Women Go Through Street Harassment Almost Daily With No Say Whatsoever

When is the next Men’s conference taking place? Because some of these people really need to have that session. I hope in the last session you not only discussed how to successfully disappear for three days and make your people believe you were swallowed by a shark that took you to Nineveh or these many ‘jokes’ we hear, but you also drove some sense into some of you. I hope.

I know there are good men out there. Men who seem to have been well cultured and well brought up. Those who are loved by their parents.

It is very common for girls and women walking on the streets minding their own business to be catcalled told crude comments and even more disgusting, to be touched (and hurt in the process) by strangers. Male strangers.

In fact, studies show that 75 percent of women aged 14-21 have reported having experienced street harassment.

I have always wondered why a normal human being would leave his house to just go idling on the streets waiting to catcall or touch someone’s daughter or mother. Or to rudely comment about her body size. As the new men’s vocabulary in town is “size yangu”. Does someone pay these people to keep saying this daily?

It is annoying! It is rude! And I know I’m not alone because I have heard and have been with many ladies who hate that men do that.

It is funny that most of them expect you (the lady), not to get annoyed. Because if you do, they’re always ready with insults. You wonder if they expect you to award them a medal for disrespecting you.

How many times as a lady have you walked to your bus stop to board a bus and have been inappropriately touched? Or walking on the streets only to feel someone’s hand on you?

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I cannot count the number of times I have had weird thoughts about possible ways of bringing this street harassment to an end.

From wishing people would just itch from touching me, or being invisible so I’d thoroughly beat offenders, to wishing that I was a witch so that when some weird, idle strange man opens his mouth to say crude, vulgar things to me, I’d make his tongue long enough to sweep the ground. Yeah! So that his tongue is busy with more useful things. But I’m not a witch (sadly, hahaha) so I still just get pissed off and keep wishing.

Sadly, I think society has made us, both men and women believe that street harassment is normal. Men think by calling a stranger ‘baby’ and many other titles are complimentary. And for the ladies, I think they have just ‘resigned to fate’. Or changed their routines and hobbies to avoid being harassed.

We may have laws in Kenya on sexual harassment. But in a country where most laws are just made, written and not followed, women will still suffer street harassment.

If for cases as serious as rape, victims do not get immediate help, instead they’re subjected to long waits and no justice at the end.

We have all heard about even the police making unwanted comments towards victims of harassment or of the very authorities that are supposed to tackle such issues showing no interest in helping victims get immediate justice.

If only we had strict street harassment laws like France does, maybe some of the many offenders would have learned a lesson or two by now.

France’s Secretary of Equality between men and women, Marlène Schiappa, introduced street harassment laws last year, that had offenders get instant fines.

The “sexist outrage” law allows for fines of between €90 and €750 for behavior such as cat-calling, obscene gestures, degrading comments on physical appearance, sexual propositions or following a person insistently in the street.

I don’t know if there is someone out there, a lawmaker who can push for this to be implemented in our country.

But until then, if you’re a good man out there, remind your friend that women do not owe him their smile or their time for conversations.

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