“Complexities of Place” – Activist Roundtable

For the purposes of this collection, the Caribbean IRN Board posed the same questions through email and skype to several activists across the region between December 2011 and May 2012. We envisioned cross-regional yet local perspectives of sexual minority organizing in the Caribbean. We invite you to enter this roundtable of responses with activists from several countries, representing The Bahamas, Guyana, Martinique, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago.

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The Bahamas – Erin Greene

1. Tell us about your work in the region and any organizations that you represent.

I joined CAFRA (Caribbean Association for Feminist Research in Action) in The Bahamas in 2000 and became the Bahamas’ National Representative for CAFRA in 2002. I am now the interim deputy chairperson of CAFRA. I was a member of CRAFFT (Constitutional Rights Reform and Facilitation Team) that conducted a six-month lecture series culminating in a two-day workshop and the submission of draft legislation to the Bahamas constitutional reform committee in 2002-2003.

I was an executive member of and spokesperson for the Rainbow Alliance of the Bahamas when it formed in 2003 until the organization was closed in 2008. I joined CARIFLAG (Caribbean Forum for the Liberation and Acceptance of Genders and Sexualities) in 2007.

I am a member of Bahamas Human Rights Network, which was formed in 2007. I now work as a human rights activist and host an Internet television show “The Culture of Things” where I discuss various issues surrounding human rights. I have made numerous television and radio appearances to discuss Human Rights and LGBT Rights.
 

2. This project is offering a space for Caribbean activists, writers, scholars, and artists to define and redefine homophobia. We think this is necessary because so much has been discussed and defined outside of the region. How would you define homophobia(s) in your country? What social, cultural, and political factors contribute to homophobia(s)?

Homosexuality is accepted as a silent affliction in the Bahamas: its okay once you don’t maintain a higher social status than me, or maintain a real or perceived position of power over me, or in any way force me to acknowledge your orientation or gender expression. Bahamians are also agitated by individuals who are perceived as attempting to blur gender lines and by Bahamians that challenge the Christian Church’s perceived position on homosexuality or the Church’s authority on social issues. But Bahamians generally are still uncomfortable with issues of sex, sexuality and relationships, and often behavior that is instantly labeled as homophobic is based in a fear or lack of understanding of human sexuality in general.

I believe that the response to the “StopMurderMusic” campaign on the ground in Jamaica was less about believing in, or supporting, or an unwillingness to challenge homophobia and more an issue of defining sovereignty. The campaign was formed outside of Jamaica and it seems with disregard to the economic impact of the campaign and to the needs and strategies of activists and the LGBT community in Jamaica.

Bahamian politicians and civil servants faced with an apathetic electorate generally, and an invisible community, in particular, are not motivated to enforce existing legislation and protections or to create special protections for the LGBT community. The continual misinterpretation of the Preamble of the Constitution of the Bahamas is an example of a willingness to ignore existing statutory protections and perpetuate a ‘church’ state where a self-appointed Christian Council participates in the creation and enforcement of legislation as it concerns mainly the media and entertainment and even education.

3. How useful is it for us to talk about different kinds of homophobia(s)? How would talking about different kinds of homophobia(s) help us to include concerns for transgendered and gender non-conforming people?

Before we can talk about homophobia(s), we must be able to talk about Human Rights. In the Bahamas using the word homophobia makes Bahamians uncomfortable and puts them on the defensive, they feel their anti-gay position is in accordance with biblical scripture and Christian belief and constitutes a Christian duty. An attempt to discuss LGBT rights is often considered as an attempt to convert the individual to that “lifestyle” or to be bad Christians. Many Christian fundamentalists believe that the only rights a human has are the rights that the Christian God gave them: the right to live and the right to die at a predetermined time only known by God. However many more Bahamians understand Human Rights and the right to be in a relationship of one’s choice (implicit in the right to freedom of association and the right to freedom of conscience) in the context of same sex couples and attraction.

4.  What changes have you seen and experienced (in the last 5 to 10 years) with regards to LGBT or sexual minority issues in the region and in your country in particular?

There has been a significant increase in coverage of LGBT issues in both traditional and alternative media throughout the region. In the Bahamas publications that once would ignore local and international discussions of LGBT issues and crimes directed towards or involving the gay community have now become some of the community’s biggest allies. Government agencies and private and religious institutions have shown increased willingness to support (both publically and privately) the LGBT community and its needs. Although we have not reached nearly acceptable levels, the Royal Bahamian Police Force has shown an improvement in its willingness to respond to crimes against members of the LGBT community. Radio and entertainment personalities have consciously participated in the decrease in homophobic material being broadcasted in public and private arenas and spaces. Regional and local festivals have increased support to LGBT artists and LGBT themed works.

5. What are the strategies you use for organizing against homophobia and its effects (ex. ostracism, depression, violence, etc.)?

Currently, I am not a member of any local LGBT organization but refer members of the community to existing advocacy and support groups like Bahamas LGBT Equality Advocates (BLEA) and Society Against STI’s and HIV (SASH Bahamas) or to LGBT affirming lawyers, doctors, churches and support groups.

6.  What are the major challenges and successes you have faced in organizing?

Challenges: The gay community has continuously shown an unwillingness to maintain the levels of visibility required to ensure the enforcement of existing legislation and legal protections that offer recourse for discrimination and crimes against sexual minorities. Most members of the LGBT community are Christian and still wish to maintain strong ties to their church but face difficulties being visible in any activity that challenges the church or established religious doctrine. No programs currently exist for LGBT youth. Activists, including myself, fear being accused of ‘recruiting’ or cultivating sexual relationships with minors, and have found the government and existing social organizations unwilling to create or support such programs to address LGBT youth issues. I have found that the LGBT community is also unwilling to organize across class and race lines, with many Bahamians fearing repercussion from even this level of visibility.

Successes: The Anglican Church and the Royal Bahamas Police Force have expressed a willingness to improve the dialogue between these institutions and the LGBT community and to work together to improve services to the community. In July 2004, the Rainbow Alliance of the Bahamas held a welcome demonstration to support members of “Family Values” cruise hosted by Rosie O’Donnell and her family in Rawson Square – and offer a counter demonstration to the local protesters. The Royal Bahamas Police force carried out their duty to monitor and protect the members of our demonstrations and visitors in a professional and respectable manner.

7.  What kinds of regional or diaspora collaboration have been effective? What kinds of regional or diaspora collaboration have not been effective?

The Caribbean IRN (and particularly the web event for the launch of the Jamaica Gay Freedom Movement Archive in June 2011) has proven to be an effective tool, allowing individuals to participate in an event and speak to activists and LGBT people around the world, while maintaining anonymity, if desired. Engaging dialog and activism via the internet allows participation without fear of the repercussions that often accompany visibility.

8. Do you think the Caribbean as a region is shifting in terms of tolerance and acceptance of diverse genders and sexualities? If so, how?

Yes. The increase in visibility of LGBT themed literature and academic work and the emergence of LGBT artists and positive LGBT themes in popular music, like reggae and calypso, and the creation and success of lesbian/gay-themed films regionally and locally indicate a shift toward a more tolerant position. Portia Miller-Simpson’s announcement that she will allow gays to serve in her cabinet after her landslide victory in recent elections in Jamaica, and an increase of support shown by Caribbean politicians in international organizations in general, and in particular, the case of The Bahamas’ (then) deputy Prime Minister Brent Symonette expressing support for a United Nations Human Rights Council Resolution that affirms equal rights for LGBT people, are indications of this shift.

9. What are some specific changes you would like to see in your country to change or lessen homophobia(s)? In the Caribbean as a whole, how can we move towards these goals?

The introduction of civics and constitutional law classes in secondary schools would be an effective tool in the reduction of homophobia. Creation of training programs for law enforcement and peace officers including customs, immigration and prison officers, for medical and emergency medical staff and civil servants generally to facilitate an understanding of fulfillment of professional duties without regard for personal belief systems will also cause a reduction in homophobia. The enforcement of existing legislation at governmental and professional levels would help to address homophobia and many of the issues concerning the LGBT community.

The creation of programs that focus on personal development for LGBT youth and temporary housing for these young people transitioning to adulthood would also lessen the effects of homophobia. Another tool that can effectively reduce homophobia would be the creation of legal and media industry standards and penalties for the broadcasting or publishing of material that promotes or perpetuates violence towards the sexual minority community.

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Guyana – Joel Simpson

1. Tell us about your work in the region and any organizations that you represent.

I work on sexual rights and health in the Caribbean; primarily in the countries I reside (and resided) and sub-regionally and regionally as well. I am the Founder and Co-Chairperson of the Society Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination (SASOD) in Guyana, Co-Founder of the Trinidad and Tobago Anti Violence Project (TTAVP) and founding member of 4Change, both of which have subsumed in Trinidad and Tobago’s Coalition Advocating Inclusion of Sexual Orientation (CAISO). At the regional level, I have been involved in the leadership of the regional lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) network – then called the Caribbean Forum for Lesbians, All-sexuals and Gays (CFLAG) but now re-named the Caribbean Forum for Liberation and Acceptance of Genders and Sexualities (CariFLAGS) since its resuscitation in 2006 as Steering Committee Member, Focal Point, Spokesperson and Advisory Board Member. I am also a Legal Core Member of the Human Rights Working Group of the Caribbean Vulnerable Communities Coalition (CVC).

2. This project is offering a space for Caribbean activists, writers, scholars, and artists to define and redefine homophobia. We think this is necessary because so much has been discussed and defined outside of the region. How would you define homophobia(s) in your country? What social, cultural, and political factors contribute to homophobia(s)?

Homophobia in Guyana exists in multiple forms. Institutionally, it exists in laws, which criminalize sexual intimacy between adult men in private. These laws are indirectly enforced through police extortion and other state-sanctioned abuses, social stigma and direct discrimination that it festers. Laws against cross-dressing, vagrancy and loitering are used to target male-to-female transgender sex workers specifically and transphobic discrimination manifests itself in profound ways; not only through criminal enforcement, but in creating barriers which amount to the denial of access and rights to education, employment, housing, health and other social services which the state is obligated to provide. In state policies, it exists in the health sector where ‘men who have sex with men,’ ‘women who have sex with men’ and other such non-heterosexual behaviours which are officially excluded from donating blood, regardless of their level of epidemiological risk for sexually transmitted diseases. And in the housing sector, it exists where legally-married heterosexual couples with children are given priority to buy house lots from the government. Socio-culturally, it exists in dancehall music, which we have largely imported and adapted locally from Jamaica. Some theatre productions also reinforce stereotypes of gay men, in particular, and represent us as flamboyant, lewd cross-dressers for comedic entertainment.

3. How useful is it for us to talk about different kinds of homophobia(s)? How would talking about different kinds of homophobia(s) help us to include concerns for transgender and gender non-conforming people?

I find it is very important in the Guyana context, especially, to talk about transphobia as a specific kind of homophobia particularly because we have these unique laws that criminalise cross-dressing and are enforced from time to time. Because public opinion seems largely against this particular form of non-conforming gender expression, even more so than against same-sex intimacy, it seems more strategic and effective to use specific language to address issues around transphobia, than referring to homophobia, as the umbrella term.

4.  What changes have you seen and experienced (in the last 5 to 10 years) with regards to LGBT or sexual minority issues in the region and in your country in particular?

The debate has definitely shifted from the time I started this work officially in 2003 when forming SASOD from one which focused predominantly on religious views to a rights-based discourse. This took years of constant advocacy consistently framing the issues as human-rights concerns for public engagement, rather than religious perspectives that dominate private morality debates. I have also found that because we have increasingly articulated LGBT issues as human rights concerns and created more social spaces for community engagement, fellowship and entertainment, young LGBT people in particular appear more empowered to live openly, despite pervasive social stigma and discrimination which still exists in Guyanese society today.

5. What are the strategies you use for organizing against homophobia and its effects (ex. ostracism, depression, violence, etc.)?

The strategies are many and include public education, media advocacy, community mobilization, alliance building and the list can go on and on. I hope the effects have been to create a more tolerant and respectful Guyanese and Caribbean societies, though I have no way of proving this.

6.  What are the major challenges and successes you have faced in organizing?

I suspect these are not unique. Challenges range from lack of resources, community apathy to downright indifference. The movement is generally unrewarding and fosters a lack of appreciation for the personal sacrifices many of us make in order to do this thankless work. Successes have been small wins like filing the cross-dressing constitutional suit – the first legal challenge in the Caribbean region to challenge laws which discriminate against our community – and the inroads we have made in the Inter-American human rights system on LGBT issues. I had the distinct honour of representing the Caribbean region at the first-ever thematic hearing on sexual orientation issues at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in October 2008. I also lead a project which culminated in a thematic hearing specifically on LGBT issues in the Caribbean in October 2010. I managed the production of SASOD’s first documentary short film, “My Wardrobe, My Right” which looks at the cross-dressing crackdown in Guyana. There have been very many ‘firsts’ of this sort that I would consider as organizing successes.

7.  What kinds of regional or diaspora collaboration have been effective? What kinds of regional / diaspora collaboration have not been effective?

I struggle to think of any diaspora collaboration in which I have been involved. At the regional level, there have been many effective collaborations. One of the first success stories was the Grenada Shadow Report project in 2007. At the time, I was a steering committee member of CFLAG and some INGOs wanted to engage Caribbean activists on producing a shadow report for Grenada’s review under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) in a manner which would see the work being done in the Global North by persons who were not from the Caribbean. CFLAG intervened, mobilized other regional partners and garnered resources to have the report produced and edited in the region by Caribbean people to build our own capacities. The media furor around Grenada’s ICCPR review saw their government take a pro-LGBT position publicly, for the first time I believe, in light of a possible tourism boycott.

In terms of less effective collaborations at the regional level, I think the ongoing international Stop Murder Music campaign could benefit from more Caribbean leadership and involvement, though it has had its fair share of global successes. The deficiency in that one, I think, is that Caribbean LGBT activists outside of Jamaica were not originally envisioned as key stakeholders in a campaign which largely saw North America and Europe as the sites to contest hyper-violent, anti-gay music from Jamaica, which was largely penetrating and becoming part of the wider “region’s psyche,” to quote some of the scholarly words of the late Dr. Robert Carr.

8. Do you think the Caribbean as a region is shifting in terms of tolerance and acceptance of diverse genders and sexualities? If so, how?

Definitely! I think the level of debate has risen in many of the larger territories like Jamaica, Guyana, Belize, Trinidad and Tobago and even some of the smaller islands like St. Lucia and Grenada. This is in large measure due to the unwavering advocacy of local LGBT groups. The more reasoned, rights-oriented debates I think signal progress in the level of tolerance and respect for LGBT Caribbean people. Our issues are now highly visible in the region’s media. Even in notorious Jamaica, the incidence of homophobic violence does not appear to be as high as a few years ago. But there is still so much more work to be done. We have only just begun.

9. What are some specific changes you would like to see in your country to change or lessen homophobia(s)? In the Caribbean as a whole, how can we move towards these goals?

For Guyana, I would like to see the laws criminalizing same-sex intimacy and cross-dressing repealed. I would also like to see “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” enacted as grounds for discrimination in our constitution. Attitudes will not change over-night and public education is long-term work. But if we do not strip away institutional forms of homophobia and provide means of protection and redress, then LGBT Guyanese cannot even hold the state accountable for violating their fundamental rights. Legal and policy reforms are important first steps to full equality and citizenship I believe. In the Caribbean region, we can only achieve these with the development of highly sophisticated advocacy strategies and powerful agents and allies, which strengthen the movement by winning hearts and minds and becoming politically significant. The region’s political leaders seem to be following public opinion on these issues, so we have work to do in this regard; but also, the movement needs to become a political force that cannot be ignored by prejudiced politicians where the populace is supportive of our humanity and rights.

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Martinique – Fred Cronard

1. Tell us about your work in the region and any organizations that you represent.

Since 1998, I worked in the field of fight against AIDS in Martinique. In 2002, I started my first preventive actions in the LGBT groups of Martinique. It was the first actions implemented in Martinique for this group. In 2004, a group of people living with HIV and gays, we have created Association Martinique Vivre Ensemble [Martinique Living Together Association] (AMVIE). AMVIE was working on the principle of community engagement of people living with HIV and LGBT. In 2005, AMVIE has developed the first programs to prevent HIV and STIs and the fight against discrimination of LGBT people in Martinique. In 2007, I was elected president of the AMVIE. In 2011, AMVIE has decided to merge with the AIDES association, based in Pantin (France). AIDES is the largest association of fight against AIDS and hepatitis in France. Currently, I’m president of AIDES Martinique.

There are no laws against homosexuality in French law. There are laws that protect the privacy of individuals, and who condemn homophobic acts. However, there are homophobic attacks, and it is always difficult for LGBT people assaulted to complain.

This is especially true in Martinique and other French departments of America of Martinique, Guadeloupe, French Guiana and St. Martin (French part). The police sometimes refuse to accept the complaint of a person LGBT assaulted. There are few (or not) programs for LGBT rights developed in the French Department of America (Martinique (1), Guadeloupe (1), French Guiana and St. Martin (French part)). There are few (or not) of cooperation between the associations of Martinique, Guadeloupe, Guyana and St. Martin with NGOs in the Caribbean region, in the fight against AIDS and the fight for LGBT rights.

In 2006, a seminar was held in St. Maarten by the Ministry of Health of France. There were 153 participants from France, and various Caribbean countries (Dominican Republic, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Haiti, St. Lucia, Suriname, etc.). A workshop was devoted to relations between men (MSM). Few links have been developed and maintained by the associations of French Department of America and the Caribbean NGOs.

In 2010, a program of cooperation with the Caribbean, funded by the European Community, and entitled “Setting up of a regional HIV observatory between French territories and other countries in the Caribbean” was implemented. The project leader is the University Hospital Centre (CHU) of Pointe-à-Pitre (Guadeloupe). Investigations are carried out in the public men who have sex with men (MSM), crack users, sex workers, migrants. The scientific coordination of the investigations is provided by the Clinical Investigation Center – Clinical Epidemiology (CIC-EC) French Guiana (Hospital Centre (CH) Cayenne). AIDS coordinated some of these investigations, including MSM, Martinique, Guyana and St. Martin.

AIDES Martinique priorities for 2012 for LGBT people are:

– Strengthen our prevention efforts : preventing HIV/STI, testing HIV rapid tests
– Develop actions for the rights of LGBT people
– Develop visibility actions
– Develop advocacy at local and regional
– Develop links with NGOs in the Caribbean

2. This project is offering a space for Caribbean activists, writers, scholars, and artists to define and redefine homophobia. We think this is necessary because so much has been discussed and defined outside of the region. How would you define homophobia(s) in your country? What social, cultural, and political factors contribute to homophobia(s)?

There are few known studies on homophobia in Martinique, and more generally in the French Departments of America. The experiences of the associations are very recent and provide some data. As part of the “Setting up of a regional HIV observatory between French territories and other countries in the Caribbean “, an inventory was made. An inventory of work (surveys, studies, and other academic work) made in Martinique and out of Martinique is in progress.

In Martinique, homosexuality is lived hidden, due to discriminatory behavior of the population. We cannot really speak of “community” LGBT in Martinique. There is no sense of belonging to a community. We identify people who claim to be gay (known in Martinique “Macoumè”). Beyond these gays, men have sex with men, without being defined as gay or bisexual. It is a male sexuality lived hard, “shameful?” Among gay people, the experience of homosexuality is different according to the generations and social class. Without speaking of visibility, there is a display of homosexuality among young gays.

A small group of transgender people is identified with an activity of prostitution. These are people of Martinique, with possibly one or two people of St. Lucia. These people are not integrated into the group of gays. Their clients are mostly men “heterosexual” socially integrated, often married and a father.

The meeting places are:
– Outdoor meeting places, which are often frequented the night in Fort de France (the capital of Martinique) and on the beaches. The absence of security makes these places dangerous places, favorable to attacks.
– The private dances are also meeting places.
– Internet networks
 

3. How useful is it for us to talk about different kinds of homophobia(s)? How would talking about different kinds of homophobia(s) help us to include concerns for transgendered and gender non-conforming people?

Homophobia manifests itself in a number of attitudes, behaviors and actions that it would be important to identify. We need to identify the foundations of homophobia to develop strategies to combat it. The arguments most often advanced are: religion (it is forbidden by the Bible, God wanted that the woman is the natural companion of man) or societal (requires men and women for the reproduction of the human species and the sustainability of the society).

Many other arguments can be identified:
– The homophobic attitudes of men who have sex with men and who seek to protect themselves? Homophobic, so I’m not gay!
– Homophobic assault offenders, because homosexuals abused rarely report, and are therefore easy targets. Often these attacks take place on outdoor meeting places without security
– Attacks (racketeering) homophobic people who think that homosexuals have money, they rarely report and are easy targets
– The homophobic acts of people that do not support LGBT visibility, but that can be tolerated if they are hidden (they stay in their private sphere)
– The homophobic acts of people who think that homosexuality is against nature, that LGBT people are perverse
– Acts homophobic people (macho) who think that homosexuals are weak, do not represent the criteria of masculinity, virility?

4. What changes have you seen and experienced (in the last 5 to 10 years) with regards to LGBT or sexual minority issues in the region and in your country in particular?

The main change in recent years, since 2004, was the creation of associations involved in LGBT. These associations are An Nou Allé, AMVIE (now AIDES Martinique) and CAP. These associations were able to develop preventive actions and actions of visibility and advocacy. They mainly concern gay men. The only active association to date is AIDES Martinique. Recently an association of lesbian was created.

Apart from the associations, there are Internet networks, which are places of exchange and encounter for gays. Speak publicly about homosexuality and attitudes of discrimination and stigma is likely to fight against homophobia.
 

5. What are the strategies you use for organizing against homophobia and its effects (ex. ostracism, depression, violence, etc.)?

The strategies we are considering:
– Building capacity, self-esteem, removing guilt of the LGBT
– Ensure the visibility of homosexuality
– Respond to homophobic actions

Actions can be:
– Implementation of group discussion among LGBT
– Develop community action (peer)
– Establishment of an observatory of homophobic violence, for a systematic response and assistance to persons victimized
– Encourage discussion in schools about sexuality, emotional and sexual orientation
– Conduct public debates by seeking the involvement of political, artistic, sporting, etc.
 

6. What are the major challenges and successes you have faced in organizing?

This is the creation of the association and actions implemented. The association may develop a public debate within the population, through the various media, newspapers, television. In May 2012, we will organize a “Diversity Week” as part of World Day against Homophobia. During this week, several actions will be implemented in the direction of the students, the general public and LGBT. On this occasion, we will invite NGOs in the Caribbean.
 

7. What kinds of regional or diaspora collaboration have been effective? What kinds of regional /diaspora collaboration have not been effective?

For now, we have no regional collaboration or relationship with the Diaspora. This is one of our concerns for the future. The French departments of America are fairly isolated from each other and with the countries of the Caribbean.
 

8. Do you think the Caribbean as a region is shifting in terms of tolerance and acceptance of diverse genders and sexualities? If so, how?

We have few links and rather limited knowledge of the initiatives developed in the Caribbean. We need to develop links with the actors of the Caribbean to find ways of collaborating and joint actions.

9. What are some specific changes you would like to see in your country to change or lessen homophobia(s)? In the Caribbean as a whole, how can we move towards these goals?

We are at the beginning of a process rather recent, dating back six years. We still need a method, action and collaboration to better evaluate our work and develop the society of Martinique. I think we are the right direction. Interesting initiatives are being developed. We need to pursue them.

I hope that this early work with you and others in the Caribbean will allow us to have a better understanding of our region and to identify actions that we can develop together.

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Suriname:

Tieneke Sumter, Chair of Women’ S Way Foundation &
Chrystabelle Beaton, member and LGBT advocate from the LGBT Platform Suriname.

1. Tell us about your work in the region and any organizations that you represent.

Women’ S Way was founded in 2008 but became a foundation in may 2011. It is our mission to create a platform for women who (also) Love women in Suriname and the rest of the CARICOM. Our goals are to strengthen the emancipation of women who (also) love women, promote and stimulate the wellbeing and health of women who have sex with women (WSW) and advocate for social acceptance. We offer a meeting place for women (also on FB), organize discussions, lectures, training and leisure activities like parties and trips. We also collect data of the needs of the WSW community.

The LGBT Platform Suriname was established in August 2011. It is a network of 5 organization (Suriname Men United, He + HIV Foundation, Women’ S Way Foundation, Club Matapi and Proud 2 be) who decided to work together after a member of our parliament, Mr. Assabina, requested an anti-homosexual policy from the government in Parliament. He called for the destroying of the root courses of homosexuality, which according to him is a disease. We were pleased to see that the chair of our parliament stopped him and asked him not to discriminate since our constitution respects and protects every individual. Also other parliamentarians came up for the rights of LGBT’s. This was the start of a long discussion in the Surinamese society and even Human Rights Watch came with a statement. Mr. Assabina was forced to apologize.

The LGBT Platform Suriname wants to secure the rights of LGBT’s and create more awareness about the rights of LGBT’s and acceptance of people with a different sexual orientation or gender identity. Our first activity was to organize the National Coming Out Day (NCOD) and walk in October 2011. We receive an official permission from our President to use the park in front of the presidential palace. A group of 250 and 300 persons participated in this activity. We were able to dominate the news for more than one week. Parents and member of parliaments walked with us while the police guided us. With help of the Dutch Embassy we were able to organize a training for aspirant LGBT advocates; to develop information material about homosexuality which was distributed at several public events. The COC Netherlands made it possible for us that one of our members could attend the UPR meeting in Genève and could give a statement on behalf of the LGBT Platform Suriname.
 

2. This project is offering a space for Caribbean activists, writers, scholars, and artists to define and redefine homophobia. We think this is necessary because so much has been discussed and defined outside of the region. How would you define homophobia(s) in your country? What social, cultural, and political factors contribute to homophobia(s)?

We would like to define homophobia almost as a disease that spreads fear and hate against LGBT’s in our societies. Most of the time some out of content taken religious scripture is being used to do so. Heteronormativity and the fear for sexual freedom is the main cause of all homophobia in Suriname and in other places in the world. Although we don’t have laws is Suriname that prohibited homosexuality in practice, LGBTs are being stigmatized and discriminated. Our laws don’t provide any regulation in case someone has changed his or her gender. Many experience discrimination in their family, workplace and school etc. Suriname has many different ethnic and religious groups and some of them are against LGBT practices. Women’ S Way is often confronted with women who knows that they love women but feel the pressure to choose a man for their love ones. Some are afraid to have relations with women since they fear they will burn in hell when they die.

According to our government, Suriname is not ready for a specific LGBT policy. To do so, a public discussion is needed with several (religious) groups. We don’t agree with this statement since it is the task of the government to protect ALL her people and should not leave that to any opinion of a religious group. Assabina is a maroon man and when he made his statement, he said that according to his cultural background homosexuality can’t be accepted. The statements of Assabina has stimulated anti gay organization and people to bring their opinion forward and create fear and hate. Some (maroon) LGBT’s have told us they would stay in the closet because they are more afraid of the negative responses from their loved ones in the community.
 

3. How useful is it for us to talk about different kinds of homophobia(s)? How would talking about different kinds of homophobia(s)  help us to include concerns for transgendered and gender non-conforming people?

We think it is important to talk about homophobia since daily LGBT people are being discriminated. Not too long ago a transgender person was being beaten and threatened by her/his neighbors because of who s/he is. S/he was brave enough to go the media and tell her/his story. We also are aware that many transgender persons are not getting the medical treatment they need since the medical system doesn’t know them by their ‘new’ gender. We heard that they are buying illegal hormone injections and injected themselves without any doctor guidance. They are not aware that they put themselves at great risk. At this moment, there is a lawsuit of a transgender who wants to change her gender in her passport. Our law does not provide for this so we expect that this case will be brought to the OAS.
 

4.  What changes have you seen and experienced (in the last 5 to 10 years) with regards to LGBT or sexual minority issues in the region and in your country in particular?

We have noticed that in the Caribbean LGBT issues are being placed in the health corner in the last years. The HIV epidemic and the funding that came with it has contributed it to this. We think it was a safe start and helped bring the MSM, transgender and the health issues of Sex workers on the agenda. Unfortunately the specific issues of lesbian and bisexual women were absolutely not addressed.

In Suriname, we saw the same pattern, but in the last 5 years, we have seen the first shifts to an also more human rights approach. Suriname Men United has helped to create this path with the help of the Schorer Foundation from Holland. Homosexuality is in Suriname a topic that is almost every week in the media. This was not so 10 years ago. Last year the journalist price was given to a news agency who covered a topic about the recognition of LGBT rights in Suriname. The LGBT rights are becoming more and more on the political agenda in the region and Suriname. And hopefully this will lead to move it out of the health corner.
 

5. What are the strategies you use for organizing against homophobia and its effects (ex. ostracism, depression, violence, etc.)?

The LGBT Platform tries to create more public awareness by providing information about homosexuality. Several members has shared their personal stories in the media to empower those who struggle with their sexuality and the response of their love ones. We try to build alliances with women organizations, NGO’s, members of the union, media, religious leaders, parliamentarians and companies. We are now in the process of developing a long-term lobby and advocacy plan. Based on the response we are getting out of the (LGBT) community, people tell us it was time that the LGBT organizations decided to work together which will help to the further reorganization of the rights of LGBT’s.

Women’S Way Foundation is providing several activities to women who (also) love women. We are working together with social workers and a psychologist if counseling is needed. Self acceptance and coming out yes or no are some of the topic we address in our activities. With the help of Mama Cash, we were able to create a safe place were women can come and meet each other in the last year. By being part of the LGBT platform we promote the rights of LGBT’s and create more awareness in our society.
 

6.  What are the major challenges and successes you have faced in organizing?

The major challenges we face is how to find answers to deal with the homophobic response of several religious groups and persons in Suriname. We are aware that the more we will become stronger in our call for equal rights for ALL the louder the voices will become of the homophobes. Building the capacity of the LGBT community and our organizations is the next challenge we face. Working on the rights of LGBT’s is a full time job and we do it now in our spare time. In order to get the job done it will be important to receive more support and (financial) resources. We are still weak in documenting all the cases of discrimination. We are a were that only data will convince our government that LGBT’s are being violated and discriminated although our constitution says that they should be protected. We need to involve more relevant groups, (non) governmental organizations and companies to include sexual orientation in their policies.

Our successes are the establishment of the LGBT Platform Suriname, the activities in relation to National Coming Out Day; the first steps in establishing dialogs with several groups; the development of the information kit; the training of 14 LGBT junior advocates ; the several public awareness activities; the several activities we were able to organize for lesbian and bisexual women. But most of all we gave LGBT’s a face in our community and we made it very clear that we are everywhere and not going anywhere!
 

7.  What kinds of regional or diaspora collaboration have been effective? What kinds of regional /diaspora collaboration have not been effective?

The LGBT Platform Suriname and Women’ S Way are just starting to be part of CariFLAGS. As being of one of the few Dutch speaking organizations in the region, we were more focused on collaborating with Dutch organizations. As an organization for lesbians and bisexual women, who are assumed not to be at great risk to contract HIV and so we have had no voice in the region’s activities in the last years. We are glad that we can contribute in changing this for the years to come. We are also aware that Suriname is in a relatively better position as compared to other countries in the region since we don’t have laws that prohibit homosexuality (or homosexual acts). But because of that we feel we have a responsibility to support our fellow LGBT’s in the region in their struggles.

8. Do you think the Caribbean as a region is shifting in terms of tolerance and acceptance of diverse genders and sexualities? If so, how?

We think that the region is making steps in shifting to tolerance and acceptance of divers genders and sexualities. The HIV epidemic and the funding that came with it has contributed to this. The fact that PANCAP is refining the draft Regional Anti-Discrimination Model Policy, ‘as we speak’, could be a big step forward. Unfortunately it is still in the health instead of the human rights corner. But it is important to start somewhere. It is our assumption that the region will be almost ‘ forced’ to make some bolder steps in the years to come since LGBT rights is high on the political agenda of the USA and a relative big amount of money will be invest in the region to bring LGBT rights and the tolerance of diverse genders and sexualities on the political agenda of our governments.
 

9. What are some specific changes you would like to see in your country to change or lessen homophobia(s)? In the Caribbean as a whole, how can we move towards these goals?

Collecting data on violation and discrimination of LGBT’s will help us to provide the scientific basis to convince our governments where actions should being taken to ensure that each (LGBT) citizen of Suriname can live a life free stigma and discrimination. We want our government to make a bold statement that homophobia will not be accepted and tolerated. Our long term goal is that it is possible to have civil marriage or unions for LGBT’s in Suriname. That means that some laws and policies must be reformulated to be inclusive and more neutral formulated. We have an example of one big Surinamese company who has a policy where the (LGBT) partner is fully recognized. The (LGBT) partner who is being registered as the formal partner at the company receives all the rights as pension etc. It would be nice if we can interest other companies to do so since we are aware that chancing laws will take time.

It is important that we create a support system in the region for all LGBT organizations. We think that CariFLAGS will be able to fulfill that role. Building regional capacity in addressing LGBT issues (not only from a HIV or health perceptive) will become more and more important in the near future. Develop a regional lobby and advocacy plan to ensure that the rights of LGBT’s not only become part of our governments but also be addressed is important. In our opinion, a regional LGBT NGO with full time staff should be established or identified (if this already exists). This NGO should be the secretariat of CariFLAGS and its job should be to push the LGBT agenda in the region and help to feed the LGBT movement in the Caribbean.

Larry Chang – Interview with Thomas Glave – Gay Freedom Movement – Video (Jamaica)

Larry Chang is the founder of the Gay Freedom Movement (GFM) in Jamaica. This interview with Thomas Glave was recorded on 20 June, 2011 at Brooklyn College , USA.

This was done around the time of the launch of the Digital Archives of the GFM

Please watch from our Youtube Channel

Larry Chang and Thomas Glave

Thomas Glave is the author of several books, among them Whose Song? and Other Stories, The Torturer’s Wife , and Words to Our Now: Imagination and Dissent (Lambda Literary Award, 2005). He is editor of the anthology Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles (Lambda Literary Award, 2008). He is a 2012 Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University.

Photo Credit: Oslo Freedom Forum

*~*~*

Larry Chang was born in Jamaica of Hakka Chinese immigrant parents. He is a founding member of the Jamaica Forum of Lesbians, All-Sexuals & Gays, J-FLAG, having previously organized a gay group in Jamaica, the Gay Freedom Movement (GFM) as early as 1978 in a fiercely hostile climate. He held the position of General Secretary and was Publisher and Editor of its newsletter, Jamaica Gaily News.

A leader and active participant of the social justice community, Larry came to the U.S. as an asylee in 2000, and was granted political asylum in 2004. He currently resides in Washington, DC, where he continues to educate and work for social justice. He is featured in the Phillip Pike documentary, Songs of Freedom, which had its world premiere in Toronto in January 2003, and he also appears in Dangerous Living: Coming Out in the Developing World, which documents the struggle for human rights of LGBT people in the global south; it premiered at the New York Film Festival in June 2003.

Larry is an artist, designer, publisher and life counselor. He is the author of Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing and Wisdom for the Soul of Black Folk. In June 2008, he founded EcolocityDC which seeks to address environmental, economic and social sustainability issues. He is currently working on a new economic theory to supplant the monetary system and profiteering which he recognizes as the root of the global crisis.

http://www.larrychang.info
http://netplanetaryvalue.wordpress.com

Charmaine Crawford – “‘It’s a Girl Thing’ Problematizing Female Sexuality, Gender and Lesbophobia in Caribbean Culture” – Critical Essay (Barbados)

“It’s a Girl Thing” Problematizing Female Sexuality, Gender and Lesbophobia in Caribbean Culture

Critical Essay by Charmaine Crawford

THE SUBJECT OF LESBIANISM IN SCHOOLS is a cause for grave concern, as it has a negative effect on every level of society. It is imperative that this matter receives the attention that it warrants, so as to bring about some form of resolve to save our young people from the moral decadence that this lifestyle brings (report by Harewood 2010: 11A).

Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society’s definition of acceptable women; those of use who have been forged in the crucibles of difference – those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older – know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those others identified as outside the structures in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish (Lorde 1984: 112).

INTRODUCTION

Lesbianism has been a cause for public concern in the Barbadian popular imagination in the last few of years. Led by religious conservatives and their supporters, the first sign of discontentment was highlighted in the Nation newspaper’s sensationalist coverage of lesbianism that took place over three consecutive Sundays in April 2010. Teenage girls were condemned for frolicking with one another, lesbians were asked to repent and convert back to heterosexuality and lesbianism was equated with many social ills in society. Social angst about female homosexuality was not quickly abated because, in February 2011, the Hollywood movie Black Swan was temporarily banned from cinemas because of its ‘lesbian’ content. The “L” word was being used regularly in media as if it was common practice. But this had nothing to do with a change in attitude towards homosexuality but it was, more so, a master technique based on dominant power relations are employed in order to first name, and then deal with, the ‘undesirable’ thing instead of ignoring it altogether. So, in this case, the approach of de-silencing was purposeful in simultaneously denouncing and de-legitimizing same-sex female sexuality. This attack on lesbians is a clear case of lesbophobia is Barbadian society.

Like any other ‘phobia,’ which has some categorization of aversion attached to it, lesbophobia can be defined simply as the fear, dislike or hatred of lesbians or women who are sexually, physically and/or emotionally attracted to other women whether on an individual or group level. But scholars, such as Kulich, critique the use of terms that have ‘phobia’ attached to them, like ‘homophobia’ and ‘lesbophobia,’ because there is tendency to suggest that perpetrators of bigotry have some kind socio-psychological problem that do not make them fully responsible for their feelings of panic and/or actions of contempt toward “nonnormative sexualities and genders” (2009:24). As a result of this, the litigious behavior of homophobes is often reduced to an individual pathology instead of being linked to the structural heteronormative codes. Despite this, I think there is a political importance and relevance in using the term homophobia, and lesbophobia specifically, because attitudes of disdain (more so than fear) and violent actions against homosexuals do occur and are debilitating to individuals who are doubly victimized as a result of buggery laws in most Caribbean countries.  The term ‘anti-gay’ does not capture the same intent to hurt, harm and exclude non-heterosexuals in society. I heard a woman say in an academic setting that she is ‘anti-gay’ – or heterosexist – but not homophobic. She, in turn, takes a sort of moral high ground on issue because she is not exhibiting aggressive behavior toward gay men and women. In this case, erratic homophobic behaviour is substituted by the liberal stance of tolerance: I don’t accept you but I will put up with you as long as you don’t get in my way. But, ultimately, heterosexist ideology legitimizes homophobic acts, whether it is in the form of harassment, discrimination or and/or violence.

Lesbophobia culminates through the intersection of sexism and homophobia as two mutually constituted regimes of oppression that produce the effects of harm – whether its prejudice, harassment, discrimination and/or sexual and physical violence – against women who love and have sex with other women. Capezza (2007) notes that that sexism and homophobia are embedded in traditional gender role identification and expectation for men and women. She goes on to argue that,

Traditional gender role beliefs are linked to sexism and in turn to homophobia due to perceived violations of traditional gender role expectations. If a person endorses such traditional gender role beliefs, then they are [more] likely to express hostility toward individuals who violate these norms, such as nontraditional women (e.g., career women) or homosexual men (2007, 249).

While gender ideology shapes and normalizes men and women’s perceptions and attitudes about masculinity and femininity and produces asymmetrical power relations between men and women (Barriteau 1998), there is a more substantive ideological basis to lesbophobia that gives it weight and legitimacy. Drawing on Jacqui Alexander’s (1991) work on female sexuality, morality and state control, I argue that lesbophobia is the byproduct, or an effect, of a heteropatriarchal ordering of gender and sexuality that simultaneously privileges and reinforces heterosexuality or opposite sex relations (heterosexism) and men’s dominant (patriarchal) claims over women’s bodies for physical, sexual and reproductive purposes. Atluri adds that, “both lesbians and gays threaten the natural, moral state of heterosexual, patriarchal family, and therefore their suppression is often integral to maintenance of patriarchy” (2001:12). Therefore, the individual and institutional efforts to police and control lesbians are proscriptive in restricting female sexual autonomy that is freely expressed, not solely procreative, and that may not involve or focus on men.

Feminism, Male Homosexuality and the Obscure Lesbian Subject

How has lesbianism or female same-sex sexual relations been explored and located within, and across, Caribbean culture? With the exception of Silvera (1992), Alexander (1991, 1997, 2005), Elwin (1998), King (2008), French and Cave (1995), Wekker (1997; 2006), Tinsley (2010), and the anthology by Glave (2008) that captures both gay and lesbian subjectivities and experiences through fiction and non-fiction writing, there is paucity in scholarly research that has thoroughly investigated or theorized female homosexuality in the Caribbean beyond a cursory glance.[1] Documentation of the diversity of female same-sex sexual experiences in the Caribbean, across race/ethnicity, class and culture, is even more scant.[2] Furthermore, at times the gendered-sexualized subjectivities of lesbians tend to get subsumed, or overlooked altogether, when discussing women (read as heterosexual) and gay men, generally, as subordinate groups within a heteropatriarchal order. This homogeneity of difference, which Lorde (1984) cautions us about, is just as troubling as intolerance to difference based on essentialist notions of gender and sexuality and monolithic constructions of collective identity.

I think that there is a particularity, and also a peculiarity, in the ways in which lesbians are marginalized in society. The particular subordination that lesbians face is clearly borne by them violating, or maybe more discursively transgressing, dominant norms of gender and sexuality. But the peculiar aspect of the subordination of lesbians is somewhat more nuanced in understanding based on their intersectional identity and “nomadic” existence and movements between different social locations and categories, such as ‘Woman’ and ‘Homosexual’ (Braidotti 1994). 

Caribbean feminists have made valuable contributions to examining women’s subordination to men in relation to how asymmetrical gender relations operate through the sexual division of labour via family, work and political economy and through exclusionary practices of the church and state to disadvantage women and confer more rights, power and privilege to men than to women (Barriteau 2003, 2004; Mohammed 2002; Reddock 1994; Robinson 2003; Massiah 2004). Other scholars have looked at violence against women violence (Clarke 1997), female sexual vulnerability and HIV/AIDS (Douglas, Reid and Reddock 2009; Muturi 2009) and women’s participation in commodified sex markets, such as sex tourism and prostitution (Cabezas 2004; Kempadoo 1999, 2003). But the heterogeneity and complexity of women’s gendered identities and sexual relations have to be more thoroughly investigated beyond a heteronormative lens. Men’s relationship to, and with, women tend to be taken as a given here both socially and sexually. It is rarely questioned how lesbian women, in defying codes of heterosexual femininity, may have less leverage in negotiating power relations with men on a personal and public level. In addition to this, some liberal feminists, in their quest for equality with men, may overlook how their own heterosexual privilege in women’s organizing and civil liberties does not take into consideration how lesbian women’s rights are denied (such as in marriage and adoption, domestic violence laws that exclude same-sex couples and laws that criminalize sex between women).

Scholars have also investigated homosexuality in the Caribbean focusing on homosexual male experiences and non-normative gender and sexual expressions and sanctions against them by their families, church and state (Crichlow 2004; Murray 2009; Glave 2008); there has also been as examination of hegemonic masculinity in shaping dominant heterosexual male norms on gender and sexuality that contribute to hypermasculinity and homophobic sentiments (Lewis 2003; DeMoya 2004; Chin 1997); and, finally, there has been discussions about stigma and discrimination against MSM and the challenge in combating HIV/AIDS (Carr 2005). While these perspectives are instructive in highlighting how homosexual men are constantly being threatened and surveillanced in society (inclusive of acts of public violence used against them) for deviating from hegemonic codes of masculinity, the category “homosexual” seems to uphold androcentrism which privileges masculinist perspectives of same-sex desire and does not address the misogyny that might be produced against lesbians, and women generally.

In this paper, I will examine how lesbophobia manifests in a post-colonial Caribbean landscape in multiple ways, whether it is through societal sanctions such as stigma discrimination and violence, or through fabricated claims of sexual immorality against same-sex female sexuality promoted by the church, state and media. From a critical feminist perspective, I will first critique dominant notions of gender and sexuality by exploring the relationship between patriarchy and heterosexism in ordering female sexuality and sexual relations. I will then discuss the ways in which lesbian sexuality and bodies are constructed to denote a kind of corporeal disorder that is unsettling or disruptive to dominant notions of hetero-femininity or womanhood associated with gender identity, sexual pleasure and motherhood. Finally, I will demonstrate how the media plays a role in manufacturing and reinforcing lesbophobia through sensationalist accounts that serve to pathologize and delegitimize same-sex female sexuality.

I. SEX/GENDER DUALISMS AND HETEROPATIARCHY

Western modern social and political thought on gender and sexuality has informed patriarchal and heterosexist ideologies. Eisenstein states that ‘patriarchy,’ as a social system of male power, “precedes capitalism through the existence of the social ordering of society which derives from a biological, [social] and political interpretation of biological sex” (1979, 25). Patriarchy reinforces male authority in marriage, the family, sexual division of labor, church (Judeo-Christian religions) and state whereby men exercise power and control over women’s sexuality and productive and reproductive labor (Rubin 1975; Lerner 1986; Johnson 2005); patriarchy has also limited the autonomy of non-dominant men depending on race, class and sexuality (Mohammed 2004; hooks 1992). Patriarchal practices are not unitary and have varied in different societies and socio-cultural and political contexts; therefore, feminists have debated the origin of patriarchy and have challenged the universality of it, which shows that it is more useful as a concept than a grand theory (Bryson 2003). Patriarchal ideology promotes a dual sex/gender[3] system through the reification of the somatic characteristics and ontological experiences of men and women as being inherently different, oppositional, and unequal in value, to one another. Men and women are reduced to their biology or sex (biological determinism) based on their physical and reproductive attributes and capabilities with women being perceived as the “weaker” or lesser sex.  Through sex/gender power differentials and binaries, women are subordinated and are classified as inferior to men, in turn, making unfair treatment towards them justifiable.

Nineteenth century Enlightenment ideologies – implanted during colonial period and sustained in the post-independence period in the Caribbean – were salient in reproducing Eurocentric gender tropes based on middle-class patriarchal cultural norms. Through gender hierarchal categorizations and roles, men and women are supposed to behave in appropriate ways according to their gender. For men, masculinity is equated with strength, instrumentality, rationality and power whereas, for women, femininity is associated with weakness, affect, irrationality, and passivity. For instance, the ‘cult of womanhood’ defined what was acceptable and respectable femininity based on race/colour, class and sexuality at the time. In 19th century Jamaica, “the ideal woman [white and heterosexual] was to be obedient to institutions and (male) symbols of authority, pious, and righteous (shunning all vice identified by moral institutions). She was depicted as passive, meek, powerless and expected to follow customs that prescribed her place in society” (Moore and Johnson 2004:138). Similar gender ideologies and customs are recognizable in other European colonized territories across linguistic and geographical boundaries. For example, in Spanish colonies, such as Cuba, Roman Catholic influences reinforced women’s role as mothers in caring for children and others. Women were also expected to live virtuously through their reverence to the Virgin Mary. The popular gender stereotypes, “boys don’t cry” and “act like a lady,” hold boys/men and girls/women in gender straightjackets whereby they are forced to behave in particular ways to meet dominant gender standards. In this case, docility is to be avoided for boys/men whereas it is to be expected in girls/women. Moreover, masculinity is validated and valued through its oppositional relationship to the feminine, and vice versa.

Political economy changes precipitated by industrialization and modernization, from the 19th to early 20th century, contributed to shifts in the sexual division of labour. Under patriarchal capitalist relations female subordination and invisibility heightened through men having access to women’s productive, reproductive and sexual labour for the purposes of capitalist accumulation through the private/public dichotomy (Mies 1987). The demarcation of spheres along gender lines relies on nuclear family arrangements based on heterosexual monogamy. Women are expected to be dependents of men, as mothers and wives, within the household where they are primarily responsible for childcare and domestic duties. But not all women meet these gender standards. African-Caribbean women were seen as violators of respectable femininity due to the racialization and sexualization of their bodies by white colonists (Reddock 1995). In the post-emancipation period in Trinidad, while many working-class women fell short of dominant gender standards, others tried to achieve it through nuclear familial arrangements, not working outside of the home and domesticity (Brodber 1982; Reddock 1994). Men, on the other hand, were expected to be providers and protectors of their wives and children and seen as autonomous agents within in the public sphere. The male breadwinner construct is ideologically pervasive in defining masculinity in the Caribbean, and elsewhere, even though not all men are not able to fully achieve or maintain such as role.

 Not only does patriarchy order gender relations, but it also shapes sexual relations as it relates to men’s access to, and control of, women’s bodies, sexuality and reproduction. Accordingly, patriarchy and heterosexism intersect in forming ‘heteropatriarchy.’ This is exemplified through the religious edit that women are made for men as well as the emphasis on procreative sex within marriage. Heterosexism – the view that sex between men and woman is the only ‘natural,’ ‘normal’ and acceptable sexual orientation – is normalized and legitimized through familial, societal, cultural, institutional, and individual and religious beliefs and practices (Adams et al. 1997:162). While men and women are defined and seen as different from each other – man is not woman and vice versa or masculinity is everything femininity is not – this difference is bridged by the complementarity of opposites, which is no less sexist because its confers a difference in worth and function with men holding privilege and power over women. Richardshon states that [heterosexuality] depends on a view of differently gendered individuals who complement each other, right down to their bodies and body parts fitting together; like ‘a lock and key’ the penis and vagina are assumed to be a natural fit” (Richardson, 7). Put simply, heterosexism relies on sex/gender binaries. Moreover, if the penis and vagina are assumed to be a ‘natural fit,’ then two penises or two vaginas in sexual activity do not match, in turn, contradicting patriarchal notions of gender and sexuality.

Really, it is through the heterosexualization of sexuality – manufacturing and institutionalizing heterosexuality as the norm – that the ‘unnaturalness’ of homosexual sexuality has come into being, as deviant, inferior and perverse. Foucault (1990) has been instrumental in discussing how sex is about power relations and how bourgeoisie hegemony relied on sexual repression and the ‘normalization’ and ‘naturalization’ of heterosexuality in the 19th century. This was purposeful in controlling the birth rate and supporting religious moralist doctrines and Victorian social codes of respectability. Since sex is about power; thus, hegemonic power was used to police sexuality and institute laws that normalize a particular type of sexuality – heterosexuality. Sexual prohibitions were enforced against homosexuality as it threatened heterosexual monogamy which capitalist industrialists were so reliant on through the nuclear family unit and a man’s role as breadwinner with wife and children (Hawkes 1996; Kitzinger 1994). The church also had a stake in controlling the sexed lives of men and women to ensure that they copulate with each other. Heterosexual procreative sex with the marriage was reinforced while all non-productive sexual activities, anal sex, oral sex, masturbation and prostitution, were deemed taboo. Therefore, sex for pleasure, and women’s sexual agency, had to be managed in order to ensure that men, affluent men in particular, had an available source of women to reproduce their lineage in the transference of wealth and property. Moreover, much of the social angst about homosexuality in the Caribbean has been inherited from an Imperial colonial missionary project that instituted and legitimized heteropatriarchal religious ideologies of gender and sexuality in society. Racism has also informed how gender and sexuality have been constructed in Caribbean colonial context. For instance, through racist-sexist iconography (e.g. ‘wench’ and ‘jezebel’) black women’s bodies were delegitimized as deviant and hypersexual compared to white women, who were seen as epitomizing true beauty and hetero-femininity.

Constructionist and post-modernist perspectives have been essential in deconstructing dominant notions of gender and sexuality beyond binaries, fixity and biological determinism, which includes the process of ‘queering’ – complicating and diversifying – representations and practices of gender and sexuality (Butler 2007; Esptein 2002; Harding 2003). Judith Butler purports that gender and sexuality are socially constructed signifiers that become ‘naturalized’ (or taken as a given), not by a biological predisposition, but through performativity – the repetition of acts and rituals that reinforce what gender and sexuality should look like, should be, and how they should be performed on individual and institutional levels (2007). Heterosexual gender rituals are performed and practiced on a day-to-day basis (e.g. fairytales, soap operas, cultural festivals, etc.), and they are rarely questioned. But performativity is also imbued with power relations between different genders and sexualized bodies; therefore, power can be used and abused by anyone regardless of their gender and sexual identity (hetero-bi-homo).

The denaturalization of sexuality allows us to explore human sexuality beyond biological deterministic notions of sex, gender and sexuality. I beg the question: Is there only one way that male and female bodies should look, feel and act sexually? In denaturalizing sexuality, Jeffrey Weeks argues that:

We must see that sexuality is something which society produces in complex ways. It is a result of social practices that give meaning to human activities, of social definitions and self-definitions, of struggles between those who have power to define and regulate, and those who resist. Sexuality is not a given, it is a product of negotiation, struggle and human agency (2003:19).

Therefore, there is no essence to human sexuality that can be captured in some kind of natural order. I argue that reproduction does not naturalize a particular type of sex act (such as coitus) or sexual relations (such as heterosexuality) because sex and reproduction are not intrinsically linked – men and women do not solely have sexual intercourse with each other in order to reproduce or can they always achieve this. Men and women of various sexual orientations make choices about having and wanting children inside and outside of marital and social partnerships based on their knowledge, and the technology, that is available to them.

Female Sexuality and the Lesbian Threat

Davina Cooper, in Power in Struggle: Feminism, Sexuality and the State, states that “as a form of disciplinary power, sexuality organizes identity, knowledge, behaviour, manners, dress and social interactions around particular desires, libidinal practices and social relations” (1995:67). Enlightenment constructions of femininity, as docile, pious, chaste and procreative, have rendered sex for women as a functional act, not for pleasure, and absolutely dependent on men. Male sexuality is recognized as a force to be reckoned with, powerful, expansive and penetrative whereas female sexuality is seen as a passive and receptive force of the later. Kitzinger argues that “sex, as it has been constructed under heteropatriachy, seems necessarily to involve the eroticizing of power and powerlessness, dominance and subordination: that is what makes it erotic” (1994:207). In this case, women’s sexuality is restricted through men’s claims over their bodies for sex and reproduction; and heterosexual sex is simply reduced to missionary position – man on top and woman on the bottom. While men have been granted sexual autonomy through codes of hegemonic masculinity, women have been seen as relying on men for sex, and only receiving it through them. Due to sexual double standards and codes of morality, women, unlike men, who are sexually free and uninhibited, in wanting and demanding sex, are often ridiculed and characterized as ‘whores’ and ‘sluts’ or loose women because they violate gender and sexual codes of ‘respectable’ femininity.

In the Caribbean, lesbians or women who do not conform to heterosexuality as a compulsory or standard way of life, or those women who challenge rigid gender codes of femininity, sell their sex for money or do not adhere to heterosexual monogamy, are viewed as disruptive to the dominant heteropatriarchal order. Rosamond King points out respectable femininity in the Caribbean has been informed by power relations race, class and cultural lines from our colonial past. She states “black and brown Caribbean women’s sexualities have always been considered ‘queer,’ odd, and less moral by European (and often by ‘coloured’) elites. Women who choose extramarital sex and childbearing, non-monogamous relationships, non-nuclear family structures, or lesbianism have always been maligned by those in power” (King, 193).  Likewise, Jacqui Alexander (1991, 1997), in examining female sexual morality, state and the law in Trinidad and Tobago and The Bahamas, argues that Caribbean states in the post-independence period have adopted techniques of the master through legislature, derived from European Enlightenment gender ideologies in order to police and regulate sexual and reproductive practice through law. She goes on to point out that morality and economics converge in the law that deems sexual relationships that do not reproduce a workforce to be deserving of surveillance and punishment. Heteropatriarchy is reinforced through discriminatory sodomy laws used by the state to criminalize sexual acts associated with homosexuals (but which are not exclusive to them) and that contravene marital heterosexual sex. Alexander notes that:

Biology and procreation sanction nature and morality to such an extent that when eroticized violence threatens to dissolve heterosexual conjugal marriage, a textual restoration is enacted by criminalizing lesbian sex and sex among gay men – an act of reasserting the conjugal bed. Indeed, the reinscription of the conjugal bed occurs precisely because no alternative sexualities are permissible; by legally outlawing other alternatives that “reject the obligation of coitus,” the power of marriage is reinscribed, and with it the reinforcement of “obligatory social relationship between ‘man’ and ‘woman’” (1991:138)

Lesbians are seen as particularly threatening because they out rightly challenge compulsory heterosexuality – the idea that women should be, and want to be, with men. Adrienne Rich states that, “lesbian [or same-sex female] existence comprises both the breaking of a taboo and the rejection of a compulsory way of life. It is also a direct or indirect attack on male right of access to women” (1993:238). Because so much of economic and socio-cultural operations, whether productive or reproductive, rely on the myth of femininity for the purposes of capital accumulation, caring for others and male aggrandizement, lesbians challenge male authority because their work and bodies cannot be readily tapped into on a private level. Sexism underlines the “man-hating” indictments directed against lesbians since women are not expected to be sexually engaged, and powerful, without men. Lesbianism really exposes the unstableness of heterosexuality. Butler argues that, “For, if to identify as a woman is not necessarily to desire a man, and if to desire a woman does not necessarily signal the constituting presence of a masculine identification, whatever that is, then the heterosexual matrix proves to be an imaginary logic that insistently issues forth its own unmanageability” (1993:239).

This also raises questions about how lesbian women are positioned in relation to motherhood and family. Dominant Euro-American norms of gender and sexuality have defined what motherhood is, and is not, based on a nuclear heterosexual family model and exclusive mother-child relations (Crawford 2011). The institution of motherhood is premised on heteropatriarchal relations: “Motherhood is what mothers and babies signify to men” (Rothman, 1989, 27) so women have children with, and for, men (Comeau, 1999). Therefore, lesbian women are not seen as legitimate mothers in the areas of gender, sexuality, reproduction and familial relations (Benkov 1998) because men do not privately control their sexual and reproductive labour. Although in the Caribbean there is a high visibility of female-headed households and matrifocality validates the central role that elder women play in caring for children and others (Barrow 1996; Clarke 1999; Mohammed 1998; Smith 1996), there has been little investigation or discussion of how some of these childcare and familial arrangements occur for lesbian women, outside of a heterosexual and/or Euro-American nuclear family norm. While women, generally, tend to be problematically de-sexualized as mothers in reinforcing codes of female morality and chastity (you can not be sexual and maternal), I think that for lesbian mothers the opposite is true. The de-sexualization does not readily occur due to stigma against lesbian sexuality. The ‘good mother’ construct relies on women conforming to codes of respectable hetero-femininity. Since there is greater threat of lesbian mothers being seen as unfit mothers or ‘bad mothers’ due to their non-heterosexual lifestyle, many women may lead closeted lives in order to protect themselves and children from ridicule and discrimination or to prevent losing their children in custody cases (Benkov 1998). While in some incidences heterosexual women may be valorized for their role as mothers, this praise or privilege is not readily extended to lesbian mothers.

Delegitimizing Lesbian Sex

Since traditional research on human sexuality has been informed by androcentrism and phallocentrism (Williams 2002), in the heteropatriarchal imagination, lesbian sex tends to be rendered not real sex because of the absence of the penis. Therefore, there is a lot curiosity about what two women do sexually. Not only because of the common argument that same-sex couples cannot procreate with each other – which I have already addressed in denaturalizing sexuality – but because penal penetration, coitus specifically, is associated with the sex act, which is represented through the objectification of the male sexual organ as dominant. Hegemonic masculinity thrives in reproducing and maintaining gender and heterosexual conformity. In interrogating masculinity in the Caribbean, Linden Lewis explains:

Hegemonic masculinity refers to practices of cultural domination of a particular representation of men and manliness. It refers to an orientation that is heterosexual and decidedly homophobic. It prides itself on it capacity for sexual conquest and ridicules men who define their sexuality in different terms. Hegemonic masculinity often embraces certain misogynist tendencies in which women are considered inferior. Departure from this form of masculinity could result in a questioning of one’s manhood (Lewis 2003:108)

Although gay male sex is abhorred by homophobes as unnatural, there is a way in which heterosexual men view gay sex as in involving real sexual activity due to the corporeal and sexual threat to their masculinity, which they do not feel with lesbians, who after all are women – females – and pose no phallic threat to them. Since heterosex is erroneously viewed as natural and real sex, with men dominating or ‘doing it’ to women based on hegemonic notions of masculinity – the supposed active masculine over the receptive feminine – then two men having sex tend to be reproduced along gender lines within the heterosexual matrix (Butler 2007).  One partner is seen as dominant and the other subordinate, with the receptive male partner being feminized as the latter. Homophobia and sexism work in tandem in preserving heterosexual masculine integrity: one of the fears that heterosexual men have of being sexually propositioned by gay men is the fear of ‘emasculation’ (being seen or treated less than a man) by being sexually penetrated (read simultaneously as subordination and feminization) and, consequently, being treated like women (women don’t screw they get screwed). Not only is this a simplistic understanding of gay male sex, but it is also a misogynistic viewpoint that reduces all women as mere sexual objects of men. Firstly, it reduces sex in heterosexual relationships to one thing, sexual intercourse, overlooking the variation of sexual practices that occur between men and women and the autonomy that heterosexual women have in initiating and participating in sexual activity. Secondly, lesbian sex is de-legitimized as non-sex because women need men to satisfy them sexually. While lesbian libidinal desires vary, with women pleasuring women in different ways inclusive of penetrative sex (object rather than organ), in popular discourse lesbian sex is either passive or vanilla of sorts or are pornographic scenarios of two ultra feminine women (usually straight) engaging in sexual play, produced by, and consumed through the male gaze, and symbolic phallus, for the pleasure of heterosexual men.

Gender Ambiguity and a Queer Lesbian Identity

Lesbians, and women in general, who break gender codes by not being clothed in representations of “femininity” or who have more masculinized features or appearances – androgynous, tomboy or butch – are seen as aberrations to the normative gender regime. Non-feminine lesbians are contemptuously characterized as “hard”, “man-like”, “man royals,” “bulldagger” and the like. A queer lesbian identity clearly, violates, the cult of femininity in both bodily performance and behaviour but it is also unsettling to hegemonic constructions of masculinity that classify the andro subject as being solely biological male (Butler 2007). Gender ambiguity (or gender queer or transgender) in lesbianism that is noticeable is often translated into intolerance and violence against women because they defy codes of hetero-femininity – “I will remind you that you are a woman.” Both gender identity and sexual identity are called into question. Since clothing is also important in how gender is performed, one’s gender identity is often conflated with sexual orientation when an individual’s appearance seems to be deviate from ‘appropriate’ representations along the masculine-feminine scale. Generally, a woman might be held suspect of being a lesbian if she does not wear stereotypical feminine attire (wearing dresses, high heels, make-up, etc.) or behave in a gender-specific way, even if she is not gay. Makeda Silvera eloquently discusses the gender and sexual transgressions of some lesbian women (indentified as ‘man royals’) in Jamaica while growing up, and retaliation against them, because they appeared to be more masculine than other women in dress, style and social behaviour. Butch lesbian women are seen as particularly dangerous to sex/gender dualistic order, which relies on mutually exclusive categories. In disrupting a causal connection between sex and gender identity, butch women occupy a space of  ‘in between’ as not feminine, but biological female, or as masculine but not biological male in performing socially and sexually in their daily lives (Capezza 2007). Likewise, female athletes are particular targets of lesbophobic sentiments, regardless of their sexual orientation, because their corporeal stature contravenes strict gender assignments. Moreover, gender ambiguity in lesbianism promotes a queer lesbian identity that contravenes strict categorizations based on sex, gender identification, and desire. It offers an alternative way of conceptualizing and understanding how the female body can be marked by different gender and sexual identifications, as multiple and malleable, beyond essentialist ways of being. Therefore, it is important to further investigate how power operates, and is exercised, in same-sex female relationships given their variation.

In this section, I discussed how heteropatriachal ideologies are instructive in delegitimizing lesbians as women based on dominant notions of gender and sexuality. Lesbophobia is a byproduct of this and is further manifested on the practical level through the interplay of sexism and homophobia; therefore, lesbians are devalued and discriminated against because of their gender as well as their sexual orientation. The specific form of oppression that lesbian women encounter as a result of lesbophobia will be discussed in the next section.

II. LESBOPHOBIA: DIRTINESS AND DISORDER

Violence Against Lesbians

Gail Mason (2002) examines violence against lesbians as homophobic and anti-lesbian acts. She emphasizes that both gender and sexuality inform the particularized violence against lesbians. While Mason credits feminists for taking a strong stance against male violence against women, especially in intimate partner heterosexual relationships, through activism, advocacy and legislation. She, however, argues that there is a paucity of feminist literature when it comes to the “specific problem of homophobia-related violence towards lesbians” (2002:38). Similarly, literature on homophobia violence tends to focus on gay male victimization. While gays and lesbians are targets in public spaces, with gay men being particularly vulnerable to random violent acts against them on the streets, lesbians encounter additional aggravation in personal and private situations. Mason suggests that for lesbians “a significant proportion of incidents take place at home or work, involve on-going campaigns of harassment, and are committed by one, older man acting alone, who may be known to the woman” (2002:). Furthermore, the sexualized-gendered violence against homosexual women because they are “lesbians” – really hate crimes – includes physical and sexual assault from beatings, sexual molestation, rape (both individual and gang related) and/or sodomy. 

Male power, desire and violence coalesce as lesbians are sexualized, demonized and then, ultimately, punished for their gender and sexual non-conformity. While some heterosexual men might sexually harass lesbians in similar ways to other women on the basis of gender – due to (hetero) sexist beliefs and attitudes that reinforce men’s claims to women’s bodies warranting this as a patriarchal right – there is another dimension to their abusive behaviour as a result of homophobic attitudes. There is both attraction and repulsion when a woman’s lesbianism is uncovered. There is the heightened excitement that men derive from conquering a doubly unavailable female source while at the same time men may harbour feelings of disdain towards lesbians because their sexual disinterest in men is taken as a personal attack or a rejection of their masculinity, which is defined through heterosexualized acts (Mason 2002). Moreover, the attempt by men to “fix lesbians” by having forced sexual relations with them is indicative of how men will use violence to reinforce male dominance and legitimize hetero-sex. Lesbians who are identifiably gay are been prime targets for lesbophobic acts against them in the form of gang rape in Jamaica (Williams 2000).

In 2011, a student spoke to me about her experience with homophobia after I conducted a workshop on gender and sexuality at UWI Cave Hill campus, which included a frank discussion on homosexuality and homophobia in the Caribbean. I will share her story in this piece because I think that it is a good example of the workings of lesbophobia. Carol[4], a lesbian, recalls being sexual propositioned by a male colleague of hers, who was initially unaware of her sexual orientation. Exercising male prerogatives, he did not seem to be deterred by the fact that she did not want to have sex with him since he thought she was playing hard to get. When she told him that his sexual advances were unwelcomed and further explained that she was a lesbian to make it clear that there would be no possibility of sexual relations between them, his response shifted from intrigue, impertinence and then to viciousness. While this male aggressor felt he had sexual claims over this woman because of gender, his harassing behaviour intensified when he found out that she was lesbian. In order to prove his masculine prowess, his discreet proposition turn into a persistent vulgar tirade of what he could do to her. He told her that he could “suck her” since he assumed that she did not like to “fuck” in not wanting to be with men; he then became physically intimidating by blocking her attempts to leave. Finally, he retreated only after she said that she would notify the police about being sexually harassed, but not before he maliciously insulted her about her physical appearance. This incident is one of many that happen to lesbian women, which usually go unreported.

Throughout the Caribbean LGBT groups, such as J-FLAG in Jamaica, UGLAAB in Barbados, CAISO in Trinidad and Tobago, SASOD in Guyana and BLEA in Bahamas[5], have been vigilant in denouncing homophobic acts that have lead to stigma, discrimination and violence against LGBT individuals and those presumed to be homosexuals. They have advocated on various levels to ensure social justice for homosexuals both in relation to civil liberties as well as human rights. It is clear that democracy is curtailed by homophobic beliefs steeped in fundamentalist religious moralism that privilege heteropatriarchal theocracy over rights in defining and deciding whom is worthy of equal and fair treatment in society. LGBT people in the Caribbean are constantly negotiating their identities and realities within a heteronormative landscape. While many are contributing to the growth and development of their societies, and carving spaces to socially convene and establish community linkages, the politics of exclusion through homophobia – from isolation and ostracism from family and friends, slurs and epithets in everyday life, being mocked, stalked and threatened, being denied services and protection before the law to sexual and physical violence – operate to control and police homosexuals, keeping them in a state of fear and self-surveillance.

There is a public/private division related to the way in which homophobic violence manifests itself differently for gay men than for lesbians. As stated earlier, while gay men are assaulted in public usually in mob style or in front of a crowd – as a way to shame, punish and deter – there is a private dimension to how violence takes places against lesbians, which makes it seem less apparent and less visible. Since lesbians, as women, appear to pose limited physical and sexual threat to heterosexual men in public, they are less likely to be disciplined via mass violence. Instead lesbian women are more vulnerable to attacks by men in their private and community spaces and the assaults tend to include physical and sexual violence, and sometimes mutilation of the genitalia (Du Long 2005). The perpetrators usually know the women and/or they are familiar with their whereabouts. For example, in Jamaica in 2006, two women who lived together were found murdered. It was alleged they were in a relationship and lesbian content was found on the scene. “Police quickly named an estranged male partner of [one of the victims) as the prime suspect, and said the apparent relationship between the women was the likely motive for the crime” (Human Rights Watch 2006). In another account, a woman was gang raped and then murdered in her community after some guys found that she is a lesbian. They did not want her to spread her ‘disease’ to the rest of the women in the community (Du Long 2005). A LBT women’s group in Jamaica, called Women for Women, stress on their website that lesbophobic attacks are underreported. Because of the anti-sodomy laws, lesbian women may be less likely to come forward with cases of rape and other forms of sexual assault because they fear further abuse and persecution by law enforcers and the state (WFW 2010).

Lesbians as Disorderly Subjects: Dirtiness and Contamination

Lesbophobic sentiments are always reinforced through lesbianism being seen as a corporeal ‘disorder,’ which is signified through ‘dirt’ and ‘contamination.’ Mason points that ‘dirt’ or ‘dirtiness’ or what is believed to be unclean has long been associated with both homosexuality and women’s bodies. If what lesbians do sexually, as homosexuals, is deemed unnatural or a disease, and the dominant order is in turn repulsed by it, then discrimination and violent acts against them are seen as justifiable. The ‘dirtiness’ of lesbians as “disorderly subjects” is also expressed through misogynist beliefs about women’s vaginas (Mason 2002:46). In patriarchal popular lore, women’s vaginas have been equated with uncleanliness and pollution, whether through menstruation or childbirth, where fluids and odours are emitted  (salty, fishy, musky). But there is also a heightened fear of dirtiness – and also of contamination – in imagining two women engaging in tribadism (two vaginas rubbing together). So, lesbophobia is expressed and operates on many different levels, even on a linguistic basis: “The language of dirt functions as an effective insult because it invokes corporeally specific images of lesbian sexuality” (Mason 2002:47).

The notion of lesbianism being “dirty” or “nasty” is captured in Atluri’s work on homophobia, heterosexism and nationalism in the Commonwealth Caribbean. She recounts a discussion that ensued on the walls of one of the female bathrooms at UWI, Cave Hill campus as a result of an ad or request being posted that read: “Want pussy to suck email me at […]” (Atluri 2001:18). Someone responded with utter disdain and wrote back:

Re: To the slut who wrote the above and any other lesbian garbage on campus. With so many men out there how the hell could you even dream of wanting a wanting a woman! There’s absolutely nothing remotely sexy about a woman. Lesbianism is pure nastiness and wutlessness. Gun shot to you all. Yours Sincerely, A REAL woman! (Atluri 18).

Lesbophobia operates in different ways in this scenario. In the first instance, the rebuke against lesbians based on washroom graffiti is telling of how lesbians violate dominant standards of womanhood in the respondent’s eyes due to gender and sexuality. In upholding heterosexism and patriarchal sex/gender relations, lesbian sexuality is read as deviant because “REAL” women are sexually attracted to men and they should ultimately desire men and NOT women. As disorderly subjects, the body and sexuality of the lesbian woman are marked as dirty on two counts, in turn, contravening respectable hetero-femininity: lesbian sex is seen as corporeally unclean or “pure nastiness” and lesbian sexual behaviour is denoted as “wutlessness” (promiscuity or looseness). Terms like “slut”, “bitch” and “whore” were further used to insult the person who wrote the salacious ad/request. Finally, homophobic violence is symbolically evoked against lesbians, in order to ‘right’ a ‘wrong’ behaviour, through the sentiment: “Gun shot to you all.”

Lesbophobia in Barbadian Popular Media

Same-sex relationships between females at secondary schools across the island [Barbabdos] are causing authorities great concern. According to reports, the problem has gotten so out-of-hand during the past two to three years that some principals and teachers have had to find ways to protect first and second form school students from being pounced upon by older students who seek to recruit them into their circles (Harewood 2010: 5A).

The Nation newspaper’s coverage of lesbianism in Barbadian society, which took place over three consecutive Sundays in April 2010, demonstrates how lesbophobic beliefs operate to pathologize same-sex female relations. In this case, patriarchal religious ideologies colluded with the media to reinforce heteronormative moralizing ideals about female sexuality, dismissing the variation of women’s sexed lives that are not exclusively heterosexual. As disorderly subjects, lesbians are presented as deviant and morally corrupting to women and ultimately a threat to the family and to straight men. A woman named Sherry-Ann stated in the Week Two coverage that: “I know a lot men who do not mind having a lesbian for kicks, but they are now disgusted because the women are taking away their women” (Harewoood April 18, 2010:13A). In this case, the thought of lesbian sexuality as a legitimate sexual preference outside of masculine persuasion raises concern because the heteropatriarchal order is doubly threatened – men do not have access to these women and lesbians might be sexual competition for men. Mason makes an important point in relation to how heterosexism operates on an ideological level:  “As a discourse, the straight mind does not see lesbian sexuality as a legitimate sexual preference with a value of its own. Rather, lesbianism represents the rejection of a social order, which decrees that only men should be entitled to sexually exchange women” (Mason 2002:50). Moreover, in the coverage there is a major stake in keeping all women in their place. Patriarchal religiosity is invoked to scare teenage girls into compliance. A woman named Nicole warned: “Young people must be made to know that God does not want us to experiment” (Hareword April 18, 2010:12A).

Lesbians are, unequivocally, presented as disorderly subjects in the Nation’s tri-Sunday coverage of lesbianism.  Lesbians are seen and presented as both deviant and dangerous to readers in order to manufacture lesbianism as a social problem that needs to be fixed for the good of the public. The misapplication of utilitarian principles in order to denounce lesbians, through the print media, demonstrates how the systemic nature of lesbophobia is produced and reproduced in a public forum. The “Lesbian Problem” is summed up in the following points:

1.    The fear of contamination is invoked as girls are warned to stay away from lesbians and homosexual activity in general. Since there is the possibility that anyone can engage in homosexual acts, there is the fear of sexual boundaries being violated. Repression is needed to prevent any hetero-homo crossovers. This inadvertently speaks of the malleability, or the not fixity, of sexuality although it was not intended by the informants; and, ironically, it challenges the so-called naturalness of heterosexuality.

2.    The deviance and the dirtiness about lesbians are promoted through lesbophobic sentiments. Lesbianism is not a “normal” sexual behaviour or is reduced to a “lifestyle” and is ridiculed through religious edict: “woman was made for man.”

3.    Lesbianism is some kind of dysfunction that is brought on by abuse, sexual coercion or familial breakdown.

4.    Lesbians are sexual predators: they are sexually promiscuous and are out to get or recruit teenage girls.

5.    Cultural relativism: lesbianism is not accepted in the Caribbean; it is just tolerated. Influences from outside (Hollywood) are leading girls astray with this kind of lifestyle.

6.    Identity obscurity: displays of same-sex female relationships are reduced to a lesbian identity, without fully knowing what girls are feeling and how they identify.

7.    Sexual repression: teenage girls should avoid same-sex sexual experimentation.

8.    Woman can be saved from lesbianism if they repented and accepted God in their life, redeeming them as a respectable heterosexual woman.

Master techniques via the print media are employed through sensationalist, anecdotal accounts to highlight to the threat of the ‘lesbian menace.’  This biased perspective is explicitly and unapologetically lesbophobic. The coverage began on Sunday April 11, 2010 with the personal accounts of Marcia Weekes, counselor, playwright and founder of Praise Academy, who claims the incidences of lesbianism in schools are on the rise and attempts should be made to stop such behavior (religious influence). Her concerns are expressed as:

The growth of bisexual and lesbian relationships in Barbados, and even the wider Caribbean, has escalated in the past two years, according to counselor Maria Weekes. And she is deeply worried (Harewood April 11, 2010:14A).

I am unclear how Weekes is able to measure the increase of same-sex female relationships without some kind of empirical study, and, so even, how would the findings be verified. How and where would lesbian women be recruited? And can all girls/women who engage in sexual activity with other girls/women be classified as lesbians? It is obvious that the motivation to quantify “lesbianism,” in this case, is based on the presumption that its occurrence is something out of the ordinary, outside of the heterosexual norm. But I think that lesbian existence and occurrence are not one and the same here. Weekes is not questioning lesbian existence –she has seen it or has come to know it through ‘othering’ sexual difference– but she is, instead, calling to attention the rate of, or propensity for, lesbianism. Fear is incited based on the possibility of mutation as a result of contamination via the spread of ‘dirt’ conceived through the act of lesbianism. The warning is sounded: We will tolerate a few of you but not too many.

Weekes goes on to state: “Young female couples are seen at times displaying their love for each other in public spaces like Queen’s Park (a popular meeting place), at the beach, on the street corner – even in the school corridor and the classroom” (Harewood April 11, 2010: 14A)

The agency that girls are displaying the public challenges hetero-norms and the assumption that homoerotic displays and desires should be contained to the private sphere. But for Weekes the closet is being opened too wide, which is contributing to the so-called “braziness” or boldness of girls who are disrupting standards of respectable hetero-femininity. Really, lesbian invisibility (what is hidden from public view) is required to make sure that compulsory heterosexuality is maintained for women.  Girls could not possibly be genuinely attracted to other girls, because they are supposed to naturally like boys, so instead something perverse is taking place. Weekes then attributes lesbianism to several factors such as vice, abuse, personal problems and familial breakdown.  Her lesbophobic is rant venomous and hypocritical because she does not seem too concerned about the morals of girls being corrupted by boys who might be visibly groping or rubbing up on girls or having sex with them in deserted public spaces.

Clearly, the lesbophobic sentiments in the coverage is purposeful in heightening fear in individuals by conveniently, and dangerously, promoted bigotry through a self professed moral authority that seeks to protect the public from sexual indecency. As Weekes professes: “I was at a particular school telling a group of females that lesbianism is wrong” (Harewood April 11, 2010:15A). The “wrongfulness” of homosexuality is created or constructed through the reification of its presumed polar opposite – heterosexuality. Therefore, homophobes who believe homosexuality is a sin think that they have the right to impose their ideas onto others because heteronormative structures allow it. Hence, moralism trumps rights when discussing sexual minorities in the Caribbean. Social justice is obscured by a parochial belief system.

Weekes paternalistically seeks to counsels those who have fallen: “It’s very strong in the arts, but I make it clear from a leadership standpoint that if a person has an issue with their sexuality, we will do whatever we can to help. No person should feel comfortable living that kind of lifestyle” (Harewood April 11, 2010:15A).  Homosexuality gets reduced as a ‘lifestyle” as a part of a fad subculture that is whimsical, transient and unstable, unlike heterosexuality, which is not read as a lifestyle in of itself. This concern about a homosexual lifestyle is also voice in Week Two’s coverage:

“Many people think Barbados is a sheltered society but a lot of ordinary-looking men and women are into this lifestyle.”

“Its all over the island today, especially in the schools. Some hide out in churches, and some

 are paid [as a means of living] to engage in same-sex relations.” (April 18 2010, 12A-13A)

Instead of denying that lesbianism exists, ironically from these accounts, it is something that is seen as occurring in Barbadian society, even though it is made out to be immoral and disruptive. The solution to a homosexual ‘lifestyle’ is conversion back to heterosexuality through the help of the church. Being saved and further indoctrination is the prescription to getting women back on track in becoming dutiful wives and mothers, which lesbianism supposedly threatens. Interestingly enough, the issue of sexual conversion brings up the idea of malleability of sexuality. If you can change from homo to hetero then the other way is also possible, in turn, contesting the naturalness of heterosexuality. But espousing lesbophobic beliefs is necessary in policing female sexuality and preventing hetero-to-homo crossovers.

Lesbianism is also pathologized through it being seen as a byproduct of a disorder or some kind of dysfunction caused by family breakdown, low self-esteem, abuse or sexual coercion. It is not seen as legitimate form of female sexuality whereby young women seek pleasure and intimacy from other young women just because they find it desirable. Weekes states that:

They are looking for unconditional love at home; and because many are not getting this kind of love, they are acting out in different ways. Some are young people who were violated from as early as five or six years old; so they experiment, even from primary school levels, with one another (Harewood April 11, 2010:15A).

The causal link between lesbianism and maladaptive behaviour and/or social malaise is faulty. Weekes overlooks that fact many girls who are abused or who are facing familial and personal challenges are not lesbians nor are they drawn into lesbianism. Trying to find the cause of lesbianism suggests that what girls are doing is out of the ordinary and is not a part of teenage sexuality; heterosexuality, in turn, is naturalized. Therefore, for lesbianism to occur it has to come into existence through some disastrous situation or it is being used in a strategic way to prevent something unwanted, like pregnancy.

Lesbianism is also seen as contributing to aggressive and disorderly behaviour among girls, and, once again, is not seen as being attributable to other factors such poor conflict resolution skills: “What is more of a concern is that they are aggressive, operate in groups, stick together, and recruit younger students” (Harewood April 11, 2010:14A). Due to gender socialization, girls are not seen or expected to be confrontational and the link between peer pressure and girls joining gangs, regardless of sexual orientation, is not made. Some girls are contesting the codes of femininity and their gender transgression is being reduced to lesbianism. Therefore, gender and sexuality are conflated and are seen as one in the same.

CONCLUSION

This was a critical feminist perspective in theorizing the relationship between gender, sexuality and lesbophobia in Caribbean culture. I have examined how lesbians are constructed through a heteropatriarchal gaze as ‘disruptive women’ because they are perceived as violating dominant norms on gender and sexuality. Due to the overt homophobic violence directed towards gay men, it often goes unnoticed how lesbians are disciplined for contravening moralistic codes of heterosexual femininity, until sensationalist accounts appear in the media. Clearly, there needs to be a more nuanced or complex investigation of female sexuality that interrogates how different groups of women understand and experience their sexual lives.

Efforts launched to combat lesbophobia, and homophobia in general, have to be multifaceted and account for how simultaneous oppressions related to gender and sexuality (along with race and class) produce a particular social reality for lesbian women, who are positioned between two socially marginalized groups, women and homosexuals. Differences do not just have to be accounted for but they also have to be interrogated in understanding how power and privilege are actualized for, and can be abused by, the disadvantaged. Moreover, in forging strong alliances between feminist and LGBT groups in activism and organizing, the links between heterosexism/homophobia and patriarchy/sexism, and actions to combat them, have be articulated as a major goal in the fight for social justice for all.

Notes


[1] Sharpe and Pinto (2006) as well as Kempadoo (2009) do general reviews of sexuality in the Caribbean that account for some of the pieces mentioned above.
 

[2] The fiction by Shani Mootoo has been important in problematizing ethnicity, gender and sexuality in relation to Indo-Caribbean female same-sex relations.
 

[3] “Although many people use the term gender and sex interchangeably, they have distinct meanings. Sex is a designation based on biology, whereas gender is socially constructed and expressed” (Woods 2011:21). Gender is the social construction of biological sex. Gender signifies that we become who we are, man, woman or both, through processes of socialization, power relations and systems. Notions of masculinity and femininity are social constructs that are produced and reproduced through language, communication, culture, religion, race, nationality, class, sexuality etc.
 

[4] This is an alias name.
 

[5] Jamaican Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals and Gays (J-FLAG), United Gays and Lesbians Against AIDS Barbados (UGLAAB), Coalition Advocating for Sexual Orientation (CAISO), Society Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination (SASOD), and Bahamas LGBT Equality Advocated (BLEA).

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Charmaine Crawford (Ph.D) is a Lecturer at the Institute of Gender and Development Studies, The University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados. Her research interests include gender and sexuality in the Caribbean, representations of gender and sexuality in black popular culture, Caribbean transnational motherhood and Caribbean domestic workers in Canada.

Rodell Warner – Visual Art, Photography with Artist Statement (Trinidad and Tobago)

Artist Statement

My ‘Photobooth’ project, which invited patrons of Erotic Art Week to make their own portraits, was intended as an experiment and a question: ‘How do we, Trinidadian people, image ourselves as erotic?’. In the case of these photos, and many others, the question was answered by lesbian, gay, and bisexual Trinidadians. One aim of my work is to produce images of Trinidadians, not something too commonly encountered in our daily media, so that by literally seeing ourselves we may better recognise and understand us. In the context of this symposium, I hope these images can help in achieving that objective within the local LGBT discourse.

Please click on the thumbnail images to see the larger image.

Rodell Warner

Rodell Warner (b. 1986) is a Trinidadian graphic designer and photographer.

In 2012, Rodell made the exhibition “Common Room – observations and comments on public-to-public communication” in Johannesburg, and, in 2011, participated in group exhibitions in Kingston, London, New York, Washington and Maracaibo.

Rodell is a recipient of the 2011 Commonwealth Connections International Arts Residency and curates the online gallery toomucheyes.com.

Photo credit : Gerard Gaskin