Vulgarities, Vulnerabilities, and Vengeance: Gendered Intimidation and WhatsApp Use in Electoral Politics in Kenya

African cultural and gender dynamics influence digital electoral deliberations on the continent. African people use the social media space as a tool to promote humorous gendered intimidation during electoral deliberations. In this article, I explore how gendered intimidation in the WhatsApp space promotes and/or limits electoral deliberation in Kenya. I use the case of Bungoma County, the third most populous county in the country, with vibrant social media use, to employ qualitative approaches with an Afrocentric public sphere. I ask how people use the WhatsApp space for gendered intimidation as a tool of domination and resistance during electoral deliberations. I was guided by the research question: How do people adopt WhatsApp space for gendered intimidation involving body shaming and sexual incapacity as a tool for dominance and resistance during electoral deliberations in Bungoma County? I joined five WhatsApp groups and selected a representative sample of active individuals, twenty-eight women and thirty-one men, for face-to-face interviews between September 2020 and March 2021. The interviewees were representative of the nine constituencies in the county. Their responses were analyzed thematically. The findings reveal how media technologies and social amenities provide equality, enabling men and women to humorously adopt the WhatsApp space for gendered intimidation as a tool of dominance and/or resistance during electoral deliberations in Bungoma County. The implication of the research is to underscore how African people’s adoption of media technologies in their cultural life affects electoral deliberation in ways comparable to developed democracies such as the United States.