Sexuality, consent, and BDSM

Kaz Transcript

Sabrina Merage Naim
Hello to you Kassia and our audience.

Kassia Binkowski
Hello! I can't wait to hear about this conversation.

Sabrina Merage Naim
This was a fun one. I got to speak with Kaz, who is bursting with personality. She's just so, you know, she's one of those people that has an infectious personality, an incredibly infectious personality.

Kassia Binkowski
She really is.

Sabrina Merage Naim
And she is doing some really, really gutsy and important things that we got to talk about. And Kaz who started her career, as a singer and a rapper, and was doing amazing things there (and she was very successful there) kind of pivoted away from that, and has done a lot in digital media. And today is the host of one of the most successful podcasts in Kenya called The Spread, which is a sex-positive podcast, focused on providing really a straightforward, comprehensive sexuality and consent education for a population that don't have the resources for that anywhere. This is really about sex positivity, freedom, and authenticity in a country that does not exactly have an open dialogue about these issues.

Kassia Binkowski
I admire that bravery so much. Right? I think it's one thing to work inside the system and try to create change in all of the ways a system allows. I'm thinking of policies and politics, and I'm thinking of grassroots organizations delivering services. It is another thing, another level of bravery to speak out so publicly, podcasts being a prime example, on a topic that is otherwise, so hushed in a culture. That to me is amazing.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yeah, and brave is really the word for Kaz, because she is a queer woman in a country where being queer is actually illegal. And she doesn't shy away from talking about her life, her experience, her sexual quirks and fantasies, and all of the things she just completely opens herself up in such a bold way, so that other people can feel comfortable to also come to the table and say, "Hey, me, too, and I have questions, and I have thoughts, and I have desires that I don't have a platform or a community to talk to about this," and Cass has created that community. And it has at times been really risky for her, you know, she has come to a place where she's created this really open authentic community about about sex positivity, and she's been threatened, you know, for that, for doing that, for being so bold, for being so open about it. And I have a lot of respect and admiration for her that she would not back down. She just keeps going. Because she has seen that what she's doing with a podcast is really changing people's lives.

Kassia Binkowski
And I love that, you know, that this sheds a light on how valuable technology is, right? We grew up in a generation, certainly I did, where, you know, sex education was available in more traditional channels, right? There was the book that my mother left me when I got my period, there was like a biology class in school. But there weren't podcasts on it. And I definitely obviously wasn't going to turn on a TV show about it, right? That wasn't going to happen. And I love how she's leveraging that platform to deliver a new level of both education and normalization on a topic that otherwise hasn't been touched in those channels.

Sabrina Merage Naim
That's right. So we in this conversation, talk about everything from her upbringing and the traumas that she faced as a young child that have paved a path for her to now the activism that she is taking. We talk about her amazing TED talk called "sex education should start with consent". I highly recommend it. She's just incredible. So enjoy. Take a listen.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Hi, Kaz.

Kaz
Hey!

Sabrina Merage Naim
Thank you so much for joining me. I've been really looking forward to this conversation for a while.

Kaz
Thank you so much for having me.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Absolutely. And you're based in Kenya right now, is that right?

Kaz
I am, yes, it's 7:30pm in Kenya, and- What time is it where you are?

Sabrina Merage Naim
8:30am in Los Angeles.

Kaz
Wow.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yes. First, tell me a little bit about an earlier age of yours where you really were an accomplished singer. And this is something I didn't know about you. You won the Korra award for the most promising female artist in Africa in 2006? And you were dubbed the Kenyan Queen of Soul?

Kaz
Yes. That was a long- that was an old life.

Sabrina Merage Naim
It was an old life, you're not doing that anymore, I know. But tell me a little bit about how you got into that and how old were you around that time.

Kaz
I started music. I always knew that I wanted to be a singer. Singing was supposed to be the thing that was supposed to be the thing that I was going to do for the rest of my life, right? And so I got into music as a rapper when I was 14 years old. I won a competition. I don't know if you remember Coolio, the rapper, he was he's an old time rapper...

Sabrina Merage Naim
I remember so well.

Kaz
So he came to Kenya and he had two concerts, like two days, a Friday night concert and a Saturday day concert. And the Friday night concert, I went for it because I had tickets. My uncle used to work at a radio station, so I got free tickets to go for the Friday night concert. And while I was at his concert, he had a rapping competition. And I was too far back, because I was trying to yell, I was like, "anybody, please me, me, me!" because I really wanted to rap. I didn't even know he's doing it. And so I missed the opportunity on the Friday concert. And then I called my uncle and I said, "you have to get me into the Saturday concert as well because I need to get on stage." So even before he announced that he was having a rapping competition, my uncle stood me in front of the stage and lifted me up and I was like, "ME! I want to rap." He was like, "wow."

Sabrina Merage Naim
That is real love.

Kaz
And my uncle was a really tall guy, and I was a little tiny thing. So he literally just lifted me up. And I got on stage, and Coolio was like, "okay, cool. Okay, slow down, girl." I got on stage, and there was four of us on stage. I was the only girl. And then we had a rap battle. It was just passing the mic around. And then I won.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Wow.

Kaz
And that's how I began my journey in the music industry. I started off as a rapper, I really wanted to sing, but I was a really (I still am) a really good rapper. And I just sort of trained my voice, I did a lot of vocal training, also blessed with the gift that I already had. And I, you know, I was in the music industry for over 20 years. And then it's so draining. It's so many different versions of draining. And I just didn't want to be involved with that lifestyle anymore.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yeah, I mean, one component that I can imagine being so draining is how we over hypersexualize, singers, especially young women. And just anecdotally, I don't know if you saw Alanis Morissette's documentary called Jagged, where she talks about how she also came into the music industry at such an early age. And she was pushed by agents and managers and whatever to be more sexy, and she was a teenager, right? And you similarly, you were a teenager. So I'd love to hear from your experience, what was that like for you? How did that shape you from such an early age? Did you experience any of that?

Kaz
You know, funny you should say that, nobody has ever asked me this question, so I've never even really had to think about it. But the first producer that I ever worked with, I recorded my first song when I was 15 years old, and the first producer I ever worked with did like push me into- I remember, I used to write really deep lyrics. And he was like, "this is not gonna sell, I need you to sell sex." So my song was just like, I was talking about pussy and errr. I was 15 years old. And so I was hypersexualized, but then also, I have a background of being sexually assaulted when I was a child. And so I was hypersexualizing, myself as well. And this was my trauma response to being sexually assaulted. I was a hypersexual teen, like completely and I, for a long period in my life, I thought that this was just who I was, until I realized that hypersexuality is actually just a trauma response.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Are you willing to talk about the circumstances of your experience?

Kaz
Absolutely. So I was about eight years old in school, I was in a very, very, very, top notch, one of the best schools in Kenya. And my mom used to work at the school. And we had a little house that was inside the school compound. So during the holidays, I would stay in school for the most part, while mom wrapped up her work stuff. And you couldn't go swimming without being accompanied by an adult. So our next door neighbor who was also a school, that he was part of the- he wasn't really a teacher, he was part of the administration. And so he's the one who used to take me, an old, old, old, old, wrinkly man, and he used to sexually assault me by the swimming pool. And this happened, I can't I remember really well, because I really feel like I've may have blocked out this memory, but I think it happened for years without me telling anybody and this is mostly because in my young, eight year old brain, I didn't want my parents to stop me from going swimming. I think that was the number one reason I was like, "if I tell anybody, then nobody's gonna allow me to go swimming." So for me swimming was the priority. Which, you know, in retrospect...

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yeah, it's really interesting to hear from a child's perspective, how they kind of sift through something like that. And I can imagine a child, the joy that you had from swimming was something that you didn't want to be- you didn't want to be punished,

Kaz
You are dropping gems, I feel like I'm in therapy!

Sabrina Merage Naim
This is Kaz's hour of therapy...

Kaz
I feel like I have to pay you after this, just send me an invoice.

Sabrina Merage Naim
You know what? This is payment enough. This is payment enough. You know, I think, too, I do want to get into how you dealt with that and how in your adulthood, you have kind of unpacked that and figured out how to move on from that. For other people, maybe who are listening that have maybe experienced something similar. Your life now is so kind of abundantly about sex, but in a much healthier way, with a healthy relationship to it. And I'm curious, what was the bridge for you, between that trauma, and now where you sit so confidently with your relationship to sex, sexualization? You know, we're gonna talk about BDSM, consent, how you have kind of positioned yourself as an expert on sex education, where was that link for you?

Kaz
So I think it begun with moving from that point in my life into being a young teen, and a teenager into my adulthood. The hypersexualization, like I had said earlier, that was a real, that was really very prevalent in my life and making really terrible sex decisions as a young kid, and not knowing who to have conversations with because at that age, when there's nobody to guide you, the only people you have are your friends. And according to like, the peer groups, it's kind of a cool thing to be this hypersexual person. It's like, "Ah, you're so cool. You're having sex with multiple people!" And older people, which is a thing that I'm learning now was not my fault. And thinking that, you know, there's a lot of young girls in school, there's a lot of people now who probably don't understand this, but looking back, when I was 14, and 15 years old, and having like relations with men that were much older. And thinking that it was such a cool thing to do, I was a cool girl, you know, "look at who I'm hanging out with, look at who I'm having relations with," which is really just the fault of the people who are older, who should know better, and not understanding that. And there's so many people who deal with that now. And going into my 20s, and I think my teens and my 20s were full of just making horrible mistakes. And then getting to a point in my life where I began to tie the pieces together. So when I sleep with certain people, I wake up, like I have, like energetically low, I just feel horrible. And I don't know how to reconcile that feeling. And I'm just like, "but sex is supposed to be great." Everybody says sex is great. The movies say sex is great. And then you have nobody else to turn to. You just have yourself and your peers and the movies and you know, the media. And then at one point going, "you know what, it's not worth it." It's not worth the waking, crying, staying in bed crying for three days, because you slept with somebody because you didn't want to, but they somehow managed to convince you into sleeping with them. And then you're in bed for the next few days crying. It's just at some point in my life, I was like, "this has got to stop." And I've got to learn more about these emotions. And I've got to learn more about these feelings. You know, what do we do? There's so many people who are going through similar experiences. What can I do to help other people because I know that in helping other people, I'm helping myself. It's a cathartic sort of experience. And then I started to learn and I started to look online for people who were sex educators or people who were in the sex space, you know, in whatever realm, and then I was so lucky to find when I first started doing my research. I was so lucky to find this couple, Jet Setting Jasmine & King Noire. And they were the first people that I reached out to online and I was like, "I want to learn everything." And they were so accommodating, and so wonderful, and they taught me everything about sex positivity. They're the ones who introduced me to the BDSM world where I learned everything about consent, and where I continued to just understand that there were people in the world that were actually having healthy sexual relationships. And here, I was just making so many mistakes.

Sabrina Merage Naim
I think it's so interesting to acknowledge that first of all, on this show, we've talked a lot about the fact that children cannot consent. Okay, like period. And absolutely, what you're saying is, it is the responsibility of adults to protect the children.

Kaz
Yes, absolutely. I was actually doing a story today on virginity testing. And I don't know if you've heard about this?

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yes, but please explain it for our audience.

Kaz
It's very prevalent on the African continent. It's where young girls, from the age of 12, are tested to see if they're virgins, before they're married off.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Right. In other words, if their hymens are still attached, that's how they test

Kaz
And first of all, people don't even know what the hymen is. And there's so many ways in which the hymen breaks, including just walking, running, swimming, riding horses-

Sabrina Merage Naim
Having nothing to do with sex.

Kaz
Exactly. And so I was actually reading about the way that they test for virginity. And the first way is visually, they look at the girl's vagina. And if it's like light pink, that's a sign that she hasn't been sleeping with boys or men. If she's tight, so there's women, the elder women within the community, insert their fingers inside these young girls to check if they're tight, quote, unquote, and dry. And then so there's three grades: there is grade, A, B, and C. So A is the light pink, tight, and dry, where grade C is wide and wet. And that's how they determine whether a girl is a virgin or not. And this is done by people that are not medical practitioners or have any kind of medical training. And this is because the value of women, the value of girls and women on the African continent is based on whether or not she's been touched by a man.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yeah.

Kaz
But not even thinking about the fact that so many young girls have their sexual debut forcefully, they are raped by people in their household, or, you know, people within their community.

Sabrina Merage Naim
It's part of a conversation that we're having with another expert, Dr. Deemah Salem, who is an OBGYN and an expert on sexual health in the Middle East. And she also talks about this virgin testing. And the sheer amount of misconceptions around this is shocking, right? But there's such a deep culture that has just persisted for so long in Africa and Middle East, in different parts of the world, where, like you're saying, the worth, the entire worth of a girl is based on these things that actually have nothing to do with whether she's had sex or not. And she may have been forced by a family member by someone in her household. And what is she supposed to do hide that? Right, hide that, but she's now sullied for the rest of her life because someone assaulted her.

Kaz
Yeah.

Sabrina Merage Naim
So yes, a lot of that exists, a lot of it is so upsetting. I really appreciate you sharing part of your experience, and one thing that I wanted to ask you about kind of going back to your music career, there was something else that happened during that time, which is just shortly after you dropped your first album. Can you explain what that circumstance was?

Kaz
Sure. It was actually like a month to the day of the day of when I released my first album. An ex boyfriend of mine released nudes onto like- This is when Facebook was just starting, but also social media wasn't that big. So it was an email that made the rounds around the country so I was plastered all over the press as this, you know, I was slut shamed and I was it was just horrible. So yeah, similar to revenge porn. I think it falls in the same category actually.

Sabrina Merage Naim
So explain revenge porn to people who have never heard that term before.

Kaz
Revenge porn, more often than not, is what happens when a partner or somebody that you've been in a relationship with, gets upset at you after a breakup or during a relationship and decides to either share nudes or videos or anything intimate of you, to the public.

Sabrina Merage Naim
And very often, this happens to girls and women. Not as much-

Kaz
Yes, for the most part. Yeah.

Sabrina Merage Naim
to men. How did you respond to that?

Kaz
I hid under my bed for almost a year, I was a wreck. I was a wreck. Because my career had just like, when I released my album, my music career just hit its, you know, we were peaking. And I had shows and I had bookings for gigs, and as soon as that happened, radio silence. People canceled their bookings, people just didn't want to have anything to do with me. My career, my music career just plummeted. And the funny thing is, I've seen it happen to many people where sometimes these men will send videos of them having sex with their girlfriend, and still it's the girls that get victim blame, there's a lot of victim blaming and slut shaming.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yeah, of course, it's very often the women who, like your example, your entire career got thrown off the rails. And you never were able to recover after that.

Kaz
It took a while. I mean, I definitely recovered, but it took a while.

Sabrina Merage Naim
I mean, but specifically in the music industry. Did you ever go back?

Kaz
I did, actually. Yeah, I continued to do music for maybe another 10 years after that. Yes, I did. I did jump back on the horse.

Sabrina Merage Naim
No, that actually makes me happy because I don't want him to win.

Kaz
Nah, and you know what the worst thing is, and people hate this when I say it, but like, I forgave him, and we became friends.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Wow. No, that is hugely mature of you. I mean, did you actually sit down and have a conversation with him about it?

Kaz
It took years and we sat and we spoke and we ironed and ironed and ironed and it took maybe six or seven years of this process of forgiving, but I finally decided to do it.

Sabrina Merage Naim
You know, you are you are a bigger person than most, but I have to respect the fact that you were committed to that process, because my assumption, my hope, is that after all of that, he changed.

Kaz
He did. He went through his own healing process and his, you know, it was actually kind of a really beautiful process looking back, very cathartic. Because sometimes you just, you know, when you begin to have that healing, there was a lot of anger in the beginning, when you begin to heal, it starts with anger. So there was a lot of like, ah, a lot of yelling and a lot of crying and a lot of a wish I could hit him. But I just can't, because I don't have it in me.

Sabrina Merage Naim
So you so you then went on to have a music career for 10 years, but you stepped away at some point.

Kaz
Yeah.

Sabrina Merage Naim
But you never really kind of fully went away from from performance or being in production.

Kaz
I never did step away from the limelight. I continued with all of my other ventures, which are, you know, I've been an actor, I still remain a musician, I had a show last week. I've always kind of wanted to be in front of the camera, on stage. Considering the fact that I have such crazy social anxiety, it doesn't make sense. The two things don't add up.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Let's talk about that for a second because you are a self proclaimed exhibitionist.

Kaz
Yes.

Sabrina Merage Naim
You are in front of audiences. You are talking about your kinks, what you like what you, you know, the whole thing. You're talking about going to sex parties, and BDSM and dungeons and swinging conventions and all of these things in front of an audience of people. And you're showing a vulnerable part of yourself, but you are telling me that you suffer from severe social anxiety? How do those two coexist?

Kaz
They don't, they really don't. But to be completely honest, it wasn't always this way. Something happened, something somewhere happened and I can't even tell you when it happened or what shifted. But something happened and I just became extremely... I want to use the word fearful of being outside in the public. And now, I'm at the peak of my social anxiety at this point in my life. I mean, one of my partners had invited me to dinner towards the end of last year. And there was going to be other people there, maybe like 10 people. And when we got to the parking lot in the car, I had a panic attack, like, "oh my god, I can't do this." And I don't understand it. And then I kind of just brush it off and then get up and go. It's not anything that I would recommend, and I know a lot of people suffer from social anxiety, and I am so interested to know how people deal with it. I take valerian root, which is a natural herb, and it really helps me calm down. So if I know that I'm going somewhere, then like an hour before, I'll take a couple of the valerian root pills, and it calms me down a little bit. Yeah.

Sabrina Merage Naim
But I mean, whatever system you have it at least in that moment, it's working. I know that you said it's not working for you kind of behind the scenes, because you're struggling through it still. And I appreciate your candor about that, because yeah, a lot of people struggle with social anxiety. And I'm sure there are a lot of people who would want to know someone like you who you are in the limelight, you are talking not just in public, but about personal things to you. How do you get there? So valerian root, crying...

Kaz
Oh my gosh, crying yes. Crying before I leave the house. And also, I think my purpose is bigger than me. So my purpose is bigger than my personal. So whatever it is I'm dealing with, I feel like there's people out there who are dealing with things that are larger, and maybe them catching a glimpse of my strength is going to be the thing that saves the, I don't know, it's like a savior complex, kind of. But also, I do know that there's a lot of people who benefit from the work that I do. I always say the spread is always going to be bigger than me. And the work that I do is always going to be bigger than me.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Tell our audience, what is this? It's not just a podcast, right? But tell us what is this movement.

Kaz
So The Spread was created because based off of my life trajectory, there hasn't been anybody for me or people like me here at home, to look up to and to get healthy advice from and I really do feel had I had more in depth conversations with my family, about sexuality, about femininity, about just all of the different variations of being, then I feel like my life would have been a little bit different. And I've seen it, I've seen kids who are like 19 and 20 now who have really open and candid conversations with their parents, and they have just there's a confidence that they walk with, there's an intelligence that they have, a certain level of intelligence that they have, that's just something that I didn't have as a kid growing up. And so I know that there, that is not a common factor. So there are a majority of the people who are growing up in Kenya, don't have access or don't have information. They don't have education, they don't have information. And so I felt like this would be a great way for me to continue to create content in the way that I want to, and then also to be educational. So that's how the spread begun. And I figured that, yeah, let's create audio content where we can just talk about anything and everything. And actually, when I first began recording the podcast in 2016, for whatever reason, the tabloids wrote about it, but the way that the tabloids wrote about it, my co host and I had taken a picture for part of the podcast image and it was just the two of us. Picture sort of cut a little bit below our shoulders, and we weren't wearing anything. And then we were both wearing head wraps and we were kind of just looking lovingly at each other. So when the podcast launched, the tabloids wrote Kenya's most popular lesbians released a TV show called The Spread Podcast. Because like even podcasting was not a thing, right. And so, the chairman of the Kenya film, Kenya Film Corporation board of something who is the moral police in Kenya, he's no longer anymore, he got fired.

Sabrina Merage Naim
For those of you who can't see, she just gave a double "F.U." to that guy. Yeah, good, right.

Kaz
Yeah. But he tried to shut us down. So as soon as the podcast the first podcast episode came out, he was like, "who are these lesbians who are putting up a TV show?" because they thought that The Spread podcast was a TV show about lesbians. And it was so dumb. And so they threatened to confiscate the equipment that we were using at the production company where we were. And they just sent out so many threats trying to shut us down, it was so chaotic. And at that point, the production house that we were with really freaked out. And so they ditched us. They were like, "We don't want to have anything to do with you guys anymore because this is, this is too chaotic for us."

Sabrina Merage Naim
All for a photo.

Kaz
Yes!

Sabrina Merage Naim
All for a photo where you weren't even naked, you just were showing your shoulders.

Kaz
Shoulders!

Sabrina Merage Naim
Oh god.

Kaz
And so because there was a lot of noise made with the Kenyan government and the press, we got a lot of people looking at us. So one of the first people to reach out to us for an interview was the BBC. And that is actually how The Spread built. It was from that it grew because everybody had their eyes like, "Who are these people? What are they doing? They're talking about sex, oh, my God." And that's how The Spread became popular.

Sabrina Merage Naim
That's fascinating. So it ended up being to your benefit in the end. Well, okay, you never know how you're gonna get there. So I want to just give the line of what the spread is, it's a sex positive podcast that creates a safe space for people to understand their sexuality, and learn to live confidently in awareness of their sexual identity. And this is something that not only didn't exist in Kenya, it still doesn't exist. You are the one safe space. And you have a mix of episodes where you are interviewing experts on different topics, and also live audience episodes where you have people coming and asking questions, which to me, those ones are especially interesting, because you have people in Kenya on the ground, who are coming up to a microphone and asking questions that otherwise would not be seen as acceptable, right? These are questions about queer culture, about kinks, about their personal sexuality, about family, I mean, a kind of all across the board. I'm curious now that you've been doing it for a while, clearly the government had some took some issue with it in the beginning, although misplaced, it seems. Now that you've been doing it, now that you've kind of created your niche, what is the response like today from the public and from the government or anyone else?

Kaz
Well, luckily, as of yet, the government has no mandate over anything digital. So for now, we're safe.

Sabrina Merage Naim
But to be clear, they don't like it.

Kaz
No! Oh, God, they hate me. Oh, my gosh, I'm queer. It's illegal. Homosexuality is illegal in Kenya. So no, I am not liked. But for the most part, people love it. Because most of the people who are against The Spread, haven't actually listened to it. So they're not getting any information from it. I think if people stopped to listen, then they would understand better. I'll give an example, actually. I sometimes host hen nights or bridal showers, where we can have conversations, people can ask questions, and we can have conversations about sexuality that wouldn't otherwise be had. And so I was hosting a hen night, I co-own a pole dancing studio with a friend of mine here in Nairobi. And so we were hosting a hen night at the pole dance studio, we did a little bit of pole dancing allowed people to feel a little bit sensual and sort of relax. And then we started having conversations, intimate conversations. And when the hen night was over, two girls came up to me and they were like, "you know, we are pastor's kids. So we've always seen you as like, evil, like you are-

Sabrina Merage Naim
The devil.

Kaz
Yeah, "the person that we never want to be." And they were like, "I did not know that you were this person." And she was like, "I'm sorry, I don't know you, but I'm sorry. And I think you're amazing. And I love the work that you do." So that's the kind of response that I receive in Kenya. It's people who villainize me without actually knowing the work that I do. And it's because they probably go on to my Instagram page, and they see me posting pictures of myself, like nudes or in you know, just like barely any clothes. And then they make assumptions.

Sabrina Merage Naim
It's so easy to to make a devil out of a stranger, right? It's so easy to kind of make assumptions about someone that you don't really know. And then when you meet that person, when you actually get to know what they're all about, it's much harder. I'm curious because you mentioned that you growing up didn't have a kind of relationship with your family where you could talk about these things, and you wanted to create a space for other young people where they have a platform to come to they have a place for education, what has your family's response been like to this?

Kaz
Okay, so I must say, my family is actually very liberal. We growing up, my mom allowed for conversations to be had, it's just that she didn't have the knowledge of healthy sexual relationships to give me. So she allowed me to have conversations, and we talked about sex, but I didn't get what I needed. And that's just because she didn't know what to give, she didn't have the education herself. So I come from a home where, you know, oh my gosh, I come from very liberal family. This is very rare, very, very rare in Kenya. So me doing my work, and me being queer and being out and introducing my partners to my family is just normal for me. It's not something a regular Kenyan would experience. And I understand my privilege. And I will not stop saying that I understand my privilege. And that's the reason why I do what I do. Because I know that there are not many people who have access to the life that I have, or who have access to the family that I have, or who can walk in the streets with our partner and hold hands shamelessly. I understand it. And that's why I do what I do so that I can create safe spaces for other people. When we come together, it's like you can you can be queer here, you can be kinky here, you can be whatever you want to be. This is a safe space.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Wow, I have to just appreciate your family so much, because not only is it, like you say, so rare to have that kind of dynamic in a country like Kenya, where it is blatantly illegal to be queer, and they are so accepting of you. But the fact that what you're saying is your mother tried to allow for those kinds of conversations, and she just didn't have the knowledge because for so many of us, for generations, that is how it was perpetuated. This lack of knowledge and education for mothers, right, about their own bodies and their own sexual education and health and knowledge. It just didn't exist.

Sabrina Merage Naim
I want to talk a little bit more about sex education in Kenya in general. How has the patriarchal system that exists shaped what sex education that exists in Kenya? What what does that look like today?

Kaz
Okay, so, historically, the patriarchy, we were colonized by the British, the laws that we currently, quote, unquote, abide by, our Kenyan laws, our penal code, is still the same laws that was set up by the British before we gained independence. We are still governed by British law and historical British law.

Sabrina Merage Naim
When did Kenya gain independence?

Kaz
1963.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Okay, so it's been a while?

Kaz
Yes, it still has been a while. And so we're still governed by those laws, and our laws haven't really changed. Our Constitution changed maybe about 10, maybe max 15 years ago, our constitution changed but our laws didn't change. What happened is a lot of patriarchy for me equals racism, which equals colonialism. It stems from there. This is how I see it, there was a lot of violence that our people experienced during the colonial era. When we gained independence, there was no room for people to heal. There was no space for our our grandfathers to heal, because it really is not that long ago. My grandfather fought in the war, for independence, but he didn't have a space to heal. He just came straight from fighting, coming home to his wife, and possibly, you know, abusing her, maybe verbally, maybe emotionally, this is a possibility. And then my grandmother who was raising her children, including my mother, reiterated the things that she was learning from her husband, and then our parents are then perpetuating these learnings. So without realizing it, and it's just three generations up, it's not so it's not so long ago, so without even realizing it, we are products of colonization and the patriarchy. And the lessons that we are getting from our parents at home now is what we have learned from our colonizers, it's violent, it's violence that has been perpetuated throughout generations. And my generation, or rather, the generation after me, are the ones who are learning how to heal, and how to cut generational trauma, which is a thing that a lot of us need to do, regardless of where we're from. And so because of this, the teachings that we have is predominantly Christianity. The Christianity that we have is a very colonial version of Christianity, where women are submissive, we should not talk about sex, you should not wear skirts or above the knee. It's just like this patriarchal version of Christianity of raising girls, specifically, yes, I am speaking specifically about women and girls in Kenya. And so when it comes to sex education, the version of sex education that we have in Kenya is, first of all, the first thing is abstinence. You should not be having sex, period. And then after that, it's like, "if you do have sex, you are going to die because you will be killed by disease." There is no pleasure based sexuality education, there's no pleasure based conversations, there's no, there's no conversations around bodies and around own body changing other than the biological versions of how adolescence happens, and you grew pubic hair, and blah blah blah. There's no actual conversations to have with young people about experiencing hormonal change and how to deal with it or like, "these are some of the things you're going to experience or this is what you should do with that, or this is how to deal with it." So there is none of that. And I'm definitely blaming our colonizers. And I just feel like so many things are changing, now we have a lot more access to the media. And so people are going out and learning for themselves. And this is very dangerous. Because the first place teens are going to learn about sex education is porn. And I can't say this enough, but porn is not education. It's not education. Porn is a form-

Sabrina Merage Naim
It's the opposite of education.

Kaz
Yeah, it really is! If you're young, and you're listening to this, porn is a form of entertainment strictly for adults. It's not a form of education. Education is a lot more vast and, and sex doesn't happen the way it happens in porn. And so this is what people are learning. And then again, keep in mind that the way porn is created, it's violent, it's very targeted towards men. And the man's pleasure. And it's kind of violent. So a lot of men are learning this violent way of having sex with women, you know, for those that are in heterosexual relationships, which is predominantly in many places, so yeah, in a nutshell.

Sabrina Merage Naim
There's so much to unpack there. But what I think I really take away from what you're saying is that the biggest issue, that kind of not moving away from this European colonization and the system and the teachings of that, and especially in school, we are stripping our young people from important knowledge around how to be empowered around their own sex, their pleasure, their sex lives, their their health, their, their bodies, their body awareness, and it just perpetuates rape culture, again, and again, and again.

Kaz
Yes.

Sabrina Merage Naim
One of the things that you bring up in your TED talk, you talk a lot about consent. And you spoke specifically about what we can learn from BDSM culture around consent. And that was kind of an interesting revelation for me, and I think it would be interesting for our audience to hear so first of all, define BDSM and then kind of go into what can we learn from BDSM about consent?

Kaz
So BDSM is, is bondage, discipline, submission and masochism, or sadomasochism. And it is role play, and kinky, erotic, different ways that you can play with partners that involve those different aspects. And so I remember the first time that I went into a, it was actually a swingers convention that was happening in New Orleans, and there was a dungeon, a BDSM dungeon, and it was my first time to set foot in a dungeon and I remember being extremely nervous because like, oh my god, I'm this little girl from Kenya, who's come to America and just been thrown into this like sex dungeon, which I grew up thinking was like the pit, you know, if you watch the way people describe it in the media, in mainstream media, is that it's just like a hellhole where people are wearing leather and flogging each other. It looks horrible. So I remember having that fear of God in me and going "if I make it out of here alive, God I promise I'm gonna give my life to you." And then just walking in and the energy just shifted and just the rules at the door were so clear, do not do not do not, if you do you will be kicked out, do not touch do not ask, do not hug do not... And I was like, "oh my god, I love this so much." But I remember walking out of there, and walking onto the streets and feeling so unsafe in the streets. Because the minute I got out, it's just catcalling and whistling somebody's trying "hey girl," you know. And I was like, "that shit doesn't happen in the BDSM dungeon." People are so respectful. People are so caring, people are so wonderful. It was just night and day. And that's when I began to like, look at consent, it started with those rules that meet you at the door. And then I was in love. And I literally fell in love with consent in that moment. And I started to learn more. And I started to, you know, understand more about children. I think for me, it went back to the space where I was sexually assaulted as a child. And I was like, this knowledge that I have about consent, which I learned from BDSM dungeon can actually come back to teach young people or actually people around young people, people who are teachers, people who are caregivers, people who are parents about consent and how to have conversations with young children about consent, that could prevent sexual assault. I could create a difference in my world where the rate of sexual assault in my country will decrease.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Really mind blowing, honestly, hearing how consent came for you from that moment in the BDSM dungeon, because similarly, I grew up seeing those images, and it's scary, it's intimidating, it looks, you know, kind of dangerous and all these things and then hearing from you that really there are so many rules that must be followed. And if you don't follow these rules, you need to ask before you do anything you need to ask before you use any tools are toys, and consent can be withdrawn at any time for any reason. And I think so much about young women who are in a position where at first they said, It's okay. And then at some point, they change their mind. And the guy is like, "well you said it's okay, so I'm going to just plow on through," and that turns into rape, right? And how so many people kind of justify to themselves that, "well she said it was okay." Whereas in BDSM, I can withdraw my consent at any time, and I don't need to explain myself to you.

Kaz
And that's the thing, "no" is a complete sentence. When I'm talking to young people about consent, that's the first thing that I teach them. "No" is a complete sentence. "No" is no: done.

Sabrina Merage Naim
We've been talking on this podcast a lot about when to start talking to kids about these kinds of things. What is that age that you think is, based on your experience, that sweet spot of making sure that they can really internalize the information, they're not too young, but they're also not too old, where it's kind of too late for this.

Kaz
So with regards to consent, it starts with understanding the body language of consent with infants. When you touch or tickle or try to touch a child where they don't want touch they react by showing you that they don't want to be touched. That's your lesson not to do that. So as soon as children start to have conversations, and tell you that they don't like being tickled, which is actually the biggest example that I give. If a kid says "no," then you have to know. Even though they say "no!" and then they come back and say "yes," you have to teach them, that's actually the teaching lesson, if you say "no," then people are going to assume that you mean "no," so only say "no" when you mean "no." Or say "yes" when you mean "yes". But I don't want you to toy around with the "yes's" and the "no's" like it's a game. And that's the best way to begin to teach consent. And then children are naturally curious. They're going to ask about their private parts without shame. And so that's a good conversation starter to have with your kids. You know, I said, I mentioned in my TED Talk, "who do you want to wash during bath time?" And with your children, you can get to a certain age where you can show them how to wash their own genitals so that you no longer have to touch them in a place where you've shown them that people should not touch unless you give them consent, right? And nobody should touch your genitals other than you, you're allowed to touch your own genitals, but don't allow anybody else to do so. And then, just constantly, because children are curious, they will come to you with the questions. They're the ones who are going to guide you as to when to have those conversations. And when the conversations come up, there's age appropriate ways in which you can answer those questions.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yeah, what's really interesting to me from about what you're saying, is that consent, it doesn't need to always be associated with sex. Consent is from a very early age, it's about respecting a "yes" or a "no." And that's how we learn, right? And then you start to incorporate the other things as they get older. That's, I think, so interesting. It's about creating those fundamentals early on, so that they know that a "yes" means "yes" and "no" means "no." And that relates to, "I don't want to be touched here." It relates to, "I don't want to kiss you there." I mean, it relates to the "I don't want to be tickled," and all kinds of things.

Kaz
Yeah. And teach them, let them understand.

Sabrina Merage Naim
I have to say I have this this image of Kaz being in, you know, growing up and living in a country that is patriarchal, colonial, has outlawed your way of life, and your identity. And yet, the conversations that you're having, the pictures that you post on Instagram, where your ass is half out and you're pole dancing and whatever is, so the opposite of that. And I love it so much. I love it so much. You know you are, you're a renegade. You are a renegade in this place that wants to kind of define you very differently than who you are. So I just want to say, I love it, continue, please. For those of you who are interested in listening to The Spread, which I recommend, you will hear people say to Kaz, "you've changed my life." You know that "this is so important to me." There are conversations being had on The Spread, that are not being had anywhere else for Kenyans, that just doesn't exist anywhere else.

Sabrina Merage Naim
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