Kwame Dawes and John Maxwell
The rape and murder of six-year-old Shanieka Anderson who went missing during a visit to the Coronation Market, downtown Kingston, with her mother has provoked disgust and outrage. For some women the discussion has stirred up memories of their own rape and sexual molestation. We heard the story of one woman who was sexually molested from early childhood until well into her teens. She now drives home to her daughters that as girls they will never be happy and that they should expect a life of abuse.
With this, and the many stories of rape; incest; sexual harassment on the job; domestic abuse; female genital mutilation, virginity testing, and the buying and selling of women and girls in some parts of the world; we put this question to a number of Jamaicans from various sectors: Are women doomed to a life of unhappiness and abuse just because of their gender? Below are their responses.
KWAME DAWES
AS LONG as there are people who are vulnerable in this world, whether the vulnerability is caused by warped social norms, economic deprivation, physical weakness, racial bias or political oppression, the weak will be preyed upon by the strong.
It is not that women are weak, per se, but when they live in societies that disempower them, when they live in a culture that privileges male dominance, then they become the weaker --the more vulnerable -- and they become subject to the abuse of those with power. It is more than sickness that allows men to abuse little girls, it is perversion, it is a certain level of cruelty that can often be explained by the permission granted such people to act as they do.
Girls should not be put in that position of vulnerability. Men should never be allowed to feel comfortable doing such things to girls.
Without the pressure of society to impose its invasive will on the way that people act privately, people will attempt to get away with what they can. Ironically, it is the invasiveness of collective consciousness and the pressure of shame in the village that has held many communities together and free from the horrors of such abuse. When that kind of pressure is removed by the secrecy of the nuclear family life, abuse is possible.
NUCLEAR FAMILY
I am not saying that the nuclear family is a source of these problems, but the implicit privacy of the nuclear family project leads to all kinds of headaches. The extended family and the communal family have been stop gaps in the past, but the weak and the vulnerable will be attacked always. Only society can protect us.
Kwame Dawes is a Distinguished Poet In Residence, Louise Fry Scudder Professor of Liberal Arts Director of the SC Poetry Initiative, Department of English. Last October he also received the Silver Musgrave Medal for Literature from the Institute of Jamaica.
JOHN MAXWELL
The way women are treated in Jamaica is derived from 1: Our inability to get rid of the slave culture;
2: The failure of successive governments to enhance family life through community development and education.
My feeling is that in a society in which all workers are marginalised, particularly men, the men are going to take out their frustrations on women. In a society which still believes in the slavish punishment by violence, both women and men abuse the weakest in the society and that cruelty is transmitted throughout the generations.
