Unjust Kidding: How Kenyans Weaponize Children to Demonize Queer People

Ngare Kariuki, a communications expert collaborating on a unique digital research team supported by Komons, Kenyan Comms Hub, and Puentes. In this article. In this article, Ngare examines how “child protection” narratives are weaponized online against LGBTQ+ communities and outlines strategies for shifting toward inclusive, evidence-based storytelling that truly safeguards children. 

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Once upon a time, insulting someone's mother was considered the ultimate offense. Even when we found humor in “Yo mama” jokes, there was always an unwritten limit, a line we could never cross.  But it seems the cultural weight of this social crime has diminished in Kenya, with even our politicians getting away with insulting the president’s mother.

In a society that seems to have normalized femicide, it is not surprising that sympathy for the mother has been rapidly waning. This growing disdain for the dignity of mothers in a patriarchal society desensitized to femicide is just the latest in a domino of attacks on the rights and dignity of women.

But the sexual assault of children remains a potent trigger for cultural outrage, consistently eliciting a zero-tolerance attitude online. You can insult my mother and kill your wife with little social consequence, but do not dare touch the children!

Strangely, though, this strict stance seems to only apply to hypothetical threats against children. When faced with actual documented dangers to children, such as child marriage, soaring teenage pregnancy rates, or the BBC's expose on child sex trade in Kenya, our reaction has remained largely muted.

Our research, "Family Values and LGBTIQ discourse in Kenya's digital sphere," explored how the "child protection" instinct is being activated to fuel homophobic outrage. We found that some of the most engaging digital content in the weaponization of "family values" against LGBTQ+ people between January 2023 and July 2024 centered on the "urgent" need to "protect children", not from flesh-and-blood sexual predators at home or school or the church, but from fictional threats like queer characters in cartoons.

Facebook pages of Kenyan gossip media like Tuko and Pulse Live were among top actors publishing and amplifying anti-LGBTQ content framed as a “threat to children”. The reactions on such posts revealed a preference for "child protection" as a narrative and rhetorical strategy rather than a genuine advocacy or criminal justice goal. The inherent vulnerability of children provides a perfect vessel for eliciting sympathy and public outrage against perceived threats with little policy change follow-ups.

Sadly, this is also what makes the "child protection" narrative so effective against queer communities. Merchants of homophobia readily exploit children to attack queer relationships (e.g., "how will you have children?") or demonize queer individuals (e.g., "you are molesting and indoctrinating children").

We’re already seeing this narrative strategy adopted by the Trump administration to roll back the rights of queer Americans, particularly trans rights. A similar pattern is evident in the narrative priorities of global anti-gender crusaders, as seen in the recent Strengthening Families Conference in Sierra Leone, which prioritized empowering women and "protecting children."

Our research also revealed the same narrative bias with comments under anti-queer posts repeatedly attempting to confine queerness to youth and youthful tendencies. Despite the fact that queer elders live and love amongst us, the purveyors of hate insist on framing queerness as a passing fad restricted to the youth. We found out that this better serves their goal of linking queerness to the youth-related accusations of immaturity, confusion, and recklessness. For instance, anti-queer social experiments on Facebook and posts by local gossip content creators were buoyed by comments lamenting the youthfulness and youth naivety of characters depicted, while others invoked religious language to seek the “deliverance of youth and children” from the “vice”.

The ultimate goal of this digital research was to provide insightful strategies for confronting homophobic attacks online, not merely by reacting to harmful narratives, but by building a vision for a just, inclusive, and loving world.

For example, our understandable impulse to shield queerness against false accusations of "threats to children" has led to a scarcity of narratives highlighting the wholesome intersection of queer people and children, like queer persons as parents, or even the raising of queer children by cis parents.

Narratives of queer individuals raising, nurturing, and protecting straight children exist. Stories of queer people contributing to a myriad of children's rights causes and fighting against child sexual violence also exist. Why are these stories not being told and amplified? I am eager for you to explore this report with us and discover how we can transform the enemy's digital tactics into a powerful vision of a more just, inclusive, safe, and loving world—for all children.