Martin S. Harle, ContributorDURING 1988 I spent three months covering Jamaica's recovery after Hurricane Gilbert's devastation, as a science and medicine correspondent. The assignment took me to many rural areas across the west, north, and east of the island.
In many areas a lone white man on a trail bike armed with a chainsaw was apparently an unusual sight. Reactions from local folk were varied, but most often after money, sex was the focus (apart from interest in the chainsaw!). Women would sell it, men constantly referred to sex more often even than Gilbert's catastrophic effect, but over and again one theme emerged on encountering strangers 'battyism'. Never having laid eyes on me before, males would call 'battyman' as I passed, and even hassle me. Travelling with my wife reduced the battyman accusations, but she was assumed to be a whore. Their stance was often anti-social and threatening. Was I encountering endemic homophobia? I wondered. In many instances, it could be better described as pathological hatred.
RESEARCH
Since about 10 per cent of all populations and both genders are born homosexual, it's no surprise I've encountered many in the course of socialising and my duties. I've been solicited by male homosexuals, but never in a hostile way. On my refusal to form a sexual liaison, I've never encountered resentment or coercion from a homosexual male. In fact, the reverse was more often the case. Working 11 years on ocean-going vessels, where same-sex relationships are reputed to be rampant, I never encountered problems with male homosexuality, though I became interested in it as a social phenomenon. Later, I would become interested in psychiatrist Dr. Kurt Freund's lengthy research at Toronto's Clarke Institute of Psychiatry. Freund had spent more than three decades studying human sexuality, and had found 'in the absence of the preferred sex, people will have sexual relations with their non-preferred sex'. In other words, heterosexuals might indulge in homosexual behaviour, and homosexuals in heterosexual activity under certain circumstances. This applies to males and females and was my experience at sea and, later, in prisons.
Then there was another psychiatrist fascinated in human sexual orientation. I filed copy about him more than 30 years ago, and can't remember his name, so I'll call him 'Professor Schmidt'. A researcher at Humbolt University, Schmidt ran a psychiatric consultancy practice in East Berlin during the 1960s. He noticed a bulge in the number of male homosexuals as his patients were all about the same age, and wondered why. His study involved interviewing the mens' mothers and his questionnaire endeavoured to find out what the mother was doing during pregnancy. Schmidt suspected something was going on before birth, and he was right. Plotting dates and war records, Schmidt found all his patient's mothers had suffered stress during Allied air raids in the latter years of the war. Not only that, he found the air-raid stress coincided with the third to fourth month of the mother's pregnancy. The phenomenon Schmidt was exploring is 'neural imprinting', when a mother's body chemicals affect a foetus' brain development in the womb. But which body chemical was it? The main suspect was adrenalin, produced by adrenal glands. Active in mediating behaviour in the 'fight/flight' response, adrenalin also affects long-term, future behaviour of the unborn during pregnancy.
CROSS-REFERENCED
Schmidt had correlated times and locations of Allied air raids on German cities, and cross-referenced them with age of the foetus at time of the raids. His findings were controversial. They meant a person was born homosexual, not socialised into sexual orientation. And perhaps surprisingly, he later uncovered similar findings when he looked at female homosexuality (lesbianism).
Two decades later, researchers at the University of Minnesota, in Duluth, duplicated his findings. Meanwhile, in the early '60s male homosexuality was illegal in many jurisdictions. Female homosexuality has never been illegal in any global jurisdiction. (If any reader can produce evidence it has, please e-mail me). Perhaps male sexuality is perceived as more threatening than that of the female. Maybe it's because some men are turned on by the thought of women having sex together. There's a big market for this male voyeurism, and many sex shows and pornography exploit heterosexual-male fascination for displays of female homosexuality.
Jamaican homophobia starts young. I've heard primary-school kids insulting others with many epithets, but for males 'battyman' or 'chichi-man' is the most common. In 2002, I was renovating a tractor in rural Hanover. The kids had just got out of school, and name-calling was in full swing. One boy was being set upon by others, while the girls looked on, laughing. The victim had stones flung at him, and his schoolbag vandalised. I intervened.
'MI NUH KNOW'
Having punctuated the violence I asked the main perpetrator why he was calling the other boy a battyman. "Mi nuh know," he said, giggling and shrugging his shoulders. "What is a battyman?" I asked. More giggles, and head shaking. Within moments the mother of the prime offender heard the magic word, battyman, and assumed her son was referring to me. Before continuing the tractor job, I suffered a tantrum of the mother's rage as she called me a battyman. The encounter with this complete stranger could all too easily have become violent. It was a stark reminder of what male homosexuals in Jamaica must endure in a blurr of ignorance about human sexuality.
So good luck to all you 10 per cent of Jamaicans who are gay. You need it. As my wife would say: "Sorry for your condition." It's not a pretty picture, and your church won't help. Christian churches, particularly American fundamentalists, have outspokenly decried male homosexuality. In keeping with societies at large, female homosexuality has been overlooked.
At the same time pre-adolescent females are more often sexually violated by heterosexual males often a family member, or friend than are young boys by male homosexuals. Our human sexuality is a shared social and biological phenomenon. It evolved over several million years. It can evoke profound, ancient emotions, often not fully understand, and lead to procreation many are unprepared for. For our own well-being, social harmony, and minimisation of conflict, it is therefore incumbent on Jamaican society to educate its members on known biology of the human sexual condition, socio-economic and health implications of sexual behaviour, and lead us out of that confining 'Garden of Eden'.
Martin S. Harle is a science and medicine correspondent who may be contacted at mharle6450@aol.com.
