Since justice has no "teeth" we'll make condoms that do...

"The ideal situation would be for a woman to wear this when she's going out on some kind of blind date ... or to an area she's not comfortable with," she said.The mother of two daughters said she visited prisons and talked to convicted rapists to find out whether such a device would have made them rethink their actions.

Some said it would have, Ehlers said.

"Yes, my device may be a medieval, but it's for a medieval deed that has been around for decades," she said. "I believe something's got to be done ... and this will make some men rethink before they assault a woman."

This is from CNN, talking to South African Dr. Sonnet Ehlers. (thanks for the tip Casey) Read the whole article here.

How to get girls at Makerere (warning: this blog includes adult subject matter)

The dinner conversation in a house where people work on issues like rape, commercial sex work and child-trafficking can sometimes be heavy. We used to have a rule based on the occupations of those around the table at the time: no rape, torture or hostage crises after 9pm. We've since moved but still have similarly macabre vocations and now we have a clever 2-year-old at the dining room table with us, so we tend to reserve the rated R topics for after bedtime.

So the last couple of weeks a topic has come up later in the evening that we've had limited information about and then in a moment of genius (read: libation induced inhibition) we decide to randomly poll our friends. This is where "D" dialing meets research. (D stands for dinner dialing, obviously--why? what were you thinking?)

Research topic #1
At a little dinner party, someone was commenting on how depressed I must get hearing so many tragic stories of sexual violence. I brought up something that gives me hope--how much things have changed between what some of my Ugandan male friends grew up with and the way they treat women now. On particularly bad days I try to have lunch with friends that remind me that there are good Acholi men. I told the table about a conversation I'd had with one of them who recounted how his uncles began their marriages, basically, by getting together with their brothers and abducting the girl they fancied when she was on her way to the market or to the well. I asked what he thinks contributed to him having such a drastically different approach to wooing women. "Education," he said. But as we got into it, we realized he meant social education, not actually what he learned in a classroom. "That's not how you get girls at Makerere University," he said. At this point in the conversation, someone, I can't remember who, asked, "how do you get girls at Makerere?" and thus started the poll. Our Ugandan friends all answered with perhaps a brief laugh, and then a tone that was extremely matter-of-fact-- like they had a list of answers that were read- to-hand.

What we discovered:

"There are 2 ways to get girls at Makerere:"
1) Help her with her homework, papers or exams. (if you do poorly, that's too bad for her, but "you will have already gotten what you wanted")
2) Buy her a pizza. ("You'll need a little bit of money. Taker her out for a meal and buy her something she might not normally get for herself like a drink and a pizza. Then she's all yours.")

Then we thought, how different is this from "our" context? (the table included Americans, and an Irishman) So we called our brothers.

What we discovered:
1) Get her drunk. (put more or less delicately depending on the brother)
2) Buy her a nice meal.
3) Impress her with your dance moves. (this may work better if you're a professional dancer)

Actually, wooing University girls doesn't seem all that different, the world over. Impress her. Buy her a meal. Alcohol helps. (I know, sweeping generalizations, but don't forget it's based off of hard evidence and research) We did comment that none of the women at the table were "gotten" in quite this manner, but that might be beside the point. And the point is: pizza is a better way to get a girl than abduction. It's a sign of social progress.

Research topic #2
Ben recently did a consulting gig where he was developing a curriculum that will be used with commercial sex workers. Sometimes it was a challenge to marry the realities of life in Uganda and the philosophies of some of his Dutch advisory group (the Netherlands is known for a very particular view on commercial sex work--think Amsterdam). One example that we discussed over dinner: they (the dutch people) thought the section on sexual and reproductive health needed to include a demonstration of how to put a condom on a man with one's mouth. Hmm. OK, that could be true. Maybe, if that skill leads to more regular use of protection it could be justified. But is that true? Research with commercial sex workers suggests that sexual intercourse is most common, and they rarely perform other sexual acts. So, how relevant is this in this context? Was there any evidence to suggest that a client that is refusing to wear protection would acquiesce if offered an alternative way of putting it on? Thus started the poll.

What we discovered:

1) Yes, Ugandan women do sometimes put condoms on their partners with their mouths.
2) No, if a man is decided he doesn't want to wear one, an offer to spice up how it gets on wouldn't change his mind.


This over speaker phone at the Chinese food restaurant in Gulu. (We don't know how universal this is, because we already used up too much phone credit on international calls in the last poll.) It was actually kind of a depressing topic, but the absurdity of our inquiry brought some light-heartedness to it. Sometimes you have to allow yourself to be entertained by what is actually evidence of our broken state as humanity. Sometimes you just have to laugh, or else you might cry.

Sex is a mental thing

by Holly
It was a hard day. For vicarious reasons. I have little claim to feel sad, angry and betrayed. I’m trespassing on someone elses pain and I have no right to take it home with me. But I do and I can’t help it. I always come home to a violence-free house and a partner that loves me madly. I never, ever worry what he might do to me tonight.

No one I talked to today* could say the same. I've decided I need several hours in the presence of really wonderful men to each hour of hearing about rape. Thankfully, there are amazing men in my daily life—Ben—and many excellent Ugandan colleagues and friends that help me balance out my over-exposure to the wake of other men’s depravity.

A couple of days ago I went to a meeting with some agencies working on Gender Based Violence. Suddenly, I was taken back to Lira, 2005. It’s funny how little “coordination” meetings change in 5 years. But that’s beside the point. (the point, is still to be determined—perhaps it’s just the catharisis that comes after sharing things too heavy to carry alone) Sitting there, I kept thinking of how many women have no idea these NGOs exist or what services they could provide them. I’ve been asking women who they would go to for help if something happened to them. They typically say something like, “Well, I hear that there is a group in town called ‘Human Rights’ but I don’t really know what they do.” Several different NGOs have hotlines—one for counselling, another for legal advice, etc. I suggested they make a joint card with all of the available hotlines—written in Acholi and distribute it as widely as possible. I’d like to have such a card to leave with some of the women I talk to.

It might do a little good. I recalled one of the women. She’s not going to report her husband to the police or seek legal advice. She just wants him to stop. She wants to talk to someone without them making her feel more ashamed than she already does. “If I tell anyone,” she lamented,” they’ll just ask me why I got married if I don’t want to have sex. They’ll say it’s my duty to satisfy him.” She wants someone to tell her it’s not her fault. She wants someone who can commiserate. “My sister,” she touched my arm and shook her head, “when he comes home so drunk and violent and with the smell of alcohol, how am I supposed to begin?”

A card with phone numbers isn’t going to help her. She can’t read. She doesn’t have a phone.

And then I remembered (the gist of) a provocative question my supervisor asked me. (I think/hope he was going for a reaction and not reflecting his opinion.) If marital rape is a normalized experience, does it do more damage than good to problematize it? Maybe, if women don’t perceive being violently forced to have sex as wrong they are less traumatized by it’s occurrence, accepting it as a normal part of interaction with husands.

Preposterous. (this is my obligatory more refined substitute for what I really think: b*** sh**. My mom always said that using vulgar language was a sign of a poor vocabulary—but honestly, once in awhile profanity is simply most apt.)

Every woman I’ve talked to that shared her experience of being raped by her partner experienced it as something wrong. They KNOW it’s not right. To suggest otherwise is demeaning. “What I know,” one of them told me after sharing the violent forced conception of her first child, “is that making love is supposed to be an agreement between a man and a woman.” Living in a village in Africa, makes this no less true than anywhere else. Another woman told me how she has never talked to anyone about it except for her husband. “I tell him, ‘What you’re doing is bad! This is the wrong way to treat your wife! Strangers do this to strangers but you should be ashamed to do it in your own house!”

Say what you want about cultural relativity. Acholi women like foreplay just as much as the next woman. Whether you sleep on a papyrus mat on a dirt floor or a pillow-top king-size mattress, women want the person lying next to them to respect their yes and their no. Perhaps to persuade them—but never to force them. Most of them are angry that they live in an environment where people around them identify ways they are to blame and make excuses for the man’s behavior. One of my personal fravorites: “well, maybe he is just trying to save them both from HIV” –implying that the only alternative to benevolently forcing one’s wife to have sex is to have sex with someone else.

A couple of months ago I had a chat with the Resident District Commissioner for Gulu. A male colleague came along and made a comment I might’ve been tempted to slap him for if I weren’t a pacifist (to be fair, I’ve seen how well he treats his wife and he’s a good guy)—something about how marital rape was a difficult issue because men have “greater sexual appetitites than women.” I bit my tongue. And sat on my hands.

Ochora, (the RDC) leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling thoughtfully before he delivered his verdict. His gigantic belly protruding onto his desk when he leaned forward. “Sex,” he pronounced, “is a mental thing. It is mentally driven. If the wife says she is not in the mood then men should be able to understand.”

(*For confidentiality purposes, I did not post this on the day I wrote it.)