Humanizing Black Female Bodies is a dedication to all black women living in the world that still doesn’t want to accept their human factor. It comes as a way of educating women on the sacredness of their bodies irrespective of religion, sexuality, social status or political affiliation. In giving this power to black women, this project is meant to be part of the journey in the freeing of black female form from stereotypes of how it should exist or look like and for women to demand for their rights as women and as human beings without conforming to what societally acceptable and correct.
Black women are faced with heighten forms of violence because of both their race and then that of them being women, this gets worse for women leaving in slums or rural areas because they don’t know much about their rights and they lack support systems to walk them through the knowledge and this is where this project has come in. Humanizing Black Female Bodies started because of the rising cases of violence against women in Kenya leading to deaths, Femicide. From women being stabbed, to women being hacked to death, Kenya has grown to be a very unsafe place for women, yet no or little action has been taken. On March 8th, International Women’s Day,
Humanizing Black Bodies moved from an online campaign to the street to demonstrate against Femicide under the slogan, Total Shutdown KE, and to present a petition to the president, judiciary and parliament to declare Femicide a national emergency, with over 35 cases reported by Counting Dead Women Kenya between January and April 2019.
Images from the Feminist Convening, September 2019
Kisumu Feminists Society 