Pigeonholing of ladies who are Nyerians as trigger-happy and belligerent is not only the hallmark of denigration but also unfortunate.
Mainstream and social media has always used this as fodder for ridicule against the distaff sensitiveness of ladies. While there may be curious incidences of Nyeri women assaulting their partners and to a greater extent obliterating them from existence, the truth is that Nyerians are baronial, peaceable and caring.
The instances of domestic violence against women are usually occasions for soul-searching conversations about machismo, toxic masculinity and violence against women. But due to the traditional stereotypes, double standards have emerged when the offender is a woman. This should occasion a conversation on a rarely acknowledged fact that violence isn’t necessarily a gender issue. The heightened ill-advised attention on battered husbands and boyfriends shows clearly that domestic confrontation has been overwhelmingly misconstrued for decades.
A Nyeri Man being a victim of female aggression will make it to front page news while a more pressing issue of national importance will be squeezed in the middle pages which begs the question of what our priorities are as a state.
Nyeri women are perceived to be more economically emancipated than their counterparts. Thus when we ridicule Nyerian gentlemen as having been ‘kaliwad chapati’ it is usually an inflation of a mistruth of the female aggression in Nyeri County.
The public humiliation that men who are victims of female aggression have been subjected to reeks of our inability to objectively look at social matters. It is a complex argument which has unfortunately spiraled to an item of sarcasm.
The outcome of this is that it has become increasingly legitimized socially for a man in Nyeri County to be a central victim of domestic violence. It is now okay for a Nyeri man to be slapped or kicked. The elevated risk of this damaged social construct has heavily impacted on serious institutions like marriage.
Gentlemen from other parts of the nation are now afraid of getting spouses from Nyeri County. Or even when they do, they will have to overcome the challenge of persuading their parents why that particular one woman deserves their surname.
While male abuse may be occasioned by their faults like irresponsibility, drunkenness, infidelity and other atrocities towards their wives/girlfriends, it shouldn’t be met by laughter. This attitude is ill-timed. A battered man wouldn’t get any sympathy. In some instances, the facts will be contorted to make the man look like the aggressor and not the victim. When you are in a hellish relationship, this is no news. The difficulty in controlling a lady’s rage, especially when it frequently erupts is not easy.
Nyeri women have also been accused of being gold diggers. It is not uncommon for a Kikuyu woman to be equated with their love for money. Blanket generalizations do us no good. This pathetic accusation of a targeted group is awry.
While it may be true that a select few are in it for the money, dragging the whole of them into it is absurd. The love of money cuts across the board. I am of the opinion that the love of money isn’t gender based. It’s mutual for both sides.
It is shallow to even remotely discriminate against Nyeri ladies on that claim. There are noble women in Nyeri who earn their keep. They don’t need a man’s bank account to survive. They go out there and compete for management positions and lucrative business deals with their counterparts.
I am not defending them, but we ‘gotta’ give credit where it’s due. Nyerians are very enterprising. It would be improper to label them as money-lovers. The unconscious damage of this stereotyping is harmful. The limitation that comes with such a label has far reaching consequences.
This stereotyping of Nyeri Women is a distorted taxonomy generated via ignorance. The false impressions it creates about them shows that the society has lost its moral compass. Despite the seemingly harmless nature of such joking, the stereotype has sunk into these women’s real image of themselves and has done real harm. We can’t bury our heads in the sand in the face of this smug unfairness. While it is part of the humor and social dynamics of this new civilization, we need to collectively question whether the media exploiting these stereotypes in the name of humor is disproportionately making any gains.
