The Boys Who Cried Wolf
There used to be a time when the truth mattered. A time when utterances had consequences, both good and bad. A time when decency private and public, ensured that we carried ourselves with a certain level of comportment. These times were supported by the genuine desire to maintain community cohesion and compassion. However, times have changed. Fast forward to 2020. The year of madness where it seems we are greeted by one global or local idiosyncrasy after another. As we stand here at the beginning of July, it is quite difficult to remember a world where Kobe was still alive and we weren’t constantly obsessing about face-masks and hand sanitizers. Although when it comes to the latter, we as Nigerians have been here before with Ebola but there’s a certain perverse togetherness that we feel to know that at this very moment in time one of our myriad of problems is share with literally every country in the world. Basically, we are all in this together.
Another problem we share with the world is the plague of abuse and sexual crimes against women. I focus on women here because they are predominantly the victims of such reprehensible atrocities and in a chauvinistic, hetero-normative world we live in, they have the least recourse to justice and this is a worldwide problem. Nevertheless, this does not in anyway negate the very real incidents of sexual assault and rape perpetrated against men as well. Nigeria is not particularly special in this respect either in the prevalence of these sexual crime or the way they are meant to be addressed from a legal standpoint. However, enforcement of the law has proven to be a troublesome prospect. I wonder why. Why is the seriousness of allegations of such a grave nature so often doubted by the authorities? Are the law enforcement agencies negligent? Are we just a heartless and backward country that don’t care about the dignity of our women?
Recently, I came across a story that might shed some light on the question of why. At the beginning of last month, a young cousin visited the family house but seemed transfixed to her phone for hours on end. This is not an unusual phenomenon and it is one that we have sadly become accustomed to even at family mealtimes. However, on this particular day, she seemed engrossed in whatever it was that had caught her attention and her reactions were so animated that I myself was intrigued. Upon inquiring, she was only too pleased to regal me with the “gist”. Apparently, Twitter was going berserk with the quite frankly sordid and unscrupulous undertakings of a bunch of “friends” (and I used that term very lightly) who had delivered a thread of confessionals depicting one of their number to be a rapist. The allegations were centered on the victims being offended that they were subjected to sexually manipulated advances and what annoyed them most was the fact that they were straight and not gay as their “friend” had thought. So far, so simple. Right? Wrong. It was anything but simple. My initial concern (if I can call it that) was that an issue as serious as rape shouldn’t be fodder for discussion or confessionals in the volatile and superficial modern-day Market Square that is social media particularly Twitter. Of even more concern was the allegation itself. Upon closer exploration, it turns out that the accused had simply propositioned his accusers, they turned down his advances, he expressed some consternation and left it at that. This is by no means an extraordinary situation. We have all found ourselves in situations where we have had to turn down advances or as is rarely the case with women, had our advances turned down. There undoubtedly is a palpable sense of embarrassment and discomfort. But in no way does that constituted criminality. The alleged victims in this case were not coerced into any sexual activities neither were they physically forced to doing so. It was the proverbial “storm in a teacup”.
Get Florence Chizindu’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
My worry about this issue is multidimensional. Firstly, these boys were purportedly all friends. Why wasn’t this resolved in a civil and amicable manner befitting of their friendship. Why did they come out to wash their “dirty linen” in public? Why didn’t they take up this matter with the relevant authorities to ensure that it was properly dealt with and justice, if sought, would be delivered? Were they using allegations as serious as rape (which in this case are baseless as no intercourse, forced or otherwise, occurred) to generate social media traction in a witch-hunt against their “friend”? The mind boggles. What is infinitely clear however, is the impact this sort of rumour-mill chatter has on REAL victims of rape and other sexual crimes. Secondly, as a Nigerian woman, I can unfortunately say that I am statistically more susceptible to incidents of sexual violence from known and unknown men. Indeed, I have been in very sketchy situations which I have had to engage all my senses to avoid complications of a sexual nature. These incidents have been incredibly frightening and have had real consequences on my perception of people and situations. As a result, I have a finely-tuned knack for knowing when an interaction is veering into “unsafe territory” and I hastily withdraw myself accordingly. So, for me to see these boys, who are clearly no more than a bunch of juvenile delinquents, using allegation of rape to gaslight their so-called friend, set off a fury in me. Do these boys know what the existential impact is on the true victims of rape?! They throw words about like they mean nothing? How dare they? What sort of school prank gone wrong is this?! This whole incident of these boys crying “wolf” has only served to trivialise the very real dangers that women continue to face everyday by just existing in a country like Nigeria where their dignity is constantly under threat from sexual predators. A misunderstanding or misinterpretation of a situation that led to advances being made does not constitute rape!
After raising these points with my cousin, her reticence regarding the issue was palpable. It also became clear that the feeding frenzy of Twitter had completely distorted the issue. Sensible voices questioning the validity of misusing the term “rape” to describe what allegedly transpired were drown out by a ravenous mob baying for blood. The witch hunt was in full effect. The piranhas had sharpened their fangs and were already gnawing at the flesh of the accused. The accusers fell silent. Their work was done. They’d thrown their “friend” to the wolves of Twitter without any circumspection as to what would possibly transpire. An ingenious plan mind you, considering it looked like a public lynching was what they desired and an attempt to publicly out their friend as gay was their overall intention. The latter was clear from their constant but suspiciously inconsistent protestations that they were straight. In the end, it didn’t matter. Their hungry audience lapped it all up. Of course, the baying mob was made up of various constituents from the homophobes who just hated “the gays” and wanted to them to “burn in hell”, to the social media moral crusaders who are keyboard warriors without any locus of influence in real life. They all piled in to crucify someone they didn’t know based on subjective interpretations of an incident that transpired in their absence. A troubling consequence which I intend to address in another piece. All of this is inconsequential to the fact that mechanism deployed to enact this public flagellation shouldn’t have been used at all. I cannot overemphasise how despicable it is to use allegations of rape to gaslight others if for no other reason than that it diminishes the validity of legitimate claims from REAL VICTIMS.
Oftentimes, we assume a moral high-ground judging what people do and how they live their lives without recognising the role we are playing to exacerbate the situation. This case is one occasion where our hunger for castigation can have a much longer-lasting effect on people other than our intended recipient. We need to be more careful when we participate in this sort of public lynching on Twitter. Alas, we may invoke the “Law of Unintended Consequences” may arise where the victim of our vitriol is not only the “accused” but also the people who suffer from claims of disbelief when they are the true victims of sexual crimes such as rape. The laws of the land have made adequate provisions for dealing with sexual crimes and the fact that these boys are using an allegation of rape as a vindictive tool of character assassination on Twitter instead of pursuing action through the appropriate channels is morally repugnant.
