From thoughts into words

I remember being in high school in Kenya and, on two separate occasions, having a male schoolmate walk up to me and either tell me he didn't like my hairstyle or it was not up too par. The key word in that sentence: male. Did I mention that the schoolmates in question were both black? My sin: my hair was unrelaxed. Whether it was neat and tied back or in neat braids/lines, it was apparently a problem. Hair was not hair unless chemicals or extreme heat had been used to straighten it. There were "app roved hairstyles" for the middle class. And they were so well-known that even the boys knew what was acceptable and what wasn't. I remember some others asking me if I was saved because, apparently, that was the only rational explanation for not relaxing one's hair: a religious injunction. Imagine I was just okay with my hair as it was. In the same way that I was okay with my skin as it was. There was no compelling reason to change them radically, no conviction

A brief conversation I had this morning has me thinking about one of the things that is wrong with a significant number of the people who belong to our upper classes and our political elites. A decent number of the folks who rule us and their relatives and friends seem to believe that nothing exists but their experiences and perspectives. So, to them, the fact that there is plenty of misery in Kenya at this precise moment is something that can be elided over, dismissed as a minor inconvenience. It's not them who have been experiencing the misery, so they don't want to talk about it. Some of these folks actually seem to think that Kenyans have been enjoying five golden years, if we are to believe their words. And when they encounter criticism of the regime or their favorite politicians, they experience a meltdown. They  remind me of all those people who come out guns blazing when people criticize a recently deceased politician who caused untold misery to thousands or mill

Someone wrote a comment to this effect in response to a post by a man about the elevated prices of maize meal (a Kenyan staple): "African men do not talk about kitchen issues in public." Now, under normal circumstances, I would have dismissed the comment as the silly opinion of one person. But these were not normal circumstances. To see what I mean, check out this article, which was published the other day:   http://www.nation.co.ke/…/Hey-were-men-we-dont-discuss-the-… As hard   as it is to believe, it appears that a noteworthy proportion of Kenyan men actually subscribe to this way of thinking. The sentiment was obviously designed to silence those who would criticize the government of the day. But it points to a larger problem in our society: People are actually conditioning themselves to be stupid in the name of preserving "African culture/masculinity." What kind of society tries to censor people who want to express concern about the accessibility of

The world is a messed up place. There’s no shortage of flawed people and things to point fingers at and express dismay about. Once in a while, doing so is worthwhile. By identifying problems and talking about them, we can sometimes fix them and make the world a little bit better. The problem is that we often get caught up fixing other people and things and forget that we are just as flawed. And so we end up with the theologian who claims to be morally opposed to violence but is able to rationalize the particular forms of violence he is involved in perpetrating. Then there’s the uber-arrogant woman who gives her colleague a lengthy, public dressing down “for being arrogant” and somehow manages to convince herself that she is the epitome of humility. It is easy to marvel at the stupidity/immorality/incompetence/corruption/laziness of “that person” or “those people.” The really hard bit comes when one has to put oneself under the microscope, magnify all the idiosyncrasies/failin

http://nutritionafrica.blogspot.com/2014/10/sexual-assault-and-gendered-stereotypes.html Lately, I’ve been coming across articles that address cases of gendered violence where the victims are men. The most recent piece I’ve read is  “When Women Sexually Assault Men,”   by Livia Gershon. The thing that strikes me most about the article is its emphasis that we often dismiss the idea that a man has been sexually assaulted because of the stereotypes that we subscribe to. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that the same holds true for our dismissal of the idea that a woman has been sexually assaulted: THE NOTION THAT SEXUAL assault of a man by a woman is impossible, and even laughable, rests on the same gendered assumptions that are also used to downplay assaults on women by men. Even after decades of feminist activism, many discussions of sexual violence still center on telling women to stay sober and be cautious around men. The ideas behind that advice—the image of men’s sexual desire

A blog post with the title, "3 Ways In Which Homosexuality Is Kind Of Creepy," pretty much summarizes some of the arguments that many have made against homosexuality in the wake of Barrack Obama's recent trip to sub-Saharan Africa and his statement on the need to uphold the human rights of gays and lesbians. Below are my responses to a few of these arguments: “But what I don’t get is how a man could possibly find another man sexually attractive. Honestly, that’s like the Six Million Dollar question I’ve had to grapple with all my life, and by that I mean since I discovered that girls were kind of nice to look at and to touch and to kiss and to…” I’m not sure why you’re grappling with this particular question. It is a fact of life that some people feel same-sex attraction. I imagine it has always been that way. You may disagree with it, but I’m sure nobody’s expecting you to take responsibility for other people’s sexuality. You don’t have to agree with