This is a continuation of the post “Oh, to be a queen! Let’s Be Real.” Over the weekend, I engaged with a few other gay and lesbian Jamaicans who criticized ‘flamboyant gay men’ and ‘butch lesbians’ for making the ‘rest of us’ look bad, and for misleading people to think that everyone in the gay community is as deviant(?). Sigh.
One gay man even told me that “people like [me] who are out don’t understand the need for discretion.” This boy doesn’t want to be defined by his sexuality, and so he will not present himself in a way that marks him as homosexual. (I chuckled as the four of us walked home together, because I’m not sure where any of them got the idea that they could pass for straight.) Someone also mentioned that it is necessary to respect Jamaican society and cultural values. Of course, by this point I was about to explode. Why should we respect a cultural standard that renders us outcasts? What is so wrong with challenging hegemony?
An effeminate gay man at UWI walks into the commissary of Chancellor Hall to purchase a few items (Chancellor Hall is notoriously homophobic.) A few men from the hall start heckling in response to his gender identity, and he responds, “Yes mi a fish, come fry mi!” The storyteller was sure to offer a demonstration of the gay man’s presumptuous effeminacy, hands and hips swaying freely, while arguing that his behavior was inappropriate. Such a brazen response might incite a mob to violence in Half-Way-Tree, but at UWI, which provides a safer environment for gay men with its anti-harassment policies, why was he supposed to walk away?
This weekend, I reread a journal article by Lawson Williams*, which articulates well my own hypothesis regarding the rejection of change-activism. I imagine it is this same hypothesis that explains the ardent criticism of ‘flaming queens’ whose behavior and presentation aggressively challenge Jamaican gender norms.
Extracts from Homophobia and Gay Rights Activism in Jamaica, Lawson Williams (2000)
It is a common understanding that the issue of gayness must never enter the ‘national arena’ or at least not in any way that gives the issue any political legitimacy. It must always be dealt with conjecturally or in abstraction, but never in any tangible form. The idea of activism to focus on homosexual issues is anathema to the Jamaican community. It unsettles the learned response of gay people who perceive any visibility as doing violence to the ‘balance’ that exists with the straight community.
J-flag Logo
“As long as there are no obvious signs of homosexuality, a gay person is allowed to function as an otherwise productive member of society. It doesn’t matter if making oneself invisible sexually requires lying or subterfuge.” There is this an unwillingness among some gays to identify with anything that implicates them any further than a personal engagement in a private gay sexual encounter. Their sexuality is never seen in its full political context where it is understood, there is a decided unwillingness to engage in change-activism. Indifference to the gay community and any semblance of gay political activism is seen as critical to survival in Jamaica.
The philosophical framework used to support this position is the public versus private debate. The issue of sexual orientation, it is argued by many straight and gay people, is purely a private matter and has no place in the public domain of one’s life. This analysis accommodates the mental gymnastics necessary to justify abstaining from agitating for changes in or removal of obtrusive and outdated laws that prohibit homosexual sexual expression, or to challenge prevailing attitudes towards homosexuality fuelled by the church and other sources of homophobia.
Michelangelo Signorile, in his seminal work Queer in America, argues that the notion of gayness as a private issue is a concession to the view that homosexuality is not of comparable standing to heterosexuality. If there is casual reference to one’s heterosexuality in everyday activities, then the same should hold for homosexuality. The failure to do so by both straight and gay people perpetuates the continued pathologizing of gayness.
If as we’ve been saying all along, being gay is not about sex acts or about what we do in our bedrooms but is a larger matter regarding identity and culture and community then how can the fact of a person being gay be private when being straight isn’t?
Gayness is not generally seen as a human rights issue, and where it is, it is felt that it runs secondary to issues such as violence and the underperformance of the economy. The tendency to deem gay rights as secondary to other more compelling issues discloses a lack of understanding of the interconnection of rights. The factors that construct a homophobic society are the same ones that create violence in general. The inability to treat civilly with differences and manage our attitudes of effusive opposition gives rise to violence as much as it secures the continuation of homophobia or even violent homophobia.
The failure to validate persons in their difference and treat them with respect affects self-esteem and thus productivity on the job. If the quality of human resources is crucial to productivity, then clearly a diminution in value of gay employees is inimical to production. The failure to protect gay people from a hostile working environment, both physically and emotionally, also affects morale on the job and, ultimately, the quality of the human capital. The fear of being found out and losing one’s job as a gay person is one issue that creates emotional and behavioral complexities that are unnecessary and does damage to the productive process. For these reasons, social engineering is important to effect the necessary behavioral adjustment towards homosexuality. There is need for the legal and social framework to adjust to accommodate gay people as a legitimate constituency in the society. Additionally, gay people themselves myst be proactive in making their concerns heard and understood. They must set their own agenda for self-improvement. The issues must not only be addressed on a personal level, but as a gay community. Only then can there be acceptance of gay voices as credible.
*pseudonym
Reference:
Williams, Lawson (pseudonym). “Homophobia and Gay Rights Activism in Jamaica,” Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism. Issue 7 (2000)
