I Profile picture
Jun 12, 2022 11 tweets 3 min read Read on X
I've been asking my male friends to do something - *watch if the first response to everything a woman tells you is to refute, say no or something negative*

One texted me later: Holy f*ck

The problem is, constantly putting up with unwarranted resistance is bad for mental health.
The conversation started off from discussions with married women on dealing with men just resisting ideas with no basis. Including, and I'm not kidding, *buying the new black toothpaste*.
W: Let's test this
M: No
W: *Goes ahead and buys*
M: *Uses it* I actually like this
This gets horrid when it piles up. It makes daily conversations with men anxiety inducing for women because you have to *literally prepare a defence for everything*. In a good no of cases - women stop mentioning or asking anything. No one wants a fucking toothpaste discussion.
Some things you just do. You think, you do - not everything needs to be a debate. It's "let's get this" and the person goes "okay" and then you get the thing. Another was a story of someone's husband chiming in to say negative things whenever she's chatting with friends 😳
Oh, he is one of those allies who believed that he's very supportive of women in his life (I'm hoping he's stopped believing that). All while responding with resounding no to things that should not get a no. He didn't say what but he found himself in an argument with his sister.
... About something really petty that he should have just agreed with. She asked him "what exactly are you resisting?" - which is when he remembered what I'd told him. It's socialized resistance to women speaking - and every man I know does it either subconsciously or consciously
My Autistic brain has to *learn by observation* - I don't pick up social cues so teaching them to me as a child was likely futile to my oblivious brain. So I kinda *learn by observing patterns* - ever since I started my ADHD medication, I'm noticing weird social norms like these.
It's like *pathological demand avoidance* but make it something inflicting men when women speak. The problem tends to disappear when it's a man speaking. One person talked about a woman who calls the husband's best friend whenever she needs a huge decision to be made 😥😥😥
In case you missed it: This thread doesn't exist for debate reasons (I don't even get why this has to be said out loud because it's the literal premise of the thread) It's for women to put words to something they experience every day. Bring debate and you're blocked.
Because this is my most popular tweet and people keep coming back to it, I've decided to come back and change the "advert" I'm putting here. There's this amazing lady called Njeri who's doing a lot of work for women in Kenya. This is her:
google.com/amp/s/www.busi…
If you have anything to contribute, here's an MChanga link. I'll appreciate it immensely. Thank you in advance.

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More from @W_Asherah

Jan 18
So I made some friends in Malaysia. Then found out that we our pay scales aren't very far from each other. An engineer there starts at 100k to 130k where ours starts at 50k to 80k. But guess what? They have double or triple our purchasing power.
Every conversation with them left me angrier. Rent for a 3 br is 30k - not the slummy ones getting built by GoK. No - designed for walkability, green spaces etc. Their roads - went to a village in the mountains and it was tamarked almost all the way. They're completing the rest.
The village had freaking internet put by the government before telcos connected those areas. In the middle of nowhere! They had solar - which had to compete with grid prices which stand at 3KES per kWh. The levels of rural poverty I was looking at vs what is here world's apart.
Read 6 tweets
Nov 19, 2025
Now let's talk the economics of rural electrification or electrification in general - the vantage point that any utility operates from. This is a short summary of a very complex topic so I'll put a paper at the end that explains things in more depth for those who want to read.
For starters, let's talk about perception of electricity in Kenya. We demand electricity as a social good - e.g. politicians promise it to people on the campaign trail... "If you elect me, I'll connect you". You can see that in the story of how we ended up at LMCP.
The reality for KPLC is that electricity is a business. Their balance sheet has to be positive so they have to sell more than it costs to repair, maintain and operate the infrastructure + employ people. Those two don't always go together because of how the grid works.
Read 14 tweets
Nov 19, 2025
Let's talk about procurement. The first sign of trouble is World Bank's "buy the cheapest" model. It works if you're buying handkerchiefs but for electricity equipment, that's a disaster. Coz guess what? China and others have figured out how to manufacture different qualities.
The second issue is the structure of the purchase team. Engineers have the least influence. They create the specs and recommend but will not have veto power when it comes to purchase. And even if they did - "phone calls" can be made. Umeguza vitu za mkubwa.
Wewe na X type breaker yako shindeni hapo. There's a brand called VBB from an Asian country. The country also manufactures the X type but you'll have to pay good quality prices and that cuts into the margins doesn't it? Nevermind that you'd still eat well if you bought X type.
Read 7 tweets
Nov 19, 2025
Say you're a president. During your campaigns, you promised to give every child a laptop. When you get into power, you decide you'll actually try to accomplish that. Two, three meetings in, you realize you're up against a massive problem - schools don't have electricity.
Your laptop project is dead on arrival. Instead of giving up, you tell your people to figure out a solution. A solution is soon found - the school electrification project. The initial idea is to expand the grid but soon, the realities of Kenya lead to solar being added.
After the school electrification, some politicians get complaints from residents near schools - there's a transformer near a market but the market which has shops, has no electricity, so you expand the program to markets. Soon, households complain, so you expand it to households.
Read 16 tweets
Nov 15, 2025
I think you people misunderstand Kenyaness. We are "settle here and keep quiet" people. I've learned that at a professional level - I don't talk about the things I do publicly. Even here, I only talk about the technical content. We are "don't show us" people.
She could very easily have settled without the drama but she's from a culturally talkative group. And Kenyans, including me, felt like she was advertising Kenya to others like her. We don't need more foreigners settling here unless we can get reciprocity with their countries.
Is it good? No. Is it us? Yes. We're a mix of Asian cultures which are culturally introverted and the American one that's culturally extroverted. But we tend towards cultural introversion more. And we are open haters - which we're allowed to be. Hating is a language we speak well
Read 7 tweets
Nov 6, 2025
I've been asked about Adani and - show me India's grid and I will point you to the heavily modernized Chinese grid that is the talk of town in the whole world. They've mastered RE integration among other things. So why exactly are we hiring an Indian company again?
Nothing personal but I'd hire the guys who have a track record managing a grid with heavy integration of RE. People who have built the entire grid infrastructure recently. Or the Germans - still the world's engineers though China is catching up. The rest? Mnatudanganya.
Just place capacity building requirements and follow through to make sure 1) It's being implemented and 2) Parastatals send young people - not old wazae for per diem. We really need to do something about HR and finance going for engineering trips. It's nonsense.
Read 5 tweets

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