I had a discussion with Mandii and Gathoni who run #Verbalintercourse the podcast, about women and sexual agency. Our context was specifically concerned with our urban Nairobi setting. The talk was by no means representative of heteronormative Kenyan women and sexuality, but simply a discussion where we were hoping to expand the narratives on Kenyan women and sex. I posed quite a few questions as I was interested in their point of view, having been women who have worked on these topics with other Kenyan women.
I was curious if my thoughts on how Kenyan women arrive at sexual knowledge were in any way valid in relation to their work. As I find that a lot of knowledge on sexual things as women in Kenya is very 'hearsay'. You hear about this new thing that you can do to your man or yourself to enhance the experience overall, but there isn't much that is actually overt or documented to guide us through or provide a basis on what we know.
This is one reason I found #verbalintercourse as a project to be so interesting because it's a documentation of aspects that are important to some people and their sexual expression.
I also asked them about the 'male gaze' and its manifestations in how we operate as women in society and what their thoughts were on women limiting themselves and exploring their sexuality based on what is appealing to men. As the talk progressed we touched on the presumed sexist notions on what men want and what men are like that women hold, and looked at how a lot of this is informed by mainstream media and some of it through institutions such as the church and or family.
Part of our talk moved into a conversation on popular music culture locally, and we touched on songs and music that addressed women's sexual feelings. However, the general conclusion on this was that, it was hard for women in pop culture to express their sexuality or celebrate it because of patriarchal restraints.
To conclude we spoke about their thoughts on women such as ourselves, who enjoyed certain privileges that allowed us to talk about the subject. We still acknowledged the cultural constraints around women enjoying and talking about sex and looked at how women such as ourselves navigated around the societal repercussions of judgement and to some extent threats.
Our final thoughts were on the steps needed to create a safer space for women to healthily enjoy their bodies and talk about their sexual thoughts.
You can check out our hangout below, and pose questions you'd love to get addressed at the forum this Saturday at Pawa254 from 10AM-4PM.
I was curious if my thoughts on how Kenyan women arrive at sexual knowledge were in any way valid in relation to their work. As I find that a lot of knowledge on sexual things as women in Kenya is very 'hearsay'. You hear about this new thing that you can do to your man or yourself to enhance the experience overall, but there isn't much that is actually overt or documented to guide us through or provide a basis on what we know.
This is one reason I found #verbalintercourse as a project to be so interesting because it's a documentation of aspects that are important to some people and their sexual expression.
I also asked them about the 'male gaze' and its manifestations in how we operate as women in society and what their thoughts were on women limiting themselves and exploring their sexuality based on what is appealing to men. As the talk progressed we touched on the presumed sexist notions on what men want and what men are like that women hold, and looked at how a lot of this is informed by mainstream media and some of it through institutions such as the church and or family.
Part of our talk moved into a conversation on popular music culture locally, and we touched on songs and music that addressed women's sexual feelings. However, the general conclusion on this was that, it was hard for women in pop culture to express their sexuality or celebrate it because of patriarchal restraints.
To conclude we spoke about their thoughts on women such as ourselves, who enjoyed certain privileges that allowed us to talk about the subject. We still acknowledged the cultural constraints around women enjoying and talking about sex and looked at how women such as ourselves navigated around the societal repercussions of judgement and to some extent threats.
Our final thoughts were on the steps needed to create a safer space for women to healthily enjoy their bodies and talk about their sexual thoughts.
You can check out our hangout below, and pose questions you'd love to get addressed at the forum this Saturday at Pawa254 from 10AM-4PM.