Of Female Body, Sexual Assault And The Dilemma Of Convoluted Ethics

Henry Chigozie Duru

Within the context of our sexual ethics, the female body becomes a curious point of reference, a problematic spot that has left us with a sexual ethics that is in some aspects convoluted and ambiguous, if not illogical. The female body has been an ever ubiquitous presence in the realm of sexual expression in our society. It is copiously featured in pornographic impressions, whether of print, film or audio kind. It is ubiquitously on display in the arena of erotic dance as found in parties, night clubs and similar occasions. It is amply exhibited in advertising – many a time in a sexually appealing manner. It is from time to time set on the stage of beauty pageantry where it is almost unfailingly sexually glamourised. The female body has for ages been showcased in fashion by way of wears and allied paraphernalia, many times in ways that are sexually appealing. It is a regular presence in music videos, many times to add a lascivious spice. All this sums up to one thing: the female body has been freely sexualised in our society to the extent that it has become firmly bound up with sexual aesthetics. Thus, sexiness looms large among the elements that make up feminine beauty. Many women would feel complimented when told that they look “sexy” and would feel slighted if the opposite is suggested. This situation has a serious implication for sexual ethics, especially in the context of what is generally known as sexual assault.

A Huge Contradiction
The way the female body is freely exploited for sexual aesthetics throws up a contradiction when placed side by side with our society’s vigorous sexual protectiveness for this same body. Across cultures, there is some guard built around the female body seemingly to protect it from intrusion. The female body is not to be freely seen or otherwise accessed. More extreme cases existed in some ancient cultures such as found in the Arabic Peninsula where women were veiled by way of wearing of hijab. This culture found its way into the religion of Islam where veiling becomes a fundamental element of feminine virtue (Holy Quran 24:30; 33:59). Further, a Moslem woman may dispense with hijab and go for full body veiling by way of niqab or burqa. Traditionally, Moslem women are not expected to do as much as shake hands with a man. To lesser degrees, many other cultures also demand that the female body be very adequately covered and guarded. Public lavatories are arranged in such a way that “ladies” is less openly positioned than “gents”; the former is farther removed from public eyes to guarantee greater covering for the female body. Similar positioning arrangement is found with male and female hostels in many schools. Some schools forbid male students from going to female hostels while the opposite is not the rule. All this is aimed at shielding the female body from easy exposure.

Juxtapose all this with the free display and sexual glamourisation of the female body in pornography, in erotic dance, in sexually appealing advertisements, and in fashion that projects the body sexually, the contradiction becomes very glaring. What then is the issue about the female body? Why should this body command such diametrically opposite treatments? Why should it be freely exposed and flaunted in one instance and scrupulously veiled and guarded in another? Why should it be made a free object of play and pleasure this moment, and the next moment, a subject of reverence? Why the moral ambivalence? Why the seeming cultural confusion?

We shall try to answer these questions by turning to our marital culture which, as it is today, is woven around the headship of the man. It is a patriarchal institution as it places the man (husband) as the superior partner with corresponding powers, rights and privileges vis-à-vis the woman (wife).

The Patriarchal Matrimony Solves the Puzzle
Like other social institutions, marriage has come through stages of evolution. American evolutionary anthropologist, Lewis Morgan, who did a seminal work on this, was able to put together a compelling set of evidence to show how humans have over centuries experimented with different forms of matrimonial and sexual relationships. Generally, anthropological data show that the earliest form of marriage was group marriage where several men and women – usually cousins – were all married to each other at the same time. There were inter-sexual relations among them without boundaries. The polygamous and ultimately monogamous forms of marriage eventually succeeded group marriage. This made possible the emergence of patriarchal marriage wherein the man literarily owned the woman. It is generally agreed that this evolution had been occasioned by a combination of social forces. In The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, German thinker Friedrich Engels, building on the data of Morgan, argues that the shift from communal property and communal economic production to private property and private economic production brought about a corresponding shift from group marriage to personal marriage where a person must exclusively possess their partner(s) and children (as against the co-possession of group marriage). These partner(s) and children became the private workforce of the head of the family – the man of course – with whom he created his private wealth in his farm. This is why in ancient societies (including the precolonial Nigeria), marrying several wives and bearing many children was an economic advantage for a man. Engels argued that the man had to be the head in the ensuing family/economic order because economic production then was still based entirely on manual labour where men, given their biological features, naturally emerged the protagonist. This marked the beginning of men’s preeminence over women in society, and here lies the philosophical basis of the Marxist feminism.

Whether one is satisfied with the above Marxist account or not, the indisputable point is that the polygamous and monogamous forms of marriage introduced possessiveness and exclusiveness into the logic of matrimony. Unlike in group marriage where there was co-mating among co-marrying individuals, sexual boundaries have been drawn. However, patriarchal logic has ensured that while the man is the possessor, the woman remains the possessed. Thus, among many older cultures, women were like property of men. This was so much pronounced among ancient Semitic peoples, including the Jews, so much so that women were not included in headcounts. In African societies, the number of wives one was able to marry, just like the amount of his material possessions, was a mark of social success. In Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo’s unsuccessful father, Nnoruka’s monogamy contrasted with the polygamy of his highly successful son. Also, in Arrow of God, the richest man in Umuaro, Nwaka, had the distinction of marrying five wives; a symbol of success that caught the admiration of all as seen in “the big stir they (the wives) caused” when they marched into the arena during a special festival of Ulu the community deity.

In the older and cruder stage of patriarchy, the woman, once married, lived completely at the pleasure of the man. Her body was uncompromisingly reserved for his pleasure. She must preserve it for the man by avoiding extramarital sex. Ironically, the man was not obliged to do same, as he was granted the liberty of sexual intercourse with as many women as he might want – typically wives and concubines, and even slave girls of his wives as seen among the ancient Semites and Romans. In many ancient cultures, adultery was seen more as an offence against a husband; a man could not commit such offence against the wife, so a man could not be guilty of adultery. Even though both the Bible (Leviticus 20:10) and the Koran (Surah 24:2) respectively prescribe death and 100 lashes for adulterers, male or female, the procedure of enforcement is clearly biased against women. Under the Jewish Torah, a man’s mere suspicion of his wife of adultery calls for a trial by ordeal to prove her innocence (Numbers 5:11 – 31) whereas no provision is made for a reverse situation. This practice, known as Ordeal of Jealousy, existed not just with the Jews, but also among other cultures of the ancient Near East, and was clearly geared towards protecting the man’s interest in the female body within the normative framework of the patriarchal matrimony. This one-sided sexual morality ensured that women were not to be jealous, only men were. The fact that sexual jealousy is socially constructed becomes clear here as the prevailing sexual norms gave no room for a woman’s claim of exclusiveness of sexual partner, thus checking the development of a jealous disposition in her. This ancient normative state, well institutionalised in African traditional societies, was amply expressed in Flora Nwapa’s Efuru where it is stated that “it is only a bad woman who wants to have a man all to herself.”

The culture of harem – where women of a wealthy man were kept literally in protective custody – further underscores how much the female body had been appropriated by the man for his exclusive pleasure. A harem was kept apart and secluded from other parts of a compound while the women there were guarded by eunuchs who, through castration, had been rendered incapable of sexual trespass. (This ancient practice of seclusion remerges, albeit more subtly, in the modern practice of positioning of female lavatories, dormitories and other private domains farther away from the public view vis-à-vis the men’s).

The foregoing exposition shows that women, from time past, have always been made to conduct themselves in such a way as to suit the patriarchal expectations of an “ideal woman”. And the ultimate realization of this ideal woman is under the matrimonial roof wherein the woman’s subjection to the man becomes complete. Thus, unto this day, a woman must guard her sexual purity in order to become marriageable – a “wife material” as colloquially said in our part of the world. This explains the prime place given to virginity in matrimonial consideration. In some older cultures, a woman must prove her virginity via an initial sexual intercourse with the suitor which forms part of the marriage formalities. In the event of her failing the virginity test, the marriage would be called off. The Jews upheld this practice as a matter of religious laws (Deuteronomy 24:1). In the modern time, this culture is symbolically reenacted through wedding gown – its white colour signifies sexual purity (virginity) while the veil covering the woman’s face presents her as a brand new parcel to be opened by the expectant receiver (the groom) through the ritual lifting of the veil.

Thus, within the logic of the patriarchal matrimony, the woman is not the owner of her body, she does not protect her purity for herself but for society and her husband, whether already found or still hoped for. This practice is still as valid today as it was in the past. So when our sexual ethics forbids men from exploiting female bodies whether by contact, look or in any other way, they are merely being restrained from trespassing in the “property” of another. It is not the woman that is being protected, but the values of the patriarchal matrimony which demand that the woman remains “pure” and “undefiled” for her husband, whether of now or future. In other words, they are being preserved to be suitable to be married – to be a “marriage material”. So when women are required to cover their body more than men may be required (like seen with some religions), when their lavatories are more “hidden” from public view, and when their body is more guarded against other forms of intrusion, it is the rights and privileges of men being protected and not the autonomy of the woman. Stated differently, these rules are mere reenactment of harem, but in a more refined manner.

In a nutshell, therefore, patriarchy sees the female body as being there for the pleasure of the man, but at the same time it sees the need for exclusive appropriation, such that no man shall trespass in what does not belong to him. Hence, the irony of a sexual ethics that, on one hand, glamourizes women’s body as an object of men’s sexual gratifications, and on the other hand, positions it as a forbidden territory to venture into. Stated differently, here lies the paradox of the fate of the female body whereby it is openly displayed for male sexual pleasure and enticement in fashion, in pornography, in advertisement, on dance stage etc, while at the same time it is revered and meticulously shielded from looks and contacts.

A Sexual Ethics That Vicitmises Everyone
The foregoing contradictory positioning of the female body has inevitably birthed a contradictory sexual ethics that victimises both men and women. This ethics is predicated on the ancient myth of sexual inequality of men and women, on a belief that women ought to lack the freedom of choice outside the rules decreed by the patriarchal society and its matrimonial institution. Thus, there is stigmatisation of the woman as sexually fragile, easily defiled and degraded by even the most disinterested of sexual involvements. She is presented as being the victim, the loser in any sexual contact. Women “give” sex to men while men “have” sex with women; they give their body to men, while men “have” the body – they are the used. They are made to be sexual victims as against sexual protagonists. They are objects as against subjects of sexual relations. A man may feel “man enough” for being able to have sex while a woman feels “used” in sex. Thus, virginity, as a cultural and lingual phenomenon, is entirely of feminine character – only a woman can lose virginity, a man is culturally protected from such defilement.

So fragile has our sexual ethics rendered women that the slightest (even unintended) of contacts or even look from the opposite sex are easily found sexually offending by them. In other words, in their relationship with the opposite sex, they feel easily invaded, offended and degraded. Our sexual ethics and laws create and reinforce this disposition in women. Even touching materials that are not part of the natural female body – such as wigs and weavons worn by a woman – may amount to sexual harassment under the law! The same obtains with hissing or even winking at a woman! Our sexual ethics reflects patriarchy’s quest to put women in their “proper” place of sexual passivity. It alienates them from their sexual self. They are expected not to be their true self, to live in sexual denial; in fact, in the words of writer Chimamanda Adichie, to “turn pretense into an art form.”

On the other hand, men are not spared of the pains of our convoluted sexual ethics by the way they are being demonised by sexual laws and morals. Our sexual laws have been largely one-sidedly constructed. Legislations and morals on sexual autonomy largely have feminine bias – women are the group largely targeted for protection while men are the predators to be tamed. Rape is constructed in the laws of most nations as involving only penetration of a woman. (It is only recently that the Nigeria’s Violence Against Persons Act widened the construction of “penetration” to include oral and anal which thus accommodated men as possible rape victims).

Our sexual ethics makes it legitimate for the female body – via entertainment, fashion and popular culture in general – to be flaunted before the eyes of men, but who, at the same time, are forbidden from contact or even look, nay they have to negotiate through very difficult, tricky and intricately convoluted terrains to avoid crossing boundaries. They are daily harassed on magazine covers, films, dance, advert billboards and even on roads by female bodies dressed to sexually allure (or harass?). Yet, they are expected to pretend not to be so harassed as our sexual ethics and laws do not recognize these as sexual harassments. While there are many men who may take pleasure in these erotic displays of the female body, there are also many who, for religious or ethical reasons, would find them objectionable and repulsive. Yet, our sexual ethics and laws do not protect their rights. On the contrary, our sexual ethics does not recognise men’s right to so sexually flaunt their body before women, as that would easily be termed sexual harassment. In fact, the way sexual harassment has been constructed across cultures infuses it with a huge feminine bias such that practically only women can be victims of harassment while men are seen as the dangerous unrepentant culprits to be tamed.

Time for a New Sexual Ethics?
In view of the foregoing discourse, suggesting that we require a new sexual ethics will amount to stating the obvious. In his popular work, Our Sexual Ethics, 20th century English philosopher, Bertrand Russell, called for new moral principles around human sexuality. He observed that our sexual ethics is, in many respects, rooted in ancient taboos as against rational considerations. I find this view absolutely valid, and it must be emphasized that nothing meaningful has changed more than 80 years since Russell wrote. Given the extent humanity has advanced in knowledge and civilisation, it is only natural that our sexual ethics ought to have evolved from its atavistic form to a more refined form founded on real knowledge as against myths, on evidence as against superstitions, and on rational reflections as against taboos. Here the pool of knowledge on human sexuality which we have accumulated from biology, sexology, anthropology, history, sociology, psychology, philosophy and other relevant disciplines will be our invaluable guide. This is our only way of breaking with the present uneasy reality where we are struggling to make sense of and live with a sexual ethics that is internally contradictory and antithetical to justice.

Henry Chigozie Duru, PhD, teaches journalism and mass communication at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria.