Sexuality doesn't have common sense

I recently read a story online about a boy in Bulawayo's Pumula South suburb in Zimbabwe who was in court for raping his stepmother. His father and stepmother eventually retracted their initial statements about the rape and the boy was acquitted. Reading between the lines I realized there was never rape to begin with: The boy was having an affair with his stepmother and when they were caught by the boy’s aunt, the stepmother cried rape and her husband foolishly believed her.

            It is claimed the boy whose age is given as 17 raped his stepmother over a period of two years. Ha ha ha. The story says the stepmother is nine years older than the boy; which means she is 26 years old. Did the stupid man actually believe his 17 year old son was raping his 26 year old wife for two years? What was the boy’s father thinking when he left his house to go and stand before a police officer to tell such a ridiculous story? A question kept bothering me as I was reading the story: Did the boy’s father expect a 26 year old woman to be mother to a 17 year old boy? As he was away in South Africa for many months, it never occurred to him that his wife might cheat on him with his son? If it never occurred to him, then he is not much of a man.

A combination of poverty and naivety has made us forget one fundamental truth: Sexuality does not have common sense: If you give a man and a woman an opportunity to screw each other, they will do so.

            Men and women will always be sexually attracted to each other and measures should be put in place to avoid a lot of sexual scandals that are in our midst. We all know that boys and girls should not sleep in the same room even if they are blood brothers and sisters. Basic common sense tells us that if brothers and sisters sleep in the same room, the fact that they are related will be pushed to the periphery as sexuality takes over. This simple truth should be applied to all female and male interactions. Because of urbanization, rural to urban migration and an acute shortage of accommodation, Africans have pulled down safeguards that had been put in place by our forefathers.

            Our forefathers knew that the boys’ room was constructed well away from the girls’ room. Each woman within the homestead had her own stand-alone hut and no one besides her husband ever saw her nakedness unless she decided to be naughty and allowed another to sneak into her hut. We should realise that a man is a man and a woman is man before they become anything else and men and women have a primitive instinct to screw each other and this will always be a fact of nature. Obstacles should be put in the way of men and women trying to screw each if we don’t want problems and the obstacles should be drastic. Let me illustrate my thesis with some scenarios:

·         If a married man’s brother visits for a few days or weeks or months and before he has left, the married man has to travel out of town and consequently leave his wife with his brother, what’s supposed to happen? My thinking is that the brother should cut short his visit or some other obstacle should be created so that the wife and her husband’s brother won’t be left alone and therefore be tempted to screw each other. Drastic, yes, but essential.

·         A married couple stays with the wife’s young sister and the wife is a rural school teacher and only comes home over the weekends: Does the wife leave her young sister in charge of her husband’s welfare? I don’t think so.

·         If women are always going to a pastor’s office to request for ‘prayers’, what is the appropriate thing for him to do? Tell the church women never to come alone or perhaps have his wife present as he ‘prays’ for the women?

There are a lot of situations we can think of that put men and women in positions that might force them to give in to their instinctive urge to screw each other. There are a lot of people who might want to throw the issue of trust at my thesis, but the fact remains that men and women should not be given room to screw each other. We all know that trust is an illusion and the fact that you trust someone does not stop them from screwing another person.

            We are so desperate to believe that humans are not as depraved as they actually are; we have chosen to bury our heads in the sand and allow things to go very wrong. It takes a village to prevent scandals.