Negotiated rape
Last week I was part of a very interesting discussion with a few Zimbabwean tertiary students, from universities all over the country, on the issue of sexual harassment in tertiary institutions. The group was a balanced mixture of male and female students, and they were all in agreement about the existence and prevalence of sexual harassment in their different institutions.
They spoke of the large number of students being forced into sexual relationships with authority figures, especially lecturers. These students are often threatened with failure of courses, despite the quality of their work, if these sexual demands are not met. When given a choice between failing a course, which in many cases they have struggled to raise the funds for, and having sex with a lecturer to guarantee that they can continue their studies successfully, many young women, (and indeed a growing number of male students too), end up giving in for the sake of their education. This is not to say that all sexual relationships between students and lecturers are all non-consensual. There are indeed some female students who actively pursue lecturers in order to have relationships with benefits (but this not what we are discussing today).
One of the students made a powerful and startling statement with regard to these ‘sexual exchanges’ between students and lecturers, and introduced me to the idea of negotiated rape.
“There are many rapists now who can give you room to negotiate with them, even to use condoms.”
Negotiating with a rapist? Pretty hard to imagine! I guess maybe because I have never thought of the issue of rape in that way before; never thought that there would even be room or time enough to negotiate for anything in the heat of the moment. To me, the word rape has always dredged up images of brutal beatings; ripping of clothing; use of weapons; women being dragged off into the bushes and left for dead, all by unidentifiable monsters, or of uncles or teachers etc, taking advantage of young children in private and threatening them to keep it a secret. However, from the way she put her point across, I got the distinct impression that the encounters she was describing were quite “civilized”, a far cry from the way I have always imagined rape. Both parties appear to get a chance to talk things over beforehand, and there also appears to be quite a bit of flexibility on the part of the ‘rapists’. It fells quite strange to be using the words rape and negotiate in the same phrase, but the more I think about it, the more sense it seems to make. I’m also not sure if other people, or relevant organizations are seeing things in the same way as this young lady, but I hope that they are paying attention and at the very least feel prompted to further investigate the matter. After all what is the real meaning of rape anyway?
Maybe we should begin by exploring the meaning of the word ‘rape’ and the issue of consent. According to Wikipedia rape can be defined as the act of having sexual intercourse with a person without their consent. It can be carried out with the threat or use of physical force, duress (coercion), abuse of authority (e.g. sexual harassment) or with a person that is incapable of giving valid consent (a minor).
So, given this definition of rape, can we say that these lecturers are rapists, or is this sexual harassment? The problems with concluding whether, the incidents in our nation’s universities can be classified as rape, or just sex, lie within the issues of consent and duress, and how the latter usually affects the former. I mean, how does one prove that they have or have not given their consent, in a situation where they have been given no other choice but to consent? It seems to me that the line between rape and sex within this context is becoming even more blurry. Even though the women I speak of are not treated brutally/monstrously as we most times imagine is the case when we think of how rape occurs, are they still not, in essence, being raped?
In some way, I feel that most of us, (male and female), have gotten into a comfort zone about how we now define rape. This has to change! We must update our thinking so that our ideas on how to solve these problems can continue to be current and relevant to the situation on the ground. I’m also not sure if other people, or relevant organizations agree with the concept of negotiated rape, but I hope that you are paying attention, and at the very least, feel prompted to further investigate the matter.