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.

Those who bash women for 'delaying motherhood' are hypocrites, don't understand human reproduction

Having reached the advanced age of mid-thirties, my attention is called quite often to articles and opinion pieces in the news regarding us stubborn, career-driven harpies who refuse to reproduce until we are good and ready, only to find that after the witching year of 35, things aren't so easy. Your eggs are old, lady! Give up and get a cat. Serves you right, anyway. The Daily Fail is full of these types of pieces - 'personal interest' stories about some poor 40-year old woman who would give up all her success, designer shoes and non-essential organs if only she could go back and have a kid at 20. Or worse: a woman who did manage to have children after 35 or 40, but is now too old and decrepit to chase them up into trees or stay awake during Mommy and Me.

Now I can't be strictly sure that there are more such stories than before, (since when I was a wee sprinbok in my twenties concerned only with non-procreative sex, drugs and rock-and-roll, and that f**king career, I likely would not have noticed them anyway), but from all the apocalyptic yelling going on about it of late, it would certainly seem as if humanity is in decline: no one is having any babies, and the end is nigh, and it's all your infertile fault, thirty-something lady. Except, not so much. In the US, where much of the yelling is happening, infertility rates are on the decline, and not because more people are having fertility treatments; this latter statistic has remained flat since 2002. In the UK, adult infertility numbers are being linked more and more to male infertility, with "male factors now accounting for 30 percent of fertility problems - the same as female factors". Even in Europe, where falling fertility rates (ratio of live births in an area to the population of that area) since 2008 are being flagged as alarming, they are closely linked in the research to the economic recession. That is, countries like Spain and Greece which fared among the worst saw the sharpest decreases in fertility rates, while those with better performance recorded no change or even increases. In other words, it's less about women's 'selfish choices' (whatever those are) and more about real or perceived and/or future financial constraint. Even the Daily Fail is forced to admit the relationship between financial situation and reproductive decisions. A similar argument can be made in Latin America and the Caribbean, where fertility rates are in fact falling, though in general not yet having reached the below replacement levels of 'developed' countries. The region as a whole still reflects Bloom's 'demographic dividend' - with an economically active population that is greater than the dependent population - but this may not last much longer, particularly in the Eastern Caribbean. Still, high levels of migration in the working age population are more likely behind this than Caribbean women's refusal to have children.

And this new debate, if not presented as willful non-compliance in the business of populating the earth, is presented as emerging wisdom to fill some gap in knowledge: women have simply had the wrong information. Hey ladies, I know you thought you could wait forever and carry out your own, selfish lady-business before reproducing, but nuh uh, missy, NEW RESEARCH shows you're about to expire. As someone who has owned a uterus for over thirty years, let me say this: we know. I'm not saying that every woman everywhere is in possession of an identical body of knowledge. In fact, we know this not to be true, which is part of the reason sharing information on sexual and reproductive health and access remains important. But a high percentage of the target audience for this blame-a-thon - professional women with tertiary or advanced technical education - already. Know. They are all too aware of their declining fertility. This is one of those cases in which knowledge on its own cannot translate into action. In simpler terms: even armed with this information, what would you have them do? Certainly not run out and fall pregnant by some random, which itself attracts its own brand of she's-a-witch vilification, and is the basis of much urban legend. Everyone knows someone who knows someone whose dressmaker's neighbour's domino partner was tricked into fatherhood by some desperate thirty-something. Always something with these women - either they're 20 and poking holes in condoms to trap a cricketer (cause we all know how deep cricketers are rolling), or 30 and going off the pill so their boyfriend will marry them goddamit, or 40 and having one night stands with friends/strangers, then spiriting away their sperm. Tricky tricksters.

The thing is, every reproductive choice a woman makes at this age is criticized.
Happily child-free? You're selfish and just want to keep your flat belly and boozing ways.
Unhappily child-free? Your fault. You used to be selfish and just wanted to have your career, flat belly and boozing ways.
Child-free, single and trying to conceive? Hoor! Children are for couples. And what about your poor, fatherless child? Single mothers are everything that's wrong with the world. You're selfish and just want to have a child to love you.

Herein lies the hypocrisy. And even had they had this knowledge earlier, before it was Too Late, the same applies.

Me explico. Growing up in Barbados, getting pregnant was the worst thing you could do. Not just as a teenager, but anytime before you had secured your place as a DoctorLawyerBankmanager. I'm serious. The Worst Thing. Teenage or 'early' pregnancy was blamed for all the ills of society, directly or indirectly. Boys are under-performing in school? Teenage pregnancy (and girls' sexuality). Never mind that the boys' (teenage fathers') asses are sat in classrooms while the girls are the ones run out of school with pitchforks. The dubious problem of society losing its morals? The dubious explanation of teenage pregnancy. Drowning at Miami Beach? Teenage pregnancy. Winston Hall escaped from jail again? Teenage pregnancy. And so on. It doesn't matter what issue is at hand. Invariably, in any meeting anywhere on the island, someone is going to raise his hand confounded that we are four minutes into the session and no one has brought up the scourge of teenage pregnancy.

None of this was lost on the generation of women now in our mid-thirties. In the Caribbean, for children of the working class, education - and I'm not talking just high school I'm talking first or advanced degree - is the handful of magic beans. You had better get it and stick with it until you can prove to people that your family is officially out of the working class. So for women, pregnancy is to be avoided at all costs even into your twenties. Of course, people get pregnant in their early twenties and are not made to wear a scarlet A, but it is hoped in general that you get your papers before you get your pickney. And then there's the whole wedlock business. I noticed growing up that the least Christian of Caribbean people could utter the phrase 'out of wedlock' with the highest amount of reverence - for wedlock. The single mother business was nothing to be admired, so there's another delay. No babies yet. Get your papers, get your husband. And this is what I mean about how reproduction works. In general and for most of history, for a heterosexual woman, if you want a biological kid, you find a man. He has the rest of the genetic material required. One cannot just grow a baby by sheer force of will. So this emphasis on the selfishness and willfulness of women is just silly. Are we supposed to be selective in partner for all other purposes save for that of reproduction? It seems to me the place to be most selective.

At lunch with an older woman friend recently, I saw a man she knew say to her, in disgust: "Why don't you go and get your children? What else you waiting for?" She said, without hesitation, "I going when I leave here. Where they selling?" And that's really the point. Apart from the inappropriateness of commenting on a person's reproductive choices, have we forgotten the several variables involved? Some of which we have all actively enforced throughout that woman's life cycle and until this point? I can't help but consider that in small societies such as ours, we see women who have 'opted for' marriage and/or children by 35 as well-behaved, and we are pleased. Whether that has meant a great, old-fashioned love and family story (I know some) or settling for marriage to some less-than-adequate (in her estimation) dude so babymaking could ensue, or something else, we can more readily live with a woman who has accepted misery as a cost of motherhood, than with one who has, for whatever reason, not chosen motherhood at all.

Most readers could guess my private and public position: child-free by choice? Ok. Child-free and trying at 39? Ok. Adopting? Surrogacy? Platonic co-parenting? Whatever. Not only are the success stats not as dire as the flailing people suggest, but there are several paths to happiness.

But what strikes me is that just as a generation of women hits 35-44 and are grappling with their reproductive choices, we are now, conveniently, getting over some of our puritanism just enough to discover that in fact, 'early' pregnancy is not the worst fate that could befall a woman and society. No pregnancy is. I tell you. If it isn't one thing - and by 'thing' I mean false set of values based on nothing but ascribed to all - it's another.

I swear if I hear "independent ladies" one more time...

I'm out pretty often: parties, concerts, limes, general lolly-gagging in the wee hours. I've only recently embraced the notion that I do work hard (I grew up thinking that hard work had to involve hot sun, perspiration and calloused hands; anything else - even 20-hour days at a computer or in meetings with seats and coffee breaks - was a luxury and a fiasco), and so I should be able to engage in the types of entertainment that I enjoy.

When one is out as often as I am, one tends to notice certain trends in the ways people seek to entertain the masses. And though not as ire-inducing as some other trends, there is one in particular that makes me itch. Shall I present it as a question? I think I shall. Because I wouldn't mind having an answer, if any of you are amenable.

I ask you: what is up with this "independent ladies" bullshit? Were I a betting individual, I would very readily bet all my jewels and livestock that at any given party or stage show, some DJ or MC - in most cases a man - will take the mic and yell something along the lines of "Ladies if you know you independent, you got on your own clothes, you got on your own hair, your own underwear, you got your own house key, bullshit bullshit bullshit, put your hands in the air." Or worse: "Ladies if you know you independent: SCREEEEAM!"

I beg. Your pardon.

First, that last exhortation is a contradiction in terms. The fact that I (and by "I" I mean "Mar". The rest of you may scream in response if you like, although I have never understood it) may self-identify as an independent "lady" (more on that later) means that I do not scream at the say-so of some random stranger on a mic. That's not to say I will never scream in public. I scream all the time. I screamed just Saturday night when Lil Rick performed some of his old dub hits and made a delightful ass of himself on stage - as only he can do - in another one of his lessons on how not to take oneself too seriously as a performer. But I screamed or bellowed or made whatever noise I pleased in the spirit of general noise-making to show appreciation. There is something about a man telling a roomful of women to scream that makes me feel like he's trying to live out some kind of harem fantasy. Worse is when he tells the women to scream and the men to say "Blat blat blat!" So men's voices are to express aggression and gun violence and women's voices are to express either sexual climax or distress. That is lovely.

But even setting aside the general screaming commands, why the preoccupation with "independent ladies"? And what is an independent lady anyway? And who the hell is this subset of women up in the club wearing other people's underwear?

I have some theories. When I was growing up, I dare say that consumerism wasn't the beast that it is today. Yes we all wanted L.A Gear and bodysuits and whatnot, but foreign markets were not as accessible; we as non-adults had limited resources, and all that resulted in the trend of sharing clothes. I can't say whether women over the age of 25 did it, although I'm inclined to think so as they had similar market access issues, but among my friends, it was certainly done. In a time before snapping cell phone pics and immediately uploading them to Facebook so everyone could see what you wore to every event, people were less self-conscious about what their outfits said about their paycheque and status. If your friend had a hot new trend piece and wasn't wearing it that week, it was an option. But, with our matey culture, in which men's dominance is perpetuated by pitting women against each other along the lines of attractiveness, domestic skills, sexual adventurousness, clothes-sharing soon became a further point of comparison that men used. The jig was up. Now, and as consumerism began to take hold more, wearing your 'matey's' clothes was to be a source of extreme embarrassment and proof you weren't an adequate female person. After all, if you were worthwhile, if you cooked well and could make sufficient babies and fvcked like a porn star, surely you could keep a man who would buy your clothes and therefore you wouldn't have to beg and borrow.

From there, as women began to participate more in economic life and it came to be seen as perhaps not the worst thing that could happen, there came a shift from "be proud your man can buy you shit" to "be proud you can buy yourself shit" (although the former maintains its legitimacy in certain ways and contexts). This would not necessarily be a bad thing, except for the following:

1) In this scenario, women's independence or lack thereof is still being used to pit women against each other. The old divide and conquer. So those of us in the fête who are in fact not financially independent, who depend on the income of a partner because such is the division of labour ('productive' vs. reproductive), or because we may be out of a job, or for whatever reason, we should feel like shit. Because not only are women supposed to be fvckmasters and top chefs and supernannies, we are also supposed to be Bill Gates. What? You aren't all those? Leave the fête immediately!; and

2) It reinforces men's resentment of having to continue to contribute economically when they, in their perception, no longer enjoy the other markers of privilege. So some men were happy to maintain 'their' women and children when it was a guarantee that they also simultaneously got to command higher wages for similar work done by women; or be promoted more easily; or have greater access to political participation; or free reign to commodify women's bodies. But for some, we women just have to damn well choose. You want to be independent? Fine. You get to pay your own way. That's the price. And all the attention to "independent ladies" is a bit of a passive-aggressive fvck-you.

An extension of that idea is that financially independent women who remain commodities or commodified in men's eyes are a huge turn-on. It is the Holy Grail of the whole ordeal. It is the reason a man will boast of his sexual conquest of a woman and qualify it with "and I didn't spend a cent." So all those independent ladies in the fête who are still willing to scream on command? Oh man. That in itself is an orgasm. Because it means that as financially independent as you are, you still require my penis to be ultimately satisfied. You still take orders and I'm still in control.

Disclaimer time: first, there are men for whom interesting, confident women who have charted and followed their own career paths are very attractive. That is clear, and not under debate. But I don't think that sentiment is behind the whole "independent ladies, scream" shout-out in the fête. Second, yes, the whole "independent ladies" meme is not unique to men. In fact, it was made quite popular by Beyonce et al, and their treatment of it is not necessarily problem-free, but I would say it is less problematic than this particular treatment of it by men. It works infinitely better as a celebration among women than as a judgment by men.

Here is my bottom line: stop singling out women as "independent ladies" based on some bullshit basket of goods that you determine of value to women: weave and clothes and underwear. All the women in that particular show or fête are independent by virtue of the fact that they are adults with rights. And they don't need to scream at your command to make that so.

Me and Samuel Beckett and homophobia in the Caribbean

Some people are willfully hateful bigots, and some people are bigots because they haven't thought long enough or hard enough or well enough about things to be otherwise. They are comfortable in their bigotry; it is warm and familiar, keeps their friends around, and maintains their own privilege. That distinction may not be important if the results are always the same. But every once in a while, that distinction means that people from the latter group, because they are in some measure open and reasonable, are willing to have their minds changed by another party or situation.

I just met someone who I think falls into the latter group. I've been travelling for work quite often, and he happens to work in a hotel I sometimes stay at when I'm travelling in the region. He came to my room to help with something, and we got to talking. I won't share the entire conversation, but it was about homophobia, LGBT rights, and was initiated by the following exchange:

Employee, as he is about to leave: What's your name, though?
Me: Mar. And yours?
Employee: Samuel. Think Samuel Beckett.* You can remember it that way.
Me: (laughs) Is that what they call you though? Because that would be pretty cool.
Samuel: No. They call me Hitler.
Me: Oh no. That's no good. Why on earth do they do that?
Samuel: Because my last name is [something associated with Hitler*]. I hate it. It's awful. And sometimes the joke doesn't stop there...my friends make a lot of Hitler jokes.
Me: Ugh. Yeah. Hitler jokes are rarely funny. Plus, working in a hotel, I guess you have to be pretty careful what you say around people. People are coming from all over the world.
Samuel: Yea. It happened already. We had some Jewish people staying here and the guys were joking around. They didn't like it. (Freezes) Are you Jewish?
Me: No. Not Jewish. But yunno you can tell people to stop calling you Hitler. I don't think that's an unreasonable request.
Samuel (looking troubled): Yeah. I really hate it. You know they say he was gay.
Me: (Blinks) Well...maybe bisexual? I don't know. He had relationships with women though.
Samuel: Yes but they said he slept with men. (Looks increasingly worried) Do you know anything about that?
(In the blink of an eye I've become an expert on Hitler's sexual history.)
Me: Well...no...I couldn't say for sure. But um...he also murdered millions of people...
Samuel: Yeah I know but...here in [country name here], we take gayness very seriously.

At this point I'm suddenly aware that I'm alone in my hotel room with a man who considers gayness far worse than murder, but we press on, talking about homophobia in the Caribbean (apparently Barbados is seen as the champion of LGBT rights in the region, a notion that while laughable to those of us who know the environment, makes me proud, even as it makes Samuel eye me suspiciously as if he is aware of my implied agenda); what it means to discriminate; why it's necessary to have anti-discrimination legislation; and why Caribbean men feel threatened by gayness. 'Gayness' is Samuel's word.

At some point when I ask him pointedly: "So are you saying the thing that worries you about being called Hitler is not the fact that he killed over 10 million entire human beings but that a couple people speculate that he was gay?" he says soberly:

"Well, here in [country name] we have people who are in jail for murder or whatever. And they go in, come out, and people don't really check after a while. But gay..."

I must have interrupted that sentence. I don't recall. Because of course it's not just the thorough and embedded homophobia operating here that is disturbing, but the fact that at the same time, Samuel seems not to understand or acknowledge the importance of the Holocaust. And I'm not talking all of the context of it, the eugenics, the politics, the war: I'm afraid the teaching of that part of history is pretty lacking in the Caribbean, and for that reason, a lot of young people don't appreciate its importance until much later. I'm talking about the fact that Samuel acknowledges the fact that Hitler killed millions of people. Whatever the circumstances, killing millions of men, women and children is a really horrible thing, right? Worse, arguably, than killing one man. And far worse than killing no one at all, i.e being gay. The thing is, I can't even be sure we're operating on that assumption. Because if Samuel thinks a murderer in the jail downtown is meh maybe not as bad as the gay guy on the bus, then who knows? Maybe he also thinks a murderer is a murderer, and after the first 20, it's all the same.

We carried on talking after this, and Samuel began to listen and nod and think a bit. And he started to make some sense after a time, to make some important associations and parallels with other parts of civil rights activism. I like Samuel. He is really a likable guy, open, interested, interesting, not hateful. And I think sometimes we have to realize that what we're working against is an attitude, a culture, not necessarily (although sometimes) the people who inhabit them. In the context of the Caribbean, where anti-gay sentiment is vastly more common and embedded than the opposite sentiment, as compared with other nations in the North where LGBT activism and legislation are far more advanced, engagement of people every day on their thoughts and beliefs, the music they write, the things they tell their children, and why, is where the movement needs to take hold.

*Names have been changed. The name used here was that of a famous person with the same last name. And somehow when I decided to use the name Samuel as a pseudonym, Beckett was the first name that sprung to mind as a famous person I could use. You can tell I'm not a fan of Samuel L. Jackson, right?

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]

The version of your body currently running is not bedroom compatible

My gym is running some kind of 6-week body makeover butt blast boot camp bangarang. That's not what it's really called but you get the idea. It's especially for women. It says so on the flier. Also on the flier, central to the message and in large red type, are words to the effect of:

GET A BEDROOM BODY!

Now, the gym runs these kinds of things all the time, in which they propose to bulk you up or whittle you down or generally bring you up to code in a specified time period. This is the first one I've seen geared specifically to women. And it's also the first one I've seen that seeks to gently encourage participation by reminding people women that they will have to get naked for someone's enjoyment, and for the sake of that other party, they'd better get their asses in gear. Or no man one will want to sleep with them. And then what would their lives become? Why else would you want to get in shape anyway, womanperson? For sport? For functional strength? For your own damn self? Stop speaking nonsenses!

Presumably, men don't need bedroom bodies*. Their fitness activities are in pursuit of more lofty ends. Hunting! Fighting! Watching cricket with their shirts off! And since women have to sleep with them anyway (everyone in this hetero-normative dreamscape is 'straight', ok? Just play along), there is no minimum aesthetic requirement involved for men.

Also what we've learnt so far is that a "bedroom body" is of a particular type produced in a gym or other exercise situation. Somebody should tell that to the bodies everywhere that are at this moment getting into some pretty enjoyable situations in their bedrooms, garages and crawlspaces right now, and have no intention of changing their bodies in order to continue doing so. If this describes you, you are hereby advised to cease and desist, until such time as we have certified that you possess the appropriate, bedroom-approved body.

It's true, I suppose, that "a bedroom body" could mean something more all-encompassing: it could simply mean a fit body of any size and shape that allows you to - as a friend of mine likes to put it - spin on your headtop during sex. But then, nobody's asking a man to spin on his headtop. I guess he and his non-bedroom body can just lay there.

And what annoys me most about this stupid poster - when I have to see it every single morning because it is affixed to the changing room door at my eye level - is that it does not reflect what I always thought were the philosophy and behaviours of the staff at this gym. They've always seemed very inclusive about women in sport, women gaining strength just because they feel like it. They've always seemed to have a pretty open "we can all do anything we want" mentality, inclusive of men, women, the elderly, people with disabilities, everyone. But now, because they are letting this stupid poster speak for them, I have to acknowledge that somewhere, someone in this establishment either does not get it, does not think, or does not care. And since I spend some time there, time that I otherwise enjoy, that's a bit of a downer. Still, always one who's eager (w00t!) to embrace the all too familiar "humourless" tag, here I go tomorrow morning. To ask what that mess there on the changing room door is all about.

*I asked if there was a similar poster on the inside of the men's changing room, and was told 'no' by a jolly fellow who is also a member, and who added, "darling, any man that got a body, it ready for the bedroom."

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

It's not just about Buju

So we heard this past Sunday that once again, following protests from gay rights advocacy groups, Buju Banton has been banned from performing at scheduled shows, this time in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago, Las Vegas, Dallas and Houston. Some bloggers are rolling their eyes that people just can't get over a song from 20 years ago and let the man have a career, and even the Jamaica Gleaner is, through their headline, painting him as some kind of tragic figure dogged by past mistakes and hunted by an unrelenting, international activist machine. It's as if we're meant to believe that this is all about one man and one misguided song, rather than an entire reggae industry made rich by anti-gay sentiment, and supported by a large, homophobic population.

There are other questions that might be examined here: the idea of redemption, who deserves it and when, and who gets to offer it; boycotting as a political action, whom we boycott, who we may find it easier to boycott, and who is ultimately affected by these types of decisions. But one thing is impossible to deny: the homophobia in Jamaican music is definite and destructive, and makes a very difficult subject for any exploration of the privilege of Western activism aimed at the developing world. Still, let us onward, and see what we see.

Back in 2005, the UK-based Stop Murder Music coalition entered into a verbal agreement with major record labels and concert promoters representing eight of reggae music's biggest names, including Buju, Beenie Man and Bounty Killer. The agreement saw the suspension of SMM's aggressive campaigns against the artistes and their music - campaigns which had been extremely successful in cancelling tours and TV appearances and withdrawing award nominations from the artistes involved. In return, record companies "pledged not to release or re-release any offensive songs", as well as encourage singers not to perform such songs on stage.

But the artistes themselves were not involved in this decision, and the following year, the truce was abandoned when it was claimed that Buju Banton, Beenie Man and Bounty Killer broke the agreement by repeating homophobic songs and views.

In 2007, Buju Banton, Beenie Man and others attracted considerable praise and media attention when they reportedly signed the Reggae Compassionate Act, renouncing homophobia and condemning violence against lesbians and gay men. But it later emerged that once news of the Act reached their fan base in Jamaica, representatives of the artistes vehemently denied their clients' being signatory to the agreement, and so the cycle continues.

Over the last decade, Buju especially has come to be known more for his uplifting lyrics than for the infamous "Boom Bye Bye" - first recorded in 1988 and re-released in 1992 - that has come to be the exemplar of murder music against which activist groups are fighting. But he performed the song at Memorial Fest in Miami in 2006, a year before signing the Act, but recently enough for those concerned to be skeptical of his professed change of heart. (The last link also contains the song's lyrics, so this is a warning for sexual content, violence and most other forms of general indecency of which you might conceive.)

None of these agreements has ever required an apology for past hateful behaviour, or any kind of public, verbal statements by the artistes reflecting a change of heart, or a commitment to denounce homophobia in their public lives. Sure, they may (or may not, depending on who you talk to) have scrawled a pen across an Act whose clauses were written by a third party, but they are part of a culture and people that considers itself righteous in its homophobia and hate: there is a community that thinks itself the victim of a conspiracy to malign Jamaica and its music, and so they stand proud in a fight to protect their right to be hateful. And much of masculinity in Jamaica and other parts of the Caribbean is predicated on an emphatic, sometimes violent rejection of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people. The same violence applied to the conquest of women that defines manhood is applied to the suppression and oppression of the gay identity.

When the Prime Minister of a country, in an internationally broadcast interview, asserts that there is 'no room for gays' in political life and refuses to establish legislation recognising gay rights, there is very little incentive for musicians to reject homophobia. In fact, this type of stance by the country's leader acts as a disincentive to any Jamaican from interrogating his/her own homophobia and taking a public stand against it, since such action is likely to be met with ridicule. It would be great to have a popular champion of tolerance, but that is not likely to come in the person of a best-selling reggae artist who, like the PM, must stay popular in order to stay wealthy.



There are, of course, parts of the population who do not accept homophobia as a necessary part of their culture, but one finds it difficult to conceive of a Jamaica where the tolerance of the few eventually extends to the many. This is not likely to happen for many generations, not when homophobia is sanctioned by the State. Jamaican opposition to outside activism makes claims of racism, charging that White gay rights groups are unfairly targeting Black, Caribbean musicians, and seeking to keep their communities in poverty. I'd say it's a little difficult to play the victim when you're advocating the eradication of an entire population, but there is something to the notion that we have to be strategic in our political action. I wrote a little about it here, and clearly immune from accusations of vanity, I'm going to quote myself below:

Amid growing calls in the international activist community to boycott tourism and products that would benefit 'homophobic countries' - on the list of which Jamaica features high - Barbados too has been censured in a recent shadow report "for its criminalisation of same-sex sexual activity and the violation of the rights of lesbian[s], gay[s], bisexual[s] and transgender[ed people] (LGBT)." While I think that the types of boycotts mentioned are often ill-conceived and counter-productive (if you want to change public attitudes towards the LGBT community, maintaining the already poor in poverty is not the way to do it), and based on the absurd notion that for example Jamaica is one homogeneous society thinking and acting as one, I do believe that properly-implemented action by the international community is one of the ways to develop political will among these countries' own governments to effect change from within. Tying development aid or representation on certain international bodies to the proven enforcement of human rights conventions is one place to start, and while it is not the place of the US or any other country to wholly dictate cultural values to another country, it is certainly the place of all of us to expose institutionalized bigotry and hate in countries that claim to promote human freedoms for all.

Do I have a point? Yes! And it is this: the LGBT communities all over the world are within their rights and have my support in preventing those who would attack their identities and their bodies from being given a platform on their doorsteps. We would be naïve to think that this is just about Buju's one song years ago. This was the track that launched his career, and he seems hard pressed to abandon his identification with it. Even so, this isn't about one man or one song. To this day, homophobic lyrics are produced in reggae studios and played in clubs. And if Jamaica is a scapegoat and an easy target, it's certainly a justifiable one. (It's also an unfortunate one, since those who absurdly and incorrectly claim that homophobia is a predominantly Black affliction have good old Jamaica to point to.) Anti-homophobia action has to go beyond bans and boycotts, but we can't expect the targets of hate and bigotry, the ones struggling to feel safe, to be the only ones tasked with eliminating it. It's the rest of us who have to do the work.

Cinderella's man seems strangely at ease

In the name of fairness and thoroughness, I must mention that the Nation newspaper ran a follow-up article to the one we discussed here last week, written by the same author. This one was much more succinct. Apparently, heterosexual men don't need as much advice on how to bag a partner as their female counterparts do. The author introduces the piece with a story he heard from a 'gorgeous lady' (I guess if she had looked like crap the story would be rendered irrelevant) of how some guy who had invited her to a movie paid for himself and bounced, leaving her to cover her own ticket. The horror. Sure this guy was rude, but only insofar as he was the one doing the inviting and didn't offer to pay, or at least didn't let her know in advance that he was planning to go splitsies.

Five instructions then follow. I'll list them for you:

Look good!
Be romantic!
Be confident!
Be flexible!
Be prepared!

Even with the couple lines of explanation that follow, these are a lot more vague and non-specific than the instructions meant for women, which included warnings like "don't bleed his pocket", "don't disrespect him" and other rules framing women's behaviour almost wholly as it relates to men. The men's instructions, on the other hand, are largely just a "be the best you" guide, a kind of self-improvement tome that comes in handy whether there's a woman around or not. Even the photos used couldn't be more telling. Last week's photo featured a woman gazing lovingly and eagerly at her man; this week's photo is of a single man: relaxed, laying back and listening to music. This thing is too easy. No doubt the writer and editors thought that publishing both pieces, even though they're both from a Christian man, was equitable and inclusive. But given the nature of this second article, excluding it altogether would have been a smarter move.

Beyond 'yawn', I've not much more to say about it, but I thought I'd give it a mention by way of follow-up.

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.

Star Trek reviews and the lying liars who lie

The trailers for the recently-released Star Trek film barely registered with me. There were flashes of beautiful, young people, several explosions, bits of camp dialogue, and I thought: "Star Trek this is not. All this is likely to be is a typical, silly, summer blockbuster hiding behind the Star Trek name to make some cash." Not even the casting of Zoe Saldana as Uhura was enticing me. But then out came the reviews hailing it as true to the Star Trek culture. Trekkies will love it, they sang, amidst a chorus of general praise and adoration. Of course I couldn't read the reviews in depth, for fear of spoilers, but I had all I needed to give the film a shot.

And how wrong had I been in my original appraisal? Why, not wrong at all.

I am of the The Next Generation generation, and watched the original Shatner/Nimoy series to get some context. Any true Star Trek lover must, of course, understand its origins, but Picard and crew were my Star Trek. Watching the older episodes from the original series, you can see how Gene Roddenberry's creation and conceptualization of a universal peace-keeping and humanitarian task force operating in a future universe - with all the moral complications and scientific advances that would allow - was genius and pioneering in 1966 when it came about. But to a TNG Trekkie (and I use that term loosely. There were no conventions in my part of the globe. I was simply a die-hard fan), Shatner's Kirk was a little melodramatic to Patrick Stewart's Picard, and twenty years of developments in cinematic technology and makeup made TNG a cooler proposition to a 10-yr old at the time. One also got the sense that by this time, the writers and creators were more at home with the world they had created: TNG had a greater sense of fluidity that made you think this world might exist even as you watched. Still, whichever your Star Trek poison, the show had a definite culture of intrigue and excitement, yes, but within the principled, disciplined world of Starfleet, which, frankly, made it all the more intriguing.

In Star Trek the movie, all that goes out the window. And this might make sense to some. After all, the film is meant to chronicle the early days of Kirk and his crew, and there's nothing to say that the glory days of the USS Enterprise were not borne of a power struggle between its brightest minds. But what a farce of a power struggle this, and indeed the entire film, turn out to be. There are so many disappointing elements, I can only touch on a few, after mentioning some of the things the film did right. (This part shouldn't take long.)

First, it's a great story. To convey how great a story without important spoilers is difficult, but when you combine generations of genius Humans and Vulcans, self-sacrifice in the face of apocalyptic destruction, time travel and heroic missions aplenty, how could it not be? And the casting isn't atrocious either. Zachary Quinto makes a credible young Spock, even if his intensity belies the painfully average dialogue; and Bruce Greenwood is the Captain (Pike)! I love me some Bruce Greenwood. The man makes made-for-TV movies worth living for. Simon Pegg is a refreshing Engineer Scott (thank God for someone in this film who understands comic timing), and Zoe Saldana could have made a fantastic Nyota Uhura if someone had remembered to write the actual character into the screenplay, instead of just the name.

Second, the bad-guy concept is almost flawless. Unfortunately, conceptualizing a kick-ass bad guy and then through poor dialogue, inadequate face time and what seems like misguided direction turning him into an 'also-there' is a pretty significant flaw. Nero, played by Eric Bana, is a rogue Romulan - dark, brooding, bloodthirsty and covered in tattoos - in command of a seriously awesome, terror-inspiring ship, the Narada. He doesn't give a crap about rules of engagement or anything smacking of common decency: not as refined a nemesis as The Borg or even the Cardassians who can be brutal and almost genteel at once, but still, worthy of some development. Alas, there was none. His dialogue is pretty weak. He's all snarl really. And while you expect to be terrified by this unprincipled Romulan seeking revenge, he pretty much just whimpers to his demise while you look on unimpressed. This was supposed to be the 'what they did right' part, I know. But the line blurs.

The film also makes use of a nifty little device: red matter, which allows them to take this seemingly innocuous little thing with incredible destructive power, and create very cool scenes of annihilation. The problem was, they didn't slow the annihilation down. When everything is blowing up everywhere, destructions of entire planets - billions and billions of people, we're talking - need a little time to create effect. You can't just drop it in there among run-of-the-mill torpedo explosions and general heroic somersaults and expect the film to have any pace or build any anticipation. And of course, this film failed to do that.



















Now, onto the things I found bothersome. I'll try to make quick work of these. First, to the most disappointing for me: Zoe Saldana as Uhura. Here's what I was glad to see: she was a top cadet, she was assertive and didn't feel cowed by her relationship with Spock into being shoved aside in the interest of propriety, we were told exactly what she did on the ship instead of her just seeming like a random ensign with a receptionist's headset (the original Uhura was a communications officer before being promoted to Lt. Comm. and then Commander, but somehow, in those early episodes, she seemed like an intergalactic receptionist to me. Her presence was, of course, nonetheless important for other reasons, but those stretched beyond the confines of the story) and she got to use those skills in saving the galaxy and all that. Here's what I wasn't so thrilled about: she was a role, not a character. Uhura I felt had one dimension. She was to be the woman in the film who was not maternal, and was to represent another part of womanness: the fearless, educated, unimpressed by random flattery type of woman. And she did all that. But she did that without having her character well developed. She was really a paper tiger; and I didn't actually mind her stripping down scene and the fact that she wore miniskirts. I felt it was real. Women high-achiever types are also sexual and attractive: that's fine. In fact, that's great. But at the end of it all, she was really just Spock's girlfriend, wasn't she? And that worked well for Spock's character - it made him seem reachable and helped make us care about him. But Uhura as an individual fairly disappeared into yet another woman who, like Kirk's and Spock's mothers, was just rooting for a man to survive. And I get the impression that any individuality we saw was all about Zoe Saldana: about her great screen presence as an actor, and not so much about the dialogue, depth and direction given to the character that had been envisioned as Uhura.

Next, who on earth was Chris Pine in this thing? Certainly not Captain Kirk. I did not like this man. He was too many parts entitled, spoilt little shit and not enough parts eventually heroic Starfleet captain. I did not care at all about his character. He could have perished at any point and I would not have felt lost about where the story might be going. And apparently in Abrams' conceptualization of Starfleet, seniority and experience mean not nearly as much as they do in the Starfleet the rest of us know. People are promoted to First Officer and Captain at the drop of a hat. Kirk himself simply skipped on board to become a cadet as if he were catching a ride to the bus station, and yes his father was a hero and that meant a whole heap, but it contributed to the overall effect of "this is Kirk's world, the rest of us just live in it". And that was not attractive. We get enough of the privileged, sexually adventurous, all-American White boy image in so many other films. Did they really need to make Kirk this as well? Yes, I suppose he was meant to seem troubled. That's why they gave us that wholly gratuitous car chase scene thrown in the middle. But he didn't seem as tied to and affected by his past as, say, Spock was. And they could have made him a devilish character while still making him a bit sympathetic.

My overall impression of the film was this: it was not Star Trek. And it could have been; it would have been better served by being Star Trek. There was none of Roddenberry's nuanced treatment of human intimate and political behaviour (after all, it's all a metaphor for humanity) and the exploration of what our future psychologies might hold. Even among the explosions this was possible, but was absent, and left a shell of a film. And further, even on its own, without the Star Trek legacy to uphold, it was not a good film. It suffered from a main character who did not seem of its world, from dialogue that did not distinguish it from any other pedestrian action flick, and from the glaring under-development of its characters. And it's such a shame too. Because this was an epic story which, told differently, might have been one of the greats.

Are women really jonesing for Angelina?

This post is about sex and attraction. It contains some profanity and reference to genitalia. The references are by no means scandalous (ok maybe by some means), but if you're shy about 4-letter words, consider this your warning.

So yesterday morning, via The F-Word Blog, I came across this post by someone called Bitchy Jones (BJ). And I imagine Lynne at The F-Word linked it because she agreed and found it brilliant, as her title "Bitchy Jones is onto something" suggests. But while this BJ person may have a general point, that is, she may be correct in part, I find the overarching message of what she asserts a steaming pile of doodoo. And this post is to explain why.

So she, BJ, is at a party.

The talk is, as it often is, of popular culture. Celebrities we’d like to fuck. We, are seven or eight of us at a table, urbanites, almost exclusively thirtysomething, artsy professionals – basically, if you handed any of us a latte we would drink it – and then one woman, a good friend, says, yeah, but we’d all fuck Angeline Jolie, right?

And she is annoyed by this because:

It is because the highest compliment you can pay a woman is to proclaim that you find her fuckable.

Always and forever and as simple as that.

If you admire a woman and like her, if you find her witty and attractive, if you like the way she thinks, well obviously, you want to fuck her. Because if you were a straight man, that’s where that would lead. But if you’re someone who isn’t sexually attracted to women, you might think you are feeling that too, you might even feel that you are insulting that woman if you don’t want to sleep with her (dishing out the ultimate insult by calling her unfuckable).

Now I get some of what she's saying. First, the notion that we should all want to have sex with Angelina Jolie because her exquisite beauty surpasses personal taste is, in fact, annoying. And tired. And premised on an imposed European standard of beauty that just induces my "Oh give me a big, fat, nougat-filled break" eyeroll response. Angelina Jolie would not be my bag, and don't tell me that I'm in denial. Because as a black, Caribbean woman, surely you can understand that were I attracted to women, a slight, pale, White woman, lovely though she is, might just not be what gets me purring. So I get that part of BJ's meandering diatribe.

I also get the notion that it sometimes slips into our vernacular to - in the way we offer praise - reduce ourselves to what has been determined as women's most important worth. That is to say, we want to convey our thorough admiration for someone, man or woman, and the best we can do is to claim that we love him, or we want to marry her, or we want to have his babies. The commentary in those statements is that the highest praise and prize we can offer is ourselves as lover, wife, mother. Our verbal, intellectual praise or support is not enough. So that it's alright for a man to say as his highest praise "Oh I really support Obama's agenda. He's the best President the United States has seen in my lifetime." But we as women feel forced to say "Obama rocks. Seriously. I want to have his babies." And I get how it might happen. We're being a little facetious; we find it funny; and we don't really examine where it's coming from.

BJ takes it a step further, and suggests that when straight women make this kind of statement about other women, we are not just reducing ourselves to our sexuality and value as objects to be f*cked, but we are reducing those women as well.

[T]his I’d-so-sleep-with-her phenomenon is pretty much just a side shoot from the whole damn dirty deal where women are mainly for fucking and generally supplying sex and men are the choosers and enjoyers of that sex. And also the whole thing that every piece of expression of anything ever should be expressed in the kind of terms and ideas straight men would use, as if that is some kind of default language because straight men will get confused if you don’t because they have never learned anything else, and they’ve never learned anything else because they are the default so they don’t need to.

Well, ok. Except, your example of Angelina is a little weak if this is meant to be your point. Because really, while Angelina is very civic-minded and activist, her main product as actor and public persona has mostly been as a beautiful woman, not as a politician or writer or even, dare I say, as a brilliant actor. So it is, I think, reasonable to say that those women who say they want to sleep with Angelina are not doing as much reducing of her person to the mere sexual as say, those who say they want to sleep with Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I don't think this particular Angelina desire is based on the idea that in order to express your admiration for someone's work or ideology, you have to do so in language that men have invented and we have all appropriated. I think that these people probably do feel some kind of physical attraction: perhaps to look like her, if not to f*ck her. (Glory knows they couldn't possibly like her pouting snarling acting.)

And BJ includes a kind of cowardly caveat toward the end which, I think, she should have led with, or at least paid more attention to. And it is this:

I know this post can be read as somewhat, uh, dismissive of ideas of sexual fluidity. I do appreciate that there is a whole Kinsey scale and everything. And that wherever you might think of yourself on that scale it isn’t fixed for life, but I didn’t want to clutter up my beayootifuel writins with endless qualifications about how this might not apply if you are bisexual or some other kind of self identified sexual lucky dipper. But sexual fluidity can be used to wash away women’s own sexual identities. Too much fluidity, too much choice, ends – bizarrely – in homogeny.

The post is dismissive, and condescending, and patronizing and insulting. And even the disclaimer above is not much better. Because the writer is telling women: "wherever you may think yourself on the Kinsey scale, if you're straight, you probably don't relish the notion of licking Angelina's clitoris. You may think you do, but you really don't. I know." And even with a more generous interpretation, the disclaimer is meant for what she imagines are the small minority of self-aware, not-strictly-heterosexual women to whom her analysis does not apply, as against the misguided, staunchly heterosexual masses of us who can't express admiration except on men's terms.

And she is also telling us that we can't distinguish between admiring someone and wanting to sleep with them. Because we get confused, you see. We don't know what our little pink feelings are all about. And I find that anti-feminist. Yep. I done gone and used the A word. So bring it.




















Because I am able to distinguish and articulate my admiration of Rihanna's red carpet poise; and Aisha Tyler's hilarity; and Michelle Obama's eloquence; and Cate Blanchett's acting, as completely separate from the fact that I think Maria Bello has a beautiful mouth and Zoe Saldana is gorgeous and Jennifer Connelly is striking. The former I admire and respect for their talent, and can acknowledge that they're beautiful, but there is no level of physical attraction there. The latter I honestly find hot (not that they're not talented as well), and while I might not want to lick their vaginas because vaginas are not my bag, I can acknowledge that were I in their presence, I might pay attention to a little more than what they had to say. Granted, I've probably only stuck my toe out of Category 0 on the Kinsey Scale, but I own that. And my brain, female though it may be, is able to make that distinction. And let's not forget that a large part of physical attraction is tied up in the non-physical. I might be physically attracted to a man not just because he's pleasant to look at, but also perhaps because he's good at what he does, or seems kind, or speaks well. Might that not be what's involved in women - who identify as straight but feel a bit of loin-stirring for some members of their own sex - expressing their desire for other women? The factors of sexual attractiveness are not as black and white; as talent vs. f*ckability as BJ would suggest.

At some point BJ also half-jokingly suggests an either/or situation, as if to say "STFU no way you straight b*tches would sleep with Maggie over Jake [Gyllenhaal]!" Well that's hardly the point, is it? Since I'm straight, my preference for sexual activity is with men. A woman I might (and this is the hypothetical 'I' so please don't flood my Inbox with oh em gees about my sexuality) want to kiss or fondle or look at or masturbate over, depending on who I am. And I don't have to refrain from those feelings because you have determined that I have to be firmly planted at 0. Yes, I saw your "but I don't mean youuuu" disclaimer, and I ain't buying.

So while I do think we could all benefit from checking ourselves if we're given to using language of admiration that reduces both admirer and admiree to our worth as wives, mothers, lovers and nothing else, I also think that we need to be careful not to invalidate people's true feelings and experiences with our angry theories. The women-are-hot, frat-party, lesbian makeout dynamic among young, straight women is tired, yes. But seeking male validation is not always what's behind expressions of women's sexual desire. If you don't want to f*ck Angelina, then don't you f*ck her. But some of those who say they want to actually do. So I see some value in some of what you say, but in general, just stop policing everyone's sexuality. It must be exhausting.