On Fridays, Edith* leaves her official university residence at a city university telling her friends that she is headed to her uncle’s for the weekend.
However,the medical students with a tempting body-tall,bootylicious and beautiful-does not have an uncle in Nairobi.She instead heads to visit Amos* in a middle-class estate along Thika Road,where she plans to spend the weekend. Amos is not her boyfriend.She is not his girlfriend. But the pair has a no-strings-attached sex arrangement.
“I like it because it allows me to do what I want, with who I want, when I want,” she tells us with a mark of finality.Edith is among a growing number of campus girls, who shun relationships for casual sex. While men have for years been known to use women for sex, multiple interviews done by The Nairobian this week shows a trend where young women are increasingly using men for sex. It seems that what men can do, women can do better.
“You do not need commitment to enjoy sex,” declares Edith, who also thinks relationships can waste too much time, especially with her busy campus schedule.Some of the campus girls believe that relationships and dating are not important until after having good grades, making career advances and having their own money.
And the trend seems to come with suitable words and phrases — some new, some less so: Friends with benefits, having a thing or hooking up. True to the real man’s script, Amos juggles between two women: Edith (who enjoys the no-strings-attached arrangement) and his girlfriend (who has no idea about the campus girl). “I call them governor and deputy governor. Governor is my real girlfriend, but I think I love the deputy governor more. However, she told me we cannot date. She only visits when the governor is away,” says Amos. The motivation to do this piece came from a recent New York Times article: Sex on Campus-She Can Play That Game, Too.
The writer, Kate Taylor, interviewed more than 60 students at the University of Pennsylvania. “These women said they saw building their rรฉsumรฉs, not finding boyfriends (never mind husbands), as their main job at Penn,” Taylor wrote. “In this context, some women, like A., seized the opportunity to have sex without relationships, preferring “hookup buddies” (regular sexual partners with little emotional commitment) to boyfriends,” Taylor’s article reads.
The Nairobian interviewed 50 female campus students, who spoke after reassurances that their identity would be protected.The findings are similar to what the New York Times published: The traditional dating in campus is mostly going the way of the telephone landline, replaced by “hooking up.”
A girlfriend or boyfriend has become like an onion that can be bought at the market or given for free as a bonus item. They use alcohol to facilitate sex and some care less about protection or about HIV/Aids. But are they smart women with foolish choices?
“Being involved in a serious relationship with a campus dude can give me ulcers. I have to keep worrying about where he is and who he is with,” Helen*, a Kenyatta University student, says. Everlyn* of Moi University says casual sex is much better as there is less emotional investment
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