Nation Media Group and a couple of big names are sponsoring an event to bring together Kenyan men from varied backgrounds. According to the official description, the event seeks to empower, celebrate and encourage the men in our society. I want us to talk about why this event is not only a grift, a cash grab, and a con job but also exceedingly dangerous in the current climate in Kenya. Last year, 2024 had record levels of femicide and 2025 is set to beat that if current online reports are anything to go by.
What exactly is wrong with this event, whose stated purpose is to empower, celebrate and encourage Kenyan men?
Men of all walks of life
Let’s start off easy. The rest of the ride will be bumpy. Brace yourself. This event is supposed to bring together men from varied backgrounds. The cheapest ticket was the early bird at 8,000 shillings a pop. I say was because it’s currently sold out. The next tier is 9,000 shillings a piece. That ticket is someone’s entire salary. That audience will not be nearly as varied as they want us to believe.
I don’t understand why the middle class acts like they create or even desire inclusive spaces. This is an event for people with significant disposable income, drop the varied backgrounds lie.
Manosphere talking points – men’s victimhood
The event is supposed to empower, celebrate and encourage men. That suggests that men are currently not receiving those things. That is, in part, a correct assumption and observation.
We currently live in an online climate that is hostile to men. Women are openly identifying as misandrists, and patriarchy is daily denounced on social media. For example, when it comes to abuse, it’s no longer acceptable to split the blame between the victim and the perpetrator, all the blame is put on the perpetrator. Those perpetrators are overwhelmingly male. The gendered nature of violence in our society is daily called out along with all the ways society socializes men to value aggression, dominance, and violence. For this reason, men feel exceptionally under attack, masculinity itself is consistently on trial.
Enter this event, with the aim of empowering, celebrating and encouraging men. This is a direct reaction to the justified online criticism of men, masculinity and patriarchy. Men have their little feelings hurt, and so reactionaries are assembling to encourage them and essentially push away all that legitimate criticism that makes them feel so sad.
Men are suddenly the victims in need of support and empowerment, not the women and children they abuse and kill because of an attachment to masculinity and patriarchal values. This appeal to men’s victimhood and nurturing their perceived grievances is straight from the misogyny and manosphere playbook. This type of thinking is directly responsible for violent attitudes and violence towards women.
Also, what does it mean to seek to empower men? Who is more empowered in Kenyan society than a man? We’re living through a femicide crisis, and the best way Nation Media sees to spend resources is to empower the apex predators in our society and to celebrate and encourage them. Celebrate what? Encourage what? Hasn’t masculinity and manhood been celebrated from the dawn of time? Encourage what? The abuse and killings? What is this? What are these goals in light of the current state of our society, where men daily brutalize women and children?
Appeal to their dominant patriarchal past
Next, the official copy says, and here I’ll quote, “It was in a cave where men retreated in our traditional setting to strategize and come up with ways to engage with their adversaries.”
He’s obviously not talking about gender-neutral man as in human. They’re calling to mind the times when the council of elders and old men of the community were in charge. This is what present-day men have lost, this level of control over not just their communities but their families as well, which is to say, women and children. One thing present in the abusive mindset is this desire for the control and dominance that patriarchy provides. Men are dominant, women are submissive. Men are in control, women are within their control. Men are superior, women are inferior. Men who hold on to these patriarchal views have been found to be more likely to abuse women. There is a direct connection from this appeal to the past order and gender hierarchies to violence against women. This is patently dangerous.
The copy goes on to say, “In our modern day, we have sought to create this ‘cave’, a safe space where men can engage on challenges that we need to collectively address. This forum, therefore, will bring men from all corners of Kenya to come together to exchange thoughts on their own challenges, triumphs and personal stories of what it actually means to be a man.”
I wonder, what challenges are Kenyan men facing that Kenyan women are not in this country? None. Perhaps police brutality. More men, young men, have been brutally murdered by police, by the state, than any other demographic. The poorer one is, the higher the likelihood they’ll find themselves on the wrong side of police terror. I’d bet my last shilling, and I just have the one, that that is not the challenge facing men that they seek to address.
They’re just playing up men’s victimhood in light of current criticisms of masculinity and patriarchy. They’re just lusting after the old days when men and the council of elders held power and had complete control over the lives of women and children. They miss that. This march towards an egalitarian world where all the power is not vested in men by virtue of their gender feels to them like a loss, a disempowering loss, and this event appeals to that feeling in men.
The Man Cave 5 – Poster
See Nothing Say Nothing
We’re in a crisis. Domestic violence cases have risen so much that activists are pushing for femicide to be declared a national disaster. Last year, 2024 was the worst year on record for Kenyan women, 2025 is set to surpass that. These men are meeting to celebrate and encourage each other and talk about what it means to be a man and the challenges they’re facing, meanwhile, they are the primary killers of women and children. They are also the primary abusers of women and children. It’s worth noting that usually, it is the men women and children know, the men in their homes who hurt them. Yet, they say nothing about that.
They’re living through an epidemic of men’s violence and choose to say nothing about it on posters talking about the event. When I first saw the posters on Nation Media’s twitter handle, I was certain they were convening to talk about men’s violence. We all know how wrong I was.
You know what they chose to talk about though besides empowering, celebrating and encouraging men? Networking and getting peer mentorship. That’s code for business and career connections. They’re enticing men with the carrot of potentially making money. Men are abusing and killing women and children but hey, let’s talk about how we can make men more money. That’s what matters.
This is perhaps where I should also point out that a cursory search of the Twitter pages of the speakers was far from encouraging. I couldn’t find the Twitter handles for Dr. David Thuku and Pastor Kelvin Odek. George Ikua’s account is not active. The last tweet was made in 2022 and there were zero tweets on femicide. Dr. Gamaliel Hassan, Fareed Khimani and Brian Aseli all of whom are active on Twitter haze zero tweets on femicide. Eric Latiff has a single post and Benjamin Zulu has an interview done by the Nation crew. That’s it.
We’re in a femicide crisis and these men have said zero. Benjamin Zulu with the most to say said something about men losing control, a common myth about abusers. Abusers don’t lose control, they decide who to unleash their violence on. There’s no loss of control. These are the men convening the event. None has anything on their social pages about men’s violence, yet here they are promoting men’s perceived victimhood. Beyond shameful.
When Men Meet, Change Happens
The tagline of the event is when men meet, change happens. That’s the biggest lie on the poster, if we assume they mean positive change. I’ll illustrate through two different stories that when men come together, terrible things happen, certainly to women and children.
Case 1: Father’s rights group
A group of divorced fathers in the US came together and created a group to fight for their rights regarding the custody of their children (Cornell University). In short order, the group had devolved into a sexist, misogyny, anti-women’s rights cesspool, forcing the more moderate men out altogether. The exodus of the moderate men left the extremists together, which only worsened the group’s misogyny.
Case 2: Parking lot effect
In Evan Stark’s book Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life, he talks about a batterer program that was puzzled by the fact that the abusive men in the program were getting worse even after all their sessions (Page 72). It turned out that the abusive men were meeting at the parking lot after the sessions and reinforcing each other’s victimhood and misogyny.
This event will do the same. That’s the only thing Man Cave 5 will do besides making money for the organizers and speakers. It will reinforce men’s victimhood and their perceived grievances. It will remind them of a time when the gender hierarchy was more straightforward, and they had the power, control, and authority. All of this will lead to more violence towards women and children. This event should be cancelled as a matter of urgency. The only thing men need to be talking about is how they must change so that everyone’s life is better, particularly the lives of women and children. If that’s not what they’re talking about, with the help of experts, including female experts, shut it down. There’s no use for it. Shut it down. Let Man Cave 5 be the last of its kind.
Check out:
#StopKillingUs: Why Femicide Remains A Problem In Kenya And What Should Be Done To Resolve It
6 Harmful Beliefs That Perpetuate Femicide And Violence Against Women
Women Who Deserve To Die: How Media Reports Femicide
