SAAM

Date: Friday. 1st of April, 2022.

Happy New Month guys! And TGIF! How are you doing? For me I'm excited because I finally made 1BCH!! It feels like a dream come true but that's probably because it is actually a dream haha. Happy April fools day. I do wish to earn more BCH than I usually do even though I struggle to find time to spend here but I'll keep trying.

While today is a new month, it is also the start of #SAAM. SAAM means Sexual Assault Awareness Month. It is a month when people come together to raise awareness about the ills of sexual assault and join in the fight to stop it and ensure justice for survivors. Now, I'm going to paint a scenario using two stories.

***possible trigger warning! ⚠ ***

The first story. A man and his wife who have been married for five years with two children started having marital issues. The problem is that the man always stays out late and doesn't return to see his children before they fall asleep while the woman stopped preparing for the husband since he is barely at home. This situation leaves both parties unsatisfied and St logger heads with each other. Resentment starts building and love starts dwindling. One day, the man comes home at midnight wanting to make love to his wife who was already asleep. She turned him down and went back to sleep. The man gets frustrated because she is his wife after all and has to fulfil her marital duties no matter what do he employs the use of force to hold her down while he has his way.

The second story, a guy and a girl in the university have been dating since the last semester. The relationship was going well and all was beautiful and nice. The only thing was that the relationship was not sexual because the guy said he didn't want to take things to that level. This issue makes the girl worried and has her trying different means to intentionally seduce the guy. On his birthday, she put together a romantic setting in his home filled with candles, dim lights, slow music and a generally sensual atmosphere. She would say dirty things and sometimes "mistakenly" graze his body parts but the guy wasn't falling for her tricks. When her plans didn't work, she got pissed and yelled at him for not being a man. She explained how other men would jump at the opportunity to have a girl in their bed. This made the guy have a rethink and then slept with her.

***End of trigger warning ⚠ ***

From the two stories above, who do you think committed sexual assault. The first one forced his wife but she is still his wife and his right apparently while the second one consented although it took some coercion.

Now, I'll tell you that both of them are guilty.

Sexual assault can simply be defined as unwanted sexual contact. If doesn't matter if you are in a relationship with the person, if they had done it with you before, if they consented because you made them to, it is still sexual assault!

While the victims are mostly women, men suffer from sexual harassment too. Sometimes, they are unable to talk about it because society praises a guy who gets any form of sexual whether solicited or not and therefore diminishes the struggles of those who have been harassed.

Unwelcome sexuaI advances are also a form of sexual assault called sexual harassment. A lot of guys in my country have harassed a girl without seeing anything wrong with it because it has become the norm. Sexual harassment involves calling someone, without their approval, names like baby, sexy, hot stuff etc, holding their hands when they want to walk, commenting on their bodies etc. There is also the issue of asking for s3x before attending to someone.

Other forms of sexual assault includes rape, groping, child sexuaI abuse etc.

During SAAM, the colour teal is used. This includes using a teal ribbon to promote awareness and participate. People also wear clothes that are teal in colour to show support etc. You can join these too.

I will be stopping here, thanks for reading! Kindly share your thoughts