sKenyans, shame on you. Dishonour on you, your family, your children’s children, and your cow

Ah, some Kenyans (sKenyans) on twitter, and facebook; aren’t you lot just a terrible example of humanity? Not a reason have you to be terrible, but there you go sharing what has been unsolicited, and is harmful. I don’t know why these 4chan-esque posters are allowed online, but I have this deep desire to see them no longer. And for the most part, I have managed to avoid them; but with the ability for people to have multiple accounts at a time, and that thing called manual reposting, it’s not an entire success. Hence how I found myself reading tweets by unnecessary bigots regarding a kiss.

This kiss is heterosexual, and boring which in itself isn’t worth much furore if any attention. However, because sKenyans on twitter, and facebook apparently have to fill some quota on being harmful negatives, they pervade the kenya-twitter-sphere with their misogynistic slut labelling of the woman involved in the kiss.

If their problem was the man involved, I’d probably be less moved to comment on it. It’s not, however. It’s not that the man is a liar, a sexist, misogynistic, sycophant government official, who spends more time making the government look irrational than communicating effectively enough to manipulate people into seeing the government in a positive, or non-negative light. Because there’s no one working for a government’s communication department that isn’t manipulating people with their messages. Their problem is that the woman was pictured with a man who isn’t the man she was pictured with prior. Their problem is that she’s a female. And that’s misogynistic.

sKenyans are a shame; repugnant excuses of humanity. Exaggerating a kiss to sexual acts, and then slandering a woman as being irresponsible with her sexual life is revolting, and undeserving of any consideration that doesn’t lead to rebuking of their behaviour. Equating a promiscuous lifestyle to deserving of rape in the case of a woman is violent. Expecting them to learn different, to be good is a pipe dream. There’s more chance public money stashed in Switzerland will be returned with all the interest gained than the likes of @masaku will stop being hateful, spiteful persons committing violence against women for the sole reason that they are not him.

I have tried to avoid hot topics such as my dress my choice, and my body my home cause it always has unnecessary contributions which detract from the conversation, and put in harmful opinions much like nudity is not my choice. Good for you, nudity is not your choice. However, why does it seem as if decency is based not on one’s mentality, but someone else’s outfit in this case; and especially how appealing, or comfortable it is to you? Such detraction makes me angry, and I end up taking out on my family, which is bad of me, and for them. It also leads to a lot of opinions, and ideas that I hold. Does it make me right? I don’t know, and I don’t care. What I care is that what I put out as good, and acceptable isn’t harmful, but beneficial to people. Respectful to more than those who are moralistic when it suits them.

As such, I say decency is in the mind of the beholder.

If you figure that a naked body is repulsive, that’s on you, because a naked body is nothing salacious. That idea comes from ridiculously repressed people in the medieval times, all the way to the Victorian Era.

Yes, some old nations in the continent had thing against naked bodies, but it was specific. For example, an old woman’s naked body was used as a weapon against men, and the younger ones. It was used to curse, or shame them when something was done that was wrong in the woman’s eyes. A woman in some cultures, stood naked to protest a husband’s mistreatment of her. Not because it was offensive, but because it was respected enough to be used as a weapon.

Know who decided bodies were repulsive, and hence deemed to be covered at all times in the continent? Europeans, and Arabs.They brutally enforced their standards in the places they colonised; and changed a body from being a vessel carrying a soul, and sometimes a work of art, to something that is repulsive, and should be hidden from sight, lest it offend God, and good people, because it’s so carnal; so base.

Why should a naked body offend an omniscient, omnipresent entity? And why should that entity make its own creation repulsive to itself. That’s irony, and foolishness, especially if that entity supposedly loves its creations. Idiocy. And some psychopathy, cause why create something to be repulsed by it, and then claim highest order of logic, and superhuman intelligence? Somewhere, someone’s contribution to their design of their understanding of the Almighty was greatly flawed. The body isn’t repulsive to a logical God. Therefore, the argument of God is ridiculous, and voids itself.

Nakedness being repulsive, or sensational is designed by humans. Europeans who peaked in the Victorian Era in our case. These eurocentric, Victorian era standards need to stay where they were made. As do Arabic standards that are oppressive, and inhuman. A body’s a body til it’s a work of art. Making it any other way is indecent.

Stop making people’s bodies a thing of contention. If you can’t explain what a naked body is, then don’t have one. If you can’t tolerate naked bodies, stop having one. If your biggest definition of decency is qualified by certain lengths in dressing, stop having a definition. Because your/that definition is harmful, and derisive. It concentrates on an unnecessary qualifier.

Length doesn’t determine character. Not long hair, nails, limbs, tongue, ears, sleeves, tops, or bottoms.Determining that the length of anyone’s clothes directly correlates with their character is a qualifier for one’s character. A bad one. Unless someone says their dressing is a reflection of themselves, and explains how, there’s no reason to assume, or believe a skirt defines someone. Define decency differently. Based on anything else that isn’t the length of someone’s clothes. Cause then, aren’t overlong clothes-indecent? Aren’t ill-fitting jackets, and colours that are ghastly against people’s skin tone indecent? Aren’t those qualifiers ridiculous?

We have to stop holding harmful eurocentric standards as definitions of decency. Decency means acceptable behaviour to set standards of morality, respect? How does it benefit us to still uphold mentality that was entrenched brutally in our ancestors? It’s a failing that of all things to keep from our colonisers, we choose the negative, harmful things. Change the standards.

Decency involves mentality; it should involve people not being offended by thighs, and buttocks, or ankle, and elbows. It involves accepting the norms of a human body; and rejecting harmful things like uncleanliness from here on out. It involves rejecting lack of water supply so severe that people can’t bathe or wash their clothes for days on end. Decency is provision of shelters for homeless people, and donations of viable clothes to those who can’t afford them.Indecent dressing isn’t about a chest, or ankle seen, but about wearing the same clothes in public for five days straight. It’s about wearing 20k suits while people are starving in North, and NorthWest Kenya. How about a 5k suit, and the 15k buy people food, aye?

Rich people dare to imply that short skirts and sagging pants are a problem while wearing clothes that could feed a family for a month. Oh, yeah, a micro mini is indecent, but not people starving while others spend a month’s worth of food on booze in a weekend. I scoff at them.

Indecency is the repulsion people have to natural bodies; to the display of body parts instead of the violence routinely meted upon bodies in the name of discipline. Why are people repulsed by them? What is going on that you think they are bad? Why can’t you explain to child that an average naked body is nothing to write home about? Why sensationalise nakedness to such an extent that a stranger’s nakedness humiliates you? Especially if that person isn’t cursing you. That’s misplaced, and unnecessary.

Teach that a body is that in which a life is carried. Teach the respect of bodies; naked or not. Teach that unless someone is sharing their body with you, or using it against you; it’s not a concern to you. Unless it’s in danger, or having suffered trauma, starving, sleeping in the open, suffering dehydration, anything compromising it’s physical health, being violent towards you, it’s not a concern to you.

Redefine indecency, and make it such that it involves violence upon positive native aesthetics like locks, and copper neck-braces. Make it indecent that schools can refuse people admission, and attendance for wearing jeans, and locks; and work places refuse to hire people based on their non-eurocentric attire. Make that an issue. Leave unnecessary problems aside. Short skirts, sagging pants; exposed thighs, buttocks, or foreheads are not serious. Violence, and violent policing against women, and men who don’t make others feel comfortable according to harmful standards of social acceptance is the indecency problem rife in this country.

It’s culture

I’m angry; raging a storm inside; and that my blood pressure reads normal should indicate that I have low blood pressure when unstimulated. I’m mad as hell.

This has been a week entrenched in misogyny, and rape that is not of the legal definition.

First off, Njoki Chege, the unnecessary antithesis to womanhood, and positivity in womanhood in Kenya, wrote an article describing the men who don’t fit her standards of being a husband. Now, for the purpose of this, I read her article. It is surprisingly painless.

She lists quite sensibly why she doesn’t date, or want to marry men who should be in her league age-wise. The points she lays out including bad drinking habits, bragging with unimpressive things, basing dates on frivolous, overhyped, or cheap gigs, and not holding intelligent conversations. She also points out many of them despise strongly opinionated women.

The reaction she got was exactly why she doesn’t date men of the age-set she assumes is expected of her. They hated on her opinions, and her. The irony was grating; and the hypocrisy made me get off facebook, and twitter. People read, but saw what they wanted. They didn’t comprehend her point. Typical but still irritating. The culture of misogyny took its practitioners off a cliff while they raged, and yelled about how unfair, and stupid Njoki Chege is for writing that she wants a man with an expensive car, financial stability, and good money management, with intelligent conversation content for a husband.

Second act of violence took place on Accra Road where guys take Embassava buses, and matatus. A hoard of men stripped a woman of her clothes because they were too tight, and provocative. To hear Embassava touts talk about it, they distance themselves from the crime that took place before them, and defend the criminals by portraying the woman as having provoked the men by talking back when they insulted her, and ripping her clothes by grabbing her pant leg out of the grip of one of the marauders.

I was stupefied by the defence. Some guy slept on the violence he witnessed, and decided it was the victim’s fault. She took herself there, and provoked the assaulters to rip her clothes off. Stupified.

Less stupifying, but equally as irritating is the reactions to the video of the assault. The typical rape culture enablers were there to regurgitate age-old tropes of “she shouldn’t have been wearing”, “she provoked”, “this is decency blah blah blah”. The others were annoying with their “what’s wrong with society” “what’s wrong with men” “I wonder why they did that” queries. The answer is simple; rape, misogyny, and male entitlement culture.

Kenya is a terrible place for women. Not as terrible as most of the continent, and that is saying something of the continent. Africa is riddled with disgusting misogyny, and rape cultures. Women work the most, the hardest, the longest, for the least. the money goes to men, and not all men, just the ones who have wrought havoc upon others, or have the power to do so. Men supported by women, and women who think being a man gains them a superior, and utmost level of humanity, and wealth.

It does, but it’s not acceptable, or ethical.

Men, and some women, think they have the right to police women. They tell women what to do, how to do it, why, when, and where; and if a woman refuses, she deserves the violence coming to her. Why do they think like this? I don’t have the words, coherency, or motivation to map out millennia of anti-woman ideologies designed, and distilled over time to become damn near inherent to humans. Millennia of anti-woman ideologies, and colonisation by Arabic, and European empires, and cultures have influenced, and been entrenched in the education of people in Kenya, and Africa at large to the extent that men think it’s natural to police women, and most of their time, to the detriment of the women.

It’s rape culture that has pervaded this country, and its citizens, and it’s killing the spirits of men and women who are its victims, and poisoning those of men, and women who are its perpetrators. Yes, women perpetrate the culture. They rape, and they enable rapists. Are they significant? Rapists who are women are difficult to tally up because their victims rarely report the rape officially, or publicly. It has everything to do with the shame attached to womanhood that is not only domineering, but strong enough to violate another.

Thank you Victorian era culture brought to us courtesy British Empire.(sarcasm)

Women who enable rapists are of a significant number. They are the ones that tell victims to keep quiet, demand victims prove their assault, fault victims for being assaulted, say victims deserved the rape, accept payment to keep assaults quiet, especially to save the rapist’s public reputation from the ugliness of being known as a rapist; and worst of all, support rapists. These women are in such great numbers that you could enter a matatu full of women, and they’d be at least half of the seats.

This anti-woman culture is ingrained in the country’s general society, and it’s not dying off any time soon. Before the Brits came through with their brutality to change cultures, there were cultures that meted violence upon women and called it nature. Circumcision robbing girls of natural sexual bodily functions, lack of political powers, lack of economic powers; and lack of equal footing with men in terms of being seen as human are many cultures that were prevalent in plenty of old nations in what is now Kenya. They have only thrived in years since independence, with people even laughing when shown the consequences of circumcision when it comes to birth. It’s a gruesome thing, but not to people practising it. Old women believe they’ve survived the pain, so can the following generations. Men believe it’s an honour, and since they see it as an honour, women must conform to their standards if they want to be married by them. In Kenya, tribalism is at level with overt racism in Europe, and Asia. Some people will literally rather stay single than marry outside of their old nation.

Such entrenched cultures can only be done away with using the same avenues the colonisers used to impose their cultures upon African natives; but are our teachers willing to teach a different culture from that which they were raised to believe was the utmost superior culture in the world? Not in the next two lifetimes I bet. Not unless it goes down with guns, and whips, and brutality to change for the better.