The things we do for a cheap laugh

[Content warning: violence against women]

When I was but a wee Mar, I used to think that old people knew a lot of sh*t. As soon as we could read, which, thanks to my mother, was way too early for human people, my mother (same one as above) would make us watch the news, and read the paper, because she thought it would make us smarter and better people. (She also made us wear watches for this same reason. All the Most Serious People wore watches and looked important. Besides, how could you take over the world if you didn't know what time it was?) And when I would watch the adults on TV running countries and having ideas, I would think "Man, they know a lot of stuff. That looks like thirsty work. Thank god they're in charge!" This admiration lasted for about nine years of life here on earth, after which I realised that old people were just as stupid as the rest of us, and we were all screwed.

That isn't to say that I don't respect age. Lots of old people know stuff (and I use 'old' here relative to my own age, so that at 9 old was oh, say 21 and above. Now, old is old-old. Proper old. I'm at that age where when someone dies at 68 I say "oh my! And so young!") and are interesting and brilliant and the best story-tellers. The other day I was sitting in a salon and an old lady started telling me some things about her life, which included the unveiling of her travel diary with an entry from 19howlong that said something resembling "Just got off the train at Scarborough where I've come to be fitted for new petticoats", along with "Did not go to Church today. That should keep them talking at least until next Sunday." The woman who sat in her seat after she left pretty much just played Candy Crush the entire time, so you can see how the old lady was the highlight of my day. But I have found that old people who are wise and interesting are so because they are wise and interesting - not because they are old. Yes, the passage of time has allowed them to accumulate more lessons and stories, but they could only have learnt those lessons in the way that they did and been able to distill and transmit this information in useful ways if they had a certain degree of self-awareness and insight to begin with.

So what am I on about? The last time I commented on something this guy had written, I actually got strange hate mail from people admonishing me to respect my elders, which I find a hilarious concept. Of course, in general interactions with friends and strangers, we should all be respectful of each other, and in particular of older people, who merit a bit more care, and patience, and kindness, I feel, than may come readily to our natural, boorish 21st century selves. But the notion that someone could be rude, or bigoted, or nasty or wholly insensitive in the expression of an idea but deserve some kind of honour because they have so far failed to die has always been a puzzle to me.

To wit: this guy again.

Last week, a woman named Carolyn Forde was beaten and killed by a man she knew while at her workplace in Bridgetown. This after the late-July murder of another woman, Denise Clarke, for which a man was held and charged, and the May killing of Brenda Taylor-Belle by her 'estranged' husband. In response, many individuals and groups, among them the National Organisation of Women (NOW), have called for legislative reform and enhanced police action to address the fact that some of these women were killed despite repeated complaints of earlier violent incidents to police, and despite having sought and received restraining orders against the offenders. Richard Hoad's take on the situation is as follows:

In the wake of recent attacks on women, National Organization of Women (NOW) president Marilyn Rice-Bowen wants to fast-track legislation mandating more timely police intervention into domestic disputes.

Sounds good. At the first report of violence, a rapid response team will rush in, cart the man off and go their way.

And that will achieve precisely what? Unless a man is locked away for life, not even a restraining order can stop him coming back to renew his mischief. Besides, it seems many women prefer to live with abuse rather than end a relationship. Won’t such women be tempted to hide their abuse in the future?

The language 'recent attacks on women' makes it seem as if gnomes are hiding in shrubberies tossing acorns at unsuspecting victims while they hang the washing. Likewise, the notion of violence against women as 'mischief' tries to neatly and playfully (!) obscure the fact that what we are talking about here is the murder of human beings. And it's unclear the point of this argument: well restraining orders don't work anyway. Men who want to kill (this, is, apparently, the 'mischief') will find a way, so better to do nothing? Further, women prefer to be beaten and killed than end a relationship, because what? Then you have to figure out who will keep the X-box and delete him from Facebook and that is sooo not worth it? The point is, guy, that by your own admission, what we have in place is insufficient to protect women, and moreover that women may be afraid to end relationships with abusive partners because they fear they will be killed. This is why we need not just more effective legislation and law enforcement practice, but supporting institutions that will protect women who make the decision to leave abusive relationships.

Then, for good measure, we get a bit of the old, not at all tired "don't get me wrong, I think hitting women is bad! I love women! Love them all up and down...bow chicka bow bow. Am I right, guys?"

I abhor the idea of a man striking a woman. To my knowledge, my father never hit any woman. Instead he taught us seven boys a simple procedure for approaching the opposite sex, to wit: gently place your hand on her knee. While making circular motions with the fingers, recite: “If you are a lady, as I take you to be, you will not laugh nor smile if I tickle you on your knee”. If she did laugh or smile, the implication was she wasn’t a lady and you could move upwards smartly.

Actually, I must have missed some other part of the instruction as I ended up getting very few girlfriends, and only one wife, compared to my brothers who got several of each.

So, from the word 'instead', I can gather that there are two ways to engage with women - beat them or screw them, the latter not necessarily with their express consent. We get a lot of this in response to the brutalization and murder of women in the Caribbean: a lot of this 'women aren't to be beaten; they're to be looked after' rhetoric that translates just as much to ownership and objectification as intimate partner violence does. What are you doing hitting her? Did you know she has a perfectly good vagina in there that you can have for your very own? We also get a lot of collective nervous laughter, like this mess of a column, reflecting the notion that this problem is, ultimately, about the man-woman thing. Crap. We're doing a shitty job of protecting half of our population? Quick! Someone tell a joke! Preferably about sex. People like jokes, they like sex. Sex jokes will save us!

The jokes haven't really worked here so far, but here comes more of the sex:

But we have to go even further back to understand what is happening here. You women have something that we need. Not “need” like a new car or a cell phone, but “need” as in food or water. Only more so.

You have the lock, we have the key. You have the carriage, we have the horse. Admittedly, some horses are a bit small for some carriages but we try our best. The bottom line is, you fulfil a need that nothing else can.

What is apparently 'happening here', according to this genius, is that women must be prepared to hand over sex in exchange for the promise of security. That is, men have a reasonable expectation of a hole to stick their dicks in when the pressures of life get them down, and if 21st century women insist on actual bodily autonomy and personhood, then they need to declare this to society, that is, if they expect not to be...murdered.

NOW needs to come clean and explain women’s new position. If marriage or a relationship no longer entitles a man to a little thing, say so. If it is your right to horn [horn = 'cheat on'; explanation mine] a man for commercial or other consideration, say so.

Women: be reasonable. All you have to do is explain to us going in that your bodies are your own and that we are not entitled to it at our whim, and we may not kill you. I say 'may', but, you know, I can't promise. The larger problem here is that the piece seeks not only to identify these apparently perfectly logical reasons why men kill women, reasons that are, of course, the fault of women, but also to narrow them down to one thing: sex. And it fails to address all the entrenched issues that allow such violence to persist.

Let me explain something to this eminent elder: mentioning in an offhanded way that 'hitting a woman is wrong' a couple times in a piece that amounts to an extended domestic violence apologia does not absolve you of responsibility. And that responsibility is to use your platform - if you are going to bother to discuss the escalating trend of intimate partner violence against and murder of women - to treat the subject with the consideration and soberness that it merits. "It's just a joke" doesn't work here simply because it isn't a joke. And the pervy uncle bit is old. It's a sheer and ineffective cover for a lazy argument that is not only offensive to women - in particular the women who have died - but to men. It presumes not only that men are irrational beasts led only by carnal urges, but worse, that you are content to remain so. And I know a lot of men for whom you do not speak. We get it: sex sex giggle. We're ready for some actual, original thought, now. Give it a shot.

Not-so-live blogging the 12th Annual AWID forum

This month, representing both my day job and WHAN, I'm off to the AWID (Association for Women’s Rights in Development) International Forum on Women’s Rights and Development in Istanbul, Turkey to present as part of a panel with other Caribbean women. This year's theme is Transforming Economic Power to Advance Women's Rights and Justice, and my segment will look at enhancing opportunities for women's economic participation, particularly in emerging and own industries. Happily, the conference also brings together some of my homies from another network of which I'm a member, The International Working Group on Gender, Macroeconomics and International Economics, which will be presenting special, toolbox sessions on gender and economics. Reunions everywhere! A reuniopalooza. I just made that up.

So a few of us are blogging the 4-day meeting. I'm sure some of the others will be live-blogging. I can make no such commitment. But I will be covering the sessions I attend, and sharing some of the emerging research and ideas, as well as linking to the other blogs. I'm excited! Are you? Yes. Yes you are.

Newsclips and Quotes [Strange New Phenomena]

This is a real item in the Nation Newspaper today:

Why are so many men keen to enter relationships with single mothers, and what can these women do to encourage these partners to marry them?

Share your views below or by calling or texting your comments to telephone number [246] 262-5986, or e-mail us at sankaprice@nationnews.com.

I think we should all call or email Sanka Price to tell him exactly what is patently absurd about everything going on above, starting with the framing of single motherhood as some kind of scourge on humanity with which no reasonable person would want to associate, hence the certainty of some Strange Modern Phenomenon afoot. And including the assumption that a single mother in possession of (presumably) no fortune and (certainly) no self respect must be in want of a husband.

Who writes these things: the girlie secrets edition

Dear Jane Hoskyn,

Please stop talking.

Because even if you are using 'girl' correctly to mean "a female child between zero and eighteen years of age", and not adult women (for which there is a whole other word who knew?), this list is still a ridiculous mishmash of juvenile, misogynist bullshit. To wit:

1. When we get whistled at in the street, we feel uncomfortable and we’ll always tut and roll our eyes. But we’re awesomely flattered and we’d be gutted if it stopped.

No.

2. We will never grow out of our fascination with pop stars. A guy can be completely ordinary-looking, but we will fancy him if he’s in a band.

No. Not that musicians aren't particularly attractive often for reasons beyond their physical appearance, but so are plenty other people. And yes, since we aren't perpetually 12 with boy band posters next to the Pollock in the living room, we do outgrow our fascination with pop stars. We may move on to fascination with 'serious musicians', but that's something else entirely.

And let me state now that even though I've duplicated it in the interest of continuity, the 'we' here is problematic. Because she's talking about a certain type of woman, from a certain cultural background, with privilege of a certain nature and amount, so as with most of these things, 'we' really means 'my friends and I'. It's fine if that's what you mean, but if that is what you mean, you should make that clear. We've spent too long trying to highlight women's heterogeneity to have to stand for articles like this one confirming that the whole diversity thing is nonsense and we're all really just the same person.

3. We are more likely to fancy a guy if his ex-girlfriends are really pretty.

4. We can be put off a guy by finding out that his ex-girlfriends are a bit ugly.

5. When we look through your Facebook photos, we’re looking to see how pretty or ugly your ex-girlfriends are.

6. We look through your Facebook photos a lot, and we really hope that you haven’t downloaded anything that reveals who looks at them the most.

Really? Does this woman live on a Lisa Frank sticker? Of course, history of partners is important, but for reasons that go slightly deeper than just "oh em gee ur totes prettier than her!!1!1"

7. Here’s how to make us fall for you. One day, come on to us so strong that we’re a bit weirded out by it. Then totally fail to ring us. We’ll wonder what we did wrong, and we won’t be able to stop thinking about you.

This is just disturbing, especially since I'm not sure of the gamut of reactions the author intends to cover with the words 'so strong' and 'a bit weirded out'. These to my mind could include anything from a meet-the-parents too early on and a quizzical look to stalking and seeking a protective order. But the real damage here is suggesting that women secretly love abusive, manipulative behaviour.

8. The above strategy isn’t foolproof. We may just lose interest. It depends on how much we liked you in the first place.

9. We often don’t know how much we liked you in the first place. We may have to wait until you don’t phone us. If we’re disappointed, it proves that we fancy you. If we’re not, it proves that we don’t. It’s like when you toss a coin to help you make a decision.

Decisions. They hurt our brainz.

10. Stop trying to understand how our minds work. Even we don’t understand how our minds work.

In fact, we have no minds. No thoughts, no intellect. Our heads are just filled with pink cotton wool and Justin Bieber songs.

And that's in the first 10 alone, consecutively. No breaks.

Also

42. During breakouts we get up at 6am and cover our spots with concealer while you’re sleeping.

Who does this? No, really. Who?

But the gem is saved for the end, I think (emphasis mine):

53. We’re all little girls inside. You make us cry far more easily than you realise.

And here, gentlefolk, is the finale. The overt statement at the end of an entire article spent infantilizing and homogenizing all women. Of course we cry, but it's not because we're little girls. Hurt feelings, grief or whatever might cause tears are completely valid among adults. When we're hurt and cry, it's because we're hurt, not because we're children. Still, thanks for confirming the notion that women are just big crybabies who will throw a fit when you take our lollipops away. Well done, you.


[Via Liss and Emily at Shakesville]

Damned homeless people and their hunger

**Trigger warning for reference to violence and half-hearted warning for a bit of profanity that is censored anyway**


How does one write an entire article about the homeless and manage to completely avoid even the vaguest reference to their vulnerability and lack of well-being? This is how.

There are too many gems to quote them all, and by "gems" I mean "instances of blatant disregard for the humanity of these people who dare to be hungry enough or desperate enough in their particular dependencies to beg for money". So just read the entire thing. It focuses on how bothersome the homeless are to businesses and tourists. Here are some quotes from the business owners consulted for their wise perspectives:

"As a tourist-oriented place we need to have the issue addressed as it may have adverse effects."

And another store owner:

"It is not right for people to come here and have this type of harassment. We cannot be spending this type of money to advertise Barbados and having a few people ruining the experience for them."

"It is a big problem and nobody seems to be dealing with it," he continued.

I have two things to say to this. First, tourists: "here is my country Barbados. It is lovely, the food is outstanding, the music is entrancing, the weather, the beaches, the people, all great. Some of these people, though, just like some of the people in your countries, have mental health challenges, substance dependencies and other circumstances which contribute to them living on the streets and sometimes not being able to feed themselves. Do help them if you'd like. Welcome to Barbados."

And second, yes, the 'issue' has to be addressed because there are 'adverse effects'. You know who is most adversely affected? The f**king homeless. I swore there, see. And I hardly swear in print. Such is the absurdity of the notions expressed here.

The idea that we have some kind of obligation to the people who visit this country to shield them from some of the manifestations of poverty - poverty that is in some instances maintained because of the unbalanced economic and political power relations between their countries of origin and ours (I know I should qualify this since it begs discussion, but that is a whole other post, so do ask "What?!" if you want to hear more) - is problematic. There are issues of safety, of course. And we should strive to maintain peace and security for all people, native or other, who happen to be resident here at any given moment for any length of time. But to frame this 'vagrancy problem' as 'a few people ruining the experience' of tourists, which is what I'm sure they set out to do when they left their pavements this morning - and to suggest that solely for this reason should we try to get human beings off the streets and into homes with food to eat and livelihoods to maintain themselves is getting things a bit ass backwards.

Our primary obligation is to secure the well-being of the citizens of this nation and region. That's what our development agenda, of which tourism is only a part, is all about. Economic arguments are sexy. I know. I make them every day. I'm often asked to make various cases for things "in economic terms", because that's what those with influence understand. And this is true. It's useful sometimes to show people the costs of certain policies or behaviours. When a woman is abused, when she is burnt with acid or stabbed or punched in the face, there are real costs to the State, to the economy, to the society. But you know what else? When a woman is punched in the face, a woman has just been punched in the face. So inherently, you see, this is a very bad thing. And while one gets that macro considerations are important and one does not want to lose one's job making these linkages clear, one gets jaded making economic arguments for things that should just be about common f**king decency and basic human rights.

Similarly, homelessness is bad for tourism, I suppose. So is littering and other forms of environmental degradation. Perhaps, so is getting annoyed with your friend in public and yelling YEAH? WELL F**K YOU TOO within earshot of a nervous tourist, since one gets the idea that we're all supposed to do the friendly native dance and not sully the tourist landscape with our actual character or personality or challenges. But poverty, homelessness, environmental decline, these are all problems that compromise the well-being of real people. And tourism is an important income earner for many, yes, but I am frankly afraid of the notion that all that is important is the tourist dollar and not spooking the flighty tourists dem, even if that means cleaning up the streets by stuffing the homeless into the nearest manhole out of sight of the money-spenders.

Quite a few of us realize the value of helping displaced people off the streets. There is a pretty impressive young man who started a local charity, the Barbados Vagrants & Homeless Society, with this as its mandate. And while the name is a little unfortunate, the work of the organisation and the support it has received from government are encouraging. Still, articles like this one contribute to the popular intolerance of the homeless. There's nothing wrong with considering some of the spinoff effects of homelessness, but showcasing the homeless as a nuisance and nothing more removes their humanity, and tells people it's alright to do the same.

International Women's Day

Last year, on International Women's Day, I wrote in support of the work of activists addressing Haiti's high incidence of rape. Today, the survival and well-being of women in Haiti remains high on the agenda of activists in the region and allies all over the world, especially in the aftermath of the earthquake. The women I've spoken to there are more focused than ever on rebuilding their country and their lives, and on continuing to work on securing safe, dignified, productive lives and livelihoods for all people. They inspire me not only to join them where they are, but to intensify my own work in Barbados and the Caribbean.

I see a lot of young women in my neighbourhood, on the streets every day, out and about everywhere, engaged in the business of growing up and figuring life out. And every day I'm reminded of how much there is to navigate, as a girl, and how overwhelming it can become if no one is creating the space needed to get through it all. That involves listening and encouraging their creative efforts and all these great things. But it also involves more tangible support, that has to do with their health care, their sexual and reproductive rights, their education, their safety and economic security. I don't have children. And even though I may at some point, and though I love my friends' children, I need not look that far into the future for my motivation to make things better now. I'm looking all around me, out my window right this minute, at the girls and women who depend on all our support to make their lives better today.

Happy International Women's Day.

In which I run out of ways to caption the inferior reporting of the media on intimate partner violence

In a post last March, I wrote this:

Ok, I promise that someday I'm going to stop being annoyed by the idiotic ways in which journalists write about violence against women, but apparently today is not that day.

Well, neither is today. In fact, I lied ok? I'm never going to stop, not as long as such ways persist.

From a Nation article yesterday:

IN A DISPUTE between a man and his girlfriend, it was the woman's clothes that came out the loser.

Nealson O'Neil Mason got so hot under the collar after an argument with his girlfriend that he went and torched $600 worth of her clothes.

Actually, no. It was the woman who came out the loser - of at least $600 worth of property, and perhaps her own sense of security, among other things. The url for this article, by the way, carries the caption 'burning hot love'. See how it's all supposed to be cutesy and punny and clever? Except the destruction of property is an act of violence, possibly not the only one in this three-year relationship, since Mason

has 14 previous convictions for drugs, assault, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, threats and theft.

Also problematic is the passive language of the headline: Girlfriend's clothes torched in lover's tiff. First off, an incident in which property is destroyed is a lot more than a lovers' tiff. And second, the clothes didn't spontaneously combust. Someone set them on fire, and that someone was a pissed off partner. Even if one needs to include the words 'alleged' or 'accused', could we at least have some agency represented here? Instead of acting like the violence was something that happened to the alleged (see how that works?) perpetrator?

The Nation reporter and the accused seem to have something in common, though, since he - the accused - also doesn't think it's that big a deal.

"I would like to say on that occasion, me and my girlfriend was having a dispute so I just separate myself and I burn up she clothes," Mason explained.

"It ain't no need to get lock up or nothing so," he added.

Well, that settles that. I'm getting the impression that this guy sees the destruction of his partner's property as a kind of coping mechanism - a way to avoid 'real' violence - since he 'separated himself' and just burnt her clothes. And one can only hope that in the course of the trial, someone will remember to mention that destroying property is also controlling, violent, illegal activity, and not something to be made light of or joked about. Let's also hope the Nation's court reporter is there that day.

"It is beneath you; it is next to me!" [Bespectacled hilarity]

I'm finishing some work and some blog entries to be posted later, but in the meantime, watch this Daily Show clip. Keith Olbermann is usually right, if melodramatic and more and more, giggle-inducing. After Olbermann's remarks that the new Mass. Senator-elect Scott Brown is “an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, tea-bagging supporter of violence against women”, Jon Stewart has had enough:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Special Comment - Keith Olbermann's Name-Calling
www.thedailyshow.com
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Has Caribbean feminism failed? Or did it just never exist?

Last week, I sat down with two of my favourite male people, over some Guinness(es?) and some wicked, fried pot fish, to catch up on the happenings. The conversation soon got around to feminism, because these two male people are actually interested, and don't just pretend to be in the hopes that when they ask me "how's work?" I'll just say "You know, it is what it is. Pass the pepper sauce."

So they had some issues, among them my confession that in my work, when I talk about my theories of economics to people who are presumably non-sympathetic - or who at least start out that way - I avoid the term 'feminist'. I do not call my work 'feminist economics' outside my group of colleagues or friends because:

1) It is irrelevant, almost so irrelevant as to be counter-productive. I'm suggesting that in the traditional conceptualization of the economy, there are missing markets, and missing actors. Some of women's work, and some of the consequences of economic policy and activity on women, are rendered invisible, and if we are to obtain a true picture of the economy, maximize its productivity and advance development goals, we need to start thinking about that economy in different ways. This argument hinges on the idea that mainstream economics is lacking, whereas 'my' economics is more complete. To then present my views as 'feminist', to qualify them in this way, only marginalizes them, which is the opposite of what I'm trying to do.

2) It is inflammatory. 'Feminist' is a bad word. This is a surprise to no one. Many people I encounter are eager to distance themselves from what they see as feminist ideology, and are in fact relieved to have that basis on which to reject your ideas. If advancing that ideology without using the F word is going to improve women's access to economic goods, then I'm prepared to use other words.

3) It is not true. Based on the first point, if I believe that an economic model that values women's work and counts it as an economic input is a truer model, then what I do is just Economics, only properly done. (One could argue that insofar as feminism is a belief in the right of women to have political, social, and economic equality with men, all economics should be feminist economics, which is also true. And so we could argue each of those points, and probably both be right.)

This is an age-old argument, and while I call myself a feminist, language is an important part of the political strategy that gets things done. So using language like 'women's rights' and 'equity', and employing methods like first establishing the existence of a problem and then revealing that the majority of those experiencing this problem are women or men or children is often more expedient.

But they thought that I was wrong to do this, and that if feminism was not at all problematic, as I was suggesting, then I should use my work to make it visible as a movement. Because, they said, the feminism that everyone knows, and that men in the Caribbean are so turned off by, has been imported from the US and UK, with all their bra-burning and armpit-hair growing. They suggested that the women's movement in the Caribbean has failed to adequately represent its cause, to refocus the business of feminism within the Caribbean context, and to disabuse people of the notion of feminism as a foreign, outdated ideology. They believed that rather than treat as separate issues like violence against women and sexual and reproductive rights, we should frame them within the larger context of women's human rights, showing the linkages, and in that way, it would all become clear to the masses and we, the feminists, would win. I explained that we had done this, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. They were not convinced. I suggested that they were considering the issue as already-feminist men, assuming a reasonable, blank-slate audience that does not always exist. Again, they were not convinced.

I had, and have, several responses to this, including the idea that 'feminist', both as a qualifier and a noun, is not strictly tied to 'feminism' as a movement. There's some merit in what they say, as well as some confusion, I think, about what the advancement of women's rights in the Caribbean has looked like, and what it looks like these days. But I wanted to ask you first, readers and lurkers and bears, what you think, before I address these ideas in a subsequent post.

Are Caribbean people really thirsting for feminist knowledge, and have we simply been doing it wrong all along?

Durned bloggin' 'n' such

I've just returned from a panel discussion on The Role and Responsibility of the Writer in Shaping the Identity of a Developing Society. And it was hilarious for a lot of reasons, not least among which was the refusal of one of the panellists to engage blogging as a legitimate medium of writing. He was outraged - or rather feigning outrage because one senses that he often uses the theatrical to make his point - that here we were meant to be discussing writers, the greats of literature, and we were wasting our time mentioning blogging and other such new-fangled nonsense. He kept saying 'blogging' with much disdain, like one might say 'phlegm', and I started to wonder if he even knew that blogging was actually writing, or if he thought it was some completely unrelated and tiresome young people's pastime - like skateboarding. I began to invent all kinds of things that blogging might actually refer to in his mind. Maybe he thought it was derived from "breadfruit logging"? The wanton cutting down of breadfruit trees? Or "blue fogging": driving around vehicles that send huge puffs of blue smoke into homes and communities, which sounds ridiculous but would surely be at least as effective as regular fogging in killing mosquitoes (i.e., not at all), and would be much prettier and hilariously random.

But assuming he does realize that blogging is writing, then I have to wonder what he's so upset about. Could it be that we're so used to the elitism of traditional literary/news/opinion media that it sticks in our craws that we have no control over who gets a voice these days? That we aren't ready to release the privilege traditionally required to publish and achieve literary greatness (or at least some kind of audience) and its associated power? That we want it to be hard, goddammit, because then anyone would have access and then what would be the point of our privilege and overpriced, overinflated educations and egos? No. That probably wasn't it.

We talked too about the importance of fair, unbiased reporting, which we seemed to be saying was the current standard of print journalism. We neatly separated this accounting of fact from 'creative writing', as if some of the writing we see in our newspapers isn't the most intentionally scandalous, subjective, created (as apart from creative) thing you've ever seen. The entire discourse reminded me of fourth form English class, where we were taught the definitions of fact and opinion, and then took sentences and assessed them for their content of each. It was disingenuous in its kind of Journalism 101 vibe, and when it came time for audience questions, I wanted to take the mic and say "I'm sorry. Are you people at all serious?" Are we really saying that a newspaper that often runs quotes like "A HOMOSEXUAL TRYST that turned into robbery and ended in death went before the No. 2 Supreme Court yesterday", describes the fact that a man didn't kill his cheating wife sooner as "restraint in the face of adversity" and spends entire paragraphs on stories covering wrongful death/police misconduct cases on whether the alleged victim was gay and promiscuous is committed to some apparently invisible ideal of non-sensationalism and impartiality? No, we can't have been saying that.

In the end, I didn't say anything at all. I've not really outed myself as a writer in this community, at least not in that way where people gather around cheap wine and bemoan the fact that we haven't produced another George Lamming. (As if anyone wants another George Lamming in 2009, or ever. Or another Derek Walcott or Austin Clarke. I don't want another of any of those. We already have them.) And I don't know that I will, because all that bellowing messes with my process and keeps me in my own head, which can't be good for writing. But also because writers talking about writing is potentially some of the most tiresome navel-gazing you could imagine. The people behind the event seem to have great intentions, and I'd like to see them keep going, with perhaps a little more focus next time. But I'm not driven to charge to the fore of this particular movement. I'm not sure I get where it's moving.

State-sanctioned abuse is not 'discipline'

Last weekend, when I grabbed the newspaper from the little old man who is so gingerly perched on the island in the middle of traffic that I'm nervous to move too quickly lest everything topple over and throw him to his demise in front of a sugar cane tractor, I was alarmed. Not by the newspaper man - he's safe - but by the enormous front page photo and the story that accompanied it. And so I became caught up in a frenzied clack-clacking on my computer, filled with outrage and wonder, which I then had to suspend because of other work. And alas, the outrage has not returned in sufficient measure to pick up exactly where I left off. But here's the photo in question, with my own description excerpted below, as I began to write it last weekend.



(The front page picture of a senior teacher at a local secondary boys' school who made the decision to wait at the school gates and publicly flog any student who arrived late. Do you need to re-read that? I'll give you a minute. The photographer went one better than that, though. He included in the shot not just the teacher with his cane or stick or whatever it was, but him actually taking hold of a student and beating him. Another minute? Take your time.

The above shot was taken from the online version of the story, and was not the one used on the front page of the paper version. In this one, the child is taller than the teacher, and is glancing disdainfully at the man as if to say "dude, do you know how long it took me to fix my pants like this? You're really harshing my look here." So it's an offensive image, but not as immediately jarring as the front page photo of the smaller child who looks about 11 and taken quite by surprise.)

Since that story was published, the debate has opened up quite a bit about the legitimacy of flogging in schools. And you know what? I don't understand it. I don't understand how we get into heated arguments around whether it is an effective disciplinary measure to engage in the state-sanctioned beating of other human beings when we've already answered that question in the negative. Remember? We used to have this monstrosity called the cat o' nine tails with which we beat convicted criminals? And this and all other forms of judicial corporal punishment were formally declared inhumane and consequently unconstitutional by the Barbados Supreme Court?

Yet, in 2009, pastors and educators and Matthew Farleys abound, writing articles and giving interviews contrasting crime and social statistics and all manner of 'moral indicators' - whatever those are - in countries where flogging is banned with those where it is still practiced, and arguing on this basis that beating the crap out of children represents the yellow brick road to Utopia. And I used to get all caught up in those arguments myself. I used to yell from my side of the aisle about how Caribbean societies seemed so well-behaved because 1) children who are systematically beaten often don't manifest learned, violent behaviours until they are much older, making it harder (also because of high numbers of migration) to draw a straight line from a beaten child to his criminal behaviour; 2) becoming an offender within the judicial system is not the only manifestation of being generally screwed up; and 3) there are plenty other factors at work keeping our 'moral indicators' as the moral majority would like than corporal punishment - just give a glance to the 'crimes' still on the law books, like homosexuality and dressing like a woman, as opposed to those not on the law books, like marital rape. And on I would go blah-blahing within the parameters of reasoned insanity.

I once even got my bristle board and Sharpie out and picketed the headmaster's office at my school, because he was about to flog (behind closed doors and with no one else present) a teenaged girl who had filled condoms with water and distributed them to her friends to have a laugh.

FLOGGING OF FEMALE STUDENTS IS VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN!!

That's what my sign said. I was 15 years old, and traumatized by the notion that a grown man was going to splay a 16-year-old girl across his desk and beat her, and we were saying that was alright because she happened to be on a school compound between the hours of 9 and 3 and he happened to be called Headmaster.

But these days, I hardly get that far into debates about whether flogging works as a disciplinary action, because I find it absurd that it is even an option. Sure it works in the short term to rule and silence a population with fear, violence and intimidation. We have countless examples of that throughout history, and even today; and we condemn them all. What changes when the population in question is below the age of 18? I would think we'd be more indignant and less willing to do harm to those we're meant to protect.

And how can we draw so neat a line between child abuse - with which this region is struggling more and more every year - and flogging in schools? I hear all kinds of silly little differentiators: "Flogging should not be done in anger, and only by principals and senior teachers." Because that's not at all inhumane. Let's pencil the offending student in for a 2:00 p.m. flogging, yet expect her to be academically productive in the meantime, and then march her off to headteachers' chambers at the appointed hour for a detached, methodical beating. Yeah, that's much better. Then there's the old "I was flogged as a child, and it didn't do me any harm. I turned out great!" Yeah, you turned out great alright. You turned out to be an adult who thinks it's ok to hit children. Well done, you.

I was flogged as a child, and it did me harm. It did me harm to realize that the people I trusted not to hurt me could not be trusted after all, and that their kindness and care were conditional upon certain behaviours that I was still learning. That horrified me. It did me harm to watch my neighbour and primary school classmate walking up the street from school, limping, and when we, concerned, pulled back her skirt, to see her fair skin black-and-blue and purple, bruised, swollen and tender from a teacher's bamboo rod. I cried for her that evening, and had trouble sleeping for days after. It did me harm to have to stand up for myself as an 11-yr old, to tell the principal I would not, in fact, allow him to hit me because I had gotten one problem out of 100 wrong (one strike per wrong answer), and then to feel the victory seep away from me after I sat down again and realized that no one was going to defend the students who had gotten 10 wrong, or 20, or 30. It did me harm to watch my sisters awakened in the middle of the night and struck for some newly-discovered transgression, like reading the wrong type of book, or saying hello to the wrong type of neighbour. I love my parents, and had some great teachers, but the fact that I'm not currently incarcerated for murder doesn't mean none of that did me harm.

Human beings have short memories. So sure, we feel fine now. But children's worlds are small, and the adults who occupy them very, very big. It's time for us to stop finding ways to justify organized, state-sanctioned abuse, get off our lazy asses and parent our children.

Can we be clear once and for all on who suffers most and worst from intimate-partner violence? Please?

I wasn't going to write about this, because this type of argument exhausts me, but here it is, stuck in my craw, and it doesn't seem to be moving. So onward.

Any discussion encompassing gender in Barbados seems to be permanently stuck on the old "but it happens to men too!" or "men suffer worse!" refrain. And the media seems quite happy to play that tit-for-tat game: every issue must be highlighted as having equal effects and repercussions for men and women, whether this be the case or not; and - I suppose through some naïve interpretation of equality - both 'perspectives' must be given equal column inches and presented with like gravity. Intimate partner violence has become chief among these.

Last week, the Nation devoted pages of coverage to the silent but apparently common scourge of woman-on-man intimate partner violence. Chairman of the Men's Educational Support Association, Ralph Boyce, who has become the self-appointed spokesperson for men's rights, was quoted heavily in one of several articles on the issue:

THERE ARE A LOT OF WEAK MEN IN BARBADOS.

That's the conclusion of the chairman of the Men's Education Support Association (MESA) about men who stay in relationships where they are verbally, physically or psychologically abused by their girlfriends or spouses.

First off, I would venture that further denigrating the character of victims of abuse by publicly classifying them as 'weak' is the wrong tack to take in offering them help. But further, if feels to me as if Boyce is conflating his outrage at violence against men with his general indignation that women should dare to speak on behalf of their male partners:

"In MESA, we have some cases, luckily not too many, where men say they can't come to meetings because their wives say they can't come.

"Or, it is a case where I call a man's home to invite him to a meeting and his wife or woman says he can't come and starts giving me reasons," Boyce disclosed, adding:

"We have some surprisingly weak men in Barbados and the women hate them for it. They call them 'twerps' and twits.

Controlling behaviour is often a serious indicator of systemic violence in a relationship, but I would hesitate to categorize the declining of an invitation on a partner's behalf as psychologically abusive. One gets the sense that Boyce is really saying "listen, man up and put your foot down, and no woman will overstep her place long enough to knock you around." This is clearly an oversimplification of the dynamic of intimate partner abuse. While Boyce asserts that the problem of female violence against men has gone unaddressed because "[w]hat prevented victims from coming forward was the perceived ridicule", he ironically spends much of the article ridiculing men who have been abused, while tossing out vague generalizations like "women like men who are strong."

And he also seems to confuse anecdotal evidence with data:

"One of our members who was doing some research into physical violence told me that a man told him his wife slapped him inside the supermarket in front of everybody and the member asked him what he did, and his response was that he went outside the supermarket and cried. This is a real case," he said.

I'm not sure what to do with that. Are we to be awed by the fact that a man might suffer physical abuse at the hands of his wife? Or that he cried? Or that he didn't retaliate with 'strength', however Boyce might define this. Because for all Boyce's purported rejection of "[t]he traditional belief [...] that the man is not supposed to show any kind of emotion", he seems to subscribe to it himself. Or is this merely meant to serve as evidence that such violence exists? In which case, I, for one, don't need much convincing. I saw one such case, in fact. That is, (and since we're basing conclusions on observed evidence) one case in my entire lifetime as against oh, say, a couple hundred involving women as victims. Boyce, though, is not convinced that the problem is so uncommon:

The verbal and physical abuse is very common. A lot of the time, women initiate the violence against men.

I would love to have that 'a lot of the time' qualified (in a lot of the cases involving male victims, or the DV cases in general?), and this is a huge part of my problem with this kind of irresponsible reporting on the part of people who should know better: a respected and recognizable public figure stands up and, speaking with seeming authority and one would assume the benefit of research, claims that "a lot of the time, women initiate the violence against men", and people run off convinced that not only is violence against women not the immense public health problem it actually is, but that women actually initiate this and other types of violence, and conversely, it is violence against men that constitutes the real danger in the Caribbean.

We know that there is likely to be chronic underreporting of all types of domestic violence cases, among both men and women, but this is not a sufficient condition to deduce that men are being abused as much as women, and it's just that they're not telling anyone because people, ironically like the MESA Chairman, will call them weak. And it isn't even necessary to prove that the abuse is as widespread as that against women in order for it to be flagged as a problem: no one should have to endure abuse, and if we can provide unique support for these men that they might not get from a regular victims'/survivors of violent crime support service, then we should (although I would suggest that given his tenuous grasp of the intimate partner abuse dynamic, Mr. Boyce not be the one to offer such support).

But let us not present violence against women, as the Nation has done by first telling the stories of men who have been abused and then in a subsequent issue those of women (the latter notably in fewer pages), as on equal footing with that against men. It simply is not true, and I'm not sure what purpose it is meant to serve. It has been a hard struggle in the Caribbean, this business of eliminating violence against women, and it seems very little headway is being made. For years, activists and Ministers alike have been highlighting the grossly exceeded capacity of shelters for women and children here in Barbados, while in Jamaica, domestic-related murders jumped 20 per cent between 2005 and the end of 2006 and continue to rise, with women and girls constituting (at least) over 70% of the victims in each year of reporting.*

It would be misguided to allocate public resources meant to reduce domestic violence equally (that is, equally; that is not to say no resources should be allocated to DV against men at all) along the violence against women/violence against men divide, and to lump them together both in our discussion and treatment of the issue is also a mistake. They are simply not the same: the persistent dynamic that keeps women in abusive situations both in homes and communities; its coexistence with sexual violence and women's exercise of their sexual decision-making and rights; the higher HIV infection rate of women which operates alongside a higher care-taking burden than that of men; all these things and more separate violence against women from violence against men. I am all for public resources being allocated to the elimination of all forms of violence against our citizens, but let's keep in perspective who the most emergent victims are, and stay focused in our advocacy to save women's lives.

*Jamaica Constabulary Statistics Department Report 2007

Bottle attacks are a real nuisance

When I wrote last week about street harassment, a skeptical male reader conceded that such attention could perhaps be considered 'a nuisance'. I suppose it could be characterized as a nuisance: vile insults, threats of rape, intimidation, being attacked with a bottle. Yeah...that could get annoying:

A WOMAN who was hit in the face because she did not take kindly to Dwayne Omar
Anthony Brathwaite dancing behind her will carry the scars from his bottle
attack, but will also get compensation from him.

A little heads up to the Nation's writer: she wasn't hit in the face because she didn't take kindly to Dwayne Omar Anthony Brathwaite dancing behind her. She was hit in the face because Dwayne Omar Anthony Brathwaite is a criminal who will not tolerate rejection from a woman and who thinks it acceptable to hit her as punishment for having the temerity to refuse him. But it's alright, because even though she's scarred, she gets oodles of money!

The magistrate ordered Brathwaite to pay Douglas $2 000 in compensation and
Forde $1 000 in compensation - by December 11.

Ok...maybe one oodle. Or..half an oodle?

During the trial, Forde told the court she and her friend Debbie were in
the Boatyard nightclub. She was dancing with a male friend in an area near some
steps when she noticed a man was in front of her.

People were also pointing at her friend and she then saw that man was
dancing behind her friend. That man was Brathwaite.

"I was concerned 'cause Debbie appeared not to welcome it and I asked
[my friend] to speak to Brathwaite," she said.

"I heard Debbie ask [Brathwaite] where he came from. [Brathwaite] then
walked away and [her male friend] walked over and spoke with [Brathwaite] and
asked him to leave Debbie alone," the witness added.

Forde further told the court that five minutes later she felt someone
approach her, and, out of the corner of her eye, she saw that person come next
to her.

"I put up my right hand to cover my face and I got hit on my elbow with
a beer bottle. When I looked to my right I saw [Brathwaite] holding a bottle,"
she said.

"[Brathwaite] then hit Debbie with the same bottle he hit me with and
said, 'Don't send nobody to tell me things.'"

Yeah. That's a real nuisance.

And here's another thing I want to know: is the content of victim testimony against violent offenders meant to be a matter of public record? Because it seems to me that this type of reporting is more about providing cheap drama for readers than about the public's right to know.

Threats and abuse are not my culture

When I live elsewhere, one of the things that I never miss about Barbados is the cat-calling. Of course, there's cat-calling everywhere. But I think a variety of factors combine to influence the amount a Black woman experiences in countries where she exists as part of a minority: the fact that Black bodies are so often othered and invisible (although this sometimes works with opposite effect, because though othered, Black women's bodies are often only visible long enough to be used for sexual consumption; aren't we lucky?); the notion that Black women are angry and crazy so who knows how they'll respond if you piss them off; urban vs. suburban vs. rural location; and the habits of the groups and societies in which we operate.

In the American suburb where I lived, there was hardly any, but it increased as I got closer to the city. In London, there was slightly more. In Santo Domingo, most of the interaction with strange men involved them taking your hand to help you on and off the sidewalk and then continuing on their way, a habit which was at once charming and really bizarre. But once the paranoid Bajan in me was sure they weren't carrying anthrax or hidden razor blades, I deduced that this was times better than cat-calling any day of the week. Leaving the city and getting closer to the coast meant more unsolicited remarks, though. And in Suriname, I had a particularly scary experience where some young men who had been shouting me down for some time got angry that I didn't respond to their questions - apparently it never occurred to them that people might be hearing impaired or, you know, not speak Sranan - and started following me. At that point, I started yelling in English to no one in particular, and they seemed satisfied that I had a legitimate reason for ignoring them - the fact that they were strange men hanging around a street corner in the dark clearly would not suffice - and moved along.

But every time I come back home, it seems like we've taken cat-calling to new levels of misogyny and lewdness. Growing up, men hissed at women; it was some version of 'psst', although not quite that. That soon developed into a sucking noise, the way you might call a dog, although I've always thought my pets too good for generic, non-specific sounds (imagine that) and always used word and noises they would associate with only me. Then by high school we were hearing what sounded like random bird calls, real 'In the Jungle' types of noises, and by this time we're not even trying to pretend that this dynamic is not one of predator versus prey. Men seemed to find it funny because the idea of women as prey, you know, ha ha etc. Then there came all kinds of references to women - and to strange women in particular: 'meat', 'food', I'm sure you get where I'm going with this. There was even a song called "Looka (Look at) The Food", filled with lyrics describing how women's bodies are gratifying to men.

Throughout, there continues to be no limit to what a man will tell a strange woman. Nothing is too intimate or lewd. And I mean nothing. Think of the vilest utterance you can imagine from the lips of a man and I have probably heard it addressed to some woman on the street. And, in accordance with the formula, failure to respond brings a barrage of verbal abuse, and in some scenarios, assault.

It's the kind of thing we learn to live with, although I don't believe we should. We're relieved when all we get is a 'hi, beautiful', and even though we may not feel like responding, we do, because we know it could be much worse and a part of us is grateful that it's not. We go out of our way to say 'thanks' to 'that dress fits you real nice, sweetie', almost as a reward for the fact that no body parts were mentioned, even though we hear the lechery in every word uttered. And we learn to ignore the rest of it, carrying on stepping high, as we say, as we're pelted alternately with 'flattery' and insults, sometimes all at once by several men, so that even if we wanted to, we couldn't respond to this gang assault, organized to intimidate us.

But as accustomed as we get to it, we should remember this: cat-calling has a clear purpose; it is to establish in women's minds that we exist for men's consumption, and there's nothing we can do about it, lest we get too uppity. It is a way for men who feel inadequate and threatened by the collective success and independence of women to keep us in our place, and have us believe that no matter how many degrees or homes we have or how big our salaries are, we are the property of any and all men - even and especially the ones with whom we might not choose to associate - and are subject to their whim.

There is a new weapon in the cat-calling arsenal it seems, and I experienced it the other day. It is not a call, but a silent action. I was standing in the corridor of a shopping center with a friend of mine as we decided on our next stop. Three men came around the corner, all in varying stages of undress and/or general dishevelment. They said nothing, but instead came right up to me so that our faces were almost touching, and looked me up and down, slowly and deliberately, each in turn. I could tell they were waiting for a response, perhaps anger or outrage, so they could have a reason to manifest whatever latent criminal pathology was there lurking. I don't imagine they could expect me to be flattered by such an assault. It was clearly threatening behaviour, meant to convey the fact that they need not even talk to me if they don't want to; they can act in some way that forces me to talk to them, since if I wanted to get away, I would have had to ask them to move. I ignored them, wholly and completely. Any verbal response would have been what they wanted, so with their faces and bodies inches from mine, I carried on talking to my friend, who even in her dismay and confusion followed my lead, and they slithered off.

This is the type of behaviour that exists even as male activists and legislators contend that we do not have a problem with sexual harassment in the workplace or on the streets. This is the type of violation that they would have us believe is a harmless part of our culture, and instead of being so uptight, we should embrace. It is the reason women are physically attacked for having the temerity to refuse to have strangers grind up against them in a party. What's wrong with me, you ask? Do I think I'm too good for you? Why yes, as a matter of fact, I am, at least insofar as I understand boundaries and personal choice, and you appear to be on the verge of criminal behaviour. I am not going to embrace this appropriation of my body, my space and my sanity. The personal action that I take every day will be a rejection of this institutionalized abusiveness, and the professional action that I take as part of a policy-focused, activist network will be towards the enactment of legislation that makes this type of harassment a prosecutable offence. I have no problem being engaged by anyone as a human being and an equal, but I will not be threatened and cower in response. This is not a part of my culture.

Voices in favour of marital rape

Marital rape is still legal in the Bahamas, and now there is legislation being proposed that would make marital rape a crime, overturning the current system in which consent to sexual intercourse is presumed in a legal marriage. "Under current Bahamian law, a man can be charged with raping his wife only if the two are in divorce proceedings or living apart."

Most news articles on the story begin thus:

Lawmakers are debating a bill that would make marital rape a crime in the Bahamas...

And even though I'm aware that each piece of legislation has its process, I'm forced to wonder what the opponents of this bill could possibly have to say. But I don't have to look far:

The bill already has caused debate on radio talk shows, with some islanders saying women could file false rape charges as leverage for alimony, child support or custody. Others have said the bill contradicts traditional Christian values.

Once again, women are cast as self-serving Jezebels who abuse the legal system in order to manipulate men. Are we still perpetuating this myth that women will easily subject themselves to rape trials in order to 'get even'? Especially when we know that often, women are made victims a second time by the indignity of some of our court proceedings and the victim-blaming found both within the court and in popular discourse? False charges of rape are sometimes made, as is the case with other crimes, but this is not nearly as common a problem as people seem so eager to believe. And in any event, this is the role of due judicial process: to uncover the truth. Are the opponents of this bill suggesting that we leave thousands of women unprotected from sexual violence on the off chance that some woman gets pissed off and tells a lie? Question marks abound in this paragraph, because i am confused.

And the opposition to the bill on the grounds that it contradicts traditional Christian values just makes me weary. Perhaps if your Christian values allow a man to rape his wife, they have no place in law or society.

I'm also a bit concerned by this:

The proposed law would allow a judge to decide the penalty for marital rape. People currently convicted of rape face a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Because surely the legislation must include some sentencing guidance for presiding judges. The law fairly loses its teeth if someone can be charged with raping a partner and then sentenced to six months community service. If rape in a marriage really is rape, then why the need to go softer on the sentencing? I'd say this is one to keep our eyes on, because the mere existence of legislation does not in itself translate to fair protection under the law.

How male is the recession?

One of the most common statistics emerging during this recession, in various incarnations, describes the extent to which men are disproportionately suffering from resulting job losses. A month ago, the NY Times speculated that women may begin to outnumber men in employment figures as layoffs rise, and Spiegel's Susanne Armann last week deemed the crisis "a very male recession".

But these kinds of articles that take aggregate layoff numbers, line them up and declare men the losers in a global recession are missing several issues. Take for example Armann's article, which deduces that men are worse off while acknowledging the following [emphasis mine]:

..a significantly higher number of men work than women. According to the Federal Employment Agency, male employment is currently 81.6 percent while female employment is only 69.2 percent. Those who work more are more likely, therefore, to lose their job.

In addition it is mostly full-time positions that are being cut -- and many women do not work a full 40-hour week. Around a third of employed women work part-time, while only 5.5 percent of working men are employed on a part-time basis.

That means that women are more likely to work in low-paid jobs. The Federal Employment Agency says that 67.4 percent of those in low-paid jobs are women, who often work as carers in retirement homes, supermarket cashiers, childminders or cleaners. These jobs may not be well paid but they are still required even in times of economic crisis.

So just to be clear: we're neatly bypassing the facts that more men than women work, that women's work tends to be part-time, and that it also tends to be lower-paid, and surmising that women are coming out on top in this economic crisis because fewer of them are losing their part-time/occasional, low-paying jobs.

However, better-paid women are also doing well, such as those working in traditionally more female spheres like education or health. The major industries like construction, manufacturing or even the financial services industry have always been more vulnerable to economic cycles and therefore suffer when the economy dips.

"Women are also more flexible when it comes to location or type of job and they adapt more quickly," says Falk of the DGB. "If a woman realizes that she hasn't got any more prospects somewhere then she tries to go somewhere else.

And once again, the old 'women are tough, they can handle it' argument. We seem to assume that women's response to economic hardship (moving or changing to find work) has little or no cost, whereas men's reality (lost employment) does. There is a cost associated with this perceived flexibility, that may involve education, transportation, shifts in family care arrangements, or increased care burdens within the home. If anything, women in some countries are less flexible because of a gendered division of labour which often sees their lives tied to those of their children. But they adapt in what is perceived as a cost-free shift, but may in fact carry several costs to the household. They adapt because women's incomes are still overwhelmingly skewed towards the health, education and well-being of their households, as against men's.

We also have to be careful not to ascribe the same economic behaviours and consequences to all men and women everywhere. In countries, especially in Europe, where there have been historically higher levels of state investment in the household economy, towards universal day care for example, there tends to be a lower cost associated with labour shifts. And while the recession began in developed nations, it certainly did not end there. Developing nations with large export markets are also being hit hard by reduced demand from the global North, and those markets often employ far more women than men.

And if the response is to invest in those industries with the highest losses, where men are more heavily concentrated, then at best, the post-recession economy will position men and women exactly where they were before: with women earning much less. What is required is not just worker protection laws to eliminate discrimination and create equal employment in those sectors without regard to sex, but also more jobs in women-dominated sectors, with higher, living wages and increased benefits.

So given all this, and while we observe all kinds of gendered job-loss phenomena, like positive correlations between male unemployment and incidences of intimate partner violence against women; a slow supply response to domestic care demand by newly-unemployed men (that means that apparently some men pretty much sit around and do nothing - for a really long time - as they adjust to their new situation, increasing the care burden for those who already provide it rather than lightening it. Don't eyeball me. I'm just reporting it); and increased anxiety among women regarding the economy (although this same writer says that women are more worried but men are more likely to just pretend not to be worried and freak out anyway), I wouldn't be so quick to summarily declare women the 'winners' here. There's a little more to the story than that. And while we do need to address men's overwhelming job losses where they exist, and their psychological responses to the recession, we also need to go a little deeper on both sides in order to gauge the real costs and risks, and shape adequate policy responses.

Is the personal always (effectively) political?

Last Wednesday, women in Kenya, led by The Women's Development Organisation coalition, imposed a week-long sex boycott aimed at pressuring the country's two power-sharing leaders Prime Minister Raila Odinga and President Mwai Kibaki into resolving their conflicts. Amid fears that current rows could see a renewal of the election violence of 2007, in which 1500 people were killed and 300 000 forced from their homes, the women's groups have solicited the support of sex workers as well as Ida Odinga (left, pictured next to Lucy Kibaki), wife of Prime Minister Raila Odinga (below left, pictured next to Pres. Kibaki).

Patricia Nyaundi, executive director of the Federation of Women Lawyers (Fida), one of the organisations in the campaign, said they hoped the seven-day sex ban would force the squabbling rivals to make up.

"Great decisions are made during pillow talk, so we are asking the two ladies at that intimate moment to ask their husbands: 'Darling can you do something for Kenya?'"

It is the kind of tactic that certainly draws attention to power-sharing tensions in the country, but how valuable is it as a feminist action, and how effective can it be as a political strategy? Writing in the Guardian, Lola Adesioye declines to comment on the latter, but offers that regarding the former:

..this boycott is significant as it says a great deal about women's progress, the way in which women are reconsidering their role in Kenyan society and how they are reclaiming power where they can.

[...]

Africans can be pretty conservative on topics such as sex. For the older generation in particular, discussing sex in public is something you just don't do. In addition, unlike in the west, you tend not to hear African women sitting around talking casually and openly about it. Within that framework, taking such a politically-motivated sexually-orientated stance – actively withholding sex for a week and announcing it to the world – is, actually, a very bold and radical move.

[...]

Will this strike achieve its aims? That's debatable. However, even if the government doesn't end its feuding, this modern-day version of Lysistrata has already had a useful effect. It has put the spotlight on women's roles, power and rights and is showing how national politics affects the individual.

For women, at least, a week without sex is worth that.

But even in the context of a society where polygamy is still practiced, where sex is seen as a woman's duty to her husband and family, and where open discussion about sex is considered taboo and un-African, this strike is still a double-edged sword, with perhaps one side sharper and therefore more destructive than the other. Yes, it does represent a big "suck it" to the patriarchy that Kenyan women can declare ownership of their bodies and their sexual agency in this way. But at the same time, it says that this is their only card to play, their only value and their only contribution. And I find that problematic.

Adesioye argues that the strike " has put the spotlight on women's role, power and rights", but has it really? It seems to cast this role, power and rights strictly in terms of their usefulness as providers of sex and nothing else. It does not advance a dialogue on all the cases where even this role, even this sexual agency which is the minimum a woman should be able to exercise, is removed from her in the country's many cases of marital and community rape. It does not associate the lack of political consensus with other realities of women's lives such as insufficient access to water, food, health, education and security. And while it is encouraging to see women declare that their sexual lives are theirs to control or reveal as they decide, if the discourse stops here, then it arguably has done very little to advance women's economic security, their true political engagement, and the overall stability of fair and inclusive governance in that country.

Women are one-finger food

Because sneaking into a woman's shower to look at her naked is high-LAH-rious:



Hello. I'm a man. And all I need are video games, meat, and sexual gratification from women's bodies. And look how easy it is to acquire all three with very little effort - just the use of my finger. I mean, in the world I inhabit, they're all just there for the taking! (Well, granted, since one of those things involves another human being, I technically need consent. But hey...I'm a guy. We're cute, cheeky rascals. Boys will be criminal perverts!) Isn't life grand?

Have the Metropolitan Police waged war on the public?

You would think that London police would be, if not apologetic in the aftermath of Ian Tomlinson's death, at least attempting to keep their aggression in peaceful situations to a minimum. Even as their crowd control tactics are being criticized, and from a vigil held for Ian Tomlinson no less, the below footage emerges of an officer first slapping a woman across the face, then striking her across the legs with his baton as she falls to the ground.



The officer, "who had concealed his badge number before lashing out at the woman", has of course been duly suspended amid a flood of impotent, wishy-washy language from spokespeople.

"The officer has been identified and suspended pending further investigation. The officer works as a sergeant in the territorial support group," [a Scotland Yard spokesman] added.

Earlier, police said the actions of the officer featured in the footage raised "immediate concerns".

"Every officer is accountable under law, and fully aware of the scrutiny that their actions can be held open to," police said.

"The decision to use force is made by the individual police officer, and they must account for that."

The IPCC said it had been made aware of the latest footage by the Met Police and would now be looking at the "best way to progress an investigation into the actions of the officer involved".

But what is really appalling is the suggestion that responsibility for seeking justice rests with the victim, even in the face of evidence pointing to misconduct by one of their own. The woman, though having been identified and interviewed, has not yet made a formal complaint.

Labour MP Keith Vaz, chairman of the Commons home affairs select committee, said it was "absolutely right" any allegations regarding the new video footage should be thoroughly investigated.

"In respect of this particular woman, which has been shown to me for the first time this evening, if a complaint is made I think it's absolutely right that there should be a thorough investigation into what the police did.

Is that to say that this evidence, absent a formal complaint being made, should go uninvestigated? That's akin to watching my child punch a stranger in the stomach and then telling her "If that person identifies you and complains to me, you're going to be in big trouble, young lady! In the meantime, come inside and let's watch Transformers."

You'll also notice on the right side of your screen, before the incident with the woman occurs, a Black man is seen talking to officers. Moments later, when the camera pans back to that location, the situation has escalated considerably and several officers are involved in a scuffle with the man. This footage, like much of the footage captured during the G20 protests, seems to indicate that the first point of action by several officers involves aggression - if not physical, then certainly in manner and attitude to the public. The Metropolitan Police seem to be missing a basic point: you are not a private citizen who is allowed to fly off the handle and retaliate because someone calls you a wanker, which retaliation, incidentally, as a private citizen, might land you before a judge. And you aren't given a baton and a neon vest so you can lawfully batter the public. You are meant to rise above purely emotional reaction in order to employ the best strategy in maintaining peace. And sometimes that means first using your words.

The treatment of such incidents by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) as isolated events caused by the actions of errant individuals is erroneous and dangerous. Presenting these officers as bad apples that can be sacrificed as the Met gets on with business as usual will not suffice. These are not coincidences: they are the products of an institutionalized failure by the police to do their job effectively while maintaining the civil rights of both the public and their own members.

Springing forward

I love my life. Even though it's sometimes hard, it's always mine, largely within my control and full of the wonderful people with whom I choose to surround myself. Sometimes I feel tired, and feel the need to determine exactly what's making me tired, so I can move forward, instead of moving around in circles; and so I can separate the things I can actively fight to change, from the things I might not be able to change but for damn sure won't be a party to, from the things I just have to release and let be.


Today, I'm tired of the definition of masculinity that maintains adult males as men-boys, always having to reinforce among themselves that they are still and always will be capable of attracting 'girls', 'girls' here being grown women that they cast as girly, perpetually young, oversexed beings who can never be complete without a penis. I am tired of phrases like 'stop being a little bitch' or 'are you some kind of pussy?' that equate these vulgar, singular interpretations of womanness with weakness, and are meant to reinforce male camaraderie by making women less than. I'm tired of the films and television shows that glorify this idea of camaraderie, that prize and celebrate the experiences of young, white, heterosexual males as if we are all meant to revel in their partying, beer-drinking, weed-smoking, ass-getting escapades while the experiences of Black men and women are reduced to Madeas and Norbits; and the realities of bright, complex Black men and women (oh will no one bring us another Girlfriends?) remain largely invisible. I'm equally tired of Seth Rogen and Tyler Perry.

And let's not even begin to mention all the straight up fake-ass 'Caribbean' accents that feature American actors who can't even be bothered to at least listen to a Beenie Man interview instead of every other sentence uttering absurdities like 'irie, mon', which no one says except maybe for Rasta caricatures on souvenir T-shirts. And episodes of TV series set in Suriname but featuring a language that can only be described as Trinidadian American English, because Sranan with subtitles would have been too expensive or no one bothered to Google 'Suriname language' before shooting. I'm tired of the Caribbean being exotic enough to provide fake settings for Friends (where 'Bajan' hotel staff are everywhere on set but amazingly none interact with the guests) and soundtracks featuring Rihanna, Shontelle and Rupee, but not important enough to merit the marginal extra effort to research an accent or find a Caribbean actor.

And I am way fed up of the ads suggesting that if your hipbone isn't jutting through your skin, you are not 'ready for summer'. Because apparently fat people aren't allowed outdoors in July, and must remain inside on pain of being electrocuted and having their large asses dragged back in the house and covered in a tarp. Bzzzt! That's called an electrified perimeter, fatty. Now eat your Special K lunch and then drop and give me a bazillion. The sunshine is for the pretty people.

I'm really tired of the term WAG, which conveniently rhymes with 'hag', 'drag' and 'slag', the final straw being a reference to the 'G20 WAGs'. I suppose these women do not merit actual, complete words, since they are in their entirety just the appendages of their far more important male masterspartners.

I am exceedingly exhausted of the women who aim to seek favour and align themselves with men by berating women who do not love porn; do not encourage lap dances and supply their partners with crisp dollar bills for the occasion; have slept with more than 2 and a half men (or women); have made something other than biblical reproductive and parenting choices; or were abused and didn't immediately pack, leave and write a book about it as soon as the bruise stopped throbbing. I am tired of women making claims to sisterhood when they really mean whitesisterhood or whiteAmericansisterhood or Westernsisterhood or sisterswholookandlivelikemehood. I am tired of watching my sisters hop and skip and dance around their relationship issues because they're afraid of pissing a man off and being labelled the angry black or brown or just plain woman. I'm tired of my girlfriends not learning our lessons collectively because we think we're above what happened to our friend next door - above being cheated on or abused or raped or disrespected. Because these things happen to the frigid or the weak or the slutty party girls but not to us. And I'm tired of being afraid to say, lovingly and respectfully, 'this is what I need from you' to my partner, or at least I would be if I still engaged in that ego-stroking bullshit we're told we must practice in order not to offend the overlords and end up (gasp) alone.

And then when I'm tired of feeling tired, I do something to renew myself. I take a shower and look at myself naked to remember who I am without clothes and hairstyles and titles and awards and boyfriends. I visit the communities of women who get what it means to support each other and to agree or disagree without destroying. I talk to my sisters and woman friends; and to my man friends who don't need to throw in a lame come-on to feel like they're men, but who can meet me on common ground, a woman with a heart and a brain and a vagina, and not let the latter dictate our exchange. I regroup, recharge, and remind myself that sometimes being tired is what gives you the energy and joy to continue.