Robert Alai ,Supporting Sexual Harassment? You Have Crossed The Line!

Robert Alai and I do not see eye to eye on a lot of things. Honestly I think he is abrasive, opinionated and a bully. But I respect his opinion (no matter how skewed) or  rather his investigative prowess.

I must say however, the comments he made on social media defending the touts who stripped the woman naked really pissed me off, made me blow a gasket and drove me up 2 walls. There are not enough wall slides and face palms to demonstrate how disappointed I was in you. What utter hogwash!!!

Sexual harassment should never be right regardless of how someone dresses. And guess who was of the same opinion? My fellow colleague Edward Chweya, who I had great respect for.

Robert Alai and my fellow Ghafla writer Chweya represent a bunch of educated people who have refused to evolve and it seems no amount of books can save them. It’s unfortunate that they still hold the same primordial opinion as those uneducated Embassava touts.  For most of these men, stripping a woman is just something they do and go on with their lives unaware of the psychological effects this habit has on a woman. Forget the initial embarrassment; you can maim someone’s esteem for what you consider is a way of ‘correcting a habit’ or ‘teaching a lesson’. Or in some extreme cases you stripping that woman could be the final nail to that woman’s coffin and she could just kill herself. Maybe she has been going through some hardship and that animalistic act will make her go like ‘Screw it. I’m done’ and she kills herself.
Maybe some of you do not understand just how terrible sexual harassment feels. Something as disrespectful as an unwanted spank on your behind along Tom Mboya Street or any street or anywhere for that matter can trigger feelings of being downgraded. And feeling cheap is not the best feeling in the world.

According to a 2013 global review, 35 per cent of women worldwide have sexual harassment which constitutes of sexual violence. If the spanking on the streets are put into consideration then the number increases to a staggering level. We are 3 women in the office and all of us have experienced some form of sexual harassment, whether inform of spanking or lewd comments as we walk by.

You blame their items of clothing, calling them ‘provocative’ and ‘inappropriate’. That is no excuse as we have heard tales of women walk around in a floor-length gown and get raped, or even a 2 year old get raped by a man with two wives. How is a 2 year old sexually provocative?

 Or that Indian woman, who was just sitting in her house minding her business, when villagers broke into her house, stripped her, strapped her to a donkey and paraded her on the streets. Bear in mind that this is a 45 year old woman, old enough to be my mum and these people embarrassed her because they suspected that she had killed someone. What has this got to do with them sexually harassing her? Don’t we have the rule of Law to observe? Or is it a Kangaroo Court when it comes to women? Guilty before trial.

Robert you are a trend setter. You are not just anybody behind a screen, trying to look cool and attempting to impress people who really do not care by spewing a tirade of insults and skewed opinions. People listen to you and hang by your every word. You should know better than post such things.