Rape & Bloodied Petals: End the Feminization of Violence

*By Akadu N. Mensema Ph. D.; Post-Grad. Dipl.

“Kumasi, Jan. 11, GNA - A Kumasi Circuit Court has sentenced an 18-year-old


footballer to 240 months imprisonment in hard labor for defiling a 13-year-old


Junior High School (JHS) student” (Ghanaweb Jan 11, 2010).








“Cape Coast, Jan. 12, GNA - Three persons, an adult and two juveniles, who


allegedly gang-raped a 14 year old girl, were on Tuesday put before a circuit


court in Cape Coast on charges of defilement” (Ghanaweb Jan 12, 2010).








I. BROKEN PETALS


Female child


Blooming petal on a branch of life


Vulnerable petal


Innocent, trusting


Our daughters, sisters, mothers

A blooming petal


Female child


Yet to see the sun


Violently plucked, trampled


Before sunrise


Suffocated under the cult of patriarchy


With magisterial freights of the phallus


Torrential storms of phallus violence


Razor-sharp deflowering


Petals bloodied


Battered


Bruised


Bleeding, oozing


Weeping, mourning innocence stolen


Damaged by the hurricanes of patriarchy


And set on lonely psychosomatic flights


Along passages of depression, suicide

Petals


Future flowers


That would blossom into national trees


Ruined


Stunted


And yet we sit idle


As our petals fall before sunrise


And wither before sunset





II. CLASSLESS RAPIST SOCIETY


Always the brutish beastly rapists


Are framed, seen


As farmers


Drivers’ mate


The mason, carpenter


The unemployed, bumbling males


Marginalized males in society

But silenced rape victims


Have different biographies of rapists


Of violent powerful males


Lawyers, ministers


Priests/pastors, head/teachers


Respectable fathers, uncles, brothers


The big men, the rich and powerful


Worst


Than the stereotypical marginalized males


Conventional ghettoized male rapists





III. PROTECTING PETALS OF YOUTH


We all need cultural re/education


On rights, freedoms


On sacredness of sex


About the sanctity of the body, soul


Gender rights, female empowerment

So let us empower mothers


So let us empower daughters, sisters


So that they can humanize sons


To end the feminization of violence


Ghanaians let us get conscientized


And bury patriarchy


That cultivates phallus rights


Over our blooming petals





*Akadu Ntiriwa Mensema is a nationalist Denkyira beauty. She is a trained


oral historian cum sociologist and Professor in the USA. She lives in


Pennsylvania with her great mentor and teaches Africa-area studies at a


college in Maryland. In her pastime, she writes what critics have called


“populist hyperbolic, satirical” poetry. She can be reached at


akadumensema@yahoo.com