Why . . . how . . . how could anyone be so testosterone-inflamed, burdened with such flagrant male-driven, Y-Chromosome pathology to rape an 18-month-old toddler?
But, indeed, that story, among several other sickening tales formed the inescapable central element of my morning commute, as I listened to Amy Goodman’s “Democracy Now.” The Setting: The Congo, Africa; the interviewee, Congolese Human Rights Activist Christine Schuler Deschryver, speaking about Sexual Terrorism and Africa's Forgotten War. Schuler Deschryver is a women’s advocate, who must have one of the saddest tasks on the planet at this moment in history. The more I listened, the more ill I became at the thought that I too was the possessor of a fully functional Y Chromosome. Subsequent to the rape-murder of her best friend in 1998, Christine could no longer remain aloof from the occurrences in her native Congo; she was compelled to begin to break the omerta of the “Silent War” as it has now been dubbed. It is a brutal war of insane maleness, maleness-run completely amok against innocents: young women imprisoned into sex-slavery, and children —yes, even infants and toddlers— brutally raped, and not solely by penises, but with the most horrid of implements designed to brutalize, mutilate, and kill. How these vile animals could possibly have had mothers is a mystery of unfathomable proportions. And why we cry "terrorism, terrorism" at individuals and cultures who are fundamentally no more inhumane than we are, while we stand by at this the most flagrant form of terrorism imaginable is likewise difficult to fathom.
I am compelled to write about this for two reasons. The first is that Christine herself has requested it, asked that any and all of us create a dialogue around this issue, trumpet this silent war, what amounts to essentially sexual cannibalism. The second, I have already articulated: because I must find outlets to purge my illness as a participant in this disgusting sub-race of individuals with testosterone-driven protrusive genitalia, who has at one or more points in his life harbored thoughts of sexual violence toward women, even, if only by engaging in sexual intercourse that was devoid of genuine love or affection. Perhaps I am as guilty as those who raped the infant, I speculate. If I have ever had even the most fleeting of such thoughts, I must be, I argue with my own denial.
Forgive me, I plead with all my sisters, for there are times when I know not what I do, when the male ego breaks loose from the leash of loving spirit and becomes the danger to this planet that makes war, proliferates hatred and fear, destroys mother Earth, eschews and negates unconditional love and perpetrates sexual violence. Forgive me; it is not who I truly am.
