In the 8+ years of actively using a plethora of social media platforms, I have met several brilliant young people.
In this period, I have engaged several of these brilliant minds on issues that I either agree with or vehemently disagree with whilst ensuring to glean as much knowledge as possible from the conversations.
A recent conversation I had was with Babangida Ruma, a Commonwealth Youth Ambassador for the Commonwealth Youth Council. He had shared a thought that was put forward by a certain Felix Ordue about the choices of women and girls to share what he termed as half-naked pictures of themselves doing sexy poses, showing off their boobs or lying seductively on their beds.
The original poster summarized his thoughts to say that men whether rich or poor admire ladies who dress decently and respect themselves.
I salute the thought process showcased but I am however persuaded that we are all shaped differently and have varying points of view as regards issues of dressing and modesty. I am also persuaded that introducing the concept of self-respect with regard to the dressing choices made by a woman is at best an attempt to erode the confidence of the woman.
I am further perplexed when I ruminate in my mind on issues bothering around who made some people the gatekeepers of modesty in conversations around dressing choices. I am yet to find a suitable response to this and I believe I will keep searching.
At a point in my life, either by reasons of the cultural influences around me or by way of religious sanctimonious messages that I was inundated with, I believe that the concept of dressing would have been interpreted by me with the lenses of self-respect.
This may also be the defining reasons for why several people in an attempt to become social-justice warriors, unwittingly make themselves the gatekeepers of modesty and morality. This has also found itself firmly situated in the minds of several that unconsciously focus on what a woman wore or didn’t wear when conversations of rape, arise.
In a January 2013 polling conducted by NOI Polls Limited, it was revealed that 34% of respondents in Nigeria attributed the prevalent cause of rape to indecent dressing. This formed the majority of the thoughts on the subject with the remaining 64% attributing rape causes to unemployment, lack of moral values and the inability to control sexual urge, faulty upbringing, ungodliness, illiteracy about women rights and embracing bad company.
In a Guardian Newspaper UK article, Amaka Okafor-Vanni, in defense of a woman’s choice for dressing wondered if the proponents of dressing as a cause of rape where advocating that if a woman’s body is visible, it ought to be available for sex or punished for this visibility.
In yet another polling conducted by NOI Polls Limited in July 2014 in partnership with the Stand to End Rape Initiative, it was revealed that an overall majority (67%) think that child rape (persons under 18 years) is prevalent in Nigeria. When asked what should be done to eradicate the incidence of child rape in Nigeria, a mere 2% of the polling population advocated for education in dressing value.
The significant interaction between the two polling activities outlined above is that while actively attributing the prevalent cause of rape to indecent dressing, in yet the same breathe, a majority of Nigerians do not believe that indecent dressing is responsible for child rape. I dare say that there are faulty lines in how we largely weigh in on issues.
These lines become greatly defined with time and reinforced not by our individualistic thought processes but by what we think is the societally correct thing to think and say.
The thrust of my conversation is simply to reiterate that attempting to blame a female rape victim for the actions of a rapist by questioning her choice of dressing is wrong. Rape victims should not in any way be labeled and held responsible for the act that everyone agree that they are the victims.
When this becomes the default action, it encourages a culture of silence which is even more dangerous as it allows rapists to roam about, unrestrained leaving several victims in their wake.
In a 2014 article I submitted to Bella Naija, I argued that the social implication of rape and the unending justification of vile offenders outweigh the clinical implications. The rape victim often becomes focused with trying to find answers to what people will say about her. This question erodes the victim of the right to stand up and speak against the offender.
It is a sad reality and I dare say that the only way to disrupt this violent trend is for victims to stand up, damn the consequence and lend their voice to speak up against evil. The other way is for the individuals that make up our society to fully understand that there is no gatekeeper for modesty. This understanding is timely and salient.
About Blossom Ozurumba:
Blossom is a writer, compère and public servant. She co-founded, Digital Media Development Initiative, a non-profit that contributes to sustainable development of Nigeria’s individuals and organizations through the innovative use of Digital Media. She has increasingly become known as a gender equity advocate with her core messaging that demands non-compromise in valuing competence, capacity and character. She currently works as the Technical Assistant on New Media to the Honorable Minister of State, Petroleum Resources. She lives in Abuja Nigeria. To relax, she plays golf, dabbles with photography for www.applausenigeria.com and reads African Literature. She hopes to write a book one day while sharpening her writing skills on www.blossomozurumba.com.
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Awesome article. I love it!
just read this article and I respect your opinion. But I’ll also lend my voice to the issue(s) you raised. I agree people are free to make choices as it affects different areas of their lives, but when those choices (like dressing) are alien to the society in which they live, caution becomes the watchword.
In light of the above statement, we’re Africans and our culture and traditions preach morality, uphold decency and abhor indecency in all ramifications.
It’s so sad that arguments like this come up due to the fact that we choose to accept or embrace the negative sides of western cultures and practices to the detriment of our heritage as Africans. It is now fashionable for a lady to dress half-naked to the market and other public places even the church… Oops, I forgot, it’s called civilization, right?!. Of course, men, (including women) whether rich or poor, admire and respect ladies who dress decently and respect themselves. I’m one of them. I also believe the adage that says, ‘you dress the way you WANT to be addressed’. Yes, how do you expect me to respect someone who dresses like a prostitute or mad person in the name of fashion.
The world over, people are quick to imbibe ‘negative’ attributes or habits as opposed to ‘good ones’. Africans do this better. We just swallow everything that goes against our culture and traditions.
For the rape aspect of your argument, I detest any act of violence visited on a girl or woman. So I condemn rape and rapists in general. But trying to dissociate indecent dressing as one of the causative agents is an aberration, a travesty. Men are moved by what they see. So a serial rapist or psychopath will easily pounce on a half-naked lady than a decently dressed one.
The fact that there are no human gatekeepers for modesty does not preclude or extirpate the existence of cultural or religious institutions that preach decency in all spheres of life. So if you like, those are the non-human gatekeepers of modesty in our society, because everyone practices or claims to practice one religion or the other, and in that religion there are rules and regulations regarding decency or modesty.