Following the disturbing trend of bloodshed being witnessed in Kenyan marriages and casual relationships today, a group of women leaders under the banner of ‘Team Embrace’ last week launched a campaign whose aim is to stem these gruesome killings that continue to rob the country of mainly its youthful members.
Government officials, including Interior CS Fred Matiang’i, have also joined this timely campaign by promising to tighten the noose on perpetrators. This comes at a time of raging debate pitting the proponents of boy child movements and the pro-girl child campaigners on what precipitates these dastardly acts.
Every time a jilted lover kills a woman, we’ve witnessed a surge in the number of men, mainly on social media, dismissing the victim as a ‘slay queen’ who deserved death. These men refuse to listen to their inner selves, neither are they dictated by Biblical and cultural values.
It’s just pure hatred of women, something which our society must study keenly. We live in a society where men are taught from infancy to be man enough without being told manning up has nothing to do with wife battery or murder when frustrated.
And with the advent of modernisation or civilisation, girls have been taught that ‘what a man can do, a woman can do better’ without being told it shouldn’t be about treating others, men included, as trash. This results in a clash of cultures where the African culture, on one hand, indoctrinates men to subjugate women while the western culture advocates their empowerment through education and career growth.
This calls for open-mindedness on what a 21st-century man and woman looks like to pave way for mental health discussions.
Freelance journalist and writer
