New York. @makaumutua.