Book Review: Unplugged; From comforting lies to cold hard truths

‘Why do many young girls today prefer becoming side chicks to high-value men rather than settling in marriage with an average man?’

‘What is the impact of ‘masculine’ females on relationships?’ ‘What attracts women to men, and how can men maintain that attachment?’

These are just three of the questions that writer Jacob Aliet seeks to answer in his latest book, ‘Unplugged.’

Citing that by 2030 A.D., 45 per cent of prime working age women (ages 25 to 44) will be single, up from 40 per cent in 2018, Aliet’s statistics are even lower than the survey quoted by Uhuru Kenyatta on Madaraka Day, which said that by then, 60 per cent of Kenyan women may well be single by age 45.

Read: Is single motherhood a recipe for disaster?

Let’s first put the dearth due to death, or widows, outside our discussion window.

Aliet argues that we now live in a femicentric world, where popular media panders to women without regard to what is proper or beneficial to society, even as social media provides unlimited access to unlimited attention and an easy source of validation to women.

“These developments have resulted in a decline in marriage rates, increase in divorce rates, more single mothers and unrealistic expectations from marriage, especially from women,” Aliet says.

Anecdotal narratives

The first part of the book then goes into common and factual anecdotal narratives, most of which happened during the past two years during the Covid-19 period, when domestic violence and divorce rates in Kenya shot up (not to mention underage pregnancies, but that is outside of the purview of ‘Unplugged.’).

Jacob Aliet gives the common story of ‘Denno and Achieng,’ where a soldier, say, spends his pay to educate a simple village lady, only for her to zero him out once she has a university degree, so she can get a ‘better’ man.

Or the common one about ‘Quan and Ciku,’ where the two are happy together.

Until he loses his job, she starts seeing other men, and eventually throws him out (and keeps their child); but when he finds better employment later, Ciku starts sidling up to him, using the tot as ‘child-mail,’ and tries her best to wreck his new relationship.

Aliet also uses the example of the firing of radio celebrity Shaffie Weru (and DJ Joe Mfalme) from Kiss FM radio a couple of years ago as the prime example of the ‘silencing of male opinion’ in this new world of local and global ‘femi-centrism,’ using the prism of the recently departed bro Kevin Samuels as the source of many of his saucy arguments.

Read: Homeboyz Radio fires morning show hosts for victim blaming

This has led to movements like ‘MGTOW’ – ‘Men Going Their Own Way.’

But Aliet says that women are neither good nor bad.

“They are just an excellent product of evolution, and men must understand Female Nature to navigate life and have successful relationships with the women in their lives, who will then inspire them, soothe them and provide them with the means (kids) to create their own legacy.”

'Toxic feminists'

He blames the idea of a gynocentric social order on toxic feminists who ‘vilify, cancel and banish anything that does not facilitate the feminist agenda,’; and gives the example of Will Smith, with all his simping to his dramatic wife Jada Pinkett-Smith as the ultimate ‘beta man wimp.’

Aliet repeats the dire warning by the recently deceased Kevin Samuels to women unwilling to settle that they will ‘die alone’ (with a lot of cats for company).

He talks of ‘female dudes,’ with the KS acronym of ‘DUDES – Delusional Ungrateful in-Denial Entitled Selfish’ women, many of whom are successful career women in this ‘Unplugged’ book.

“Female dudes in the masculine frame may make for great career women, but since they assert (and never submit), and compete but are never cooperative, they are incapable of sustaining a marriage; and the High-Value Men they seek, having built their own boxes of success, are seeking beautiful, feminine women who support their vision, and not partners to re-frame it.”

Read: What I said when men asked for my opinion on cancel culture and male privilege

Aliet points out the female dynamic of ‘frenemies,’ where the schadenfreude of single or divorced women makes them either go after their BFF’s man or “mislead her into coming out of her marriage.”

And this is just the first quarter of this book, that makes the claim to teach us (men) ‘things that our fathers did not tell us.’

The book is available at Nuria Bookstore on Moi Avenue for readers.

As for the author himself, he will be leading the quartet of Chomba Njoka, Lubanga Er and Herr Silas Nyanchwani (writer of ‘Sexorcised’ and ’50 Memos for Men’) to Castle Forest Lodge in Kirinyaga today to discuss ‘masculinity.’

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