Some things are tiring, especially coming from people who are old enough to know better. And I am not talking about 30’s old, no. I am talking almost gen x old. I do not enjoy writing these type of articles. I’d rather write educative posts and posts that bring joy to our hearts, but look what some of y’all are making me do on such a beautiful morning?
NKT.
Let us start from the top.
A video circulating online shows a married man, allegedly a psychiatrist that is visiting Kenya from the United States, in a bar with a visibly intoxicated young woman. This so called doctor, Instead of protecting the intoxicated woman’s vulnerability, lifts her dress and starts recording her exposed nudity, zooming in on her body while she offers feeble resistance. I say so called doctor because as someone who went to school to study brains and everything else involved with mental health, you would understand how alcohol works, or at the very least, what pushes human beings to alcohol. People are stressed and others depressed out here. So if you do not want to be (cannot be) a decent human being, the least you could do is leave the drunk woman alone!
At one point in the video, the woman asks him, “Why did you call me?” a chilling detail that suggests they knew each other prior. And this, to me, makes the violation even more disturbing.
This was not a reckless teenage boy chasing clout. This was an ageing, bald man, old enough to know better, educated enough to know the law and socially positioned enough to understand power. And yet, he chose to violate a woman’s dignity for entertainment.
Importantly, not all men in that space were complicit. Another man does eventually intervene and stops the recording. That matters because it reminds us that the problem is not masculinity itself, but the rot within certain expressions of it. Not all tomatoes are rotten, true, but the spoiled ones are contaminating the crate. It is important to ask yourself, that as a man, what type of man are you? Are you the man that lifts the dress of a drunk woman so that you can record her nudity and expose it to the world, or are you the man that steps in and asks the imbecile to stop?
And then there is the particular rot we need to talk about.
The phenomenon of summer bunnies. These are the men who behave within the bounds of law and decency while in Trump land or anywhere else abroad, but who land in Kenya and suddenly act feral, believing themselves to be untouchable demi gods. These men behave as though African women are lawless terrain, as though consequences do not apply here.
This entitlement is not accidental. It is rooted in patriarchy and the dangerous belief that African spaces are legally weaker and socially forgiving of male violence. These men know exactly what they are doing. They know they would never try this nonsense abroad. So they do it here because they believe they can get away with it.
What followed the video was just as horrifying as the act itself. The initial public reaction was vile as men and women alike rushed to blame the woman. Angaa, she was drunk. Sijui ohh, she wasn’t wearing panties. Some proclaimed loudly that she allowed it while others insisted she invited it. All responses that expose how deeply misogyny is normalised in our society.
We have created a culture where women’s bodies are treated as public property the moment they are perceived as undeserving of dignity. The moment a woman drinks too much, flirts, stumbles or fails to perform respectability, her right to privacy is revoked. Say what you may, but the sad reality is that the initial comments flooding social media were not harmless opinions but social permission structures. They are the mechanisms that protect perpetrators and silence survivors.
This is how violence is normalised and consent is misunderstood.
This is how abuse becomes entertainment.
Perhaps, this is the time to talk about comparative accountability.
In many jurisdictions including the United States, this video would have triggered an immediate criminal investigation. Believe it or not, non consensual recording and distribution of intimate images is a serious offence. Careers would be suspended and charges would be filed. Here, however, laughter, memes and excuses replaced justice. That contrast should make us uncomfortable.
What happened is a clear case of Technology Facilitated Gender Based Violence (TFGBV). Under Kenyan law, recording and sharing someone’s nudity without consent is illegal. Consent cannot be given by someone who is incapacitated by alcohol. Consent is not implied by clothing. Consent is not retroactive. And lastly, consent is not silence.
Whether or not the woman chooses to pursue legal action does not change this reality. At the end of the day, it is her choice to make. But, understand the fact that survivors are not obligated to seek justice in order for a crime to exist. Our responsibility as a society, is to name the violation and condemn it.
We need more voices willing to say plainly that what happened was sexual violence and illegal recording.
#EndGBV
