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Male Rape


  1.  14 May 2007, by Aernout Zevenbergen in South Africa. Men can not be raped. Well, actually they can – but still: legally speaking they can"t. The jails of South Africa (and elsewhere on earth) are full of men who might tell in all details (gory or not) who, when and by whom they were put into a position where they could not say no to unwanted, anal penetration.

     
    However, the law does not mention unwanted anal penetration as rape, and therefore rape of a man does not exist from a legal point of view. One wonders who write laws like that. On what planet do they live?
     
    Uganda knows of even weirder laws regarding sexual behaviour. Having sex with a goat is considered less of an offence than two consenting adults of the same gender following the directives of hormones and love. Until a few weeks ago, those same Ugandan laws did hold women accountable for adultery – a crime of which men strangely enough could not be accused.
     
    African countries know some of the most unrealistic rules and regulations regarding the intimate acts of their citizens. Recently, a Sudanese man was obligated to 'marry" the goat he had known intimately, according to the owner of said goat: his neighbour. The only ever 'married" goat in the universe has now died, it was reported only a few days ago. But it did so, blissfully unaware it was blessed by holy matrimony.

     
    Also a few weeks ago five "lesbian" women in Kano (Northern Nigeria) had to flee a popular uprising because they had been accused of having married each other in a ceremony. From her hiding place the 'leading lesbian" issued a statement that the 'wedding ceremony" was not a wedding but a gathering of people trying to collect funds for one of the alleged 'lesbians" who needed money for her nuptial feast.
    By the time she issued her statement, the theatre that had housed the 'wedding ceremony" had been flattened and the guardians of public morals had been sent out to trace the women of immorality and arrest them.
     
    Laws and sexuality – how to tame the beast within? And why does the beast need taming? Sexuality can be a force of great intensity. It can be ruthless, especially when its anger that feeds someone"s need to penetrate someone else. No questions asked; just a body (mostly male) intruding upon someone else"s deepest insides.
     
    Whenever someone"s sexuality limits someone else"s space and sense of safety and freedom and breaches boundaries it is beyond doubt that said sexuality needs to be reigned in. But a great deal of the morality laws in Africa is not aimed to protect individuals from other individuals, from misfits. A great deal of those laws is out to protect first and foremost a public sense of 'morality", as defined by the most vocal and most powerful, the established forces in society.
     
    Is there any limit to the regulation of lust and hormones, without de-humanising life?
    A South African man who was exiled from his native land in the 1970"s because of his work against apartheid moved to the UK. Indecency laws there have gone so far as to make it impossible to take pictures of children toying about on a playground. He no longer feels it is appropriate to hug his children in public for how it might be perceived by some.
    If a man in the UK no longer feels comfortable to show his affection to his own off-spring, clearly something is going wrong. If a man in South African can be raped but he has no way to accuse his rapists because, legally speaking, the rape of a man can not take place, clearly something is going wrong. Where is the balance?
    Click here for the Aernout Zevenbergen Weblog
     



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