The Myth of the ‘Slay Queen’ and Kenya’s Lackluster Response to Femicide

NAIROBI — On January 14, Rita Waeni, a 20-year-old university student at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, was brutally murdered at an Airbnb. According to the investigating officer, Waeni met her killer on Instagram. The pretext for their meeting remains unknown, but investigators and her family told the BBC that Waeni had been “lured” to the short-term rental by the man.

Waeni’s murder bore an alarming likeness to that of Starlet Wahu, a 26-year-old model and social media influencer, who also met her killer online — on the dating app TAGGED — and agreed to meet with him in another Airbnb in Nairobi, where she was slain on January 3.

After a man was identified as a suspect in Wahu’s murder, women came forward to share horrifying experiences they’d survived after also meeting the man on online dating sites, including one instance in which he allegedly violently raped one woman and forced her to transfer large sums of money into his accounts. But while several women had reported him to authorities, he was never apprehended.

The high-profile murders were among at least 21 femicides across Kenya that month, according to Usikimye (“Don’t Keep Quiet” in Swahili), an organization working toward ending gender-based violence.

But among the nation’s reactions of shock and outrage, a spate of misogynistic posts online excused the murders by blaming the women for looking for quick money, or for putting themselves in harm’s way for social media clout. Media outlets alluded to much of the same, with one newspaper spinning Wahu’s fame as a tragedy and another appearing to passively blame her for going on a date with a stranger.

The media’s reaction, while shocking, is perhaps unsurprising to the Kenyan public. Former radio host Shaffie Weru infamously blamed a woman who was pushed off the twelfth floor of a building for rejecting her date’s advances. This was their first date, but Weru voiced the opinion of many Kenyans when he suggested that women should accept the sexual advances of men, especially if money was involved.

But the most shocking response may have come from some of Kenya’s political leadership — many of whom are women — who attributed the recent surge in femicide cases to women not doing enough to protect themselves. When parliamentarian Tabitha Mutinda appeared on Citizen TV Kenya’s State of the Nation roundtable shortly after the murders, she implied that the women were chasing fame at dangerous costs, saying, “There is a default certificate in society called the ‘slay queen’ or ‘socialite certificate’ that the young people are awarding themselves, which results in the recent killings experienced in Airbnbs.”

The “slay queen” trope has captivated Kenyan society over recent years. According to one story (among many) published by the national newspaper The Standard, “slay queens” are predominantly described as women who flaunt a luxurious, opulent lifestyle in what is considered a superficial and contemptible way. “Slay queens are very choosy and full of attitude,” the story read. “She will ignore your texts and will only revert when you ask her out for lunch or dinner. This is because she needs to post photos from that nice restaurant and flaunt on Instagram.”

Another story published by the paper defined a slay queen thusly: “Remember that girl who told you that a gentleman must match his shoes and belt, yet her face and neck don’t match? That’s a slay queen.”

Shortly after Mutinda’s comments aired, thousands of Kenyan women took to the streets of Nairobi in a planned march against femicide. Following the march, another woman parliamentarian, Senator Sabina Chege, told Nairobi’s The Star, “The most important job is not a march. Counseling, mentorship, and girls accepting that you can’t start from the top is a start to reducing femicide cases,” she said, alluding to women’s desire for money and lavish lifestyles as the purported real issue. “What comes easy, goes easy. Girls need to know how to work hard. There is no free money in this world.”

Chege’s statement sparked even more outrage.

Notably, the two parliamentarians gained their positions through legislative affirmative action that imposed a two-thirds gender rule, which sought to course-correct from women’s historic exclusion from the state by preventing more than two-thirds of one gender from occupying any elective or appointive position. The rule was once lambasted by another parliamentarian, Didmus Baraza — a man — as an open door to flood parliament with lazy “slay queens.”

“This makes our women not work hard and it only seeks to serve a few individuals,” he said.

Infamously, Kenyan women leaders have been termed “flower girls” — “who just can’t stop clutching on their male party leaders’ coattails for political survival or election,” according to one Standard columnist — while the credible instances of workplace sexual harassment and coercion they face have not only been left uninvestigated but also rebranded by the media as “sexual pacts” for political gain.

“This generation of older women leaders believe that they had to struggle and work hard to get their positions of power, money and class, while this current generation has paved a path rather different from theirs that doesn’t necessarily entail suffering to earn a living or even a husband,” said Brilliant Chepkirui, a young feminist researcher and grassroots organizer present at the march. “Brandishing [them as] ‘slay queens’ is to […] demonize young women who are believed to be illiterate, dumb, lazy, and use their bodies to get what they want.”

Meanwhile, other women leaders have been called out for their silence on the femicides. At the march, women chanted, “Where were you?” to Nairobi County’s women representative Esther Pasassaris as soon as she joined.

“Look at the women nominated to parliament,” said Chepkirui. “They gatekeep these positions by supporting patriarchal stances because they have been tokenized by the patriarchy. I call them ‘patriarchy’s female foot soldiers’ because they are not radical enough to question power.”

Feminists at the march also called on the Kenyan government to specifically introduce femicide as a crime in the penal code. “This allows for the crime to be defined, perpetrators arrested and arraigned in court, and could bring justice to families of femicide victims,” said Nancy Ouya, a feminist researcher, but she also suggested that the matter would be taken more seriously if legislators filed it.

“Swift action will help mold society to understand that there are dire consequences for the murder of women,” said Chepkirui.

After the march, the Office of the Director of Public Prosecution created a special investigation unit exclusively for femicide cases. Additionally, the Kenyan judiciary amplified the creation of sexual and gender-based violence courts that many hope will make access to justice less tedious than before.

Ouya is encouraged by these developments if but skeptical of the motives behind them. “We hope that these courts will be survivor [and] victim-centered and ensure that victims are protected on all fronts,” she said, but, “it feels like the government did this just to show that they are not ignorant of the impact of the march.”

If the recent government-led actions are indeed only performative, then the bigger challenge is shifting away from a victim-blaming culture. “Kenyans normalize gender-based violence and femicide,” said Ouya. “In this culture, no one bats an eye when a woman is beaten or killed.”

According to Femicide Count Kenya, 120 femicides have been recorded in 2024 to date.

Two men have been arrested and detained concerning Waeni’s murder, but her alleged killer remains at large, according to the Director of Criminal Investigations—half a year after her slaying. Wahu’s alleged killer has been detained since his arrest as the investigation remains ongoing.

An analysis produced by the Media Council of Kenya on femicide reporting in January following the murders concluded that while media remained largely consistent and focused in their reporting, some media houses “fell into the trap of sensational, inaccurate, and insensitive coverage.” The council called on outlets to “stick to professionalism and the code of conduct in reporting femicide,” but a quick Google search for the term shows that it remains pervasive in Kenyan headlines.

“The ‘slay queen’ rhetoric is deeply ingrained in Kenyan society, and the digital space has created an avenue for misogynists to continue perpetuating patriarchal narratives,” Ouya said. “We need a radical societal shift.”