Speaking out against GBV

The panelists – Amanda McIntyre, co-director of feminist organisation WOMANTRA, Terry-Ann Roy, board member of I Am One TnT, and Jade Trim, a student of the Institute of Gender and Development Studies (IGDS) at UWI, St. Augustine – spoke of the history of misogyny (the dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women) in a Caribbean context as well as how the law defends or turns a blind eye to victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and street harassment. The event also happened to take place a mere two days following the discovery of Shannon Ban_ eld’s body in a store’s warehouse on Charlotte Street, Port of Spain – yet another victim who perished at the hands of GBV.

The #LifeInLeggings movement was started by Barbadians Ronelle King and Allyson Benn, as a means for Barbadian women to share experiences and accounts of GBV. While the movement’s roots are Bajan, the hashtag soon gained regional popularity – a testament to the startling number of GBV infractions women face in both subtle and life-changing ways in the Caribbean. The experiences shared over social media have run the gamut of indirect associations to misogyny to truly horrendous and brave accounts of sexual assault. Most of the experiences shared involve men as the main perpetrators of GBV.

This year alone, scores of women in TT have been reported missing or found murdered. Archaic notions and opinions of women exposing themselves to the opportunistic male gaze have been rampant among men and women alike – age-old victim blaming that claims a woman’s safety is her responsibility. This was the major pivot of former Port-of-Spain mayor Raymond Tim Kee’s argument following the slaying of Japanese national Asami Nagakiya after this year’s Carnival festivities. The uprising such comments caused forced him out of his mayoral office, but not without constant and ignorant backlash from pockets of our citizenry who decried the protest as a “foreign affair”.

Yet organisers of the well-attended protest that brought about Tim Kee’s mayoral demise continue to reiterate that the action was not merely about a Japanese national but our culture of respectability politics. Respectability politics refers to the attempts of marginalised groups (such a racial minorities, gender minorities, sexual minorities) to police their own members and show their social values as being continuous, and compatible, with mainstream values rather than challenging the oppressive status quo. Men and women engage in such detractive politics that can water down the impact of rightful advocacy in these instances. By perpetuating ignorant notions that women are responsible for their own safety through the policing of their attire, how many men they take to bed, and the types of social activities they engage in, we continue to ignore the fact that the men who perpetrate such violence are the only ones at fault and rarely, if ever, held to similar standards.

The proof is also overwhelmingly in the favour of the danger all women face – not simply women whose characters may be called into repute based on unfair social notions of respectability. In October 2016, the body of Vanessa “Buffy” Ackie was found in a precipice; a known sex worker, public opinion surrounding Vanessa’s death slanted to the “she look fuh dat” mentality. However, a month later, Tobagonian nurse and mother, Crystal Tobias-Busby, was stabbed and killed at the hands of a male relative at her home - two seemingly different women, with quite dissimilar life experiences, choices, and accolades, who met similar fates at the hands of men.

In May, Patricia Fletcher-Thomas was killed at her Enterprise, Chaguanas home one day after her 26th birthday. Reports indicate that a male relative at Patricia’s funeral admonished, “Watch the kinda man allyuh picking up.” Except, the responsibility of not murdering must surely fall on the murderer, not the murdered! Sadly, these views are not only widespread but upheld by misogynistic cultures that in_ ltrate all levels of society – from vulnerable youth, to the elderly, to babies who are raped and killed – there is no girl or woman who is safe or can be expected to uphold her own safety in a society that openly declares her the “second sex” and subservient to men.

Opening up the panel discussion on Saturday 10 was Terry- Ann Roy, also a second year law student at UWI, St. Augustine.

Her opening lines were narrative stories of women who were murdered at the hands of jilted lovers or husbands on our shores, including a moving narrative of the _ nal moments of Shannon Ban_ eld’s life. She tells WMN, “The most important part of the #LifeInLeggings movement is the fact that it has empowered many women and girls to speak up about GBV.

Also, with that empowerment comes solidarity amongst us women.” She explains the hashtag has uncovered what many women have known and experienced for years and given these experiences their own space. “I think this sort of ‘_ ght back’ was long overdue.” UWI Undergraduate and Gender Studies student, Jade Trim linked the histories of the Caribbean – colonialism, slavery, indentureship, and civil rights movements – to the misogyny and misogynoir (misogyny against Black women) that plague our region and country today and argued that to understand the history of GBV in our speci_ c context, it is important to trace its roots. She also commented that in most historical accounts, there are hardly women’s voices yet simple research shows that women have been at the fore of freedom _ ghts and historical shaping dating back centuries. Such subtle omissions cannot go unchecked and further perpetuate unfounded myths that women are docile, unable to act autonomously, and dependent on male protection.

In her academic paper “Unmasking Masculinity and Deconstructing Patriarchy”, Patricia Mohammed posits that our personal identities are a conglomeration of the experiences that have shaped our lives. She explains the feminist theory of everevolving identities that must be reconciled with lived experiences – separate entities that are intrinsically linked. She writes, “Our material bodies … our race or ethnic group, the colour of our skin and the class we typify within a particular culture constantly inform and mediate our social experiences and in_ uence how we express our masculinity and femininity, as well as the expectations by others of our masculinity and femininity.” There are schools of thought that do not limit “experiences” to the personal happenstances of our lives but rather collective and historical experiences that may be shared by ethnic groups, genders, sexual minorities, and social factions. These collective experiences may result in lasting and ongoing trauma, as is the case with the Atlantic Slave Trade and even the divide and conquer mentality of colonialists who shaped stringent race divides that can be traced to Caribbean societies to this day.

We cannot ignore how our very unique histories and oppressions as Caribbean peoples – and Trinbagonians – have shaped the misogyny and femme hatred experienced to this day; to ignore these factors would be a disservice to the Caribbean women’s movement and even to understanding the necessity – and _ ery popularity – of the #LifeInLeggings movement.

Trinbagonian activist, co-founder and co-director of BGLAD (Barbados Gays, Lesbians, and All Sexuals Against Discrimination), Ro-Ann Mohammed praises the movement.

“It exudes feminine prowess and organisation,” she describes the power behind the hashtag, “and has created a space that didn’t really exist before.” She believes in our modern society where “technology is our oxygen”, social media platforms have far reach and can exact change through collective voices. She also notes the hashtag has not only been used by women but also members of the LGBTQI community to express their own experiences of misogyny and violence. “[Until now], there hasn’t been a space for Caribbean people to go online and say, ‘this is my truth, this is the discrimination I have faced based on gender discrimination and misogyny. This [movement] is a space for solidarity and it’s a catharsis and that space is powerful.” Yet, women who have found a safe space in the annals of #LifeInLeggings posts are still disproportionately exposed to the threat of violence and murder at the hands of men in everyday reality. The complaints of domestic abuse violations and reports falling on deaf ears at the institutional level are countless.

In January, mother of three, Hassina Khan, was found in a shallow grave in California, Couva. Relatives at the gravesite were overcome with grief and voiced their anguish that many of Hassina’s reports of domestic abuse to law enforcement went unanswered and unchecked. For the families of women who have been failed by our systems and institutions, what is their recourse? Retrospect leaves an entangled web of emotions that are not easily reconcilable – the knowledge cannot make up for the loss, the once-deaf ears cannot now unhear, and families are forever changed.

The #LifeInLeggings movement has also seen backlash with many men and some women arguing that crime and violence are not a gendered debate – yet of the countless names of women who have been murdered on our shores in 2016 alone, many were not involved in criminal activities, were not living lives on the edge that would predispose them to the threat of violence and death. “What was she wearing, why she stay with him, she shouldn’t have been out of her house at that late an hour.” The problem with such rhetoric is it completely bypasses the root of the problem: the engrained and continuous spread of hatred and inequality of women and femininity. One cannot hope to speak of or understand GBV without identifying the perpetuation of gender inequality and the double standards that continue to this day regarding women and their autonomy (or denied autonomy) of their bodies, actions, and spaces.

This is the _ rst part in a two-part series on the #LifeInLeggings movement and GBV in the Caribbean.