I Wish It Wouldn't Keep Asking for a Title

One: Old
One of my professors is rather elderly. We like to poke fun at old people don't we? A whole row of people sitting behind me say "Ai! But this guy is old. Does he really know what he's doing? " *Chuckle Chuckle* "Just look at how slowly he is moving!" *Guffaw*

Why is old dishonarable? Laughable? Repulsive? Has it always been this way? Dirty old men? Wicked old women?

My niece used to burst into tears when she saw her great grandmother. That is actually funny. "Why is she soooooooo old?" she would wail. "....and bent ooooooover?" She was petrified of this beast with long gnarled fingers, yellowed teeth and C-shaped back that kept calling her "kajuju". Eek!

Two: Prejudice

Admittedly, I have become rather obsessed with white nationalists and racists. I find them simultaneously entertaining and terrifying.

The only problem is now when I see a white person I wonder whether they are one of THEM. I'm sure they are a small minority but you never know. How do i remove myself from this downward spiral before it is too late?

Or maybe if I continue my study I will soon be able to sniff them out at the drop of a hat, just like I do male chauvinists. (It is a long time since I used this term) (It is quite refreshing, reminiscent of my adult beginnings)

Three: Wangari (and Khadja Nin)

I am reading Wangari Maathai's autobiography at the moment. It is great and inspiring. I love Wangari Maathai even though I have never met her. She reminds me (eerily too much) of my mother. She is a great woman and I wish she would be Kenya's next president (Wangari, not my mother).

But I experience occasional twitches of irritation when I notice that it is clearly written for a worldwide (maybe just American) audience. This of course is understandable and my irritation irrational. Yet I can't help twitching for example at references to baseballs (when referring to the size of the bump on her head received from anti-riot police).

Similarly I love Khadja Nin. But I have been experiencing occasional unexplained twitches of irritation whenever I hear her voice ever since I read what she wrote about her song 'Mama' - 'This track is dedicated to my mother, to me, and to all the women who struggle alone for their children. There is no bitterness in the lyrics, nor the slightest feminist statement .....etc"

Four: Snakes
We Africans have a marvellous way of putting things in a way that we all understand completely - no need for explanation.

On that note I would like to remind those of us who are invloved in the struggle for equality and women's rights never to put down the stick before the snake is dead.

Gorilla

When you are fighting a gorilla, you do not rest when you are tired. You rest when the gorilla is tired.

White Pride

Inspired by a recent account of a brother attacked by Afrikaners in a bar, I've been hunting around for white pride (or whatever they call themselves) groups in South Africa. So far I have come across this: http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=301446

The Movement

Kenya's women's movement like any other freedom, activist movement has had its successes and failures. We have come a long way, and we have a long way to go. But somehow we are forgetting what we are about - activism, freedom, choice, empowerment, and most importantly, sisterhood.

We have allowed politics, greed, competition, jealousy,selfishness to tear us apart. We have become mouthpieces for the patriarchy we opppose. We are not building each other up. We are tearing each other down.

Our divisions are tribal. They are age and status defined. Some of us have turned this movement into an eight to five job. Professionalized.

I always remember Sylvia Tamale's 'Be Drunk' (in reference to Charles Baudelaire's poem). She talks about the need for feminists and women's rights activists to be 'poetically drunk' - drunk with passion, anger, outrage, with justice.

I want to hug Sylvia Tamale when she casts doubt on the term 'gender activism'. She and I share the view that gender activism has led to complacency, diplomacy and a lot of general vagueness. What on earth is gender activism? I hold the view that gender in and of itself is an inequality of power. So while some may argue therefore that one has to be gender sensitive, that is, presumably,sensitive to these inequalities, the truth is our approach to tackling gender inequalities is not working. We have no business going around fumbling, making apologies, stressing SOME men so as not to insult the men amongst us. We shy away from being called 'feminist' (God forbid), 'revolutionary' and 'radical'. We end up being so diplomatic that we are inactive.

We name and accept gender differences, but skirt around dominance, or deny it. We don't look pervasive cultural misogyny in the eye. In many cases we perpetuate it. If one does not know what one is fighting, if you do not know, taste, smell and hear it, or do not recognize its potence, you are fooled and sucked into it. You become a part of it.

Sylvia Tamale talks about 'careerism' overtaking the struggle. We are NGO-ized, professional, we have CEOs. We have CEOs!!!

Our strategizing has changed from 'what can i do to bring change for my community?' to 'how do I make the most money, benefit financially?'. Voluntarism, struggle, sisterhood - forgotten.

I wish the career people (women and men) would leave the movement alone. Leave it to the activists, the drunkards. And remember that there are those of us who will die for it.

Raunch

There are so many concerns about women and sex. Mine and others. I have seen the reactions to the blog post of a female Kenyan talking about sex, the kind of sex she wants. This, apparently, has turned into a sexuality question. I wonder about that.

Women are becoming bolder, proud of their sexuality, brass. It seems all well and good. But is it? Sure, women should be free to express themselves as sexual beings. But are women defining how this is expressed? Or are men?

Popular culture is doing a good job of selling women's sexuality as entertainment. For men. This is cool. Hot. Liberating women. Women are taking charge. Yeah right.

Playboy, the magazine, gives a fair amount of money to some kinds of feminist work, Hugh Hefner contributed a sizeable amount of money to Roe vs. Wade. Actually Playboy asserts that it is a feminist magazine. I will, on another occasion, examine this ludicrous claim in more detail. But I can guess that they say something along the lines of them celebrating women's bodies and sexuality, in a bid to unchain and liberate said women.

Apparently in this new, increasingly liberated world, after all the struggles of our foremothers, women express our liberation by baring our breasts and spreading our legs for a camera.

This is it. What we have been fighting for. And Playboy and numerouis other magazines and media like it have helped us get there.

Women and girls are increasingly swallowing the lie that we are in control - that the key is sexiness. Or dumbness. Sexy and dumb. And that we make the CHOICE, it is VOLUNTARY. We must do all we can to remain relevant. Our relevance is sex. Months ago I saw three girls, none of them could have been more than 10 years old, in a shop, looking at clothes, saying how they were so 'hot'. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

What Playboy does is the classic. It is an active oppressor of the dignity of women, and it pretends to be the bearer of equality and liberation. It tells the ultimate lie. And many women have fallen for it.

(more later)

My Father

My father is the person I care most about in the world. This is profound. Last night I had a dream that my father was 'lost'. I woke up crying, because I could not find him. I suppose this is God telling me something. I need to rekindle a lost relationship. Growing up he was my daddy - my bestest friend in the whole world. He was gentler with me than he was with my siblings. He listened to me, took me seriously. He hugged me, kissed me, held me. Called me 'Toto'. He wore warm, soft sweaters. This Sunday he called me 'my baby' and I almost cried.

I want that back.

Rape, Sodomy, Violence and the Politics of Sex

This morning I was at the Nairobi Women's Hospital, visiting the 17 year old boy who was sodomised by his classmates. While I was there, a vehicle from Kayole Police Station drove up with three more boys who had also been sodomised. The press (they were there for a press conference) rushed to cover the story. I complained to one of them that I didn't like them covering, sensationalising these stories. Showing us the victim's hand, knee, back of their head. Why do we need to see this? So we believe it?

I feel sorry for the 17 year old for obvious reasons. But mostly because he has joined the club of many people who ARE NOT BELIEVED when they talk about their sexual violation. The PTA of his school has dismissed his ordeal as a malicious lie. This will probably linger with him the longest, of all the traumatic things that have and are about to happen to him. You never forget being called a liar. And many, many raped people are accused of being liars. Justin Muturi wants these liars locked away, punished, shamed.

Furthermore, apparently the sodomizing of the 17 year old points to rising homosexuality in schools. *Shudder*. Does rape point to rising heterosexuality? We are embarassed because a boy has been raped. Or that he has even said he has been raped. This we cannot take. What will become of us?

I have been thinking lately about rape and sex. Of course we have always said rape is not about sex but about power and domination. I don't disagree. Indeed I have been amongst the first to attack anyone who confused, interchanged, or related the two words, or acts.

But I'm starting to (re) wonder why violence against women, and violence aimed at men who need 'to be taught a lesson' must involve the sex organs. I am wondering why rape has been eroticized by pornography. I am wondering if what we sometimes think is 'ordinary intercourse' is not violence, violating. Wondering why we are so quick to separate rape and sex.

Rape is a sexual event. But to be against it we have to make it not sexual. Because sex is always good and normal, natural. We are animals. We have needs.

The feelings of degradation that women feel when we are treated as sex objects, felt up, leered at, are feelings of sexual violation.

We say "phew!" when a woman we know is attacked and not raped. That means, a penis did not penetrate her vagina. When it is a bottle that is pushed into her we talk about 'a bottle being inserted into her vagina'. But without 'penetration' - Phew!

Forget that during the attack she was touched, stripped, stroked, slapped, laughed at. What's the name we give that? At least she was not raped. I once read a book that referred to penetration as the 'peculiarly resented aspect of rape'. The ultimate. It's like 'going all the way'.

Why is there an obsession with 'penetration'. Women who are raped resent the fact that they were 'penetrated'. But that may not be what they resent the most. What they feel worst about.

If rape is so distinct from sex, why do many rape victims feel uncomfortable about sex? Repulsed by it? Why is the difference 'consent' or 'force'. Is there always consent in sexual intercourse? Is there never force?

Maybe we call rape not sex because we do not want to criticize everyday behaviour. The fact is that men rape women and themselves because they get off on the fusion of dominance and sexuality.

The problem is that dominance-sexuality is no stranger to purportedly 'consensual, 'normal' sex.

Where does that leave us?