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In the last few days, our airwaves and social media accounts are inundated with opinions on what the

verbal and physical abuse perpetrated against a female journalist and a female MP mean. I came across

an online discussion where some were suggesting that the public humiliation of Kiss FM presenter

Caroline Mutoko and Nairobi Women's Representative Rachel Shebesh at the hands of Nairobi Senator

Gideon Sonko Mbuvi and Nairobi Governor Evans Kidero, was a ploy to distract attention from the

President and his deputy's problems with the ICC.

I personally find it disturbing that some evidently regarded discussing the violence, humiliation, sexism

and exploitation that our women suffer daily as a distraction from more important issues.

How we treat our women is a measure of how we regard ourselves as a society. After all, Wanjiku has

become a synonym for ordinary folk, both male and female. We speak of the motherland and ascribe a

feminine gender to our national collectivity. Kenya is a she and has her interests, we say. The disdain

we have for women mirrors the contempt our rulers have for us. When Kidero slaps Shebesh and Sonko

insults Mutoko, they are not just putting powerful women in their place. They are expressing their

contempt and fear of an empowered society, of a populace that dares to question the actions of their

betters.

In my view, the problem isn't that people are talking about about Sonko and Kidero. It is that they are

ONLY talking about Sonko and Kidero. Not about how they are representative of a societal disdain of

women. Not that this attitude is responsible for the silence on the rape epidemic in our towns, the

horrors beading and FGM and domestic violence, the lack of investment in maternal health which leads

women to be beaten by hospital staff after being forced to give birth on the floor.

It is why when we discuss abortion, we are blind to the dangers that pregnancy poses to women. We

have one of the highest rates of maternal deaths in the world. Many lose their jobs or have to forgo

their schooling for having the temerity to conceive unwanted kids. Many are ostracized by their familiesand abandoned by their men. Many have no incomes, no education, no support , to take care of the kids

we insist they bear.

We refuse to invest in girls education, to protect them, to empower them, to provide sex education and

contraception preferring instead to blame them, to call them fornicators and adulterers and murderers,

to turn a self-righteous blind eye as they die in their thousands or get maimed for life at the hands of

backstreet quacks.

It is never about the men.

Accept and move on, we tell women. Suck it up. It's your lot as a woman. You must have done

something to deserve it. It is just punishment for your immorality, for the sin of being female.

The parallels between how we speak of the abuse meted out against women and how we speak about

the violence meted out against us are hard to ignore. It is always our fault. We drive too fast. We are too

tribal or stupid or lazy or ignorant. It is never the fault of those who steal elections or organize and

perpetrate the violence. It is never about the brutality, negligence and corruption of officials and

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officers. We must pay taxes to fund our potentates lifestyles as just punishment for our gui lt. The poor

must forgo drinking milk because the government must have the revenues to build roads for the rich.

We do not demand accountability or better because we do not think we deserve such.

Thus the talk on the ICC trials almost completely ignores and excludes justice for the victims. We are

only concerned about the safety of the powerful, about what their prosecution means and aboutwhether they are being treated fairly. That 1600 Kenyans died five years ago barely registers. Who cares

about them or their stories or their families? Just like the treatment of Mutoko and Shebesh is seen as a

distraction, the demand for justice is portrayed as a distraction from the more important pursuit of

economic development.

No. This is not a frivolous issue or a distraction. It is a conversation we should be having but one we are

determined to ignore precisely because it is about women. And because it is really about us.