May 31^st 2014 will see a courageous bid to reshape a facet of Sierra Leone’s psyche. The ‘Stop Rape Now’ walk in Freetown is a protest event that deserves the support of all Sierra Leoneans who oppose the abuse of power and privilege that condemns many of our fellow citizens to lives debased by the selfishness, thoughtlessness and wickedness of others.

Rape, as usually reported, is almost exclusively a problem of the male of the species that has (predominantly) female victims. After all, it is men that more often than not fail or refuse to accept the right of women to decide whether or not to have sex and who to have sex with.  Indeed, it is sad but true that this warped thinking is implied in some of our traditions with females taken out of the safety of family homes and thrown into exploitative marriages that invariably will include sex that at best happens in the context of fear induced consent. I know some are now going to jump up and down because they think “proud Africans” do not question our traditions irrespective of whether or not they bring value to us as a people. Well, here is a head on the block and please do your worst if you are really bothered by what I am saying.

I am of the view that rape lies on the least favourable and most unpleasant end of the sexual act spectrum. My belief is that the decent people among us believe the end of the spectrum that is consensual and by default predicated on mutual respect is preferably where these acts should be conducted. On the other extreme of the spectrum is rape – an act often conducted with the help of threatened or applied physical violence. In other words, it usually involves a crude call on basic survival instincts to deliver gratification for one person at the expense of another’s rights.

Along the spectrum of sex acts are those without (obvious) violence. They might have a semblance of being consensual but are based on imbalanced relationships between the involved persons. Well, probably without being the intention, the flippant remark that refers to equality in the bedroom says it all. If consent comes out of fear of the consequences of refusal, that indicates an imbalance in the relationship and, in order to achieve conceptual clarity, we must unpick such relationships. If sex happens because of the power one person has over the other, that has surely got to be on the that segment of the spectrum that encroaches into the seedy and disrespectful. I would suggest the use of financial, political, hierarchical, societal, or physical advantage to gain sexual satisfaction are only distinguishable by the degree of perceptibility of the harm inflicted on the victims. So, like it or not, the person who uses the threat of withdrawing financial support or other favours to get sex is using the same thinking and tactic as the one threatening physical violence or death for the same outcome. It is all about acts of attrition against the right to consent… i.e. the fundamental right to say no.

Make of it what you must, but rape and sexual violence encroach on the freedom of women by leaving them afraid to move around – and people cleverer than I will ever get to be have already told us there is no such thing as part freedom. So, I commend all those men joining the ‘Stop Rape Now’ walk as we men must send out the signal that we abhor and condemn this crime by others of our kind against our fellow citizens and human beings. At some point, we will need to dig deep and look at the various ways we do things and have the courage to challenge what is taken as given. Whatever we do, those thinking sexual violence is right must start getting the message that it isn’t just women demanding ‘Stop Rape Now’.