The Problem with Feminism is…

Chris Rock is a funny guy. Sometimes, his jokes are a little out of line, but most of the time, he’s a really funny guy. I bumped into one of his stand-up clips a while ago. He explains that it’s okay for fat girls to talk about skinny girls and short guys to talk about tall guys, but not vice versa…

Life is full of double standards, and I accept a whole lot of them. Just like fat girls can get away with calling bitches skinny, men can walk bare chested but women can’t. When a (non-married) couple loses virginity (to each other), the guy becomes a hero and the girl becomes a slut. A single dad is brave, but a single mum is flawed. A dwarf can insult a giant, but an NBA player gets fired for calling his team-mate a midget.

That’s why I hesitate to call myself a feminist. In the house where I grew up, there was no difference between girls and boys. I have three brothers, and they were raised the same way as I was. We all did chores. (Or rather, we didn’t do chores – we had three house helps; one for house work, one for shamba work, and one for business errands. I didn’t do any cooking or cleaning until I moved out of home at 22. No, washing uniforms in boarding school doesn’t count).

Baby-Making Cars and Padded Bras

First things first. I didn’t really get an answer to this question, and I’d still really like one, so if you don’t mind … thank you kindly. Onwards onwards.

A good proportion of the DR Crew works in advertising. Which means we routinely makes videos like this *pointing up*. Which means I should really enjoy videos like this … but for some reason, I find this video quite annoying. I expect the average human loves it though. In fact, I expect it will win quite a few awards, social and otherwise. In case you didn’t get it (which shows how old you are … or how old I am …) that video *pointing up* is meant to be a parody of this one *pointing down*. It’s a clip from a movie starring Patrick Swayze . Yep. Now you know.

Men, Women, And Porn #NSFW

Every Friday, I get a newsletter from Cracked with five articles they think I should read. Last week’s letter had an interesting piece on directing pornography which made me genuinely curious. See, I’ve read tons of articles about how women analyse everything and how men are remarkably simple, and today, I’m hoping a guy can explain something to me.

Part of the cracked piece explains that the cameraman shooting the porno is married to the woman starring in the movie. On one occasion, the cameraman watches – and films – as his wife is expertly … serviced … by her ridiculously well-endowed co-star. The writer wonders how the cameraman can cope. Well, by grabbing his wife and aggressively servicing her right after the scene.

Okay, in case you didn’t click on the article for yourself, here’s a summary. Our writer – let’s call him Ted – was a documentary film-maker who was between jobs. His friend makes porn, and asked Ted to take over filming for a few days. The article is basically the lessons Ted learned along the way.

While Ted was on the set, he realised that the cameraman often had to film his wife having sex with other men. Ted asked the cameraman how he dealt with that, and the cameraman said, ‘It’s not real. It’s just acting.’ Until one day, the cameraman filmed a scene that was NOT just acting. As soon as the scene was finished, the cameraman sat next to his wife, gave her the most dangerous look any human being has given another human being, and proceeded to have very aggressive sex with her as everyone watched.

Friday Night: One Woman’s Story

I like to leave the office at 5.00, but I usually leave at 6.00, or maybe 6.30. Not today. It’s 6.00 p.m., and my boss needs me to go for a meeting. I have no idea what time this meeting will end. I call my baby and tell her I’ll be late. She says it’s okay. She’s at the salon, and it’s her day to cook.

I walk into the client’s office. They have a beautiful architectural model for a new housing complex. It has a swimming pool, shopping malls, and a penthouse full of palm trees. I ask my boss if he’ll ever pay me enough to buy a palm tree. He laughs and tells me my dreams are valid.

We’re in the boardroom, talking to our clients. I’ve decided to be quiet in this meeting, because at the last meeting, I came off as a little too aggressive. At least that’s what my boss said. But it seems my aggression worked, because the client insists that I speak, and my boss watches me with a smile.

It’s 7 o’clock. My phone rings, and I peek at it under the table. It’s my daughter. She’s done with her hair, and she wants to send me a photo so I can see how pretty she looks. I say I’m in a meeting. She doesn’t reply.

It’s 7.30. My phone rings again. I cancel the call and text, ‘In a meeting.’ This time, she replies. She says she’s sorry for interrupting. She says she’s really tired, so she’s going to bed. She asks me to wake her up when I get home, so she can cook me dinner. I want to cry.

I look up from texting to see everyone staring at me. It turns out they had asked me a question and are waiting for an answer. My mind is blank. My boss gives me a look, covers for me. I realise that I missed something important, but asking would only make things worse.

It’s 8 o’clock. The meeting is finally over. I’m in such a hurry to leave that I forget my backpack. My boss calls me back to get it, and I explain why I was distracted. He says his baby is sleeping too, and that if I ever want that raise I asked about, I need to be willing to put in late hours. I silently wonder how badly I want that raise.

My boss offers to drop me at Yaya, since it’s too late to go back to the office. There are no matatus at Yaya. I stand feeling lost and distressed, uncertain about being in familiar surroundings at an unfamiliar time. A man tries to sell me sugar cane, but I’m not listening to a word that he’s saying.

A matatau comes from Kibera. It’s 10 bob to Hurlingham. Perfect. There’s only one person in the matatu. Well, two people. A mother and her 2 year-old son. I get on the matatu. They get off at the next stop. I freeze. There are two men here, the driver and the makanga. The road is deserted and I’m all alone. Should I alight?

I see two women in the distance, and I sigh with relief as the matatau waits for them to board. Phew! I get off at Hurlingham. I start to walk towards Kenyatta, worried and distracted because it’s 8.30 and I don’t know if I ‘ll get a 34. I should have just gone to town.

I see two men walking towards me. They’re hogging the road. I try to step around them but they move with me in a strange, disturbing dance. I raise my head to look at them, and the big one says, ‘hello.’ His eyes and his leer say that one word is much more than a greeting. I try to step aside but he won’t let me pass.

I jump onto the road, straight into oncoming traffic. A car hoots, a driver swears at me, but in the blinding light, the two men are gone. I sigh with relief and keep walking on the road. I’m safer in oncoming traffic.

I reach Total and realise my fists are balled. I’m thinking about those men. Hurlingham is a safe place, a clean place, a well-lit place. Yet two men I’ve never even met tried to scare me. I’m wearing jeans, sneakers, a marvin, and an over-sized hoodie. Yet two men tried to hurt me.

There’s nothing provocative in my clothes. There’s nothing feminine in my clothes. And yet … if it wasn’t for a car with an angry swearing driver, I might not have made it home tonight. All because my baggy, shapeless sweater couldn’t hide the fact that I have breasts.

Why did they come after me? Is it because I work for a living? Is it because I was on the street and not in some house cooking for some man? Is it because something about my backpack and my baggy, shapeless sweater rubbed them the wrong way?

I get to Kenyatta and find maybe the last matatu home. I take out my phone and squint. I type a sad message to my friend. And then I stop and I think.

This is my life. This is what it means to be a woman. It means being scared because I had to stay out late to feed my baby. It means wondering if every other person on the street is trying to hurt me. It means shaking as my skin crawls, just because a random man said one word to me. It means sitting in a matatu in tears because it’s Friday and my baby fell asleep before I got home and kissed her goodnight.

They tell us we can have it all, just not at the same time. They say we’re making empty noise, because our needs are not like theirs. They say we clamoured for our rights, and this is a consequence of those rights. They say that we should just shut up, that this is what gender balance means. They say we can’t demand to be equal still expect our treatment to be different.

I take a breath and tell myself to chill. I remind myself to be grateful. Grateful that I got that last matatu. Grateful for the headlights on the angry driver’s car. Grateful for my boss, my talent, my salary. Grateful for the good Lord that made me a mother. Above all, grateful that tonight, I get to see my child, and nobody will find me in a ditch with my heart and body broken.

Tomorrow I will wake up, and they will tell me not to be angry. They will tell me this is life, and that all I have to do is live. But on nights like this, I almost wonder if I should even try. On nights like this, I wish I was a boy.

Stories Of Our Lives That We Don’t Want To Hear

My views on homosexuality have changed a lot in my 32 years. My first conscious memory of the issue is watching a mini-series on KTN. I don’t remember the name of the series, but it had something to do with a wall or a fence, and I think it starred Oprah Winfrey. In the series, a lesbian woman experiences ‘corrective rape’ from some neighbourhood boys. When asked why they did it, they said they wanted her to know what she was missing. They claimed she was only gay was because she had never had sex … with them.

I wasn’t old enough to know what lesbianism was, but I was old enough to recognise rape. I wondered why they would do that, how they could do that, what on earth made them think that was right. So I asked my mum about lesbianism, and she explained it to me. I didn’t think it was particularly strange. I figured that’s just how some people were.

Later, I read Bible verses that seemed to condemn homosexuality. Something about men lying with men the way they lie with women. Or rather, men NOT lying with men the way they lay with women. The verse left me conflicted, because in my mind, some people were simply born gay. So why would God create you with certain desires and then tell you they were wrong? Although … in all fairness … many men use the same question to support cheating and polygamy, so … *shrug*

Over the years, I’ve argued – mostly with myself – about whether homosexuality is nature or nurture. Are you born gay, or do you learn to be attracted to members of your own gender? Is it about genes, dysfunctional families, or an inseparable mix of both? Did I – at some point in my life – make a conscious decision to be straight? And if not, what makes me think someone can deliberately decide to be gay? Or conversely, if we are all just ‘born straight’ what happened to particular people to make them gay?

On Nudity and Pulling a Jeniffer Lawrence

The naked body is a beautiful thing. Unfortunately, few women see their bare bodies that way. Even models and beauty queens have qualms when they stand before a mirror. So no, it’s not that strange that Jennifer Lawrence and a hundred other celebrities are uncomfortable with their (perfect) nude bodies being paraded all over the place.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to write this piece, because there’s always a possibility that those pretty pictures I sent to that boy I liked could end up in a tabloid, on a porn site, or worse, in the inbox of my daughter’s class teacher. *shudder* I’ve already given her the ‘don’t send nudes to boys’ speech, but love makes people do stupid things. I did, and I know that when her time comes, she probably will too.

That said, it takes a huge amount of trust and confidence to share those pictures with anyone, especially that boy you like. So when he – or someone else – turns around and publishes said pictures, it can destroy you on many different levels.

 

For  a start, let’s look at Shaunna Lane. She’s a regular girl who had bodily insecurities. Her friend is a model, and suggested that Shauna do a nude photo shoot to help her appreciate her body. And it worked. Shauna looked at those photos and saw herself in a whole new light. She finally saw how beautiful she was.

And so – of course – she sent the photos to her boyfriend and forgot all about them. Until a few years later, when the now ex-boyfriend posted those photos online. Along with her details and facebook profile. Unlike celebrities who get insulted and bashed when such things happen, Shaunna is a regular everyday girl. So what happened instead? People sent the photos to her family, threatened to rape her, offered her mother money to have sex with her.