Book Review… Revisiting Gay and Queer Life in the Caribbean

Nov 15, 2020 Book Review…, News

Book: Beyond Homophobia: Centering LGBTQ Experiences in the Anglophone Caribbean
Editors: Moji Anderson and Erin C. MacLeod
Critic: Glenville Ashby. PhD

‘Beyond Homophobia’ offers new paradigms in LGBTQ research. In this insightful collation of work by a cadre of scholars we peer into a cultural reality that is no longer subterranean. LGBTQ though is very present, a zeitgeist with global reach.
In the Caribbean imaginary, homophobia validates masculinity. Symbolic gestures vilifying gay and queer lifestyle are anthemic, immortalized in lyrics and jest, cleverly construed to project virility.
In the process, tradition, seeded with social and religious beliefs has set the tone, until now. ‘Beyond Homophobia’ attempts to mend a fissured landscape through dialogue and nuanced studies within the LGBTQ community.
‘Tales from the Field: Myths and Methodologies for Researching Same Sex-Desiring People in the Caribbean,’ represents the existentialist tenor of this compilation. We glean from interviewees and hear their narratives. This qualitative study by Nikolai Attai, K. Nandini Ghisyawn, Rajanie Preity Kumar and Carla Moore, affords us far greater insights on the subject. The socio-religious and political construct on sexuality is dismantled and new scripts are written by those most impacted by bias and vitriol.
“The Caribbean is often imagined by the Global North as a space that is inherently dangerous and unsafe for queer subjects and researchers, [and] an important part of this process,” they argue, “is allowing the community to speak for itself and not imposing our own words, perceptions and assumptions.“
It is within this communal setting that we find answers.
“The field is a lived space and thus subject to change. This has resulted in producing a homophobic narrative that queer subjects are either dying in their countries or dying to leave their nation for a ‘safer’ life in the North. The Caribbean is conceptualized as a site that is also unsafe for researchers to conduct research.”
The animus towards the LGBQT community is palpable enough to trigger an existential response. Safe spaces take on a womb-like meaning. They nurture and sustain, and form the bulwark of resistance.
Inscribed is the “systemic and unavoidable” consequences of homophobia.
“Researchers may find it more useful to meet trans women at or close to their homes, or in the places that they socialize, like during drag pageant rehearsals or at night clubs or other areas where they party.
Participants spoke of explicit acts of interpersonal violence…mainly citing sexual assaults in early childhood to more recent incidents of rape.”
Paradoxically, such a revelatory undertaking poses new challenges.
“What does it mean to be able to interact with and write about self-identified bullers, trans people, or same sex/gender-desiring people without making them targets of violence in their communities? How do we ensure that our work adds valuable insight about the real concerns of these communities without infantilizing them or at worst, encouraging homophobic backlash?”
In ‘Inclusion of LGBTQ Students in Jamaica Teacher Education – Religiosity, Responsibility and Resistance,’ authored by Carol Hordatt Gentles and Vileitha Davis-Morrison, civil rights, despite legislative protection, are sacrificed at the altar of tradition. Such we encounter in the education system.
“Our research suggests that the views and practices of the teacher educators we surveyed with respect to the rights of LGBTQ students are in keeping with the official position of the Ministry of Education: show tolerance by allowing LGBTQ students to occupy spaces in schools, but is okay not to practice inclusion. It is also okay to privilege one’s religious beliefs over one’s professional duty as a teacher to provide inclusive and equitable education for all.”
Writer Nick Marsellas’ ‘The Sodom of the New World: A Queer claim to Historical Belonging,’ forays into the far-reaching implications of ego fragmentation and reparation in accordance to the Ego Ideal. His psychodynamic critique of John Farley’s ‘Kingston by Starlight,’ demonstrates how the psyche morphs reality to avoid dissolution. Here, the protagonist views seafaring in salfivic terms. It establishes his manhood. The concept of the womb, the Goddess, long associated with water is turned on its head. He seemingly reconciles his internal struggle but no one knows for sure. For longing and guilt are oftentimes internal wounds. The perils of “desubjectification,” and queerphobia, to be exact, are hardly discussed.
Marsellas pens, “His movement toward the sea and to masculinity is a turn against his prospects on land as woman. He sees only two paths on land, either prostitution or marriage, both of which he regards with equal disdain. He sees himself as able to do the work of any man, but artificially limited because of the gender imposed on him. He sees a happy pairing between masculinity and seafaring…learning the ways of men at sea; the sea becoming an important site for queer resistance – he quickly performs the gender he chooses.”
Queer resistance, identity, and pride, are examined in Keith E. McNeal’s Level 5: ‘Betwixt and Between “Homophobia” in Trinidad and Tobago.’
Here, resistance takes on a new meaning. It establishes the gay community as endemic to the national corpus and as an irrevocable building block of the Republic. It’s arguably a political stance that elevates the discourse in ways hitherto explored. The position of CAISO (Coalition Advocating for the Inclusion of Sexual Orientation), the longest-running LGBTQ rights advocacy group, proves instructive. Their position is clear, according to McNeal: “[I]t is possible to be gay and live your life in Trinidad and Tobago, that homophobia far from necessarily kills, that things have indeed been getting better, that LGBTQ asylum-seeking encourages a queer brain drain and depletes the local movement of energy and resources, and that rhetorical substantiation of queer asylum claims in Europe and North America are premised upon quasi-racist, neocolonial imagery of the Caribbean as pathologically backward in its level of homophobia.”
Carla Moore’s Brave “Battymen” and the (Im) Possibilities of a Straight Dancehall,’ raises the thorny subject of black culture and queerness; that they are irreconcilable and mutually antithetical are challenged. Moore avers that the stability and legitimization of the black community is realizable through endogenous initiatives that procure the safety of its people, queers included.
He writes of “symbolic violence as [a] showcase of masculinity.” His is a reminder that “the dancehall is still not visibly queer friendly,” and that “blackness and same sex desire and queerness have been historically and contemporarily created as mutually unintelligible.”
He posits that the “cultural labour” required of black queer people must be directed at relocating queerness inside blackness as a legitimate part of (diasporic) African cultures, especially in the imaginaries of their peers.”
He concludes that “while the state can create rights through legislation, it is only within the spaces of black communities that real protection lies; [and] the work of securing the acceptance and protection of peers is integral to the liberation of black queers.”
Additional writings, (including but not limited to), Thomas Glave’s, ‘In Search of the Dead,’ Rinaldo Walcott’s, ‘So: Queer Life and Beyond and Against Homophobia,’ and Lyndon K. Gill’s, ‘I am a Messenger: Spiritual Baptism and the Queer Afterlife of Faith,’ augment the relevance of this scholarship.
‘Beyond Homophobia’ is a groundbreaking ‘discourse’ that delivers a socio-psychological message, a message that challenges archaic, unfounded suppositions on the LGBTQ community, while offering a marked blueprint for its integration into the wider society.
(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
Publisher: The University of the West Indies Press www.uwipress.com
ISBN 978-976-640-744-5
Available at Amazon
Ratings: **** Highly recommended