Spot the difference

 This is something I have been thinking about for quite a long time. In fact, I feel very uncomfortable whenever I come across people using these words or even reading them, especially in newspaper and news magazine stories. I don’t know if many readers will agree with me on this or not, but I am hoping we will be able to share our views and try to find the right perspective or a balance to this. It is about the use of the word sex and its various derivatives. That is, the way people describe or refer to the act of sexual intimacy between two people or more. Let me cite some examples here for better understanding of the point I am driving at.

1. Sometime in August 2014, a newspaper headline read: “19-year-old boy rapes chicken to death in Ondo”. But the first paragraph of the story read: “A 19-year-old apprentice welder (names withheld) was caught today making love to a hen. The fowl reportedly died during the act”.

In later parts of the story, the boy who confessed to having been under the influence of some spiritual forces, was also quoted to have slept with the hen and that this was not the first time for him as he had once been caught in his home village again making love with a goat. In a similar story, another boy, a 16-year-old secondary school dropout was also caught somewhere in the south-East, again making love to a dog and also accused of having carnal knowledge of many other dogs in the area. Please note   the italicised words. Can they be used in these contexts?
Let’s look at another case. And this is a very common one. In the story of a woman allegedly raped by a police officer in Lagos while in detention sometime ago, the body of the story stated: “However, at about 10pm, Akinwunmi said one Inspector Ajiduwe called her out of the cell and took her to the DPO’s office, where she alleged that the station’s boss forcefully had carnal knowledge of her.
According to her, “the DPO made love to me without a condom, saying he would throw me into prison if I mention the incident to anyone.” The word “lovemaking” was used several times in the story to describe the act of rape that took place between the two.
Going through the papers, I often come across these words describing absurd sexual intimacy with all manner of subjects and situation. Lovemaking is used to describe sexual acts involving rape, incest, bestiality and all sorts of perversions which I find derogatory to the act of love making. As a young girl, my vision of lovemaking was stimulated and conceptualised around the romantic novels one read back then. The Mills and Boons, Silhouette, Barbara Cartland, Romance, et al, taught us to believe in the   fairy tale pleasures of sexual intimacy known as lovemaking. (I dare say many of us now know better as adults though).
Growing up, sexual intimacy between couples was not as broad as we now have it, with all manner of people, animals, objects and apparitions (pardon, LGBT) (Q). For me and many others I know, love and the sexual act was a picture of girl meets boy, falls in love, courtship, make out, marry and procreate. It was an orderly process aimed at seeking, giving and taking of sexual pleasures in a mutually consenting relationship and only in that context can we talk about lovemaking.
Sex and love being interwoven. Even the Webster’s Dictionary describes lovemaking as the act of courting or sexual activity, and love as a profound tender passionate affection for another person. When you love, you want to protect, nurture and make happy and it is in that context that I see lovemaking. Rape and all these other synonyms can therefore not be described as lovemaking. Sex is different from lovemaking. You can have sex without loving, or being in love with your sexual partner. I have had varied responses from people on this issue and would really love to hear from my readers as well.
Some of the other issues that came up in the course of my discussions with respondents are the various tags for the sexual acts and who engages in them. Many Nigerian women, especially the married ones exhibit and relish the erroneous idea that only married couples make love, all others have sex. The marriage contract elevates the sexual act to a state of perfection, or so they want you to believe. And only when the curtains are down do you ever get to see a glimmer of their pain and sexual dissatisfaction.
Words like the famous f..k, bang, shag, etc are considered dirty and reserved for the cash-and-carry domain. A decent woman will never engage in the ‘f-sex’ with a man. On this, I disagreed with many of my married friends. While a marriage or long-term relationship may provide an opportunity leading to greater intimacy and knowledge between the partners, it does not exclude the fact that similar or even higher and more pleasurable levels of intimacy cannot be achieved outside of these bonds.
My conclusion on this is that perception and attitude to sex will go a long way in determining how we deal with the various tags. Various factors will determine what partners do when they get between the sheets.
There are times when quickies are all that can be squeezed in, just as there will be days of endless hours of hot, sweaty, sensual, pleasurable lovemaking and after play, just as there will be days for the F-sex which may include a little rough handling and hard grinding. As long as it’s between mutually consenting partners, it falls within the scope of lovemaking. Or what do you think? Do have a wonderful weekend!

The fling syndrome
I was with a close friend of mine the other day. She had come to visit me since she was on call at the hospital where she worked and didn’t have to work during the day. We had planned to begin watching the day’s episode of Empire tv series which seems to be everyone’s favourite lately. Unfortunately, PHCN struck just before she arrived and so we decided to make do with what we had and settled down in the living room to soft drinks.

As is the usual thing to do, we started to talk about the things that were going on in our lives. There was the famous topic of relationship and suitors and she started to tell me about a colleague of hers whose relationship and love for his girlfriend was well known to everyone at the hospital. Recently, however, he had some issues with his girlfriend and her parents and they decided to take a break.
Nevertheless, he was planning to reconcile with her and then go ask for her hand in marriage. This was his plan and he had told his colleagues, including my friend what he intended to do. As the story went, he suddenly started to get close to my friend. Then he began to make suggestions that didn’t go down well with her.
He made it clear that he needed someone to play around with for a little while before reconciling with the love of his life and then getting married to her. I remember screaming “What?!” in my head, when she got to that part. I mean such impunity!
According to her, she told him off, stating that she was not looking for that kind of relationship. We laughed about it and talked about other things. Sometime later, the issue of dating and relationships came up again and I realized that a lot of Nigerian men these days, see this kind of situation as normal as long as there’s an understanding between both parties on what is expected of the relationship and of course the wife or “main chick” as they are called doesn’t have to know about it. It could be a fling just before marriage or a continuous thing even after marriage.
Exactly why these men believe it is normal and are even confident enough to propose such an idea leaves me wondering the kind of society we live in today. It seems to me that people who got married in the past couldn’t wait to commit to their significant others for the rest of their lives which is in contrast to men and women of our time. They seem to be terrified of committing to one person for life and I keep asking myself, what has changed and how this situation can be remedied. The women are not left out because these men are aware that some ladies consent to such and that is why they often have the nerve to ask for it in the first place.
In fact, Nigerian ladies of nowadays not only agree to such in return for material gain but quite a number of ladies boast about having two or more boyfriends and how this gives them some sort of back-up or security just in case one decides to bolt out.
I remember a video I saw a while ago of Nigerian female students who said they had more than one boyfriends. Some said each one performed a different duty or provided for a different need and so it was necessary for them to have it that way. I found it hilarious but it is a shame that this is our society today and I wonder what the future of our children will look like if our own generation has sunk so low as to equate relationship with material gain or anything other than what it was originally meant for.