WHY DO WOMEN HURT MEN?

“For women, killing is often seen as a last resort — a defensive move, whereas, for men, it’s an offensivemove,”- Emma E. Fridel and James Alan Fox U.S. Homicide, 1976–2017

“When a battered woman kills her abuser, it isn’t usually planned. It’s a last-ditch attempt by the woman to defend herself, according to experts—though many battered women who kill are not credited with self-defense but with murder, or, if they are lucky, manslaughter” –Starre Vartan. Killing Your Husband to Save Yourself

Again, according to SCOTT MICHELS, SARAH NETTER, LAURA MARQUEZ and SABINA GHEBREMEDHIN in Why Do Some Women Kill? “forensic psychologists and criminal profilers say that, “women who kill have backgrounds and motivations that are often quite different from their male counterparts. Compared with men, women are more likely to be related to their victim, less likely to plan in advance and less likely to use extreme violence”.

Furthermore, they said that” The traditional female role is a nurturer, not a murderer. Extreme violence is far more alien to females than to males, …When a murder is committed by a female, it’s more likely to be self-defense or can reflect some sort of mental illness.”

So why exactly do women kill? Why has this aberration become so preponderant in Nigeria in the last couple of years? What has come over our women that they have suddenly shifted away from their nurturing nature to that of killing?

Does it mean that in this day and age of so much economic and social insecurity, women are exposed to so much violence, strife and danger that their fight-flight-or-freeze physiological response has kicked into anoverdrive permanent state?

Growing up, stories about killings, death and murder were hush- hush especially around women and children. The reasons we were made to believe was that such stories were too inhuman and jarring for the innocence of children and the soft nature of women! If anything, all stories meant for their ears must among other ideals, be skewed towards kindness and the sanctity of life!

So, it was a rude shock when in June 1993 when I was younger, we woke up to the very disturbing news of an Ecuadorian American woman, Lorena Bobbitt, who had chopped off her husband John Bobbit’s penis! What a heck! 

Though it happened in a faraway land, but it reverberated so much here and emotionally shook us to the bone marrow. 

But why did she do it?

According to her, when she came back from work that evening, John, her husband violently raped her as usual and slept off. While he slept, she crawled out of bed, went to the kitchen for a drink of water, then grabbed an 8-inch carving knife, pulled back the covers and slashed off his penis.

Her defense was that her husband, John was selfish, always had orgasms and never waited for her to come, very abusive both physically and emotionally. She claimed that theirs had been a volatile marriage, he raped her all the time, flaunted his infidelities to her face and forced her to have an abortion.

Lorena also claimed that, “John had physically battered her on multiple occasions prior to the evening of the severing off his penis, that they lacked financial stability, and that he stole her earnings and spent the proceeds”

Really? We did not know then that men could rape their wives, we thought it was normal for men, like Okonkwo-Things Fall Apart- to demand at will, what they claim naturally belonged to them by marriage! We also did not know that there were better ways of asking a woman and getting double portion instead of enforcing perceived rights!  

Could it be then that women don’t usually like it when they are threatened by rape no matter by who or could it be that they just want to feel wanted? And by the way rape is any form of sexual intercourse or penetration carried out against a person without their consent! 

May be Lorena and her likes do not just like being forced, maybe she had low esteem each time she is forced, and the build-up led her to snap, like her defense team claimed, and she decided in one momentary madness to put a stop to it!

But one wonders if she couldn’t have walked away from the marriage at least to the best of my knowledge, nothing was stopping her especially if she could go to work and could even drive and call the 911 to report herself. Under normal circumstances, could she not have called the police or any women friendly authority to report the abuse?

Thanks to God John Bobbitt survived it!

But back home here, in May 2020, Nasarawa-State born Sunday Ekpe paid dearly with his life. Though Sunday’s “crime” was not that of sexual assault but ironically, that of emotional and sexual denial, the punishment meted out by the two women were the same. Janet his wife of eight years slashed off his penis and placed it on his chest as a reminder of his “crime of not doing enough” as he meets his creator! 

She accused him of not only holding back from her for years and making their once affectionate marriage sex starved, but for frolicking with her best friend, Helen a widow, while abandoning her and the children.

According to her statement, after eight years of a very happy and amorous union, Sunday, her husband gradually slipped away from her and stopped attending to her biological needs despite entreaties from her, cautions from their pastor, parents, and other relations. She claimed that her husband not only asked her to relive their passion in the past to help assuage her present sexual urge, but audaciously told her to go out to other men to satisfy her sexual needs.

Matters were said to have come to a head when he started flaunting his relationship in her face and stopped coming home.  That seemed to have been the cracking point, she felt trapped in a sex starved marital relationship that her apparent puritan values inhibited seeking sensual gratification elsewhere.

Again, there seems to be a pattern here, Lorena felt trapped in a violent marriage and the only way she felt to free herself was to attack and take out the (penis) instrument of oppression. Janet also saw herself as trapped in a loveless sexless marriage, she also struck. Could it be the case that women are most likely predisposed to attack when trapped in any extreme emotional relationship? Yet again, are there no other ways Janet could have settled this score? Killing as a solution still seems very uncouth and barbaric, to say the least.

According to studies, by N C Jurik ,  in, Gender and homicide: a comparison of men and women who kill “most women who kill frequently do so in response to threats of violence by men. It further claims that “compared to men, women more often kill intimates and kill in situations in which their victim initiated the physical aggression”

Could it be the case of Princess Paschalin Chidimma Odume a corps member at Akwa Ibom who was alleged to have stabbed, a male friend, Japhet Akwaowo at his residence? Ndume’s justification was that she acted in self-defense as Akwaowo had earlier picked up a matchet and threated to kill her if she did not oblige to his sexual advances. 

According to her, she overpowered him and then matched him severally which left him dead. If it is the case that the victim posed a threat to her life, was it wrong to have defended herself? 

One might argue that she probably shouldn’t have applied maximum force, but how many people in such circumstances of fight-flight, can measure the level or depth of their defense actions?

Fortuitously, another female victim, Laurel Effiong Scot literarily corroborated her story as she claimed that she was also raped by the same man in 2017. To substantiate her claim she made a clarion call in a viral video to other victims of Japhet Akwaowo to come up with their experiences so as to save the corps member from an impending undeserved punishment.

Furthermore, in his studies of homicides by men and women, N C Jurik again suggests that “each group kills in ways that are reflective of socially approved gender role behavior”. For women, self-protection and the liberation hypothesis are front burners in the reasons why women kill based on analysis of court records of 158 cases of homicides by men and women over a period of six years.

The above case of Princess Paschalin Odume and more especially that of a nineteen-year-old Rabi Usman of Dan Jaku village in Malumfashi, seem to strongly support theabove claim. Rabi allegedly stabbed her 25-year-oldhusband, Shamsudeen Salisu to death when argument ensued over who charges their phone first. In the process, it was reported that Salisu drew a knife and Rabi snatched it from him in self-defense, dealt a blow which turned out to be a fatal one.

Belinda Parker, a senior research assistant in criminology at Queensland University of Technology, believes that most female offender’s motive can be for revenge, thrill and conviction/hate. Most cases of matricide happen as a result perceived threat of the loss of a valued relationship to a rival and pain of rejection. In such cases, the affected partner begins to feel low and unappreciated leading to unhappiness, frustration, and untoward reactions. 

For instance, there seem to be a similarity of purpose and action in the cases of, Udeme Otike-Odibi, a Lagos-based female lawyer who purportedly killed her husbandSymphorosa Otike-Odibi, in 2018 and cut off his genitals; and that of another female Ibadan based lawyer, Yewande Oyediran (released on parole) accused of stabbing her husband, Lowo to death in February 2016. In both instances, the accused all reportedly adduced infidelity, betrayal, and lackluster relationship as reasons for their dastard actions.

The horror movie -like case of Maryam Sanda and Bilyamin Bello that hit the airwaves not quite long ago can also be seen from the perspective of above reasons of insecurity and unrequited love. She was said to have become uncontrollably enraged when she saw nude photographs of a female posted to her husband’s phone and in that heat of transitory madness, attacked and cut off his penis! Abomination!

In most cases of jealousy, which creeps in when one of the individuals in a relationship is no longer having interest or is getting involved with someone else, the affected partners do not know how to control their emotions and anger especially when it comes to a much-cherished relationship and they find it hard to believe that another  is taking over, since they cannot bear the shame of  cast- away  they resort to a  crime that most times result in murder.

In July 2019, Lauratu Ahmed supposedly emptied a pot of boiling water on the laps and private parts of her resting husband, Malam Aliyu at their home-town, Fayan-Fayan,Danbatta LGA ,Kano. The 35-year-old Lauratu is said to have birthed 10 children for the victim who is a primary school teacher, so she was said to have flipped when he made moves to bring another woman home seeing that they barely survived on the man’s meager income.

So, despite that he had seemingly bribed her with some items to clear the way for him to bring in another wife, she still went ahead to temporarily immobilize him and put a stop to his libidinous tendencies even if for a while.

Apart from the above, there may be other reasons why women hurt their men. Belinda Parker believes that some women kill because of what there is to benefit and she has this to say, “Gain homicides are those committed for personal benefit, such as money or business and personal advantage. The homicides committed by women for gain in the sample were mostly carried out for insurance payouts, assets, or due to being removed from a will following a divorce, and generally involved the partners of the women”. 

Could this be the reason for the latest on the front burner now, the Ataga versus Chidimma saga? But one wonders why she would want to kill Ataga. Why did she not give him more doses of the drug and drink mix they were ostensibly already taking to keep him in a prolonged stupor so that she could clear his money if that was her plan?  Must she kill him, or could it be the case that he actually attacked her in his dazed state, and she reacted in self-defense? Could it be that Chidimma herself had been a victim of abuses and in their suffused state, Ataga became a representative of all that abused her all her life?

According to Jenny Yourstone in “Women Who Kill: Acomparison of the psychosocial background of female and male perpetrators”, Results showed that both female and male perpetrators were psychosocially encumbered already at an early age. Homicidal women had more severe childhood circumstances, but less aggressive childhood behaviour than did their male counterparts. At the time of the crime, women had a more ordered social situation, had more often been exposed … These gender differences suggest that specific actions are needed for preventing women’s homicidal behaviour”

Can the above be the case of all the Chidimmas of this world or is it a case of a failed society in all its ramifications as Levi Obijiofor alluded to in his treatise,in The Sun, Tuesday, 29 June 2021 Usifo Ataga: Death that staggered a nation- “At a more general level, this incident has exposed the underbelly of our society. It shows the flaws in our marriage institution, infidelity in marriages, lack of good parental upbringing of children, lack of accountability in our society, the collapse of our social values, and waywardness of the young generation. The case says a lot more about the eccentric practices and ways of our people than about the moral character of Ataga’s family and the principal suspect. It also speaks to the way the police collect evidence with which to prosecute suspects”.

So many questions! Be they as may, the truth of the matter is that death, or the killing of another human being, no matter the reason, cannot be justified! 

It is not in the nature or character of anyone, gender, tribe, or nation to kill. Something has startled, we have lost our humankind, there is a serious decline in morality and values, a drastic shift in the order of things and untoward happenings have griped humanity. Who and what will bell the cat?