Are they animals?

It’s a question I first asked myself when I was seven years old, and it stayed with me for
a long time.

Walk with me.
The first time this thought took root, I was six. “Don’t wear that in front of your uncle,”
my aunt said. I was wearing shorts, just like my brother, but he wasn’t scolded. No one
asked him to cover up.
The second time, I was seven. “Don’t dance like that in front of your uncles.” Dancing
might be controversial, sure, except I was just imitating my male cousins and making
everyone laugh. They weren’t told to stop. It only became unacceptable when I joined
in.
And then came the third time, the one that broke the camel’s back. I was seven when I
got the talk. The one that goes: “You’re a girl. You have to sit properly. Keep your legs
together. Wear long dresses. Don’t walk alone, not necessarily at night. Don’t be alone
with boys. Don’t talk too loud in front of boys.” All of these were presented as fair
instructions, reasonable precautions.
But if they were so reasonable, why weren’t my male counterparts given the same talk?
Why were they free to do all the ‘sacrilegious deeds’ without consequence? It felt like
being warned about how to behave around rabid dogs or poisonous vipers. Like there
was something inherently dangerous about them, something I had to protect myself
from at all times.
So, are they animals? These boys, these men, these uncles we are taught to tiptoe
around, to modify ourselves for, to fear?

These, I’m certain, are sentiments many girls and women carry. There are layers to all
of this. Only recently did I start to deeply understand how these seemingly ‘harmless’
warnings we grow up with are part of a bigger, darker system, one that enables sexual
harassment, abuse, rape, and defilement.

Thanks to the Mulika Campaign, I’ve been able to finally contextualize these norms and see how dangerous they really are. Because of this campaign, I now see that it’s not just about being told to sit properly or dress a certain way. It’s about surviving constant, low-level harassment, harassment
that so many of us have been taught to normalize, from catcalling, to getting groped in a
matatu, to being objectified by a male teacher, to being asked to sleep with a lecturer to “find” your missing marks which, ironically, are missing because he was incompetent.

But hey, anything to take advantage of someone vulnerable, right? Through Mulika, I
realized that we don’t speak up, most of us never have. We’re wired from childhood to
believe that it’s our fault. That we must’ve said something, done something, worn
something.

Keep walking with me.

If you tell a girl, “Don’t dance like that in front of so and so,” then what happens if
something does happen to her? You know like rape or defilement, She’ll think: “It’s
because I danced like that, because of what I wore.” That’s victim-blaming, and it’s
planted early. Boys grow up hearing girls being constantly warned, and so some of
them grow up thinking, “If she dresses that way, I can do whatever I want.”
But let’s be clear: Boys are not animals.

It’s the system that teaches them to behave like they have no control. Boys are victims
too. They face defilement, sodomy, and abuse, but who warns them? Who tells them it’s
okay to report? Who even asks? We will get into that some other time. My point is Why
are we so busy cautioning girls instead of educating everyone on the basic principle
of human dignity? It’s really easy if you ask me:

A) DO NOT ENGAGE SEXUALLY WITH CHILDREN (BELOW 18).
B) DO NOT ENGAGE SEXUALLY WITH SOMEONE WITHOUT THEIR CONSENT
C) IT IS NEVER AND IT WILL NEVER BE THE VICTIM’S FAULT.

It’s as simple as ABC.
We could curb this issue by “ku – Mulika” , these systems that are uncivilized and do not
humanize people. We are not animals, let’s not act like it.