A couple of weeks ago Jeff Koinange hosted Miguna Miguna and Esther Passaris on his show live. The Kenyan internet nearly broke after that with responses to the conversation that was had, from both the male and female candidates. Personally I believe the whole interview was a mess, and what should have been a discussion on steps needed to be taken to achieve change in Kenya became a personal attack or vendetta.
If we are talking about who seemed to make more sense with the issues they would address to change this nation, it would be objective to say Miguna probably hit the nail on the head harder. However the end doe
s not justify the means, and some of the things he said prove everything that is wrong with our patriarchal society.
The biggest problem with his argument was the fact that it was not based on the actual issues at hand but directed at Esther being a “socialite bimbo”, as he put it. He didn’t address her policies and the flaws in her progressive thoughts. Instead he attacked her for being a woman and a lot of the insults he used on her wouldn’t be used if she was a man. This is where the problem lay. We live in a society where men can get away with saying things that degrade women simply because they are women. Imagine if Esther started addressing rumours that Miguna had a small dick? She would be bashed to no end!
Then to top it off when Jeff jokingly asked whether Miguna was Kenya’s Trump, he said, “No, actually Trump is my student”. The same Trump who said, “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it, you can do anything.
Grab them by the p***y, you can do anything.”
The same Trump who also called Megyn Kelly a “bimbo”, after being interviewed by her on some of his previous sexist remarks. He then went on to imply that she was hard on him during the interview because she was probably on her period. These are just a few of the several instances Trump has publically degraded women. The same Trump who is now somehow the President elect of the United States of America.
Misogyny means the hatred of women. From Greek: misein “to hate” + gyne “woman”. The Greek philosopher Aristotle lived over a century ago yet still had a huge impact on the world as it is today. He believed that women exist as deformations or imperfect males. This is basically the way the system works even up to now.
Men say women have gotten the equality they wanted so why are ‘lonely, sexually frustrated, feminists’ still complaining on the internet?
Because you don’t get it! Women are still seen as second best. Women are still seen as the weaker sex, who need men to survive. Women are still seen as being blessed with looks only because that will be their biggest asset. Women still need to settle down and get married early to be considered successful so that they don’t become an angry, lonely feminist. When a man is considered weak he is called pussy, which is the very attribute that defines being a woman. Thus women are still seen as weak.
Rape jokes are still perpetuated as funny and okay when they are more than harmful to the psyche of women. The sad thing is that women also push this culture of hatred towards themselves because it is all they have been taught to know. A majority of women don’t understand that they are second class humans because they don’t know what it means to be considered for more than how they look.
Feminism by definition is the political, economic, and social equality of men to women. It is not a competition. It is a response, an asking for a safe space to protect women in EVERY aspect of their lives. It is saying you cannot get away with degrading a woman simply because she is a woman.
