Peter Espeut
'GENDER STUDIES' is not a euphemism for 'Women's Studies' or 'Feminism', as some would have us believe. 'Masculine' is a gender too! Men's issues are seriously under-researched and under-discussed, mostly because the feminists have captured the 'gender agenda'.
Jamaica is suffering a crisis in masculinity, and we don't talk about it enough. It is
particularly insidious; so many of us are
seriously affected by it, and we don't even know. The symptoms of the crisis are so
damaging to our society and to many
individuals, that I believe we are dealing with a pathology that needs serious treatment.
Who is a man a real man? How would we recognise a real man if we saw him? What is genuinely masculine behaviour? Where do men learn how to be masculine?
Primarily men are taught that they must 'bring home the bacon' (I suppose in Jamaica the expression should be to 'bring home the jerk chicken'). The man is supposed to be the head of the house, the provider, the one who goes out into the world to work to support the family he heads. And before he has a family, a man must take a woman out and entertain her at his expense.
The most desirable men are the ones with money, a flashy car, and trendy clothes; and nowadays, I suppose, 'bling'. I am not here going into a discussion of who has defined masculinity, and in whose interest the system works; that will be for another day. The fact is that men have been brought up in this mould, and too many have bought into it to their detriment.
In an economy (like ours) with a large lower class and high unemployment, many men cannot 'bring home the jerk chicken', and he is made to feel less than a man. As the folk song says, inter alia: "When the money nuff, dem call him sweetie pie; but when the money no nuff, dem call him dutty bwoy." Men who cannot earn enough to support their women have been chased out of the house. For the man, this represents a crisis in his self-image, an identity crisis. Am I a man or a 'bwoy'?
ATTRACTION TO POWER
To add to the crisis, men are expected to wield power, and women are attracted to men with power (policemen, soldiers, politicians). In post-slave societies like ours where power is the prerogative of a few, the poor are the
powerless, and powerless men might well be led to question their identity as men.
What makes the situation more complicated is that illiteracy and educational underachievement are higher among males, for reasons that are well known. The Jamaican educational
system benefits girls more than boys. Most female teachers sit the boys at the back of the class, and give more attention to the girls; and in any case, boys develop conceptually much more slowly than girls, who have a biological advantage at age 11-12 when the promotional examination for high school is offered; and on top of that, there are 40 per cent more places at high school for girls than for boys (beginning with the fact that there are 14
single-sex high schools for girls and only seven for boys). And so these males, marginalised by the education system, will find it difficult to find a woman who wants to pair with them. The dysfunctionality of Jamaica's education system is seen not only in our weak economy but also in our weak family structure.
And so Jamaican society offers many
challenges to the masculinity of our men, and some respond more positively than others. Some men realise how they have been
disadvantaged, and find the wherewithal and the drive to continue their education after school by working day and night, and their
success rubs off on the whole society. Others give up on education, and their lives can go on one of several directions: they can hang out idling on the street corners (probably the most benign of the options); they can turn to crime (to get money, so to get the girls); or finding the business of finding a woman too
challenging, they might look elsewhere.
Yes, Jamaica is in the throes of a masculinity crisis.
(Continued next week).
Peter Espeut is a sociologist and is
executive director of an environment and development NGO.
