Then there was the other camp of women that recognised the existence of marital rape but felt that they would never report it because of the shame it will bring her for reporting her husband.
The number of women that think of marital rape as a myth is appalling. When I started to read up on marital rape in Tanzania, I particularly looked at blogs and spaces that gave people a chance to give feedback on their thoughts on the subject matter.
I was shocked that a lot of women that made comments did not even recognise the idea of marital rape. A significant number of women felt that if you choose to marry a man then it is his right to demand sex whenever he pleases and your obligation as a woman to provide it to him when he wants it. To add onto this thought, I’ve heard women say that, one should not even sleep in their underwear once married, in the case that their husband feels like having sex.
Then there was the other camp of women that recognised the existence of marital rape but felt that they would never report it because of the shame it will bring her for reporting her husband.
There was also the fear of being shamed and shunned by her family and society in general. One woman went as far as to say that reporting it is pointless.
Her case would never see the light of day and she will be sent back to the man that raped her.
Marital rape is non-consensual sex wherein the perpetrator is the victim’s spouse.
The whole idea of marital rape is a bitter struggle in the African culture. Others opine that “marital rape is un-African, it does not exist.” Religion and the law refuse to recognise the fact that a man could force his wife into having sex with them.
They refuse to recognise the fact that a woman is not just sitting there ready and waiting to be used sexually whenever her husband pleases. They refuse to recognise the fact that sometimes a woman does not feel like it.
In African countries where they have attempted to criminalise marital rape (such as Uganda), the courts were met with a harsh resistance from men who felt that this law will put a lot of them in prisons.
Some publicly (and proudly) admitted that they have, more than once forced their wives to have sex with them. I met a man once when I was travelling who told me that he does not believe in the idea of love.
But he was “happily” married with a daughter he loved more than anything. When I asked him why, he told me that his father raped his mother and then she was made to marry her rapist.
She was made to love her rapist, which she eventually did. She learnt to love the man that took away what was hers to give. So he took that on, he met a woman he figured he could learn to love and married her.
If a woman is being raped by her husband, and her mother was being raped her father, how do you tell her that it isn’t right? How do you convince her that sex can actually be consensual?
How do you tell a whole generation of women surrounded by men that have taught them that sex is only something that they (men) can enjoy, something that can only be taken away from women and not gently given?
