Last month, the Anglican Communion’s Director for Gender Justice took part in a three-day preventing Gender Based Violence (GBV) workshop in Nakuru, Kenya. Here she reflects on what she heard.
“Wives are expected to have sex as soon as they return home from hospital after giving birth” stated a Mothers’ Union member in Kenya. The discussion around “conjugal rights” and wives being “accommodating” (a euphemism for always being available for sex whenever the husband wanted it), surfaced some raw emotions from the women present.
This was a part of a three-day preventing Gender Based Violence (GBV) workshop in Nakuru, Kenya organised by the Mothers’ Union in conjunction with the Revd Domnic Misolo and the Anglican Communion Office. The Kenyan Anglican Men’s Association (KAMA) were present too.
The workshop began by looking at our identity in Christ and what influences there are on us that we forget to live this out on daily basis. The societal expectations and culture that subtly pushes success as an achievement in life. Comparing this to Jesus we see a different way of life offered to us in discipleship.
GBV is the abuse of power and control over a person which is in direct contrast to the love and freedom that Christ offers us. GBV comes in many forms including coercive and controlling behaviour, domestic abuse, verbal abuse, sexual violence, emotional abuse, financial abuse to name but a few. Marital rape is specifically excluded in the Sexual Offences Act in Kenya which led to the discussion about rape in marriage. The general view was that rape in marriage wasn’t possible because women should not deny their husbands.
Sadly, it wasn’t shocking, but it was distressing, to hear Christian men justifying using their wives for sex. Sex is a God given gift for marriage to create a bond of intimacy between couples. Misusing and abusing that gift and using wives for sex is abuse.
Sexual abuse, incest, rape and resulting teenage pregnancy are sadly far too common in some areas of Kenya. Children from ages 10-14 becoming pregnant. That is child abuse. It is an abomination to God. It destroys lives.
Kenya is not unique. We, as a global communion of Churches, need to break the silence, shame and stigma around abuse and especially sexual abuse and violence. There is a real need to talk about healthy relationships, to provide pre-marital courses and marriage courses to enable couple to have healthy and wholesome sex lives in their relationships.
As Bishop Rose Okeno stated: “our culture has given men a lot of power over women. They use it to perpetrate violence against women. Men look at women as sex objects. Culture forces widows into inheritance. . . Young girls are lured into sex because most of them can’t afford sanitary towels, men take advantage of their poverty and sleep with them and dump them when they get pregnant. We, the Anglican Church of Butere, say no to Gender Based Violence.”
Amen – let it be so across the whole Anglican Communion.