So I was in church this Sunday - you in the back, stop sniggering, yes, you.

There was a play on rather than a sermon, though it was indeed longer than a sermon and bumped into the start of the second service.

It was one of those "message" plays as you would expect of a church play. It was about a broken home that is restored by the love of Jesus Christ. It went as you would expect. Abusive, Philandering Husband, and Shrewish Unattractive Wife. I didn't even get too annoyed by the implied equivalence of the two characters. Basically a woman being shrewish and unattractive is just as bad as a man beating his wife and sleeping around. Still it is not Sirach level madness and so I could deal.

However I took exception to one point during the play. Just after the man batters his wife, she has a road to Damascus conversion, and becomes a good Christian... which is all well and good. She then apologizes to her husband for doing anything that made him beat her... which is definitely not all well and good.

Now I'm the kind of person that is perfectly cool with disagreeing with the messages of the church I attend, but this one kinda made my head explode. It's a play, not a sermon, but it was indeed unfortunate that the play validated the theory that a woman is ever in any way to blame for getting hit.

I had a conversation about it at lunch, and I ran into the standard argument that can be guaranteed to drive me mad. You know the one: I will never advocate hitting a woman, but you know that it is possible for a man to be provoked into hitting a woman. Why do many educated men (and women to be fair) in Nigeria believe that fists are ever a response to words? Why can't they see that the fact that the violence is not about the woman nagging, it is about winning an argument, it's about power. Cos I'd bet my bottom dollar that if the woman in question was a mixed martial artist, her husband would not be so quick to put his dukes up.

The implication of all this is that the woman did something. This is why a lot of counseling sessions about abuse start with the question "what did you do?" Break it down: the stated assumption is that the man wouldn't have hit without provocation so therefore. The implication there is that if the woman doesn't do X again, she wont be hit. So I always wonder, what happens when the lady stops doing X and then Y makes him hit, and then stops Y and Z makes him hit. That little intellectual exercise quickly shows that any conversation that starts with "what did you do" blames the woman for being beaten, no matter how it is couched.

Doing a Mercutio I should also mention that the Nigerian culture is unforgivably dismissive of domestic abuse when the woman is the one doing the battering. I think that any discussions on domestic violence should begin and end with the fact that it's categorically wrong, no ifs buts or maybes. Anybody who believes differently should be prepared to explain whether they will understand if their daughter or sister gets beaten up because they "provoked" their husband. If not they can feel free to plank on third mainland bridge. Anyway, rant over. Stay tuned for my review of ZR 7 at some point in the near future (I know better than to make promises anymore :D)

PS minus 1,000 cool points to the people that knew the three references (The title, the Sirach quote, and Mercutio)

PPS minus 1,000 more for anyone who read the above and thought of googling :D

PPPS. Explanations are here, here and here