Abigail Arunga: Terence, the creative crossing a line

There are many wonderful things about the internet, but there are also very many horrible things as well. I was unfortunate enough to come across one of the horrible things last week, when winding down after a long day. A friend sent me a link to a video, simply asking – have you seen this?

‘This’, was an 8-minute-long video skit by social media influencer Terence the Creative.

Now, Terence is no stranger to controversy. He became internet-famous a few years ago for doing entertaining skits (dressed as a woman, of course, as all Kenyan comedians seem to have to do to make it big) on normal Kenyan eccentricities. They really were amusing. 

Some of his skits were about cheating. Then, it emerged that he was actually cheating in real life, but that's besides the point. 

Being no stranger to controversy, it would appear that he has now decided to embrace it fully. The main premise of the video I mentioned earlier is that he is against being trapped by a woman. (By the way, if being trapped is a real fear for you, please consider using condoms or getting a vasectomy. It’s rudimentary science). 

A lady walks past him and tells him that he needs to send her money because she needs to go to the hospital; that she is pregnant with his child. He, and the juvenile friend he is with, mock her as she walks away, and he explains to his friend that there is no way she is pregnant with his child. 

Why is he so sure, you ask? We are taken to a flashback of the morning after their one-night stand. He says to her, you know I am in a relationship. The lady says she doesn’t care, and that he should have thought about that. He says she should take morning-after pills, and she says she doesn’t want to do that. As she leaves her drink on the counter to pick a phone call, he apparently grinds morning-after pills and dissolves them in her drink.

So basically, if you haven’t followed the paragraph above, he spiked her drink, and that is the reason he is so sure she is not pregnant.

Many line crossed

I don’t even know how many lines are crossed in this video. I’ve already mentioned the acting (and now I just feel embarrassed that a woman would agree to be in a video done in such bad taste, for fame, as opposed to an acting credit, because there were no credits given there). 

The thing that hit me immediately after watching the clip is the fact that we are suddenly ok with joking about putting drugs in women’s drinks so that you can get away with a decision you consciously made. You were drinking. You chose to have sex with someone. Sex has consequences, the most obvious of which is reproduction. If you didn’t wear a condom, those consequences can be swift. So...how is it now...that you must decide for someone else’s body what they will and will not do?

The most disturbing thing for me was the comment section. Both men and women were laughing at this man’s attempt at creativity. Because this must be what happens in WhatsApp groups – a man says he’s going to drug a woman, or force her into a spontaneous abortion, and his boys cheer him on. They probably share tips. This has become so widespread, so normal, that Terence the Creative can now publicly release an 8-minute-long video about putting a morning-after pill in a woman's drink, and get almost no flak. 

I know several women who have been drugged by men, and have been put in situations of trauma and violence that they did not choose. The fact that some people can feel comfortable about producing this kind of content is the clearest evidence of the existence of rape culture in Kenyan society. You see, it takes an extreme level of entitlement to a woman’s body to feel like it is ok to put drugs – any kind of drugs – in her drink. 

You can say all kinds of things about how far removed other horrific stories involving spiking and drinks; that this is just a man trying to make a living through comedy and that he would never actually do that in real life. But we should all be alarmed by this.