Glenda Simms, Contributor
THE ONGOING controversy about the desired role of homosexuals within the Anglican Church family is really about the male-dominated hierarchy of the church coming to grips with the sexual prerogatives of men.
A close examination of the ongoing debate will reveal that it is the men who are ultimately responsible for deciding how to accommodate or reject behaviours that they have always been aware of. It is no secret that all the major churches within the Christian family have always turned a blind eye to the presence of gay priests and pastors. Some churches have been found guilty of protecting even those men who used their revered position to abuse choir boys and other young men who come under their influence.
In a real sense, the "homosexual debate" is not about women and their sexuality, even though homosexual women will no doubt reap any benefit that might accrue from the openness to same sex marriages in countries such as Canada.
Women are always and will always be a "side show" in any discussion on homosexuality, because women's sexuality has been defined and controlled within the general framework of patriarchal societies. So to a great extent, gay women are not seen in the same way as gay men. This is because women's sexuality is linked to the overall marginalised position of women in the social, economic and political spheres in all societies. Because women remain relatively powerless, their attempts to express their sexual and reproductive rights are either devalued or blocked by the "gatekeepers" of the patriarchal legacy.
Let us be real, lesbians are rarely taken seriously in any society. While it is true that some of them are very public in some first world countries, they rarely, as a group, have the economic clout to influence the politics of any country. Their position is starkly in contrast with the powerful gay constituencies of countries such as Canada and the United States of America.
PROGRESS UNDER PRESIDENT BUSH
A case in point is the reported influence of vocal gay Republicans on the Bush administration. In the June 1, 2003 edition of the New York Times, writer Sheryl Gay Stolberg described the strategies to influence the White House by the Log Cabin Republicans, a political advocacy group of gay men and lesbians. According to Stolberg, this group boarded buses in their Washington neighbourhood and went to the White House. In her words, "to gay Republicans, the visit symbolised their progress under President Bush".
Such progress might not be as dramatic as the gay lobby would like, nevertheless Stolberg reports that President Bush is willing to include all groups with whom he can find common ground on issues of national importance. One of Mr. Bush's spokesmen is reported to have summed up the President's approach as a strong belief "that one of the roles of the leader is to bring people together around shared priorities".
Like the situation in most western societies, the debate on homosexuality in Jamaica has been largely a phallocentric debate. While it is true that there have been a few reported interviews with lesbians by writers in the local newspapers, the discussions on the status of homosexuality both within the church and in the wider society are reflective of the point of view of men (both gay and straight).
While it is known that some women are homosexuals, very few Jamaicans take them seriously or see them as a threat to the social, political or economic realities of the society. In fact, there is a general belief that lesbians are to be pitied because they are either too ugly or too frustrated to be attractive to men. In fact, there are many (men as well as women) who voice openly that what these lesbians need is a "good man" to cure them of "their problem". Afterall, everybody knows that "two pan head caan shet".
What all women need to keep in mind is the realisation that these attitudes and beliefs are directly linked to the scant regard in which all women are held in all societies. Women's sexual prerogatives are circumscribed by the entire range of systemic barriers that still obtain in even the most progressive and enlightened of cultures.
As Corin Benninger-Budel stated in the 2000 report of the World Organisation Against Torture - "inequality in the enjoyment of rights of women throughout the world is deeply embedded in tradition, history and culture, including religious attitudes".
Now that there is an open debate on human "sexualities" women must consciously bear in mind the backdrop of all such deliberations. Sexuality has been and continues to be one of the key sites of women's oppression and marginalisation. A wide cross section of groups, including fundamentalists and conservatives in all major religions, hold on to the idea that women's sexuality has to be the battleground in their struggle to establish 'purer' social norms and ethics.
To come to grips with this need to control women's sexuality, everyone has to have a full understanding of the complex of socio-cultural values that have been carefully adopted and designed to 'keep women in their place' in every society, and in all cultures.
SEXUAL RESTRICTION
At this juncture, women need to be reminded that the definition and restriction of their sexuality starts very early in childhood. In fact, in some cultures where there is a preference for boys and their sexual prerogatives, the female foetus is routinely aborted. China and India provide examples of this segment of the continuum of repression. In other societies, where the girl child is accorded the privilege of "being born", there is a whole range of ways designed to "whip her into shape" so that her sexuality can be controlled by the church and by the state.
In a most clearly articulated discussion on the Burden of Childhood, writer Neena Sohoni reminds us of some of the more drastic measures that have been applied to women and girls, at different points in history. She pointed to foot binding in China, a practice which was not outlawed until 1911. This practice restricted a woman's movement and literally crippled her, yet, the "myth perpetuated was that the resultant hobbled gait so tightened the muscles in the genital region that sleeping with a woman with bound feet was like sleeping with a virgin".
Interestingly, Sohoni also pointed out that upper class Chinese women's feet were more tightly bound than those of their working class and poor sisters. Obviously, the sexuality of poor and working class women had to be in line with their prescribed role - the 'work horses' of the society, not the sex symbols.
Another extreme form of the restriction of female sexuality is the horrendous events referred to as female genital mutilation (FGM). The wide spectrum of procedures that are defined as FGM demonstrates that the sole intention of these practices is to rob and restrict the authentic sexual expression of women and girls. That is why the clitoris is either fully or partially removed in this most repressive practice.
All of these seemingly bizarre manifestations of male dominated systems lead us to realise that women's sexuality is a major frontier for the justification of all forms of violence against women and girls. This was summed up succinctly by Gloria Steinem in her forward to Eve Ensler's book, The Vagina Monologues. Steinem noted that "the last three decades of feminism were marked by a deep anger as the truth of violence against the female body was revealed, whether it took the form of rape, childhood sexual abuse, anti-lesbian violence, physical abuse of women, sexual harassment, terrorism against reproductive freedom, or the international crime of female genital mutilation".
Steinem puts all the horrors against women within the framework of the need to restrict women's sexual potential. She reminds us that even well educated women, who were exposed to the science and biology of human reproduction, hardly wrote or spoke about the unique potential of the clitoris. It took Steinem herself years, before she learnt that "females possess the only organ in the human body with no function other than to feel pleasure".
It is this knowledge which poses the greatest threat to patriarchy. It is this knowledge that sets the stage for all the practices that have been devised to restrict, distort and marginalise the sexuality of the female.
These global issues impact on all women, but in Jamaica women must also take into the equation the fact that the sexuality of black women has been textured by popular views of which women are the "most desirable", "the sexiest" or the "designer wife type".
Verene Shepherd in Women in Caribbean History described the negative views about black women's physical appearance during the period of slavery. She argued that "white Europeans or Caucasian standards of beauty were considered superior to African and Caribbean standards of beauty - the prettiest black woman was considered 'ugly' because her skin tone was not brown or light and she did not have long straight hair".
SEXUAL APPEAL
These ideas have obviously outlived the days of slavery and today in contemporary Jamaican society, a wide cross section of black women seek to enhance their sexual appeal by wearing yards of "other people's hair" and by taking extraordinary and life threatening measures to lighten their black skins. Over and above these social scars, far too many black women are acting out their repressed sexuality by over-exaggerating their "sexual prowess" to prove that they should be seen as desirable in the crass market place where sex has become the cheapest of commodities.
Yes we live in a globalised world in which we are able to celebrate the magnificent strides that women have made over the past 50 years. However, we need always to remember the power of the "global brotherhood" which will always find new ways of defining and limiting women's sexual prerogatives.
Instead of falling in the trap of the further 'devaluation of self' women need to understand why universally, in all societies and religions, female sexuality poses such a threat to the underpinnings of patriarchal systems.
In the process of trying to find answers to these complex questions, women must keep seeking to find their reason for being, outside of the primacy of the sexual - a primacy determined by a "universal rush of testosterone".
Dr. Glenda P. Simms is the executive director of the Bureau of Women's Affairs.
