I chanced on a WhatsApp status where a young woman was giving herself accolades and it somehow ended in her expressing joy and pride at being ‘someone’s future wife’. I use ‘joy’ here, for lack of a better word. However, it was more along the lines of her seeing being a wife as the ultimate prize for her womanhood. Now, this is not an isolated case; it would be much easier if it were. Then it could be related to personal aspirations and goals. Of course, each one of us is different and we have different hopes and wants and desires. However, this happens way too many times to be attributed to personal wishes alone. I have seen a lot of women express this need to achieve the ultimate; to get to the climax of womanhood. Unfortunately, this climax of womanhood, to many, is being a wife. It is never anything else. This begs the question; why? Of all the things a woman can aspire to be, why is it always ‘a wife’? Again, to be clear, it is not wrong for one to aspire to be a wife if it
Photo Credit: Vox.com What most people do not understand is that rape is not something you just ‘get over’. No, it does not work that way. When the choice of consent is snatched from beneath you, it is a violation of not just your body but your mind too. Rape, is like a robbery in which something is taken forcefully from you with every unconsented thrust. Yet unlike robbery where items taken can be replaced, rape takes away parts of you that can never be replaced, only learned to live with. When a person is raped, it isn’t just the body that has been invaded but also the mind. And this unwarranted invasion can lead to a thrashing of a person’s mental health. Walls get broken and victims without the right help and counselling may never get around to becoming who they used to be. Their present comes to a standstill and the future turns to gloom. Some dire psychological effects of this violation may even be that victims may be broken to such abysmal levels that they acce