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A Reaction to Aziz Ansari

“I believe Aziz and ‘Grace’ are a product of a society and a culture that places consent in the realm of strictly ‘No’ means no, without a lot of focus on ‘Yes’ or silence not necessarily meaning consent. This same culture (whether partly rooted in patriarchy or evolutionary biology) pushes for men to mostly take the initiative in establishing communication and taking the lead in heterosexual interactions,while also defining seduction as a dynamic process.

With that being said, I am conflicted on absolutely placing the blame on Aziz regarding reading the non-verbal cues in that interaction. At some point she expresses that the speed at which things progressed initially made her unable to properly organise and articulate her thoughts to him. Following this, she performed oral sex on him at his request and then expressed her disinterest in having sex with him afterwards, to which he seemed to agree. Then she added, ‘Next time’. We live in a society where we police verbal communication and this is another reason I’m conflicted about this.

Fast forward to the point where they were around the couch and he requested she perform oral sex on him to which she agreed. I believe she felt some pressure- possibly stemming from her feeling bad about saying no partly because she went to his apartment, her inability to reconcile what she truly wanted, who she thought he was and what she was experiencing, and also possibly being too star struck to disagree. All of those reasons make me sympathize with her. However, I do not want to blame Aziz for not understanding this pressure due to the context involving romance.

I do believe there was some inappropriate behavior displayed by Aziz in continuously persuading her to have sex after she expressed her disinterest in that.

To wrap this up, I think the main issue here is ‘Yes’ and silence not necessarily meaning consent and an indication for us to keep dialoguing what consent truly means in sexual interactions.”

 

– C. Ilozue

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Ten Things I Know About Rape and/or Sexual Assault that You Should Too

In light of recent events, I’m taking a temporary hiatus from love, from pain, from human feeling, really. Instead I’ll talk about an act so heinous, it doesn’t really rate on the human spectrum – rape/sexual assault. It’s funny because I see animals and their sexual interactions and, even when I was much younger, I had a problem with how I could not tell if the female animals were really showing consent, really enjoying the acts as they stood complacently and were pounded from behind. Docile, pliant, but not quite passionate; just furthering their species. But humans aren’t that way, are we? We hardly engage in sexual acts to “be fruitful and multiply”. We express passion, hate, excitement, happiness, pleasure and love through that medium. 

Now, I spend a lot of time with love. I am trying to make a whole blog about it, for Gods sake. I am not an expert on it but I do know a bit about it. Not so with rape, not at all. I barely know anything about it since it consists of so many different experiences and the hurt and angst of so many different individuals with different reactions that I do not know. But here I am still writing a blog post about it (and here you are still reading). Well we’ve generalized about all I do not know about rape/sexual assault. Below is what I DO know about rape. 

Ten things I know about rape and/or sexual assault that you should too:
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– Victim blaming is NOT okay. Blaming is used lightly here to describe victim doubting, victim indifference, victim shunning, victim hostile analysis, victim anything really. You know why? Because the only thing that should be directed towards them is love and support. And some more support.

Oldest trick in the book I just employed, eh? But as with all other cliches, still bloody effective. I could have talked about how rape is a heinous act that gets committed every day (RAINN actually reports one sexual assault in America every 107 seconds. If you don’t know what RAINN is, please educate yourself) yet there is NOT ONE self acknowledging rapist out there (yes,yes, I know about that disturbed psychopath who actually admitted to it). 

I could have talked about how 4/5 rapists are people we know and 47 percent are actual friends or acquaintances (this one needs a bit more spreading around in certain countries. Mine, for instance) and so we shouldn’t be so quick to discount the more “unbelievable” strikes of sexual assault i.e. Fathers, stepfathers, brothers, uncles, cousins, husbands, neighbors, grandfathers etc. 

I could have talked about how empathy and support shouldn’t be given more readily solely to those we know simply because we can speak to their character, but also to those we do not. Because while on the other hand, there are obviously those out there that we do not know that can speak to their characters (weak justification), until the rapist is proven completely innocent (approximately 1 in 400 cases btw), it is NEVER the victim’s character that should be in question.

I could talk about how the justice system does not make it the easiest for victims even in this century to report this revolting act, no matter how advanced the country in which it is committed.

I could talk about how acts of rape and sexual assault require the silence of the victim for the perpetrator to keep on committing these acts and he will go to any lengths to achieve this aim. Is it then a shock that emotional, physical and psychological abuse are usually the weapons of choice employed to attain this objective? How far fetched does it seem now that most victims do not report these crimes? (Yes, there are definitely also cases that aren’t reported for fear of shame, ostracizing, and all things that could be reasons for all situations. But you get what I mean).

I could have talked about how rape/sexual assault has nothing to do with what a woman is wearing, how much she has drunk, the recreational drugs she chooses to take, the jobs she chooses to do, the company she chooses to keep, the words she chooses to use, the people she chooses to love or the way she chooses to act. You know why? Because 10 times out of 10, a woman will never CHOOSE rape. And that is the only choice that matters.

I could have talked about how while rape/sexual assault isn’t exclusive to women, (yes, kids and men also get affected) they are highest sufferers. And while men should also be protected, kids even more vigorously so, this movement has more than enough space for everybody. Much like all the movements out there about social justice with opposers – #alllivesmatter #notallmen – the opposition noise is unnecessary. If we all supported the movement at hand at each moment with the importance it deserved without detraction, the hashtags I just used would not be necessary. It would be clear to all that all lives matter and it wasn’t all men. The point is each movement should get its due as presented – independently and with complete attention. 

I could have talked about how social justice should be championed by all – passively or actively. Because humanity – as social beings- require justice. You cannot hope to be human and not be concerned with the concept of it. It is not a choice we should consider that we have, like our opinions on religion or politics. It is a right we should exercise. If one chooses not to be active in their bid for justice, one can still passively participate by providing support to its victims. This does NOT include keeping silent. To stand silent is to provide consent. (I think I paraphrased two different quotes here but you get my point).

I could have talked about how rape/sexual assault has affected at least one person you know well. No, really it has. 

I could have spoken about how this issue is important to me because I, like the countless others that came before, after, and beside me, have suffered from it myself. I, like countless others, have suffered psychologically and emotionally for years afterwards. It does not make me any less of a human, I do not live any less in my own truth and I certainly did not deserve any of it. But it happened anyway. 

I know I know, I pulled another cliche and gave you 10 reasons anyway. Funny how that still works, huh?

Some of you will, upon reaching the end of this list, scoff at how logical and common place these things were. I’m glad you read it anyway and I hope we are friends in real life. 

Some of you will not agree, think some of these statements are largely assuming on my part or that I have no right to challenge your way of thought. But I would argue that I do. We grow when we are challenged.

Love is still the answer though, it always is.

Journaling
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Change II

And so it hit me – full in the face. Bam! A truth I’ve been locking so far away and so deeply that it hit me with the juggernaut momentum of its escape. And all it took was a tweet to know it. I had to see someone say it before it made perfect sense to me.

“Loving someone and watching them move on with no stress is both what you wanted and your worst nightmare”.

Yes. It is what I wanted. It’s what I wanted terribly. But why did I have to read someone else come to the very poignant conclusion to understand this? Because I think I had been living out the nightmare part of it the whole time… But I’m free now, you see. I have to be. You can’t want what’s best for someone with fervour and live in your nightmare. No, you will then live in your release. In your truth and in that love. The object of the affection might be dead and gone, for all intents and purposes, but the love will last. That’s the beauty of it. Once love has been created, it does not go anywhere. It might exist in a vacuum if necessary (in those times, we are deluded that the love is gone because there is no object on which to impress it), but it really is an imperishable thing. Love is an imperishable act and once fostered, you cannot possibly exist in love and in a nightmare. The two are mutually exclusive. Instead, you can be like, “I was, till two moments ago, in a nightmare of my own carelessness THEN in love”.

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Change

People say that people don’t change, which of course, is preposterous. I will admit that getting there is a series of missteps, false starts, false middles and shaky continuums. But if a person does something to surprise you one day – just once – there is change in that. The absolute beauty of the the thing is when they never repeat it. Because from time to time we have to remind ourselves that we are human and that change is a process we haven’t quite wrapped our heads round yet. I have spent the better part of two years trying to change three things in my life. I am now so changed from the person I was back then , I am only now slowly trying to come to terms with it. But would you believe it? None of the things I focused on changing have moved even a little bit in any direction…

It’s the focus on these three though that did the other things, I think.

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Trust I

*The word should is used indiscriminately in the snippet below.*

It’s been said that you should be able to trust the people that mean something to you. The operative word being “should”, ha. We are not obligated to trust. Yes, we are born trusting but quickly learn or are forcefully taught… for lack of a better word – Better. No, we don’t have to trust the ones we love fully. I don’t think there should be a love that is totally immersed in trust. But yes, by virtue of loving, we should trust to some capacity. Never all the way. And we SHOULD – please remember that the operative word is always should – be able to completely immerse ourselves in that if we chose. That should be the standard of those we keep close to us anyway. Yet, it would be foolhardy to use all that utopia (for indeed fully trusting is a utopia) all in one place. But wouldn’t it be great if there was a thought, a slim chance that we could?

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M.I.S.S.Y.(ou)

One blow… One pronounced skip of the calming rhythm of my heart’s steady pace. That was my initial reaction to the news. One blow that plunged me first into shock then into hyper reaction then into the stark flow of silent tears then back into shock. One blow was the only punctuation I felt in the next 20 minutes of an unending sentence that I endured before I felt myself truly breathing again. Just that one blow. Only one…

Missy came into my life when I was 10/11. The years are blurry at this point. But I remember that she came when the office was still on Awolowo road, super close to Munchies. Super close to Bacchus as well (but I wasn’t aware of the latter till much later in my adolescence). And her name was as spontaneous and attitude driven as the person she was named after at a whim – Missy Elliott.

She was the perfect character from day one. And with the trepidation of the young who love all furry four- legged friends but who are also smart enough to have a certain regard for  life and self preservation, I played with her coyly at first; quickly nervous if she got irritated or overly excited with me. Eventually, and not after very long, I decided I loved her. Like you know the kind of love you have for something or someone that never fully leaves your thoughts? That importance of their wellbeing? That happiness in the reunion? I loved her.

It has always been clear how incredibly blessed I was to know Missy. How blessed I still am to have known her. It’s not common in Nigeria to have dogs as pets. This is not to say that people do not have dogs or that people have a shortage of love for these adorably loyal creatures. But what tends to happen is that a lot of people who love dogs in Nigeria do not have the means or the motivations to own dogs, and those who do tend to own them as guard dogs. It would seem of little consequence – these shifts in role title- but the only people with enough patience or time to love these guard dogs are usually those responsible for putting food and water in theirs kennels and releasing them at night. These people are also not usually their owners and more often than not, give abuse instead of love. But I, to my greatest advantage, grew up around dogs who were genuinely loved for their quirks and definitely not treated like “animals”. I was blessed in this way and was blessed to experience the best of Missy in this vein.

As an aside, I will say that the expression “being treated like animals” never sat well with me. Animals should be treated kindly and lovingly across the board, with pretty much the same courtesy we would give to complete strangers at the very least. Even in cases where we eat animals, their method of execution should be merciful and their grooming for this execution, humane. In other words, in an ideal world, that expression wouldn’t mean the things it does now. But back to Missy…

This post was really to acknowledge the life of an amazing dog. A dog that acted a good deal like a cat. One that added a lot of laughter and attitude to my life; a dog who had such emotion that sometimes I swear she could talk. And I think that single immense blow, the one that stopped everything for one second was my heart’s way of affirming what I already knew: that she will be missed tremendously.

RIP Missy

2003-2015

 

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Pandora’s love

I spoke with one of my best friends yesterday about love. I don’t even recall how we arrived at the topic, but I do remember the discussion with the sort of kickstarting clarity that engages all your senses when you revisit the memory. You know… like the way I remember eating paella in a little dungeon of a place in Barcelona. But more than that, I recall the smell of that restaurant and the unconfined laughter bursting out from the kitchens and the way the tablecloths looked and the happiness that I felt. I was completely engaged. But I ramble.

My dear friend – we’ll call this one E – was of the opinion that love is like a pandora’s box. It can remain shut for an age and a half but once opened, well… Her type of love struck me for a couple of reasons: First, I had never assumed love to have such a catastrophic persona and second, I was weary to agree that her pandora’s box had not been open from the beginning. Before going any further, I should clarify that love can have catastrophic consequences. But the persona of the consequences cannot pretend to be those of the love itself. And love as an act is usually far too simple to be destructive in its purest form. I got E’s broader points though – the ones that preceded her bold description of love. She would rather not open up herself to love unless the other person was absolutely ready to jump in- head first- into the complete pandora that her love could be. And I understand that. Perfectly.

It takes a great deal more than courage to declare a love you are not sure will be returned. It takes a certain fearlessness, and a blind confidence in that fearlessness that some these days label, “sense of self” to step into the void and make such a proclamation. Especially as the chances of hearing an echo back from that void these days is so slim. To be sure, courage is not fearlessness. Although, the two are very nearly interchangeable, in my opinion. Fearlessness requires a certain absence of the “wisdom” in courage. But in such a way that is applaudable. I also do not entirely recommend fearlessness. It is to a great many still interchangeable with foolishness, and only to a precious few replaceable with faith.

This year, I decided to embark on a journey of fearlessness. I jumped willingly into that particular void I feel E was referencing and I shouted out with no certainty of response. There have been many quiet moments since when I have grown tired of questioning myself and this decision, but nary a moment of regret. Because, as I told E then, the love we have in us is not for us. This is going to be a difficult concept to expand  on but I will try (forgive me in advance if I fall woefully short of doing it justice).

We are human, yes? And on this plane we consist of water- a lot of it. We have blood and bones and flesh and muscles, but mainly water. On an atomic level, we have the nuclei and mitochondria and all that other biology stuff that form cells. We can also argue that we are mostly hydrogen and oxygen if we really think about it. But on some other plane, I believe we are stuffed with love (I have expanded a bit more on this in my about section).  We eat love and breathe it. But more importantly, we work/run right because of love. Like we have this centre of mass that propels us and it is love. And we can think of it, like I do, if we try and picture it like a pulsating box or sapphire orb at our core. That love, that orb is the love that is from us. It is us. This love is not  for us. Rather, it is for us to give. We can give it to ourselves aka self-love, but in the same external manner in which we receive love from others. That love that we get from others is kept in a different place and manifested differently.

Simply, I think the love we hold in ourselves was always meant to be for others. And since love, to me, is a verb, you can’t do nothing with it like you can’t do nothing with a verb (those are called nouns, I believe). You can’t just sit on love. You have to do something with it; share it, display it, forge it, solidify it. And this was my point to E.

Love, or shouting into that void, is like giving someone a box of chocolates (mmm Lindt Lindor dark chocolate truffles). they might really like them (aka love you back) or they might not. If they like them, great! I will continue to buy you chocolates/ shower you with my love. But if they don’t like them, very much like the etiquette involved in actual gift receipt, please hold on to that information and never let it go. And at an opportune time, regift that darling box as you, I feel, have an obligation to use your love. In the end, it does not matter to me that you do not love me if the love is important enough to me and remains mine to give, which it will. So long as you do not hurt me (or to continue my lovely metaphor, throw that box of chocolates in my face).

It is funny that I say all this now – and said the same to E then- with a bit of hindsight. But I think it is also a credit to us nearly-fearless few who take that risk. I jumped into the void and there I still am. But I would rather be completely uncertain in the certainty of my own truth than hold on to the concept of an un-emptied pandora’s box.

And so to (rather comically) to rephrase one of my favourite sayings:

“Holding unto love (anger)

Is like eating chocolate (poison)

And expecting the other

Person to glow (die).”

– YD (Buddha)

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Reclaim of Pain

I once had a really good friend and, if friendships are really broken down into tiers of closeness (which they are), I might even say that we were the best of friends. But, a few months ago, there was a huge falling out. And this, I think, is where this really begins. You see, J – we’ll just call this person J- and I are no longer friends. This has had a profoundly larger impact on my being than even I thought possible. And I think, in many ways, I have allowed this. I wanted to not feel anything at the end. We are always so tempted by the ease a lack of emotion or pain offers. The lies with which we are fed that unfeeling is strength or peace. There is no strength in hiding from your pain. There is no courage in locking up our emotions. They go nowhere; they fester and putrefy. John Greene said pain demands to be felt-

So.Much.Truth.

But, my point is my pain went nowhere. It did not fizzle out with time because I had not experienced it. And if I had not experienced it, I couldn’t let it go. I woke up yesterday morning and I had a dream with a feature from J. You know you’re bottling something up when it no longer torments your consciousness, but goes even deeper. I had not let myself acknowledge my feelings in my waking, so they tormented my dreams. Yesterday I caught myself, though. Finally. I guess what I’ve been trying to say, what I’m still trying to say (and doing a poor job saying) is that I’ve been afraid- afraid of experiencing unpleasantness. Fear is a powerful compeller but I find that for me I fail too often to acknowledge that it is the root cause of many of my problems.

J and I stopped being friends and I did not cry. I did not look back. I did not let go of hope even in such a hopeless situation. I pretended that my pain and loss did not exist, then I sugarcoated my denial and called it “moving on”. I told myself that if I looked back, I was lost. But as it turns out, I am still lost now. I do not pine for what was once, but I acknowledge now that I do have to grieve for its loss. My life is no longer exactly as it was and I’ll be damned if I don’t stop and realise it. So, if I feel like going through a bag of lindor truffles to grieve, I won’t stop myself. I am the only one that can make ‘being alone’ feel ‘lonely’, and I am the only one who can reclaim my solitude.

Journaling
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For Shit’s Sake

Happy New Month!

It’s March! And my first post! I warn you that it will be nothing spectacular. The title IS a precedent, and this is my journal after all.

I have an inordinate amount of fear or apprehension about being caught with my pants down… literally. I take every precaution to ascertain that the least amount of people ever can attribute that stray fart or that relieved sigh following the tinkle (or splash) behind closed doors to me. Call it silliness or some milder form of OCD or whatever. Does it really matter as long as I am plagued with it? There’s something constantly new and exposing about excretion; about the indignity involved in producing waste matter. It’s so unglamorous. But it is out of our control. Really really. Our body is responding in those times to one of the many primal urges it still retains and that leaves me raw, exposed. Human? Lol. Some people probably don’t give a shit (seriously, no pun intended). I give one too many as far as shits (literal or metaphoric) are concerned.

I bring my vulnerability up because today, I stepped into someone else’s quite unintentionally and if I had had but a moment’s notice or warning, I mightn’t have. Not because the person in question fills their time with my petty, air headed musings or because they feel some profound insecurity (which is really what this is all about) about using the loo in public. No, this was the sort of vulnerability I surely must share with another human being or seven billion.

The million dollar question: What do you do with skid marks in someone else’s loo? It’s their loo, it’s their space. The question here isn’t about ownership, its about reaction.

Does your view of that person shift for a nanosecond or for a lifetime? Not a passing judgement, not a hygiene call, your view. The fundamental way you understand them or see them.Do they become more human, more relatable? After those first few seconds of stark revulsion, do you appreciate the humanity in being the uninvited witness of that vulnerability? Do you appreciate the true meaning of six degrees of separation behind the toilet walls?

I did.

I mean, fuck it. My irrationalities will be here tomorrow and probably after that. But for the love of God, I can find an appreciation for that human being who takes a dump and means it. We are human. We shit. We shit and then we die. That is my bible of life’s vicious cycle.

 

Journaling