During a youth camp in the marvellous city of Rio de Janeiro, a brother came to me saying that he had something very important to tell me. According to him something very wrong was happening in that gathering and therefore he needed to mention it to me.
I made room to receive the gentleman to hear about his concern. In reality he had a question and inquired me: Are you going to allow that girl to wear that indecent bikini? The question surprised me and I answered: “Yes, I’ll allow her to use that bikini, but I will not allow you to continue looking at her in this indecent manner!”
The indecency could actually be in both of them, but in this case it was clearly not in the girl wearing the bikini but in the person that kept looking at the girl wearing it. In reality this is a common male chauvinist tendency, to blame the woman for the sinful male’s look. Out of this emanates phrases like, In that clothes she deserved to be molested, or dressed like that she is asking to be raped.
Although some dress more provocative than others, no one asks to be molested or raped and the aggressor cannot justify his actions by blaming the woman. Violence against women is unjustifiable in whatever shape or form, be it physical, verbal or emotional!
Sadly women have been victims of a male chauvinist society and of a church that tends to maximise the women’s deviances and minimise the male’s ones. Like the episode of the adulterous woman brought to Jesus, the text says that she was caught in the adulterous act but only she was brought to be stoned, nothing is said about the man who was involved in the same act.
It is time for the true male Christians to really follow Jesus’ example standing up for what is right and impeding violence against women.
- Which situations of violence have you lived or seen?
- What can you do know to impede violence against women?
(The adulterous woman and man, John 8:10-11 – Own sinfulness, James 1:14-15)
Commissioner Torben Eliason is the Territorial Commander of the Southern Africa Territory.