Of overly "submissive" Kenyan women who put up with rubbish from men

A ‘ride or die chick’ is a wife/ girlfriend woman who is, like Americans like to say, ‘down’ for anything and everything her man wants. She will do anything her man needs her to do without questioning.

Originally, a ‘ride-or-die chick’ was the woman who would be imprisoned on her man’s behalf and still see no problem with it.

And as a result, ‘ride-or-die chicks’ have been heralded in hip-hop music since its inception. From Tupac, to Ice Cube, to Jadakiss, to T.I, to Jay-Z’s “Me and My Girlfriend,” women who hold their partners down, no questions asked, have been revered.

However, it is not just hip hoppers whose ideal woman is a ‘ride-or-die chick’, even locally this kind of woman is the ideal for most men.

Door mat

In fact, from the time women are young we are programmed to believe that we must be submissive to men. And submissive here means being a ‘ride-or-die chick’. A woman who tolerates being treated as a door mat and still hangs on.

Such women will do anything to keep their men, even if it means playing house and having babies without the man proposing marriage.

Others put up with men who have mpango wa kando (secret lovers) just because they ‘understand’ that such men have humongous libidos and cannot control their sexual urges.

This is also the kind of woman who would not raise her voice even if her man brought home an STD. Good Lord! Some women take a lot of crap! For some reason beyond my understanding, this is the kind of woman most Kenyan men prefer.

To borrow street parlance, wanapenda mtu wanaweza kukalia (they love women they can mistreat)!

In my opinion, however, there is nothing romantic or worth celebrating about this type of woman because what men are really asking for when they claim they want a ‘ride-or-die chick’, is a door mat. A woman with no standards who will never ever leave no matter what her man does to her! Gentlemen, that is slavery.

My biggest issue with this ‘ride-or-die’ hogwash is that when a woman decides to become one, the relationship or marriage is never ‘balanced’.

Misguided woman

I was never good at math, and I barely made it through accounts in my second year at campus, but one thing I am an expert at is balancing accounts when it comes to relationships.

Look, it’s unfortunate that no matter how hard you try, this kind of unions don’t ‘balance’; they are one sided! The woman is always putting up with rubbish and doing stuff to please her man.

My second issue with this ‘ride or die chick’ is that there is no safety net or guarantee for the misguided woman who chooses this path. Unfortunately, I see too many ‘ride-or-die chicks’ all over this town. It saddens me that it is 2017 yet some women still let men treat them as slaves!

What does being a ‘ride-or-die chick’ get one? Absolutely nothing but misery! Why do some of us women settle for mediocrity?