Jamaica’s Rape Culture
I was triggered from my silence by the recent rape and murder of Khanice Jackson because of the manner in which she was killed, her body then discarded as refuse. As if this were not sufficiently barbaric, several individuals came out on social media suggesting that she did something to deserve her death. How could people think, much more express such an idea if they did not support the concept of punitive rape and murder? Implicit in it is the belief that a man can give gifts to a woman in exchange for sexual favours, and if such favours are not forthcoming, he is entitled to use rape or the threat of rape to bring the woman in line.
In response to Jackson’s murder, I wrote an article and posted it on Facebook.
To my shock, over 400 people, mostly women, responded and commented. Not a single woman challenged my claims and a few of them came out as survivors for the first time in their lives. I had touched more than a nerve and I knew I could not retreat to my customary detachment.
I recently listened to a talk given by Member of Parliament Lisa Hanna in which she recalled a man grabbing her breasts and claiming that he had never held the breasts of a Miss World. Her recollection brought to mind two similar experiences I had, one at age 18 and one in my forties.
I was walking home from school one afternoon when a teenaged boy ran across the street, grabbed my breast and then ran off laughing. I was so traumatised by the incident that for several seconds, I lost my ability to see and hear. The next day, I went to his school and pointed him out to the principal who was a man. He made light of the matter until the vice-principal, a woman, walked in, took over the matter and made the little twerp apologise. I told him that had I possessed a weapon at the time, I might have killed him. I had the satisfaction of seeing fear in his eyes and would like to believe that he learnt his lesson and never did anything like that again.
The other and far more disturbing incident involved one of my husband’s former co-workers who came to our home for dinner. He sat across the table from me and as soon as my husband left the room, his hand wandered to my breasts. I looked at him and he had an expression as if he did not know what he had done. When he left, I reported the matter to my husband who dropped him like refuse and he was never invited to our home again.
My initiation into Jamaica’s rape culture began early. It was my first week at infants’ school when a slightly older boy made us form a circle around him and then he taught us a crude nursery rhyme about a ram goat and a she-goat in a pasture. In summary, the female goat sassed the male goat who summarily and violently raped her to put her in her place. I did not understand this at the time but many
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years later, I came to understand that my innocence was replaced that day with a premature awareness of sexual violence as an everyday possibility. Later, I came to know several women who were raped for talking back to men or refusing their sexual advances.
I was about 10 or 11 years old when an adult male confronted me on my way to elementary school and told me that I was getting fat and he could well imagine what other part of my anatomy was also getting fat. My heart filled with a deep loathing for men on that day and it took me many years to believe that decent men existed outside of my family circle.
On another occasion when I was just 17 and late home from school because of poor transportation, I had to run for my life from a group of men emerging from a night shift at a sugar factory.
I made it home safely but was frightened and ashamed. To this day, I have never told my parents or siblings about that night.
Even today, I am triggered by groups of men gathered in my line of vision.
I was 19 years old when someone I considered a friend attempted to rape me. As he held me down, I looked in his face and quietly asked him if he intended to rape me. My use of the word jolted him to his senses and he apologised. I was in my 50s before I succeeded in mustering the loathing that he deserved at the time of the attempted assault.
I was 20 years old and attending college when a group of men passed a minivan in which I was sitting and one of them looked at me and casually suggested that they should take me out and haul me up into the hills to have their way with me. The driver took their words seriously enough to take off without a full contingent of passengers. I am forever grateful to him.
I was in my 30s and attending grad school at UWI when a man threatened my life on a minibus because I refused to allow him to use me as a pillow. Had it not been for a bunch of higglers on that bus, he would have hit me in the face. None of the men on that bus called him out or came to my aid.
For the 35 years of my life that I lived in Jamaica I rarely went through a week when some man did not use crude sexual language to me and for every moment that I walked or travelled alone, I did so with a kind of hypervigilance that became second nature. I also developed a rich vocabulary of putdowns for men who stepped to me. I did not realize what an angry woman I had become until my partner pointed this out to me. Deep introspection led me to realize that being subjected to frequent sexual harassment changed my personality.
Growing up in a rape culture is hard, especially as the objectifying and ‘thingifying’ of the female has been normalised in our culture. When I listen to the language used in many of our popular songs to describe women, I am forced to conclude that for most of the song writers and performers, the full humanity of women remains hidden. So many deejays and singers think nothing of referencing women as bottoms, breasts, flat bellies, buffs and an endless litany of parts and orifices. What is even more alarming, however, is that so many of our women and girls have come to accept the debasement and happily dance along to the songs.
While I hold every artiste accountable for their song lyrics, I am not blaming the artistes solely for the condition of the country as I believe that the musicians are products of a dysfunctional culture