What is wrong with Kenyan Women? Look at what homophobia has done?

So the polygamy bill is only now waiting presidential assent. Among its many benefits as family lawyer Judy Thongori reminded women, is that it consolidates all the marriage laws into one . It is therefore easier to administer matrimonial issues especially during divorce. The bill has many benefits - among which, as the self-confessed homophobe, is that it provided opportunity to close down any backdoor attempt at same-sex marriage.

The law is not controversial because it now allows polygamy. Kenyan women made peace with that long time ago. As a compromise, they had suggested that existing wife’s consent be sought first before their husbands added another wife(s). But now as Judy notes “No consent of the existing wife is required. You consent to a marriage that is potentially polygamous when you opt to marry under customary law.”

 “Progressive” women are saying, all they need is to ensure that one does not marry according to customary law – Muthoni Thang’wa wrote. Her article presents the “other options” available to women who “wish to be in a monogamous marriage.” This article so annoyingly simplistic – as if a woman in Turkana, Pokot or Narok, fighting against early marriage for her daughter with the hope that her daughter gets a better life than she did, would have agency to opt for a “Christian” marriage? I think the feminist theory calls these layered vulnerabilities – Intersectionality?

Of course if Muthoni were not a woman, one would be excused to think of her along the same lines as the Justice and Legal Affairs Committee chairman Samuel Chepkong’a. During the debate in parliament, Mr. Chepkong’a said “Any time a man comes home with a woman, that would be assumed to be a second or third wife. Under customary law, women or wives you have married do not need to be told when you’re coming home with a second or third wife. Any lady you bring home is your wife.” 

But this bill is a result of something much worse happening in the Women Rights movement in Kenya. I agree with Dr. Nyairo, that the quality of women representatives in parliament is deeply wanting.  I also agree with her that in years gone by, women leaders, like Wangari Maathai, Eddah Gachukia, Phoebe Asiyo and others offered far better leadership, in a far hostile environment than the current women leadership.

But she fails to diagnose when the “rains started to beat” the women leadership. My view is that they started after Moi and others denigrated them using heterosexual and patriarchical – hereafter referred to as hetero-patriarchy anchor-points. When Moi, referred to them as a “bunch of divorcees.”  A new generation of women leaders emerged, that wanted to prove they were more “catholic than the pope” – paying homage to hegemonic masculinity and distancing themselves from anything that seemed contrary to the traditional concept of marriage.

According to them, the woman was powerful not because she is a human with “equal dignity,” but rather because she is “the neck” which enables the “head” i.e., the man to turn.  (I really hate this metaphor of the head and the neck, because if all women are like my mother and my sisters, then they are more like the backbone of their families rather than just the neck)!

A once famous lawyer’s organization, that had done so much to build the human dignity of the woman, adopted hetero-patriarchy as its guiding star. It was during this time while working at GALCK, we approached this once-famous organization, with a case of a Lesbian who had been raped. The response was as stunning as it was utterly disgusting. “We are a family-oriented organization, we are afraid we cannot work or be seen to work with lesbians!”

The women swallowed hook, line, and sinker what their male religious leaders told them – “equal does not mean similar.” That just because they fought for equal rights, they did not need to have similar rights, after all men are different from women.  Unfortunately, the new generation of women leaders failed to realize that it was not about the details but the PRINCIPLE of equality that mattered.

Moreover, worshiping at the altar of hetero-patriarchy, they failed to see, gays as their allies in the struggle to dismantling besieged masculine hegemony. Now I look at them well aware that I can marry any number of women, - yes as a gay man, and at no cost (because there is provision for prenuptial), just to spite the “family-oriented-non-homosexual-supporting” women leadership! How could they proselytize just to get a few favours?

Now look at what they have done? Do they even realize it? The power of the new law lies not in the fact that men will marry more wives – far from it. It lies in the abiding threat to take on more wives! And don’t talk about civil or Christian marriages. The threat of divorce so as to enter a more accommodating customary marriage will just be as effective. Just like the anti-gay laws, the power of the new law lies not in its execution, but rather in ever abiding potential for execution. If women leaders had listened to the gays, they would have known that….

Anyway, the bill is not yet law…..now go and do something about it!