And now onto more serious business.
"But a rescued masculinity is simultaneously an injured masculinity; a masculinity that does not emerge from the inherited conditions of class and race privilege. And it is injured in a space most vulnerable to colonial constructions of incivility. At one time subordinated, that masculinity now has to be earned, and then appropriately conferred.
Acting through this psychic residue, Black masculinity continues the policing of sexualized bodies, drawing out the colonial fiction of locating subjectivity in the body (as a way of denying it), as if the colonial masters were still looking on, as if to convey legitimate claims to being civilized. Not having dismantled the underlying presuppositions of British law, Black nationalist men, now with some modicum of control over the state apparatus, continue to preside over and administer the same fictions."
- m jacqui alexander - not just (any)body can be a citizen: the politics of law, sexuality, and postcoloniality in trinidad & tobago and the bahamas
There was a
tiny thread in
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cereta's post where a person (from what I gather -- I got there post-deletion) talked about how she and her girlfriend would have to go on permanent birth control as a precautionary measure before visiting Trinidad because "men are different there".
There are so many things I want to say about this. I don't know if I can get them all in order due to my BURNING RAGE, but let's try:
1) People whose concern about homophobic violence in the Caribbean only surfaces when they are considering the Caribbean as an idyllic tropical paradise vacation spot? They need to recognize that concern as the self-serving privilege it is. The
Boycott Jamaica campaign demonstrates this privilege in a truly slap-in-the-face way by using the slogan "Let's Get Together and Feel Alright" [sic], which has been the music of Jamaican tourism since, what, the 70s? Most of these islands have local populations who have already been compromised for the sake of tourism dollars. To then exploit that dependency by threatening to cut off that source of income -- and with no attendant care or understanding for the day-to-day lives of those populations -- is an ugly exercise in power.
2) There are indeed strict and abusive anti-homosexuality laws in parts of the Caribbean. I am not disputing that. I am disputing these boycott movements, these blanket statements, that surmise that the local queer populations are either nonexistent, nonactive, disorganized, or simply incompetent. If you as a Westerner are worried about your safety when you visit the Caribbean, take a fucking second to wonder what the LGBT people
who live there do about it, and what would help them in their efforts for justice. You CAN, if you wanted, go to Jamaica or Trinidad or the Bahamas and never worry about the threat of homophobic violence, because you can stay in a nice, safe, gated resort on the best beaches and the only terrifying Caribbean people you need be exposed to are the ones at the market ...
if you choose to take a tour.
3) None of these legislative acts against homosexuality arose in a vacuum. Read the Alexander article I linked to and find out how British laws policed the sexuality of non-white Trinidadians, then shaped the nature of local lawmaking by creating taboos and mythologies predicated on white British notions of those sexualities. Watch
Life and Debt and see how crucial it is for Jamaica's survival for the island to maintain its appeal as a carefree vacation spot, often at the expense of its people. Read Jamaica Kincaid's
A Small Place and see what tourism on the small islands looks like from the other side of the camera. These are not realities which afford a lot of room for radical change in legislature, as to do so would endanger already-precarious economic systems and postcolonial social understandings.
4) "Men are different there". They are, indeed, but only so much as they are different
everywhere. My father grew up dark-skinned and poor in the sugar cane barracks; he's uncomfortable when gay people kiss on tv, but he believes that people have the right to be happy and he can't in good conscience begrudge them this. My well-off half-brother Richard grew up mostly in Toronto and is terribly homophobic; he freaked out once when my dad sent him a hat and, trying to say that my sister-in-law could wear it too, called it "bisexual" instead of "unisex". My dad mentioned this anecdote when my cousin Derek was visiting from Toronto and Derek grimaced and said with annoyance, "Yeah, Rich is a total homophobe."
Men are different there. I think of my legions of uncles (and "uncles") and boy-cousins and my charmed childhood, free of sexual or physical abuse, and that statement hurts and enrages me to incoherence.
Of course, my brown kinfolk might not be who the commenter was concerned about, as she might not even know that West Indian Asians exist; she might envision a Trinidad full of scary black men, as many people who don't know anything about the Caribbean assume it to be. As much as I (as a Trinidadian) am hurt by the original statement, I want to acknowledge that particular homogenizing tendency in discourse about the Caribbean, and the likelihood that any non-Caribbean person will be squinting through that half-obscured lens. And this just adds an even more problematic dimension to the idea, placing a specific colour to
those men from
there.
There is a strange disconnect when it comes to the West Indies as seen by tourists; the islands hold an elysian mystique, blue waters and colourful people, lilting accents and a slow, hot rhythm. But it's almost as if the Caribbean outside of travel brochures exists in a blurry stasis, and nothing else happens there unless it directly affects first-worlders. Reports of poverty, unrest, drugs and violence barely make the news and are only important insofar as they might disrupt the tourist's desire to experience "authentic" island life.
Kincaid says it best: "... so when the natives see you, the tourist, they envy you, they envy your ability to leave your own banality and boredom, they envy your ability to turn their own banality and boredom into a source of pleasure for yourself." Remember that banality and boredom, and remember that it exists alongside swimming with turtles and drinking rum on the seashore.
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