Blame It on The Girls

Man is defined as a human being and a woman as a female 

-Simone de Beauvoir-

I went to a seminar about adolescent sexual health today. It was a very interesting event with many well respected high authority figures spoke. They delivered remarkable presentations, flawless slide show with appropriate amount of jokes in the middle. But my eyes was locked into Jakarta's head of education department, not because of his head which start to bald and was mentioned in almost every minute during his speech, but because of how he reacted at a very sensitive issue.

Prior to his speech, there was a guy, the chief of Indonesia teacher association, who talked about the importance of education for adolescent and sexual problem related to the age group. I asked him about whether there was such policy of expelling pregnant students from school which happened quite often. According to chief of teacher, there wasn't any detail sanction or any instruction to expel them from school. However, they still have to leave school anyway since teacher's creativity to interpret basic school regulation for such immoral behavior is, sex before married (until pregnant or become viral sex tape), to receive highest punishment and be expelled from school, in order to prevent their friends from repeating it. In some schools, if the teacher hasn't kicked them out, they will voluntarily leave school as they feel shameful about it. The chief teacher's solution for this issue is to find way for these unlucky girls to keep continuing her study by sending her to other school or put her in Paket C. Fair enough.

Mr. head of education department, on the other hand, stated that it was unnecessary to help those girls to stay in school. It was their faults in the first place. He continued by saying that they probably enjoy their earlier sexual activity so it was no need for us to find solution for them. It was a jaw dropping moment. Who doesn't enjoy any sexual activity? Even the rape victim sometimes feel aroused. It was a physiologic response. We can't avoid it to happen. It's just how our body react to such stimulus, like nauseous if there's anything hit the back of our throat or coughing if there's any other than air tries to sneak in our respiratory tract.

What more surprising from his statement was what was following it, people's reaction. They laughed hard and clapped loudly as if the sky was falling. Falling and burying those unlucky girls alive.

Human reproduces sexually, if you remember your elementary school biology, so it's not possible for any woman to become immediately pregnant without a sexual partner (exception for Jesus's Mom). But it's funny how all the stigmas only attack woman while man are safe to continue doing whatever they want freely without being stigmatized. It's funny how we place woman to be the only criminal while they are probably the true victim. I'm not suggesting that we should also punish the man by kicking him out of school and screw his life, but what I'm trying to say is that if we can let the man live in peace, why can't we leave the girl alone? Why can't we just let her have the baby and let her stay school rather than creating her Armageddon?

One of the cause of maternal mortality in Indonesia is unsafe abortion, and most of it happen to unwanted pregnancy, the case with our unlucky girls. Afraid by social punishment and stigma, she chooses to terminate her pregnancy by having abortion, and since it's illegal in our country to have an abortion, she goes to an unskilled traditional midwife who merely know how to conduct the unsafe one, then our unlucky girls lose her life because of the unsafe abortion complication. It's society that should be blamed for the death of a girl for putting the label on her. When do we become so cruel? 

Woman are easily forced and scared especially under the dominance of man. They often aren't initiated the act of sexual contact, but most of the time should bare the consequences alone.

We might still remember that there was an unconscious woman in TransJakarta bus who was raped by 4 bus officers. The court decides to "sufficiently" sentenced the defendants with 18 months imprisonment. During the court session, the judges accused the victim of leading on those men by her choice of clothing. Oh poor the men for being enchanted by the unconscious woman. She must be a witch.

I cannot provide any conclusion or even a slight assumption to this issue as I still have no clue why this kind of thing happen in the country famous for its friendliness. Maybe it happens because our patriarchal society, maybe it happens because our religion teach us so, or maybe it's just happen becuase we're lack of love and humanity. Who knows. Wallahualam.