Abstract
This essay focuses on fleshing out the ideology of a popular Kenyan masculinity consultant called Amerix as one of self-scaling social repair. Assuming that the natural order of society has been colonized and infiltrated by feminist practices, Amerix promises men masculine salvation if they agree to change their daily practices and their ways of interpreting the world which, like a matchbox igniting a large forest, would allow the natural order of masculinity to rule society at large again. Repair, in other words, is considered a self-scaling practice that (re)masculinizes men’s bodies, men’s relation with one another as well as with women, and finally the world itself, thereby tipping it back into its natural state that allegedly has been skillfully hidden beneath a cloak of feminist rhetoric and micro-practices. Instead of analyzing the Kenyan men’s movement spearheaded by Amerix myopically as a conservative political movement, we propose to view it as an ideology that suggests to reinforce teleological properties of the world itself, to repair the masculine machine so to speak. Amerix’ men’s movement is not an attempt to restore twentieth century patriarchy but to set free natural masculine forces that are believed to be able to deal with all contemporary issues of society, ultimately with detrimental effects to men themselves.
“A time has come for men to say no to women’s chaos. It is a time to take charge and refuse to be bullied into destructive surrender and unchecked capitulation to the failed feminist experiment […]. It is time for men to rediscover the operant masculine frame needed to steer the society towards order.”
Amerix
For the last couple of years, it has become difficult to discuss gender relations in Kenya without, at one point or another, being asked about one’s opinion on Amerix, a healthcare professional from western Kenya. With over one million followers on X (formerly Twitter) and 150,000 members in his Telegram channel, Amerix has become one of Kenya’s most influential social media personalities offering Kenyan men advice on what it means to be and how to behave as a man in 21st century Kenya. Amerix is clearly inspired by the global antifeminist backlash organized primarily in the digital “manosphere” (Ging 2019), a conglomeration of websites, forums, and blogs spearheaded by controversial figures such as Andrew Tate and Rollo Tomassi who closely align themselves with what is often referred to as the “red pill movement” (see Van Valkenburgh 2021), an anti-feminist and pro-men movement that believes feminists have uprooted the natural world order by blinding men and making them meek deniers of their own masculine selves.
While Amerix does not operate in an ideological vacuum, even in Kenya “masculinity consultancy” is an economically and ideologically contested arena (see, for example, the work of Onyango Otieno, also known as Rix Poet, see also Aliet 2022, Nyanchwani 2021), his success depends on his ability to transfer and translate more general anti-feminist ideological titbits to the specific Kenyan context. He does so by both referencing local discussions about a variety of topics – such as an alleged increase of single mothers, the NGOization of Kenyan society, or local stereotypes about men and women from specific ethnic groups – as well as by situating his advice in overarching narratives revolving around two interrelated issues: economic inequality between man and women as well as violence against women. While the dividends of women’s empowerment in education and the economy have helped reduce inequality, they are perceived by men as a loss of power and control, as illustrated by local discourses about the neglect of the “boychild” (see Pike 2020). These views are further reinforced by deeply rooted heteropatriarchal expectations that men should serve as primary economic providers, a role that intensifies pressure amid the country’s economic uncertainty (see Schmidt 2024). Consequently, discourses that resist gender equality, often seen as politically incorrect in mainstream spaces, thrive online, where pseudonyms enable individuals to voice such opinions more openly.
This essay does not ethnographically analyze Kenyan men’s daily practices but focuses on fleshing out Amerix’s ideology as an ideology of self-scaling social repair. Assuming that the natural order of society has been colonized and infiltrated by feminist practices, Amerix promises men masculine salvation if they agree to change their daily practices and their ways of interpreting the world, which, like a matchbox igniting a large forest, would allow the natural order of masculinity to rule society at large again. Repair, in other words, is considered a self-scaling practice that (re)masculinizes men’s bodies, men’s relation with one another as well as with women, and finally the world itself, thereby tipping it back into its natural state that allegedly has been skilfully hidden beneath a cloak of feminist rhetoric and micro-practices. According to Amerix, we are therefore not witnessing political fights about how gender relations in a society should be structured. Acknowledging a political fight between genders already presupposes that the world is not, in its core, propelled by masculine energy and force. Rather, Amerix advises men to shed off the many ways in which feminism has indoctrinated them, thereby starting to behave according to their masculine nature again, correcting internal contradictions brought about by unnatural feminism that make men suffer.
Amerix’s suggested practices of masculine self-repair thus have three important characteristics differentiating them from other forms of social repair. They are, firstly, not outward-oriented but practices of caring for one’s masculine self. They are, secondly, prone to paranoia because changing their masculine self will cause a change in how men see the world, namely as interlaced with feminist ideology and micro-practices that need to be uncovered and corrected. Lastly, masculine self-repair is considered self-scaling, that is small acts of (re)masculinizing are believed to cause changes in men’s relations to other people as well as cause the world to run according to its masculine nature again. According to Amerix, masculine self-repair therefore leads to a revelation of the fact that men live in a perverted world that can, however, be tilted back onto its masculine trajectory if enough men decide to repair their masculine selves.
Instead of analyzing the Kenyan men’s movement spearheaded by Amerix myopically as a conservative political movement, we propose to view it as an ideology that suggests to reinforce teleological properties of the world itself, to repair the masculine machine so to speak. Amerix’s men’s movement is not an attempt to restore twentieth-century patriarchy but to set free universal masculine forces that are believed to be able to deal with contemporary issues. It is thus not best understood as a movement looking backwards but as one clearly situated in the present and forward-directed. It is not the appearance of an assumed pre-colonial patriarchy that Amerix wants to reinstall. Rather, his focus is on the underlying masculine force, the salvaging of which he proposes would lead to a new masculine world order that fits and deals with problems unique to the 21st century.
After the next section has outlined Amerix’s view on men and masculinity, we will shed light upon how Amerix’s followers constitute “the female” – women’s practices, appearances and politics – as an object that does not need an interpretation of its mysteries, but an uncovering of its hideous nature. Women’s bodies are not objects of hermeneutic interpretation to reveal a woman’s personal character but one of inquisitorial revelation of her immutable “female nature”. The result of scrutinizing women’s bodies thus takes precedence over an open-ended practice of interpretation. We end the essay by summarizing the vicious cycle of masculine self-repair that underlines Amerix’s ideology: men are encouraged to focus on their masculine development which allegedly allows them to spot women’s problematic behavior everywhere that is then assumed to be caused by a feminist society that has lost its masculine guiding principle, thereby setting off the cycle again by encouraging men to repair their masculinity.
Muscles, Money and Manhood: Guarding Masculine Power
“Masculinity is about: Strengthening your innermost self-confidence. Having powerful self-belief about your manliness. Setting up a strong frame of selfness. Building a peaceful hamlet in your innermost masculine core.” Amerix
For Amerix, a man is defined by his relation to his “mind, muscles, men, material, and money”. This ontology of masculinity is sometimes referred to as the “5m” doctrine, according to which practices of repairing one’s mindset, body, relation to other men and approach to material goods, such as food, will create financial success. Two things are particularly revealing. On the one hand, men’s relations to women do not feature in this doctrine as central. Rather, they are considered to be second-order problems that will automatically be solved after men repair themselves according to the doctrine. On the other hand, money is presented as a given, a necessary part of society, a claim that dovetails with Kenyan men’s experience and acceptance of living in a capitalist society where a man’s worth is pegged to his monetary wealth. In alliance with these widespread beliefs about money (see Schmidt 2024), Amerix not only suggests that money and success result from implementing masculine (and masculinizing) habits but also that those who lack money risk losing the respect of fellow men and women.
According to Amerix, masculine self-development can be set in motion by following his advice and by avoiding the perils of “ignorance, pornography, masturbation, alcoholism, overeating, and smoking”, practices that potentially cause men’s emasculation and physical, cognitive, emotional, social, and material deterioration. For Amerix, being a man is defined by possessing, displaying and implementing the core values of confidence, dominance and control. Amerix, in other words, sees masculinity that fosters self and societal healing as typified by the virtues of discipline, tenacity, and toughness, virtues that are produced and maintained by following a strict regime entailing multiple practices of “working on one’s self” (Foucault 1988), such as a variety of physical exercises, for instance lifting weights, healthy and “natural” eating habits, such as avoiding processed food and eating meat, writing grammatically correct English, refraining from using “effeminate” emojis, being firm with women and children, avoiding “aberrant” sexual practices and expressions of pleasure, such as excessive moaning, reading the books of masculinity consultants, and engage in agriculture. Three of his X posts may suffice at this point to give a broad understanding of his ideology: Men, Here is a reminder of our February Goals • OMAD daily • Wake up at 4:30 am. • Read 2 books • Go to the gym 4 times a week • Learn a new skill • Save 30 percent of your income• Cut expenses by 50 percent • Buy a cow/goat/chicken or crop farming Men, To be born a MAN is to be born with responsibilities. So, stop whining and complaining like little girls, face life with a reptilian mindset, fight hard. The world will not sympathize with your failures. REFUSE TO BE WEAK. Fixing a man’s frame is all about re-adjusting the mental attitude to align with a masculine philosophy. - Discipline - Order - Consistency or Commitment
Positing that women who discourage men from following him are part of a larger feminist plot designed to manipulate and exploit Kenyan men, Amerix, consequently, not only directs men to avoid being intimately involved with such women but to avoid the company of women as much as possible, a clear difference to, e.g., pick-up artists (see O’Neill 2018). Instead of spending time with women, men should socialize with men and build strong homosocial networks of solidarity and mentorship. Consequently, he has not only proposed to rebrand his “Masculinity Saturday” on X as the “Workshop for Men”, but also recently started to provide a variety of online and offline “workshops”, such as a Telegram group called the “Warrior’s Channel” as well as boot camps for young men aged twelve to twenty-four, with the primary goal of instilling discipline, order, and commitment “for the betterment of society” and to “positively influence young men” to “rescue a generation messed by wicked women.” Amerix, however, not only makes a case for homosociality by asserting that “only men can help men” but also promotes masculine domesticity, claiming that “fathers, not mothers, can positively shape boys’ transition into men”, thereby reinforcing the myth that men grow more feminine when they interact with women.
Making use of a language also used by the globally active red pill movement (Van Valkenburgh 2021), Amerix recommends a careful approach to (re)build one’s masculine self by “fixing” one’s masculine “frame”. While “fixing” here clearly suggests that the frame is not constructed from scratch but merely repaired, pointing to masculinity’s alleged deep nature (Kimmel and Kaufman 1993), “frame” functions as an ambiguous metaphor for building homosocial connections as well as a strategy for self-repair of one’s physical as well as cognitive “frame”. At first glance, it thus might seem that this ideology does not address men’s relationships with women and considers them secondary issues that will resolve themselves once the self-repair process is complete. The following tweet attests to this: Women are not going anywhere. Don’t stress about getting girls, you have more than enough time. Focus on fitness, finances and status.
Nonetheless, there is a persistent push for men to re-evaluate their interactions with women according to their newly gained knowledge. Amerix, for instance, warns men against “micro-castration”, which he defines as “the sustained psychological neutering of a man when women initiate sexual intimacy, stay on top during sexual intercourse, and make men not only perform oral sex but also engage in roles traditionally for women like household chores”. He thus encourages men to follow what he calls the “marriage hierarchy” by dominating sexual activities and never admitting that they enjoy sex. This suggests that he not only frowns upon Kenyan women’s sexual freedom and confidence, but also confirms that Amerix’s self-repair ideology draws on the belief that heterosexual sex and relationships are a central focus in the exercise of masculine power. His remark that “sex begins by penetrating the woman’s mindset” confirms not only this but also that he thinks that the masculine cognitive frame is by its nature more powerful than the “woman’s mindset”. As the next section shows, the belief in the alleged primacy of masculinity sets off a paranoia that, on closer inspection, basically leads to a rejection of modern femininity as such and results in a diagnosis of the Kenyan women as “rotten”, reinforcing the need for further masculine self-repair to repair the lost society as such.
Feminist Red Flags, Men’s Paranoia, and the Role of Women in Society
In as much as men are imagined as tough, dominant, strong and natural leaders in Amerix’s worldview, women are seen as naturally weak, submissive, obedient and natural followers of men. His general understanding of women’s nature becomes clear in the following posts: Men, You are the driver of your bus. The bus is your life and the route is your purpose. A woman is a passenger in your bus. If you are a careless driver, she will alight. Don’t follow her. Improve your skill & keep going. Another passenger will board.
Considering the active feminist scene in Kenya (see, e.g., Okech 2024, Nyabola 2018), it is unsurprising that feminists are one of the prime targets of Amerix, who often conflates feminism with vulgarity (and education) and actively contrasts it with femininity, suggesting that feminism is, in fact, anti-feminine, thereby reproducing decades-old stereotypes of feminism. In the following two X posts, he, for instance, alerts men to “stay away from vulgar women” and look for an obedient woman: Men, Stay away from vulgar women. A feminine, respectful woman values what she speaks or writes. A woman who easily says or writes “fuck”, “vagina”, “dick” is a NO. Vulgar women are damaged women who come with emotional baggage. FOCUS ON YOUR LIFE. Remember your goal is to get into a relationship with a woman who: respects you, believes in you, cooks for you, will mother your children. Leave those cosmetic things like buttocks and academics to simps and white knights.
Feminist are allegedly easy to spot for Amerix due to their assumed vulgarity but are also accused of participating in occult-like activities: If you date or sleep with a feminist, her dirty spirits will indoctrinate you into her uncouth beliefs. She will brainwash you to: • Embrace abortion • go for vasectomy • be an atheist • hate other men. A feminist is a witch. Avoid them.
Apart from attacking feminism and feminists, Amerix also offers his followers advice on how to spot “problematic” women by looking out for so-called “red flags”, that is signs pointing towards women’s problematic character, past life, or intentions. Of special interest are her social media comments: Before you commit, check her social media footprints. If you come across comments that are: abusive towards a man, sarcastic, rebellious, chaotic, avoid her. From the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.
Apart from her social media “footprints”, Amerix also mentions, among others, the following red flags: propagating “women empowerment”, high number of sexual partners, tattoos, drinking alcohol, going to parties, talking negative about ex partners, sleeping late, refusing to pick phone calls, texting back instead of calling when seeing a missed call, being overweight, growing up without a father, going to church, and long nails. Of particular interest to Amerix is also the age difference between men and women in relationships, advocating to marry “young women in their prime age” while discouraging men from dating young girls whose mothers are unmarried as a way of ending “generational curses” as well as dating women who already have children arguing that such relationships are “immoral” based on the assumption that they left their partners to “pursue” immorality or that their partners abandoned them because of their immorality: “There is no good woman who is single at 30. Very soon, you will learn why those who came before you used her and left”. According to Amerix, such women turn into cougars preying on and spoiling young men. Apart from labelling such women “demonic”, he suggests that dating them is an abomination incurring severe consequences: “it is equivalent to engaging in self-loathing activity; you derail your progress. You become anaemic and weak. Your virility experiences a damping effect”. On the one hand, all of these observations increase men’s paranoia by offering a multitude of small cues as to why a woman might actually be a “slay queen” or “slut”. Of particular interest is the fact that some of the cues are contradictory to one another: not using one’s phone can be as suspicious as using it too much, being uneducated can be as problematic as having a university degree. While these contradictory cues already increase the possibility of many women being seen as problematic, the sheer number and also the incidental nature of many of the cues cited by Amerix also increase the chance that almost any woman will exhibit a bodily or character trait that makes her unsuitable for an “enlightened” red-pilled man. On the other hand, and as shown by our concluding remarks, Amerix also links these observations to a diagnosis of Kenyan society as a whole, arguing that feminism has “degenerated” society and claiming that “a degenerate society celebrates degeneracy”.
The Vicious Cycle of Self-Scaling Masculine Social Repair
The language of prophetic scientificality corresponded to the needs of masses who had lost their home in the world and now were prepared to be reintegrated into eternal, all-dominating forces which by themselves would bear man, the swimmer on the waves of adversity, to the shores of safety. (Arendt 1962, 350)
Based upon his belief that masculinity is the ordering principle of nature, Amerix concludes that “weak men are not just a danger to themselves but also to society”, whereby his project – which on first glance might appear as a mere project of masculine self-repair – intimately links masculine self-repair with social repair. A few of Amerix messages might suffice to prove that he believes in an inherent self-scaling potential of masculine self-repair to set the “unnatural” “femicentric” society back on its inherently masculine track: When institutions are emasculated or are run by emasculated men, they become a threat to the success of men and society. We have figured out that our society is degenerating due to a lack of masculine energy. Chaotic and rudderless women are a danger to society. An effeminate society is a doomed society. In our underfathered and overmothered societies, there is a crisis among boys and young men; therefore, unscrupulous individuals will take advantage to hoodwink and prey on unsuspecting listeners or followers. In a society where men are soy, docile, weak and depressed, the woman is the tool used to extract value from the man.
In light of ongoing protests against the rise of femicides in Kenya (see Okech 2021), it remains to be asked what happens to men if they do not succeed when employing Amerix’s strategies to repair their masculine selves and thereby Kenyan society as well, strategies that Amerix often presents as being based on scientific research. Despite offering actual opportunities for personal growth as well, such as securing jobs and internships, and giving advice on nutrition and health, Amerix’s ideology, after all, is based upon the idea that repairing one’s masculine frame will bring romantic, social, and economic success. Amerix’s ideology thereby not only reproduces the experience of pressure, failure, depression and stress caused by the expectation to fulfil the role of the breadwinner (cf Schmidt 2024), but also fosters a sense of masculine entitlement among Kenyan men (cf Kimmel 2019) that, in case of ongoing lack of success, might produce feelings of rage and aggression. What presents itself as a form of self-scaling masculine repair might thus rather be a vicious cycle of destroying oneself, other men, society, and women.
Footnotes
Funding
Mario Schmidt's fieldwork upon which this article is based was supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [grant number SCHM 3192/2-1]; and the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.