"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people
think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt." - Mark Twain
Last
week Youth Minister Ronald Kibuule is reported to have said something to the
effect that women who are “indecently” dressed and are raped were asking for
it. He feels so strongly on the subject that he asked the police to
investigate all rape cases and if they find the victim was dressed “indecently”
should charge her with inviting the crime!
The portfolio of state minister of youth is
not one of the plum jobs in our amorphous cabinet – one would be hard pressed
to name Kibuule’s predecessors. But after this unfortunate statement Kibuule’s name
is now singed in my memory for all eternity.
When the news first broke one wanted to know
exactly what he said. Having established he had said it and wanting to give the
youthful minister the benefit of doubt one wondered whether he was drunk, drugged
or operating under the influence of something illegal.
The minister attempted to deny the report,
claiming he had been misquoted but an audio recording of his utterances soon
hit social media and that was that.
He got some ambulance-chasing PR types to
try and put up a defence for him – they had the bad taste to invoke Jesus’ “Let
he who is without sin let him cast the first stone” but this defence was dead
on arrival.
There are some worrying indicators about our
society that can be gleaned from this whole sordid episode.
That the fiercest brand of male chauvinism,
where women are there to do men’s bidding regardless of their own needs and
wants is alive and kicking. That women for their own safety, should always
factor in men’s comfort or discomfort when deciding on what they should wear or
not wear. It is even more worrying that such an attitude has found as one of
its most vocal champions Kibuule, who’s official age is listed as 29.
It is more likely that we are going to be measured in our public utterances than we are in private when we are left
alone with our thoughts or in the presence of close friends and family. About
the minister you have to wonder that if he says this in public what horrors he
metes out in the privacy of his home.
The young man in a personal explanation to
parliament, in which he sidestepped clarifying on his thoughts that indecently
dressed women who are raped had it coming, saw no need to apologise for his
statement, leave alone relinquish his position as youth minister.
The central debate that drives psychological
debate is that of nature versus nuture. Basically that the way we behave is as a
result of our genetic makeup or how we are socialised or brought up.
So for the minister to harbour these thoughts
is it a product of his physiological and genetic makeup, that men are provoked
to have their way with any woman who crosses their path who is dressed
indecently? He defined indecent dressing
as miniskirts, bikinis and tight jeans!
Or maybe it’s how men are socialised, brought
up to view a woman who is indecently dressed as an object of lust and it is therefore
justifiable to act on that lust, after all the woman has “invited the crime”.
The genetic makeup angle is a hard sell. If it bore any
truth, with men as half the population we would expect more incidents of rape.
Which leaves us with the nurture hypothesis.
That Kibuule
and men that think like him are a product of our society – how we bring up our
sons, how we ignore and even collude in our brothers transgressions and make
excuses for our father excesses.
Seen in this light Kibuule then should be an object of our
pity rather than a lightning rod attracting our ridicule, that he is trapped in
this chauvinist society, where wherever he looks the signals indicate that
women are second class citizens serving at the pleasure of men.
Kibuule has presented us with as useful an opportunity for
soul searching about our gender relations as we may ever get.
That being said it does not get the youthful minister off
the hook.
He is a national leader and his loose talk cannot be written
off as the folly of youth. We are sure it is not government policy, though we
wonder about the deafening silence that his comments provoked, with nary a word
coming from the official spokesmen or the minister’s appointing authority on
the subject.
Let’s see the minister’s utterances for what they are – the
outcome of a patriarchal socialisation for which we are complicit in
perpetuating.
