The ageless sin of men

A show of hands please from all women who have been victims of verbal sexual harassment by lecherous men. You are wearing a barrel; the man has his girlfriend at his side; or you could even be wining out of time in a party — Trinbagonian men naturally have this incurable addiction of ‘sweet talking’ and ‘interfering’ with every woman they see. All women have to put up sexually derogatory remarks from men in this country. The first sound a TT man learns as a baby has to be ‘Psst’. This ‘gift’ that these men think they possess to woo women takes years to perfect. There is no age limit when it comes to trying to attract a female. It begins at infancy. I remember visiting my brother in primary school, only to be stopped by a Second Year student, a pygmy, who shouted at me, “Hey Baby!” A little too fresh for me and shocking.

Many of us have to endure daily the heckling and ‘sooting.’ We know all the irritating slurs, “Dougla, princess, darling, reds, slim, family, sweets, Chinee, Indian, thickness. . .” Even more irritating are the men who follow women around repeating, ‘morning . . . morning?’ Sometimes you feel like shouting, “What? Do you live on the other side of Uranus. Can’t you see it is morning?” What I do is create a mental block which has its minor repercussions. People often tell my mother, “You know that daughter of yours pass me straight in Arima?” I am not a snob, but with this wall that I have created I sometimes even pass family members straight without even knowing it. People can call me by name and I will not turn around. You see me, all I want to do is take a maxi and reach where I am going.

Men tend to see my mental wall as hostility so they try to gain my attention in other ways. Take last year Carnival. I was walking with my aunt near the dial, when some men in front a bar began harassing me. I ignored them. One of the men got very angry. He crossed the road to where my aunt and I stood, and threw his wallet on the ground in front of me. I felt so embarrassed by the act. Why do men always try to embarrass you when they cannot get what they want? Crazy marriage proposals are also another Trinbagonian idiosyncrasy. A man once proposed to me in a KFC line. I bluntly told him my only concern was getting my spicy two- piece, and he was standing between me and my meat. Some marriage proposals can sound like the man is planning a kidnapping.

One man said to me, and I guess he thought he was being romantic, “The Lord is my shepherd and I see what I want. If you were my wife, I would lock you up so you will never leave the house.” Well, he could walk his way with the lord, and I would go my way. Another disturbing proposal came from a young boy about 17 who told me, “Reds, I want to marry you and put you in a glass house.” He might as well include some stones in the dowry. Let’s not talk about the really old men who try to score big with women. It is the most putrid feeling in the world. What we have walking around this land are old men trying to relive their player days of the old millennium. I don’t know if they are trying to recapture their youth or if they are just lonely, but they should stop interfering with girls young enough to be their great grand-daughters.

They are nothing more than pathetic old men with musty smells, and that is hardly a turn on. Do they think young women have a sign on their foreheads saying, ‘looking for an old man.’ The remarks these old men make are so offensive, yet when you answer them back they say you have no respect. Like the grandfather who hobbled past me on the Brian Lara Promenade had the gall to tell me, 60 years his junior, “Baby I would pay you $5,000 now. I wanted to tell him, “When you save up $5,000 from your  pension call me.” These old men are so silly because they are setting themselves up for young gold diggers. A colleague told me when pension was a mere $600, an old man offered to give his whole cheque to her.

She just laughed at him. But I am sure particularly now that pension is over $1,000, there are some young women who would like to take advantage of these old fools. So there we have them all. Is there any cure for TT men’s insatiable desire to allure women? Maybe we should attack them with the same aggression they show us. Then again they might just enjoy it. What TT men should consider is if it was their mother, sister or daughter, would they still condone their own actions? There are civilised ways of greeting and speaking to a woman. Only when men learn to respect women, will they be taken seriously. Until then, their sugar- coated lines will only attract society’s best flies.