Shifting Sands: Sex and Culture in the Caribbean

Aug 23, 2020 Book Review…, Features / Columnists

Book: Gender Variances and Sexual Diversity in the Caribbean – Perspectives, Histories, Experiences
Edited by Marjan de Brun and R. Anthony Lewis
Critic: Glenville Ashby, PhD

‘Gender Variances and Sexual Diversity in the Caribbean’ is a compendium of scholarly, conceptual writings on our most primal force, a force that has arguably shaped and defined societies since days beyond recall. Waves of psychoanalytic possibilities form the underbelly of this sociological blueprint. Music, media, religion, human sexuality and, above all, patriarchy in Jamaican society, are presented within the framework of Oedipal phenomenology. Notable is the issue of patriarchy, hardly a genetic, instinctive blueprint; for while sex is a primeval need, its formation and expression are indicative of a society’s psychological health. Contributors of this fine work explore this theme, seemingly in tandem, each complementing the other.
In ‘Conceptualizing Sex/Gender Diversity – Considerations for the Caribbean,’ writer Rhoda Reddock states, “In addition to clear identities as male or female, people are…expected to behave and act or perform their perceived gender in ways appropriate to their sex…[I]n much of the Global North until recently – the strict classification into binary opposites precluded…ambivalent spaces from emerging. The result often was that persons manifesting specific kinds of non-binary gender markers would be hidden, made visible or driven underground.”
Anna Kasafi Perkins’ ‘Male and Female Created He Them,’ offers that “biblical injunctions frame responses to issues of gender and sexuality in Jamaica, particularly in relation to LGBT community, [and that] important aspects of the national discourse on gender find their root in the patriarchal stories in the Hebrew Scriptures.”
‘Taboo and Obligation’ written by David Plummer forays into archetypes and the most primitive energy of the unconscious self. He avers that homophobia cannot be explained through the narrow prism of heterosexism. He convincingly opines, “For me, heterosexism” just does not cut it as an adequate explanation. Such powerful, almost primal responses suggest that any explanation had to consider deeply indoctrinated attitudes, intense taboos and the workings of power.”
Ronald E. Young’s ‘The Variability of the Sexes from a Sociobiological Perspective’ speaks with the same provocative and revelatory reach.
Donna P. Hope’s ‘The Impact of Jamaican Popular Culture in Shaping Normative Conceptions,’ identifies language codes that insightfully gauge the boundaries surrounding gender and sexuality. These boundaries invariable move forming a new, unimaginable zeitgeists. “As postmillennial mores continue to shift,” she notes, “dancehall culture has become a site for the signalling of incremental transformations in the terrain of gender and sexuality, particularly male identity, [and] that onstage and offstage borders have proven more fluid with the capacity to signal new possibilities.” She argues that the moniker Shebada has been absorbed into dancehall slang and Jamaican language. “Shebada,” she notes, “is another term used for sexuality that is suspect or, alternatively, for a woman who behaves “like a skettel.”’
In like vein, R. Anthony Lewis’ ‘Dem Bow – Translation, Globalization and Dancehall’s Recalibrated Anti-Gay Discourse’ examines hypersexuality and the castration complex. The male imago is defined by a pop culture that reinforces heterosexuality while outlawing ‘other‘ practices of embodied pleasure which [did] not conform to this norm.”
Moji Anderson’s “Bring it Cross?” – Sexuality and “Passing” in Jamaica,’ examines the complex nuances of passing as heterosexual. It is decision, a process that proves psychologically suffocating. “Some participants said being gay is ‘like being in a prison without bars.’”
In ‘The Myth of the “Free Pass” in Jamaica – An Assessment of the Representation of Women who Love women in the Media,’ “Gemma D” argues that “[t]he failure of local media to report violence against queer women…is a result of male fascination with intimacy between two women, which is a stark contrast to public repulsion at intimacy between two men.” She adds that the queer woman challenges the feminine ideal, positing that voyeurism (as a result) “is a technology of reappropriation that seeks to reinscribe men’s claims to women’s bodies in a patriarchal society.”
Every contributor offers insights into the complexities of sex, socio-political dominance and identity. But the sands are shifting, they concur. Once unbending, monolithic beliefs are losing ground to more divers positions. And as an abundance of literature garishly market competing positions, the present and the future is slowly reconfigured. While the jury is still out on the outcome, there is a sense that the grip of conservatism has weakened. Surely, its pontiffs, the fruit of castration complexes are losing ground; their ways having cost incalculable damage to the psyche. And now, righting the social and psychological wrongs of the past is a commitment to which every writer herein has pledged.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

Feedback: [email protected] or follow him on Twitter@glenvilleashby/www.glenvilleashby.com
Gender Variances and Sexual Diversity in the Caribbean – Perspectives, Experiences, Histories Copyright 2020
Publisher: UWI Press, Mona, Jamaica
ISBN 978-976-640-741-4
Available at Amazon
Ratings: Essential

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