Rather than trying to change the system or accepting defeat by returning to the village, most male migrants in Pipeline engaged in forms of male sociality that provided refuge not only ‘from the world “out there”’ (Masquelier 2019: 32) but also from the pressure men experienced and the expectations they were confronted with in their urban households. Men found solace in bars, gyms, pool halls, videogame joints, betting shops, and Telegram channels where they talked to male friends, lifted weights, engaged in practices of wasteful masculinity, and looked for self-help advice from religious and non-religious masculinity consultants. Homosocial spaces and the depressurizing practices that they offered thus helped men to evade pressure, refuel their energy, and remain certain about their future success.
Men in Pipeline, and across Kenya, were not really interested in radically altering the narrative of the male breadwinner. In the case of the investment group HoMiSiKi, male migrants socialized this ideal form of masculinity. As members of HoMiSiKi, they carried on dreaming about financial success while, in the shadow of the investment group, they went out for drinks as virile, wasteful, and strong jo-pap. In contrast to this socialization of the ideal form of masculinity, the members of the No Mercy Gym externalized the traits of the prevailing narrative of the male breadwinner as prudent and hardworking by strengthening their bodies systematically, which they believed would help them to take over an economically and romantically more strategic position vis-à-vis other migrant men in the long run. Philemon Otieno took the opposite approach, locating true masculinity deep within each man’s inner world, from where it had to be rediscovered and nurtured through an individualized ethics of vision, perseverance, and entrepreneurship. Thereby, and if necessary with the help of male mentors, such as Philemon himself, men would be able to restore the natural order of male supremacy, even if that meant withdrawing temporarily from women and focusing on themselves and their personal and economic development, as suggested by some of the Kenyan masculinity consultants inspired by the global red pill movement, such as Amerix, Jacob Aliet, and Silas Nyanchwani.
These three masculine spaces and the homosocial bonds formed within them also strongly influenced migrant men’s images of women (Flood 2008). While jo-pap saw women as ‘antelopes’ (Dholuo, mwanda) to be hunted on the ‘playing field’ (Dholuo, pap), participating in HoMiSiKi fuelled migrant men’s hope of an economic success that would enable their wives to focus on their domestic duties. Male migrants thus upheld an inherently bifurcated image of women, who were either viewed as irresponsible slay queens or faithful and obedient wives. In the gym, equally ambiguous perceptions of women circulated. On the one hand, women were seen, especially in case men felt that they demanded too much attention, as powerful threats to their personal goals of physical transformation and economic success. On the other hand, gym members perceived women as being naturally weaker than men and thus requiring male protection. Lastly, the self-help literature and masculinity consultants I analyzed wanted to place women back into their allegedly natural position below men. By excluding women from these male spaces, where migrant men developed or (re)emphasized criteria defining what it meant to be a good man and what it meant to be a good woman, male migrants denied women the agency to participate in the conceptualization and negotiation of gender roles. What made these male spaces valuable and attractive to men, in other words, was also the absence of women and female voices.