White Privilege and Slut-Shaming in Kenya (OR Just Another Day at the Ghafla! Offices)

 Today morning I woke up to one of the rudest texts I have ever received from a friend. I was being STRONGLY accused of being “rude and disrespectful” to a certain brand because of this sensational Monday story. The texts read,

“….how rude and disrespectful can it get with the ratchet pictures… that is targeting our brand negatively”

“You guys are messed up for posting those pictures…. wannabe blogs wanna ride on that sh*t after being courteously invited…… Y’all are gutter….”.

I must admit I had no idea what this was about, so I searched for the story, and there it was: our top photo story of the week. I checked out the photos. I formed a personal opinion which I would share with Vinnie, rationally, once I got to the office. Still, I was beyond upset that this person thought they had the right to step to me like that, friends or not. I like it when I receive angry, misdirected, emotionally charged and derisive texts, said no one, EVER.

Then I got to the office, ready to pick everyone’s brain on said pictures, and found out a top PR firm in Nairobi had actually called Vinnie and asked him in not too many words to take down all the pictures involving “foreign girls”, aka the white girls. WHAT?

That’s right. White privilege strikes again.

The uproar over the photos affirmed that many (if not most) people in Kenya still hold some ridiculous culturally inept views; that white people in Kenya have a presumed greater social status; they have the freedom to move, buy, work, play, and speak freely. So we at Ghafla were to presume the universality of those young ladies’ experiences- the young white girls, that’s normal, they are just having a good ol’ fun wild time. The young black girls dirty dancing though, that’s not normal. That’s different, in this case, it’s “ratchet”-.

Well, the pictures speak a thousand words.“Whiteness” is NOT a proxy for class. Nor should it be for any other social privilege, like being served 10 hot cross buns, even if there will be none left for the white person in line right behind you. (‘member #OccupyArtCaffe). Fun fact: Did you know that caucasian people are a GLOBAL minority. 8% of the world’s population is white. 92% is non white. Sit on that for a little. Yet, the mind-frame of an empire that tried to inadvertently proclaim my motherland, my ancestors dominion, as theirs for less than 60 odd years still attempts to dictate my daily life?

But this white priviledge disaster shall not distract me from a deeper underlying problem in Ghafla. A problem that brings itself to the forefront in the inequality of so-called-ratchet pictures that Vinnie posts after any crazy-wild affair.

The appalling Ghafla culture of slut-shaming.

Ever noticed how the so-called-ratchet pictures are always girls dirty dancing, or grinding, or being sandwiched by to men, or being “daggered”. I’ve been to enough festival-type events to know men be making a fool of themselves too. And since when is simulated sex the only “ratchet” thing going on there?  Where is the fighting, projectile puking, peeing in bushes. Picture this: a girl/guy blacked out in the grass, one shoe off, clothes a hot mess, tufts of grass in their hair. Isn’t that more “ratchet” than daggering? When did dirty dancing become ratchet? Heck, I always thought it was more ridiculous than ratchet. (And by the way, someone give some of these girls a medal for their flexibility and gymnastic prowess when daggering.)

You know, this comes down to this odd Kenyan (and widely pan-African) culture of us collectively burying our heads in the sand. WE STAY PRETENDING. It’s time we just stopped the f*cking pretense. The culture of casual-sex is NOT a new phenomenon in Nairobi. We even have a modifiable phrase for it – chips funga (chips fungee, chips fungwad, chips funga bila paper bag etc…). Why just last week I went on a date with a man who straight up told me he wanted to just “have a thing cuz life is short” and proceeded to ask me if I wanted to go back to his place AFTER A FIRST DATE (and when I declined made a comment to the tune of “Hmmph, you proper women.”). So taking pictures of people dirty dancing and calling it ratchet, is pretty farty and old-fashioned. That ain’t nothing new, there was a whole year when a club in Nairobi had “Bend-Over Thursdays” a night for EXCLUSIVELY daggering. And it was PACKED every Thursday. And don’t front, every single one of us HAS engaged in some inappropriate dancing in public at one point or another, whether drunk, as a dare, as a joke, as dance-floor-sexy-time….
 
Feminism has a hard time being accepted in many African societies. Personally, it’s been a lot of snarky comments (even from my own family) when I tell people I am a feminist. It runs from me being told “You will not be married” (YUP, YOU ARE RIGHT. Marriage is the definition of my existence, and the yardstick with which I measure all my personal successes), I am accused of being a “Caroline Mutoko”, I am told to watch out I “don’t overdo it like Wangari Maathai” (I guess she just won a Nobel Prize because of all the wrong things she did in her life, and I definitely want to be nothing like her). I struggle to understand why so many women adamantly reject feminism as if they didn’t believe in equality. I’ve learnt (over time and through a lot of interwebs cruising) that what they were in fact objecting to was privileged white middle class feminism.

We have a completely different set of experiences as women, women of color, and women living in a world that doesn’t fully recognize or understand the societal structures of our traditions. African feminism is hard, I won’t deny. We are caught between protecting our traditions and rich history (or in some cases rediscovering them after many years of them being denigrated as ‘superstitions’ ‘UnChristian’ or even worse, being told our culture is shady (definition). SHADY! What the what?!), and educating ourselves on the ways of the world in order to be heard in today’s global world where black women presumptuously means African-American women and not African women. Many African women today have rejected the word feminist. Even if they subscribe to the ideals, they run from the negative connotations associated with that word. For myself, I refuse to let the “negative societal connotation” deter me from calling myself a feminist; I have always been a feminist and will continue to identify as one.

Back to this appallingly blatant slut shaming in Ghafla’s event photos. Slut-shaming picked up a lot of steam when people tried vilifying Miley Cyrus for twerking at the MTv awards. And Twitter, blogs, FaceBook showed out to support her.

Then today we received so much backlash for these pictures (I guess solidarity really is for white women #solidarityisforwhitewomen) .

 Lemme get this straight, we were supposed to take down the pictures of the white girls, but let all the other pictures fly? Young black girls in the larger cities of Kenya are being HEAVILY influenced by the white-feminism feminism prevalent in American pop culture that encourage expression of sexuality openly. So it is reinforced to us that it is universally empowering to own your sexuality and be free to express it publicly, without us having the opportunity to fully explore our intersectionality. As a result, Ghafla self-contradicts: celebrating bikini shots of socialites and Ghafla Girls yet condemning hot/sexy girls who are dirty dancing.

Hey, look at these three BFFs having a super fun night!!! (So why the title of the article then?)

I don’t have a one-size-fits-all solution. Bottom line, the schadenfreude in each and every one of us makes stories that lead in with “ratchet” or “exposed” Ghafla’s top stories of the week. I don’t have a problem with that, it’s human nature. I just have a problem with the fact that the de facto standard definition of “ratchet” has become girls grinding or dancing in any way that is sexually suggestive. NO. Here is a Euler diagram for you to better understand what I mean.

C – Ratchet behavior

B- Sexy dancing

A- Sexy dancing that is ratchet behavior

Ya digg? Yeah sure, SOME sexy dancing is ratchet behavior. BUT NOT ALL RATCHET BEHAVIOR IS SEXY DANCING. AND NOT ALL SEXY DANCING IS RATCHET BEHAVIOR.

TL;DR F*ck white privilege. Vincent, stop slut shaming young women who are simply doing a pretty popular dance when they go to events.