Protest against stripping is push for equal rights, respect for women
What you need to know:
- First, stripping someone in public clearly constitutes violent assault, which is illegal. In turn, the fact that groups of men nevertheless carry out such acts in broad daylight, and that they nearly always get away with it unpunished, points to a troubling level (and assumption) of impunity.
- Second, such acts — together with some of the online commentary and sexist remarks made by male bystanders during Monday’s march — point to high levels of misogyny and a reality where some men seek to violently assert their assumed power over women.
- The organisation of a march in defence of a woman’s right to wear a short skirt without fear of assault is about much more than wardrobe preferences.
Last Monday, over 1,000 men and women convened on Uhuru Park and then marched to the central business district.
The protest called for an end to gender-based violence and impunity. It urged respect for women and their bodies.
The trigger for the march was a violent assault on November 7, where a woman was publicly stripped in the city centre for the alleged crime of being ‘indecently dressed’.
Unfortunately, such attacks are nothing new, and at least two similar incidents have occurred in the past week.
However, on November 7, the assault was videotaped and posted on YouTube, sparking a fierce debate on social media between those who condemned the attack (#MyDressMyChoice) and those who supported it (#ScantilyDressed). The violent footage — together with police inaction and divided public opinion — prompted one Facebook group, Kilimani Mums, to organise the march with the help of activist friends.
The fact that much of the debate and mobilisation took place online highlights the importance and power of social media. This is particularly striking given that the initial organisers, Kilimani Mums, had hitherto focused on issues such as childcare, female pampering, and relationship problems, raising interesting questions about social media’s protest potential.
However, the protest and associated debate is also interesting for what it says about impunity and misogyny. First, stripping someone in public clearly constitutes violent assault, which is illegal. In turn, the fact that groups of men nevertheless carry out such acts in broad daylight, and that they nearly always get away with it unpunished, points to a troubling level (and assumption) of impunity.
Second, such acts — together with some of the online commentary and sexist remarks made by male bystanders during Monday’s march — point to high levels of misogyny and a reality where some men seek to violently assert their assumed power over women.
And I do think it is about power and not morality or culture.
UN-AFRICAN OUTFITS
No doubt many will disagree with me. Indeed, some have already asserted that miniskirts, tight trousers and other ‘revealing’ outfits are un-African. However, this is clearly nonsense, as any glance at photographs from the pre-colonial period will attest.
For others, such clothing is a sign of loose morals. However, my knowledge of moral codes is that it is about individual and collective interactions — such as a love of one’s neighbour — and not about skirt lengths.
A different take on the moral argument is that such clothing constitutes purposeful temptation and an unfair test on men’s sexual urges: the sight of a woman’s legs apparently being too much for some men to bear. However, if this is a moral problem, it is one that clearly lies with the immorality of those men who suggest that they cannot control their violent sexual urges towards members of the opposite sex.
In a similar vein, it is sometimes suggested that women should be careful about what they wear lest they become victims of sexual violence.
However, it is generally accepted that sexual violence is not about admiration for a woman’s appearance, but about power, control, and domination. Unfortunately, this means that women currently get raped in Kenya, but also across the world, whatever they are wearing.
In turn, the way to tackle sexual and gender-based violence is to cultivate a culture of respect and to bring perpetrators of such crimes to justice; it is not to blame the victim, which just further perpetuates the underlying problems.
So why, shouldn’t a woman wear a short skirt? Ultimately, it seems to be an effort on the part of some men to assert the power that they believe they should wield over women’s lives: from what women wear, to how they behave, where they go, what work they can do, and so on ad nauseum.
In turn, the organisation of a march in defence of a woman’s right to wear a short skirt without fear of assault is about much more than wardrobe preferences.
Instead, it is about a demand for equal rights and respect for the female body. And, in an ideal world, for a situation where gender becomes irrelevant such that all people are judged on the basis of the kind of person that they are— their values, ideals, behaviour and actions— rather than their sex and least of all on their clothing.
Lynch is an Associate Professor of Comparative Politics, University of Warwick, UK.
