Women are the reason why men have changed because women are hard on men. [鈥 The expectations they come with into a relationship, and generally how they have been brought up, or the life they live, that is what gives some men stress. [鈥 When someone is living with a woman in the house, you find that issues are many because money is little.
Wellington Ochieng, 36-year old labor migrant from western Kenya
During almost three years of ethnographic fieldwork among male migrants in , I heard complaints like Wellington鈥檚 almost daily. Migrant men, in my case predominantly Luo from western Kenya who came to Nairobi with high expectations of a better future, bemoaned a life full of pressure caused by the romantic, sexual, and economic expectations of their girlfriends, wives, and rural kin. The blame often lay on 鈥榗ity girls鈥� who were portrayed as materialistic 鈥榮lay queens鈥檞ho 鈥榝inish鈥� men by leaving them bankrupt only to suck away the after grabbing him with their 鈥楤eelzebub nails鈥� as Wellington called the colorful nails sported by many Nairobi women. Soon, so a fear expressed repeatedly by my interlocutors, most men would no longer be needed at all and Kenya鈥檚 economy would be ruled by economically powerful women who raise chaotic boys brought up . Such fears of male expendability also manifested in imaginations about a future in which more and more men and women would live in or 鈥榗ontract marriages鈥� that replace trust and love with contractual agreements. When my flat mate Samuel, a student of economics divorced from the mother of his baby son, returned to our apartment after passing the neighbor鈥檚 house where a group of women celebrated a birthday, for instance, he just shook his head and sighed: 鈥榃e live like animals in the jungle. Women and men separately. We only meet for mating and making babies. Maybe that鈥檚 where we鈥檙e heading to.鈥� Overwhelmed by their wives鈥� and girlfriends鈥� expectations, many migrant men who spoke to me in Pipeline decided to spend as little time as possible in their marital houses. Instead, they evaded pressure by lifting weights in gyms, , , gulping down a cold beer in a Wines & Spirits, playing the videogame FIFA, or catcalling 鈥榖rown-skinned鈥� Kamba women on the roads. Some men who could no longer cope took even more drastic measures involving murder and . One man, for instance, cut the throat of his girlfriend only to try to kill himself, while another tried to poison himself, later quoting the wife鈥檚 actions and character as the cause. Anything appeared better than spending time with the 鈥榙aughters of Jezebel鈥� who were waiting for them in the cramped houses of Pipeline, sometimes demanding migrant men to engage in romantic and sexual practices they were unfamiliar with as expounded upon by Wellington:
When you come to Nairobi, our girls want that you hold her hand when you are going to buy chips, you hug her when you are going to the house, I hear there is something called cuddling, she wants that you cuddle, at what time will you cuddle and tomorrow you want to go to work early? [鈥 you don鈥檛 go to meet your friends so that you show her you love her, you just sleep on the sofa and caress her hair, to me, this is nonsense because that is not romantic love, I think that romantic love, so long as I provide the things I provide, and we sire children, I think that鈥檚 enough romance. [鈥 Another girl told me to lick her, and I asked her 鈥榃hy do you want me to lick you?鈥� She said that she wanted me to lick her private parts. Are those places licked? [鈥 Those things are things that people see on TV, let us leave them to the people on TV.
Figure 1: Pipeline
The burden of economic and sexual performance was not only felt by poorer migrant men though. Rather, as shown by articles in Kenyan newspapers (see, for example, and ), it is a nationwide pandemic affecting men from different classes. On a two-day long men鈥檚 meeting on the slopes of Mt. Kenya in mid-2022 which I attended and which was organized by Chomba Njoka and the self-help book authors and masculinity consultants Silas Nyanchwani and Jacob Aliet, for instance, a male lawyer, a psychologist, and, among others, a land surveyor lamented about similar issues. Sitting around a bonfire drinking cold beer in Mt. Kenya鈥檚 damp night, one man after the other told a story about a girlfriend who cheated with a financially better-off man, a wife who emptied the marital home of all valuable commodities and left with the children, or young women who come to Nairobi to be seduced by the city鈥檚 material promises and men in suits with 鈥榙eep pockets鈥� who flock the bars of places like Pipeline looking for teenage girls with dreams of big cars, shiny clothes, and expensive hair pieces. Initially the stories were narrated with hesitance, one could feel that the men telling them were afraid to be blamed. Was I not man enough to provide for a family? Was I responsible for my wife leaving me? Yet, soon and after more and more of us had told similar stories, we broke out in cathartic laughter after another man had told us about another ridiculous incident in his life. Maybe, we began to think, it was not our fault, but whose fault then was it?
Figure 2: Men鈥檚 meeting in central Kenya
鈥楴airobian girls, man, acha tu (Kiswahili, 鈥榡ust leave it鈥�)! If some hapless guy with disposable income and sensible behavior shows some interest, the girl will put her acting mask on, and can easily fool the man proper. Nothing wrong with that, as life is a game. You play. They play. We play each other鈥�, writes Silas Nyanchwani in his book 50 memos to men (2021: 104), a collection of his Facebook posts on gender relations in contemporary Nairobi. The first time I met Silas in a caf茅 in Nairobi鈥檚 central business district, he, a calm and soft-spoken guy over two meters tall and father of a girl, told me that men had been left behind in Kenya鈥檚 economic and cultural development of the last two decades, thereby perpetuating local discourses about the 鈥樷��. Most development aid interventions were , and women were increasingly empowered economically. Who, however, was there to tell men what to do, to give men a voice and guidance? Jacob Aliet, an imposing man with an authoritative appearance, shared Silas鈥� sentiment. Known as a writer of Sci-Fi novels, many of his male friends had shared stories with him about the pressure to provide, the burden of performance, women鈥檚 ungratefulness, and men鈥檚 inability to know how to respond to what women and society demands of them after which Jacob decided to write the book Things our fathers did not tell us. Unplugged. From comforting lies to cold hard truths (2022) that, according to has helped many male readers to find relief and new hope by getting guidance on what it means to be a man in contemporary Kenya.
Figure 3: Gym sign in Pipeline: men as strong, stoic, prudent providers.
Yet, neither Silas Nyanchwani nor Jacob Aliet rule over the booming Nairobian masculinity consultancy scene where one can find a controversial figure such as former radio host among more moderate voices such as who counsels men and couples or who openly talks about his experience as a male rape victim and advises men to allow themselves to be vulnerable. The most famous personality, however, is who gives advice to Kenyan men and through other social media channels. Although Jacob Aliet, Silas Nyanchwani, former writer of the column 鈥樷�� in the newspaper The Nairobian now written by , and Amerix align with the global red pill movement, part of a global backlash against feminism or some of feminism鈥檚 social consequences, they do so to different degrees. While they all agree that the world has become 鈥榝emicentric鈥� and that men need to swallow the red pill to be 鈥榰nplugged鈥� from the false truths of feminism, Amerix has a more radical take on Kenya鈥檚 gender relation and offers answers that aim at changing not only the totality of his adepts鈥� daily lives but also openly admire Paul Kagame鈥檚 autocratic style of leadership and dreams of a world where strong 鈥楢frikan鈥� men subdue obedient women. In his chat groups, young Kenyan are not allowed to write using 鈥榚ffeminate鈥� emojis or incorrect English while dreaming about a reinstated patriarchal order and implementing Amerix鈥� advice by practicing semen retention to accumulate testosterone, fasting for days, lifting weights, and avoiding industrial processed food as well as imperial ideology spread in NGOs and churches by white men and women. Being pressured to perform economically and sexually, young men all over Nairobi beg Amerix to 鈥榗ontinue to mislead鈥� them by warning against get-rich-quick schemes and by ridiculing s.
Figure 4: Amerix: a men鈥檚 movement with over one million followers on Twitter
It would be easy to just ridicule the absurdity of some of Amerix鈥� advice or to call out Jacob Aliet and Silas Nyanchwani as toxic men. Yet, over one million people are following Amerix on Twitter, and both Jacob Aliet and Silas Nyanchwani are rather typical Kenyan men who, despite boasting patriarchal inclinations, care about their children, girlfriends, and wives. None of the men I met on the slopes of Mt. Kenya dreamt of enslaving women, and all agreed that a return to their fathers鈥� worlds was not desirable. However, after three years of fieldwork, I can count on one hand those men who confided to me that they are in happy relationships or marriages. Heterosexual Kenyan men, in other words, are unhappy, and, as attested for by Amerix鈥� fame, they are desperately looking for explanations for their experience of economic, romantic, and sexual pressure and the impasses they find themselves in financially, socially, and with regard to their relationships with women more generally. Many Kenyan men feel sidelined and, despite their willingness and attempts to provide, are unable to meet what they imagine to be or what sometimes indeed are the unrealistic expectations of women which compels them who seem to be the only voices resonating with the problems they face 鈥榦n the ground鈥�. Mark, an unemployed Luo migrant with a degree in physics who survived by writing essays for Chinese students with substandard English skills, for instance, responded to my question about the role of Amerix in his life with excitement:
Amerix is talking about why shouldn鈥檛 we be us? Why do you have to be dictated by a woman? Let the woman decide whatever you have to do. Be away from friends, she does not want. Do whatever she wants? You see that? So, we were like, give us this shit. [鈥 From the first day, we were all into Amerix鈥� thing. [鈥 there are some people who argue that Amerix is misleading the men, but then if you understand what Amerix is talking about, it is the real thing, the real situation on the ground.
In such an impasse, western journalists, social scientists, and practitioners from development aid should ask themselves what social, economic, and conceptual benefits for both men and women could be generated from working with more moderate masculinity consultants such as Silas Nyanchwani. Though they neither agree to notions of the social construction of gender nor share beliefs in the necessity to dismantle all patriarchal gender roles, they have access to the minds and hearts of Kenyan men such as Wellington, Mark, or Samuel. Although I disagree with the red pill movement鈥檚 evolutionary naturalization of gender roles and its simplistic use of biological assumptions 鈥� such as female hypergamy 鈥� to explain human social relations and strongly believe that a more political-economic approach would allow men and women to attack some of their common enemies who deprive them of economic development, I also think that honest debates that include the voices of various masculinity consultants could open a conceptual space beyond, on the one hand, the capitalistic and colonial notion of the male breadwinner and provider that necessarily produces pressured men who desperately want but cannot provide for their loved ones due to structural conditions of Kenya鈥檚 capitalistic economy, and, on the other hand, locally largely still unacceptable notions of men as vulnerable and dependent that only resonate with a few middle-class Kenyans. Such progressive, open-minded, and creative debates might help to repair what appears to be a social constellation characterized by mutual misunderstanding and heightened mistrust between men and women.
is currently a senior research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany. He is the co-editor of the blog series 鈥楶ressure in the City鈥� and currently finalizing a book manuscript entitled 鈥楳igrants and Masculinity in High-Rise Nairobi. Under Pressure in an African Capital鈥�.
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