Another world is possible

20Aug08

i may have to say bye to Barbados again soon.

the consumerism-as-development model we’re following (remember “the two cars in every household” dream?) leaves little room for ideas, for people to begin to think crticially about the world in which they live and how they can change it.  “The one graduate in every household” thrust of the University seems to have less to do with teaching people to transgress and more to do with careerism and consumerism.

I’ve just spend a beautiful five days (American Airlines cancelled my flight and cut my time down by half-no apology or explanation)  engaged with people who dare to dream to make a difference in the world, to share ideas, to think critically.  i am in awe of the sheer power of the intellectually stimulating environment.  UWI leaves a lot to be desired in this regard, and it wasn’t always like this.  i feel that we are so concerned about styling and profiling in SUVs and trying to bring a little sex-in-the-city sophistication to Barbados that we are completely oblivious to the world around us.

a small island can really be a big prison…

Filed under: Barbados, caribbean, personal   |  3 Comments

Sweatshops are hot, right?

10Aug08

i would love to eat your pussy all day long

these guys are chauvinist pigs. jasmine. lets get tea if youre on the east coast, unless some other lucky man is already slammin your vag.

From the comments section of the “Hot Girls Make Great Clothes” Ecko Manufacturing Ad Campaign.

It’s thongs-meet-vomit-inducing-street-harassment distasteful. Marketed to women, it features models in bikinis sewing, finishing and loading up jeans for shipment. Because hot girls make great clothes, right?

I wonder what working conditions in ECKO’s sewing plants are really like and just which team of geniuses felt that sexual harassment and objectification appeal to women.

You can read more about it at Jezebel.

Filed under: gender, media, sex   |  5 Comments

Castrating Mr. Harding

29Jul08

“Of course, we will make Mr. Harding gender neutral…” Senator Irene Sandiford-Garner. (I’ll add the full quote tomorrow.)

A little background on Mr. Harding. Crop Over, which now in name only celebrates the end of the sugar cane harvest usually included a burning of Mr. Harding, in effigy or using pyrotechnics, to put a symbolic end to this personification of hard times. Mr. Harding was burnt and hard times were burnt with him. It’s been a while since this part of Crop Over has been observed. Crop Over has since become a commercial six-week rum-binge fest during which even a belch or scream into a microphone passes as “culture”, the culmination of which is the bikini and beads parade which will set you back around $500 if you want to participate in this “community” activity.

The opening statement was made in reference to plans by the National Cultural Foundation to make Mr. Harding a part of the Emancipation Day celebrations which are largely overshadowed by the revelry of Crop Over. So the DLP* senator, unabashedly progressive and gender sensitive, has insisted that Mr. Harding will be castrated so that he can become gender neutral. Whatever that means! This from a party with the worst track record of supporting its female candidates. The DLP might perhaps try to give more of their female politicians a fighting chance at the polls rather than having them run in constituencies where they are bound to lose if they want to be seen as giving a damn about gender equity.

Leave Mr. Harding alone! Well…sure, go ahead and burn him, castrating him first is just overkill! (Not to mention it makes for some very controversial symbolism). I can only imagine just how scared Mudda Sally and the Heartman must be right now!

*DLP- the Democratic Labour Party, the current ruling party

Filed under: Barbados, culture, gender   |  3 Comments

HIV Awareness in the party

26Jul08

I got a ton of condoms on Friday night at the Wadadah Fete (and I still have them) - handed to me by girls working for the National HIV/AIDS Commission- all young, slim and attractive though not dressed in the short shorts that the girls who promote various alcohol brands wear. I didn’t see any men from the HIV/AIDS Commission handing out condoms (male representatives from Durex were there, however, distributing condoms as well, fully clothed and about a good 15 years older than the HIV/AIDS Commission girls).

Well, you know, these girls may very well be volunteers committed to community work who just all happen to be young, slim and pretty and not part of some misguided? behavioural change communications policy.

Yes, I know I’m always critiquing the anti-AIDS messages, doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate the effort. After all, those condoms may very well have saved a life on Wednesday night.

Filed under: Barbados, HIV, education, gender, sex   |  2 Comments

Not just any (body) can be a tourist

20Jul08

My mind goes back to those Guyanese tourists who were refused entry into Barbados during the Crop Over festival last year.

The process of getting a tourist visa to spend two weeks in a Latin American country (which shall remain nameless as i have not yet received the visa and don’t want to jinx things) brought to mind the hypocrisy of much discussion on immigration. Very often citizens of the South complain about exclusionary practices of countries of the North- the long lines to get a visa (Juan Luis Guerra’s Visa Para Un Sueño), the derogatory signs at the embassy entreating applicants to please keep their passports dry, the rising cost of a US visa, the security hassles involved in such travel, the deportations and detentions, the human rights abuses. Less often do you hear of the treatment meted from one developing country to another. (Barbadian Annalee Davis a documentary of the experiences of Guyanese immigrants in the Caribbean which I am yet to see but had received great reviews!)

To cut a very long and meandering story short the lady with whom I spoke at the consulate was unwilling to even share information on the visa application process. She did mention in a dismissive quip that i would need to appear in person at the Consulate in Trinidad to be fingerprinted, to fill out “lot’s of forms” and then she added the piece de resistance, “Do you have a bank account?” You know, coming from this tiny, backward Caribbean island, potential illegal immigrant that I am, I save my few pennies under the flea-infested mattress in my shanty. (When I called again the following day and was able to speak to someone who was willing to listen and was told that I could be issued with a two-week visa without being fingerprinted.)

Not just anybody can be a tourist…

Filed under: Barbados, caribbean   |  5 Comments

What happens in the party

20Jul08

Guy walks up to me, obviously drunk, with a pair of gold stilettos in hand, “These shoes is yours?” I ignore him. He then begins to hit me on my behind with his bandanna. I glare at him and at the SECURITY GUARD who is standing beside us and watching it all. After an insistent and penetrating stare the security guard he asks me if something is wrong. Yuh think? He then tells the drunken stiletto thief to “cool out”. I leave and move over to the main dance floor. Every time I triy to so much as sway to the music some random asshole reeking of that putrid too-much-alcohol, too-little-deodorant smell comes up behind me attempting to “dance”.

The ad may promise “ladies free”, that the fete will be “bursting wid girls” or have illegally used the image of some porn star on the flier- such is the mythic world of marketing but, in the real world, the women who pay their money to have a good time deserve to be able to do so without sexual harassment. I understand completely that these fetes depend on the attendance of women for their success, that the advertising is designed to attract men by promising them women, the men are then expected to drink themselves silly- obviously a greater revenue earner than the $20 cover. Does this mean that I shouldn’t expect that if security sees someone harassing me they should do something about it? It’s about time we had some women-friendly parties.

Filed under: Barbados, angry, culture, gender, personal   |  3 Comments

Gender in Caribbean Politics

09Jul08

Dedicating her first Budget Reply to the women who head families in Barbados, Mottley severely criticised Thompson’s three-hour Budget on Monday, saying it was the poorest she had ever heard in the history of politics in Barbados. Source Nation News

Men’s political participation far outstrips women’s in the Caribbean but we have nonetheless had an impressive (if more by their qualities than by their numbers) share of women leaders.

However, after Opposition Leader of Barbados, Mia Mottley declared her assets at a conservative? 3.5 million the likelihood of Barbados electing, in the future, a Prime Minister of either sex worth say a couple thousand seems to me a more important question than the likelihood of Barbados having a female Prime Minister.

I’m still processing just what the budget, which some people have described as increased taxes on everything but wukking up, will mean for me personally and the country as a whole. But the Opposition Leader’s big up of the matriarchs who “are struggling to make ends meet” rings a little hollow IMHO. Isn’t the use of the archetypal Single Mother, Female Head of Household, Caribbean Woman, Third World Woman a political cliché by now? Well, if this was indeed a karaoke budget, as Mottley called it she delivered a rather awkward and out of tune interpretation of Fantasia’s Baby Mama.

Barbados Free Press, Bajan Dream Project, Living in Barbados and Bajan Global Report have all commented on the budget and the Barbados Underground offers its assessment of the Opposition Leader’s response.

Filed under: Barbados, caribbean, gender   |  12 Comments

Conversations

09Jul08

guy i went to primary school with: i see you all the time but i didn’t think you would remember me
me (thinking) : how could i possibly forget you? you peed in the teacher’s shoes when we were in Infants B!

guy whose name i don’t know: am…so let me ask you a question…in fact don’t bother
me: no, go ahead
guy whose name i don’t know: so…are you a lesbian?
(after he finds out what i’m studying)

Filed under: personal   |  2 Comments

Licks like peas

07Jul08

The Minister of Education in Barbados has called for the end of corporal punishment in schools. Finally! Surprise, surprise everybody’s favourite principal is offering up the jackassinine argument that if not for getting his ass cut as a child he would not have become the fine, upstanding, tape measure wielding enemy of schoolgirls in short skirts that he is today.

Filed under: Barbados, education   |  10 Comments

Caribbean Community

04Jul08

Whenever people mention regional integration they speak of cricket and UWI. As far as cricket goes it just doesn’t mean the same for those born after 1980, not to mention that the not so stellar performance of the team doesn’t give you much to rally around. UWI is celebrating 60 years as each campus becomes more and more insular and standards fall hard and fast.

In the end it’s ordinary people who knit this region together, at the same time connecting it to other regions of the world- people who move for work or love or just because, whose family trees branch out across the islands, Central and South America); not institutions, not the politicians, who if it were up to them would all be quite happy being big fat, parasitic fish in small ponds.

Community remains so hard because we’re still clinging to notions of nation, race and class that really have never served the majority of us and never will.

The Jamaica Observer has an editorial that is more than worth the read and the Barbados Underground and its readers have also been having their say.

Filed under: caribbean   |  0 Comments