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Minding my own business the other day, a colleague from the HIV organization I am volunteering at approached me…
“Hey Matt.”
“Morning Andrew,” I said. How was your weekend?”
“Ah, all I can say is God bless German women.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“God bless German sluts,” he said. “I spent Friday night with three friends and a German woman, and after four bottles of vodka; we all took turns doing her. Last night, it was just her and me, and another bottle of vodka. Let your imagine do the rest.”
No thanks. I hardly know Andrew. What I do know is that he is cocky. He works on safer sex programmes. He is a Catholic, and he loves to talk about sex. I’m no prude, but I do believe that discretion is a virtue. If a guy back home were to tell me the same story as Andrew, I would suggest that he was masking personal insecurity or trying to prove something. With Andrew, I would say that it is roughly the same issue: he wants to prove himself to me, a relative stranger and a foreigner, with examples of his prowess with women. He is perpetuating the myth of the hyper-masculine African man, playing to stereotypes.
But Andrew’s story – reeking of ego as it does – underlines a concerning factor in the fight against AIDS in Kenya (all the more ironic considering Andrew’s daily job on HIV prevention): that culturally sanctioned hyper-masculinity contributes to sexual violence, which is being recognized as a key nexus between sexual and reproductive health and HIV/AIDS.
The feminization of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa – where young women are four times more likely to be infected than men – is being driven by violence against women and girls. Sexual violence is now one of the most reported crimes in Kenya. Reporting figures would likely be higher were it not for the hidden perpetrators: husbands who rape their wives (marital rape is not a criminal offence in Kenya). The problem becomes bleaker with the emerging figure that more than ten per cent of pregnant women are HIV positive, and seven per cent of men and women in monogamous unions (marriage or cohabitation) in Kenya are also HIV positive. With these figures in mind, it is hard not to conclude that the key issue – gaining increasing attention from development agencies and donors alike – is the vulnerability of women and girls.
Importantly, this vulnerability needs to be understood in the context of hyper-masculinity: not only in terms of what men are socialised to expect from women, but also in terms of what Kenya’s patriarchal society expects of men in terms of sexual behaviour, demonstration of prowess and power and how high levels of sexual activity is an indicator of manliness. It is unhelpful to demonise men in this analysis, but it is vital to understand the culture that consents to or even endorses treating women as objects. One may even find reasons for the aggressive assertion of manliness: the uncertainties of modernisation that are leading to more women seeking gainful employment, accompanied by decreasing material dependency on men; straw-clutching to reinforce “traditional” ways of life, many of which are fading with modern city lifestyles and rural-urban migration; or simply for fun, because they can.
Of course, homophobia plays a role too—men proving that they are men—all the more complex when the majority of men who have sex with men are married to women, further increasing vulnerabilities for all. In this context, it is a wonder that protection programmes of non-governmental organisations and the UN focus almost exclusively on women. Just as “gender” should not refer solely to women, “protection to reduce vulnerabilities” is not only a female realm. Who will protect Kenyan men from themselves?
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