Paper short abstract:

This paper draws on the various commentaries on social media platforms- characterised by jest, victim blame and the validation of the currently prevalent femicide cases-to assess how these reactions expose the gender tensions and anxieties that define masculinity and/or femininity in Kenya.

Paper long abstract:

The recent upsurge of femicide cases in the East African country, Kenya, has seen trending hashtags on social media platforms from #EndFemicideKe, #TotalShutDownKe to #StopKillingWomen. According to Femicide Count Kenya, the country experienced 152 femicide cases in 2023 which is considered the highest in the past five years (Lawal, 2024). On 27th January 2024, thousands of protestors, mostly women, took to the streets of major cities in Kenya- Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu- as part of an anti-femicide demonstration. Ironically, these killings have foregrounded gender tensions with a male population that is both anxious and embittered. While most Kenyans, especially women, have employed digital platforms as a space for activism against femicide, the site has also brought to light contradictory attitudes of Kenyan men towards femicide. Drawing on digital counterpublics, this paper highlights the gender tensions that ails the nation producing a culture that shames victims rather than perpetrators, denies women their bodily autonomy and the looming xenophobia that these deaths have aroused. Despite the varied circumstances under which the victims faced their deaths, this paper highlights an adamant association of femicide with promiscuity, materialism and greed. This, by extension, creates a binary of victims, the deserving versus the non-deserving, of death. Simultaneously, these killings call attention to anxieties that Kenyan men grapple with in fighting the "sponsor culture" and the commodification of interpersonal relations that leave young, “poor” men relationship-less.