Submitted by Terence Blackett
“Pornography is the theory – Rape is the practice”ย โ Robin Morgan
Rape is rape! There are no grey areas. Its checkered history goes back to the African slave trade and the pernicious commodification in slave breeding and forced pregnancy through rape and other misogynistic practices by both white and black males.
In this past week, it has come to my attention of the rape of a very close and dear family member in Barbados, who after an evening workout on the Boardwalk, was making her way home when she was abducted, anesthetized and sexually violated. In the aftermath of that violent incident, the perpetrator then threatened to murder her and her family if she disclosed the incident to the police – pushing her even further down the proverbial rabbit hole.
Surely no woman (red, yellow, black or light) should be a victim of such vituperation from any man โ regardless of subliminal incitement, androstadienone pheromones or how she jiggles her pert, voluptuous backside!
Clearly, some Bajan men have now sunk to new depths of moral and ethical depravity!
In a โtinyโ country like Barbados, covering a mere 166 sq. miles, with a population under 300,000 people; with a 99.8% literacy rate and a social infrastructure that is the envy of the world โ how is it possible that such violent, sexual, predatory crimes are allowed to go unchecked – as serial rapists walk the streets either on bail or purposely stalled into oblivion by a legal system hijacked by shrewd, wicked, evil, corrupt lawyers who know how to play the system?
Moreover, how has the legal system in Barbados been allowed to reach such a state of almost total dilapidation and meltdown? Jurists are clearly out of their depth โ punching above their moral weight, while the subliminal effects of rampant โCORRUPTIONโ appear almost virulent โ to the point of almost dire contagion.
As a result, the quality of โepistemic justiceโ is strained as โLAWYERSโ are nothing more than hogs with their snouts nuzzled in a melliferous trough of monetary largesse โ profiting at the hands of the poor, disadvantaged and those who have been victimized and doubly screwed over.
Are those who are responsible for enacting laws and securing social justice for the weakest of its citizens asleep at the wheel? Has the polarization & destabilization of imported wealth placed the least fortunate in Bajan society in the camp of those of a โlesser Godโ?
So how did we get here as a society? How do we explain this moral rift we find ourselves in – where a major cross-section of our society (mothers, sisters, aunts, wives & girlfriends) cannot feel safe walking the streets or feel comfortable to be alone in the company of men? How do argue this narrative from a perspective that would reach those who believe they are educated and enlightened? How do you โSPINโ this tangled web of deceit, viciousness and evil that would even make any kind of sense?
Social science commentary on this most vicious and cruel of all moral issues regarding male violence and avowed misogynistic views and behaviours purport a broadly ethnomethodological approach – mediated by sociological stylistics in๏ฌuenced to a large degree by what is called discursive psychology that is underpinned by so-called reported crime statistics, with an equally glaring body of unreported discourses and narratives that oftentimes remain lodged in the hubris of silence and emotional distanciation.
As far back as 1949, (17 years before we gained Independence from our Colonial pariah masters), the โSystematic Rapeโ of any people had been considered a โWAR CRIMEโ by the Geneva Conventions! This form of targeted human genocide was euphemized as โETHNIC CLEANSINGโ โ however, its application when it came to the Indigenous Peoples of the world including enslaved Africans everywhere that has been a prominent feature throughout the gruesome 400+ year Serpentine advance of European colonial imperialisation โ endemic with all the ravages experienced by the Black family, tells a squalid tale of puerile victimisation.
Over the years, those who have written the historical record, including the protagonists, propagandists and demagogues have all employed a combination of specious sophistry, white lies and mind-numbing โtricknologyโ, subliminally projecting ALL of their rape-filled Caucasian history onto the Black male. As a result, the epigenesis now plays itself out through the social construction of โlies, damn lies & rock โnโ roll that is reinforced by the wicked, vile images perpetrated by the White moviemakers of HollyWeird who are quick to push โPORNโ down our throats as they objectify the Black woman as nothing more than a โpiece of ARSEโ โ a Jezebel to be ravaged with or with consent.
Rape as a means of social control was explicitly used during the era of the plantocracy system and during the Antebellum period in AmeriKKKa to create a โMULATTOโ buffer zone over Black Africans. The โmulattosโ became the โhouse Negrosโ and were trained to keep the Black Africans in check and compliant with the aims and objectives of the slave owner. This long arm of historicity has reached down even to our time.
In the words of Tim Wise โ โAt the heart of our national dialogue on rape – to the extent we can even be said to have one, in the true sense of what dialogue implies – stands a persistent and rather transparent contempt for women, indeed a hatred so complete as to call into question just how many of us actually accept the idea that women are full human beings at all.โ
Rabbi Harold Sharfman cited that Frenchmen for example, were โwhiteningโ African females for sexual purposes, and by โselective breedingโ, for a myriad of roles, some produced Mulatto types [with] remarkably exquisite facial features, lithe bodies, small hands and feetโ โ an โexoticโ specie of woman to be used as a tool of sexual indulgence, promiscuous pleasure and kinky gratification.
According to the narrative of the time, Thomas Jefferson famously molested his 14-year-old Black captive slave girl named Sally Hemings, forcing her into a long-term relationship with her rapist and producing six children from her as a result as she was a beauty.
In the research work of feminist Erinn Cunniff Gilson entitled: โIntersubjective Vulnerability, Ignorance & Sexual Violenceโ, she argues that: โThis view of vulnerability, relies on racist and classist assumptions in addition to sexist onesโฆโ
Gilson cites Rachel Hallโs (2004:4) work in โIT CAN HAPPEN TO YOUโ arguing that through the reiteration of this particular construction of female vulnerability โ[rape] prevention discourses reinvest white and middle-class women with a sense of preciosityโ and obstructs recognition of the risk non-white and working class women face. This view of vulnerability actually renders an array of people more vulnerable because it buttresses rigid norms for victims (i.e., female, feminine, heterosexual, sexually pure, non-agential, and invested with social worth). Vulnerability, she believes is divvied up along gender lines, construed as a burden women bear and an impairment men avoid, but also a quality that indicates oneโs value, oneโs worthiness of protection…โ
Gilson also believes that โalthough Black men are historically vulnerable to racist allegations of rape and violent reprisals that serve to maintain the white supremacist racial order, perceiving vulnerability in terms of sexual violability and a generalizable weakness works with racist stereotypes (BLACK MEN AS SEXUALLY AGGRESSIVE) to render vulnerability antithetical to Black masculinity. Overall, these beliefs about vulnerability work in conjunction with wilful ignorance of intersubjective vulnerability as a shared conditionโฆโ
The bottom line is this: Bajan women do not appear to be safe and that vulnerability is having toxic repercussions for familiesโ right across this good and pleasant land. Women must be protected from sexual predators. For as long as men continue to treat women as figments of violent sexual objectification โ they will inevitably continue to play out their psychotic sexual fantasies making more vulnerable women notches on their bedpost – as they seek out more and more women to satisfy these lurid sexual urges and desires.
Sadly I must give Erinn Gilsonโs the last words on this epistemic eye-opener, on the rapacious nature of a rape culture both in Barbados and even here in the United Kingdom and across the world (especially in war-torn areas where #ISIS has permeated).
Gilson believes firmly that what is the โcore problem for social justice is the failure of many to understand fully and accurately the particular patterns of vulnerability to sexual violence experienced by those situated in diverse ways. Yet this problem has deeper roots in the repudiation of intersubjective vulnerability: a pervasive unwillingness to be vulnerable in this most fundamental of ways pre-empts understanding of the complexity and depth of vulnerability…โ
For she contends that โone cannot understand othersโ experiences, oneโs responsibility in relation to others, and the limits of oneโs beliefs if one cannot acknowledge that one too shares in a basic openness to the corporeal and social world. Denying inter-subjective vulnerability goes hand in hand with more limited, social functional beliefs about vulnerability. Thus, ignorance of intersubjective vulnerability as a common condition means that one cannot understand how rape often a๏ฌrms and exploits the socially sanctioned gendered image of what vulnerability is and how it is distributedโฆโ
It is undeniable in 2016 that โRape and sexual violence in general are violations of our shared condition of intersubjective vulnerability and constitute attempts to disavow it by reducing vulnerability to a gendered susceptibility to harm. In this way, wilful ignorance of how intersubjective vulnerability is a basic, shared facet of human existence is one of the most deeply rooted sources of common forms of ignorance about rapeโฆโ
Like most decent human beings, I also believe that โat the most basic level, it prevents the kind of openness to altering oneโs views, interests, and dispositions that are required for altering rape culture and dispelling rape myths. Accordingly, the kinds of ignorance that crop up around rape and sexual violence must, I think, be understood in relation to the kinds of ignorance that surround vulnerability in general. If sexual violence is always a matter of vulnerability, then undoing ignorance about sexual violence will entail knowing more about and challenging ignorance about vulnerabilityโ โ period!
Barbados is facing a crisis of deep spiritual confidence. For a country that was once a tour de force of moral, ethical and traditional virtues and values โ we have now descended into a Bottomless Pit of decadent, declining dustbowl of vacuous leaders, mindless liar-politicians and money-grabbing, slight-of-hand lawyers who can be compared to the souls of dead men on board a lifeless ship in Samuel Taylor Coleridgeโs โRime of the Ancient Marinerโ.
Is there a common, national will to change course? Or will there be a Titanic implosion on the rocks civil strife and unending chaos? We must all collectively decide!
May God help this once great nation!
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