Jamaica and Homophobia: a ship

Jamaica’s known for a lot of things. Lovely beaches, Bob Marley, one of the most vibrant twitter communities, wet t-shirts, great cuisine, the fastest taxis, the wildest parties and the funniest DJs, just to name a few. Our vices are just as colourful and range from a ridiculously high crime rate to an unshakable ‘informa fi dead mentality’ and the big one, homophobia. Jamaicans, for the most part, accept all our vices. Some might even say we laud them in the typical Jamaican spirit of “tekking bad tings mek joke.”

Homophobia is one of these vices. Jamaicans will sip beer, play dominoes and make idle chat and bawdy jokes about any other sin; tekking people man, brukking anada man foot, scamming, scaling walls to steal etc etc. The lyrics that permeate our musical genres include light, heart healthy commentary on topics ranging from cheating, political corruption and even murder. Homophobia has yet to reach this level of prestige. Homophobia is one of those big people tings that Jamaicans don’t take for joke.

I knew this about my country long before I even knew that serving fried chicken without curry gravy and soup without dumplings were sins and downright disrespectful. However, the extent to which Jamaica was homophobic hit me square across the face when I spent about 8 months in France last year and realized just how unbothered people could be by other people’s sexual preferences, body art and personal lives. I remember being amazed at walking into the tourism office of a town I visited and seeing a woman with tattoos and piercings snaking across her skin in a mural of artistic brilliance. This wouldn’t run in Jamaica because somebody would request to speak to the manager or somebody would call TVJ. Unheard of. In a country where skirts were measured in some all girls schools and wearing a basic knob in your earlobe was against the school rules, allowing somebody with body art to be a front desk worker was an audacious move.

Don’t be mistaken, if I had to choose between Jamaica and France, I’d choose Jamaica faster than a loader man can say “Papine-Liguanea-Sovereign” but there were so many things about life there that I preferred to Jamaica.

To be frank, there were a lot of things I didn’t like about France. I can recall ranting and bristling in all the languages I speak about the many French things that irked me.
The blatant racism for example, but as someone once said to me, “In which European country will I really escape institutionalized racism?”
I wouldn’t say I’m jaded when it comes to France’s vices, but I’ve definitely given up on the dream that racism and islamophia in a country I grew to love so much would just go away.

To focus more on the positive, one of the things I loved the most about France was the innate ability of the French to mind their business. It was magic. I walked around sometimes feeling like everybody had their personal invisibility cloaks. Did these people drink more water than anybody else? How dem dweet?

Coming from a country where the idea of a private life is sometimes a myth, I was in awe. I grew up in a small half-way uptown community in rural St. Andrew and even though I lived on the outskirts of the community I went to primary school in, everybody knew me and my parents. Even though I heeded my parents’ warnings and didn’t stop to loiter on the street, everybody knew which grade I was in and whose grandchild I was.
Where I come from, neighbours knew just about everything about their neighbours’ lives. It was all very communal.

There was seemingly a blood-thirst for the details of other people’s lives and sometimes I got the impression that Jamaicans, (I am at times guilty of this) are overly inquisitive about the details of people’s lives especially the details about the going ons that we do not agree with or support.

Anyways, I’m rambling, back to the topic of homophobia.

Although heterosexual, I’ve never been able to relate to the intolerance so many of my other straight friends had against persons who didn’t tick ‘heterosexual’ on online forms. Even back when my Christian faith was a strong and spirited shankle-dipper, I cannot recall ever using my religion to further advance homophobia.
France, was amazing because of the lack of this. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that homophobia didn’t exist in the deep dark corners of France, but it definitely did not overpower the narrative or deserve a place in every other conversation among young people and old people alike.

I loved that I could sit on the edge of the table in a classroom with teenagers and talk openly about the struggles faced by LGBT people without a student brandishing a Bible verse in rebuke, or fear of the superiors at my lycée (a French nod to what we English speakers call 6th form) clamping down on the content of my lessons.

I loved that Michael* (name not disclosed for what I hope to be obvious reasons) could hold the hand of his boyfriend and walk down the street and not be harassed. Michael was one of my favourite English students. Not only was he genuinely engaged in my lessons, but he made me, and my other flatmates feel welcome in a town that was strange, new and frightening to us. In presenting my country, with its people, culture and beautiful landscapes, I slowly began to feel apprehensive whenever he spoke about visiting here.

This apprehension soon led to embarrassment.

I would recall his concerns in class about wanting to travel to other English speaking countries, namely the United States, to better practice his English, and I knew with an overwhelming sense of dread that although I dearly wanted him to visit the country I was from, he would never be accepted in Jamaica because of his sexual orientation. Many Jamaicans would take one look at his personal style, his piercings and his manner of speaking and instantly lump him into what many Jamaicans consider the lowest of the lowest categories; “battyman”
I personally think the premise for homophobia is idiotic, hence the entire concept falls apart, but far be it from me to tell people, least of all Jamaicans, how to think and how to exclude or degrade. Suck yuh madda is still one my least favourite phrases so I will continue to keep myself to myself. However, I can’t help but wish that we be a little-eensy bit French in this regard and just lie, cheat, fornicate and tief and allow other people to be bitten by their chosen sins in peace. I mean, how hard can it be?