I did not know whether to laugh or cry... we are not locks, even if we like sex that much

There are tonnes of ridiculous and downright absurd analogies and metaphors people use to slut-shame women and socially control what they do with their bodies. If you are a regular social media user, you probably come across them regularly, since small-minded people tend to circulate them widely as if it is the gospel.

I recently read one that compared women to iPads. It was about a girl who bought an iPad and put an anti-scratch sticker on the screen in addition to buying a cover for it. When questioned by her dad, she said she wasn’t forced to cover up the iPad and didn’t think it was an insult to the manufacturer. She covered it because she didn’t want it to get damaged and decrease its value.

If I had known where this story was going, I would have stopped right there and saved myself a great deal of mental anguish.

Anyway, back to the story. The girl affirmed that putting the cover on the iPad did not decrease its beauty.

Then came the idiotic conclusion and I quote, “The father looked lovingly at his daughter and said, ‘Yet if I had asked you to cover your body which is much more precious than the iPad, would you have readily agreed?’”

Moral of the story: Indecent dressing and exposure of your body reduces your value and respect. Cover your body, protect it and use an anti-scratch just like you protect your gadgets in order not to decrease in value. Increase your worth. Be priceless.

After reading that, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Who comes up with this crap? I’m sure you have all come across the one about locks and keys. It claims that if a key can open a bunch of locks, it’s viewed as a master key and is an awesome key to have. But if a lock is opened by a lot of different keys, it is a shitty lock. In this case, men (or men’s genitalia) are keys and women (their privates that is) are locks. This analogy is used to justify the sexual double-standard that men can be promiscuous and women can’t.

Such kind of absurd analogies really rile me. They are incredibly foolish and make zero sense, yet they get an absurd number of ‘likes’ and ‘shares.’ People actually believe they can win an argument with such tripe!

Women are human beings! Do not equate us to inanimate objects. Do you even hear yourself when you declare that ‘if it is true for locks and keys it must be true for human genitals? We are not objects. We are not locks. We are not iPads. We are not any silly objects you want to compare us to.

Instead of acting dumb and arguing about locks and keys, just come out and say ‘I am a chauvinistic SOB who approves of male promiscuity and disapproves of female promiscuity.’ End of story. Spare us all this ‘women are like’ hogwash.

@roxannekenya