Why do media organs perpetuate objectification of women in Tanzania?

Several debates have happened on social media about ‘labelling’ of women, which masquerades as flattery, but with underlying dehumanization and objectification. A recent label that’s gaining ground is ‘Pisi’ or ‘Pisi kali’, a term allegedly used to refer to a beautiful woman. Such objectification is wrong in so many ways, it is difficult to fathom why it has been condoned and legitimized in Tanzania, to the extent that some media houses have used it. They went even further to create a hashtag #PisiKaliZaTaifa in the recent Miss Tanzania contests.

Some influential people have raised their voices against this, including January Makamba, the lawmaker for Bumbuli Constituency. But it seems more people need to raise their voices before some corrective action is taken by the responsible authority.

Why ‘Pisi Kali’ must be stopped

Because it is a form of objectification of women that can bear fruits in the form of dehumanization and violence. What is happening now is that people who use ‘pisi’, or any other label for women, are trekking on what has become a fluid boundary between flattery and dehumanization. They don’t see anything wrong with calling women ‘pisi’ because, as they say, it means a beautiful woman and so, it is endearing. This has become so pervasive that some women call themselves and others ‘pisi’. This is such a shallow, uninformed, and troubling view of the issue.

Objectification of women

When objectifed, a person is judged for his or her usefulness and becomes a tool for one’s own purpose. Although exactly how the word ‘pisi’ came to life is hard to trace, it seems to originate from the English word ‘piece’ … a piece of something … an object!

Research has showed that dehumanization is the primary instrument of violence, and it always starts with language. This can be evidenced by how dehumanization was used in every genocide recorded throughout history. While we may not be immediately concerned about genocide, we must be concerned about the violence against women that happens in our society today? Research has shown that men who dehumanize women as objects are more liable to sexually harass them, and display more negative attitudes toward female sexual abuse victims.

Think about a recent nude video that went around social media, of a young lady who was crying in pain because she had been sexually abused by her partner. Much worse, it was the partner who was recording the video, mocking her. This is the kind of society we are moulding by continuing to legitimize and play a deaf ear towards labelling and objectifying women.

Research shows that sexual attraction shift men’s focus of a woman away from her personality onto her body, and may trigger a dehumanization process. A key question to ponder here is ‘how does someone see the woman they call pisi? Do they see her individuality, her character, her intelligence … or do they see her body as an object of potential use? This is the pervasive issue that women face – the precedence that is often placed on their appearance.

It is undeniable that the driver behind the word ‘pisi’ is the woman’s appearance, i.e., a man’s judgement of the woman’s attractiveness, which as research shows, attunes the man more to the instrumentality of the woman. Here is where such issues as men in power hiring a woman not because of her competence, but for the way she looks. Now, how worse does this get when the woman is looking for a job in a society that objectifies women?

The way we perpetually misuse language to describe other people can shift our perception of them in derogatory ways. In fact, we diminish our own humanity in the process.

The boundary walls between flattery and dehumanization in Tanzania are crumbling down and need reinforcement, and good place to start is corrective action by the media houses that seem to loosen their grip on professionalism of journalism.

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Epiphania Kimaro writes about careers, personal growth, and issues affecting youth and women.