Postcolonial Constructions of Masculinity and Violence Against LGBT in Jamaica

Jesse Keating

PL 450: Seminar on Violence

May 11, 2017

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Post-colonized constructions of masculinity in Jamaica, enabled frameworks of pervasive

heteronormativity that in turn justified extreme measures of violence toward LGBT Jamaicans.

The colonization of Jamaica by the British can be considered as an act of violence against the

physical and mental capacities of the Jamaican people. Despite decolonization led by the

Jamaican people, a failure to eliminate all forms violence came to be. Western moral and ethical

norms sublimated into violence towards other Jamaicans that did not fit in the strict confines of a

newly minted masculinity. To detail this sublimation of violence, and the embodiment of

violence, I will draw upon Frantz Fanons Concerning Violence. In addition, I will turn to the

work of Maziki Thames and Ashley Currier to show how the embodiment of strict roles of

masculinity has produced a notion of citizenship that both excludes LGBT, and fails to recognize

violence towards LGBT individuals as proper acts of violence.

Fanon

Frantz Fanons chapter Concerning Violence presents the argument that decolonization

is a violent phenomenon that replaces one species of men by another. This substitution is

considered total and absolute, resulting in a cultural change in the social structure due to the

embodiment of utter violence. According to Fanon, this phenomenological experience can be

better analyzed through the past instances of violence that led to movements of disorder for

decolonization. Decolonization as we know, is a historical process: . . it cannot be understood, it

cannot be intelligible nor clear to itself except in the exact measure that we can discern the

movement which gave it historical form and context (Fanon, 36). Thus, it is crucial to analyze

parties that helped shape the context for the implementation of total disorder, decolonization.

In addition, Fanon argues that the new nation resulting from colonialism should be

concerned with redistribution of wealth, rather than accepting new forms of imperialist relations
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as a means of assistance in overcoming challenges of poverty, starvation and government

implementation (Fanon 95). Applying this warning cautiously, Fanon offers insight into how the

failure for total decolonization in Jamaica, led to the formation of postcolonial constructions of

masculinity as a weapon of violence against LGBT Jamaicans.

Jamaicas Colonial History of Violence

Jamaicas history of colonialism and movement for decolonization cannot be simply

compared to other decolonization movements from around the globe. In the Caribbean, under

British colonial rule, Jamaica experienced unique conditions in which gave growth for

opposition, with the goal of reclaiming freedom and personhood. The island once colonized by

the Spanish, then formerly handed over to the British, due to the Treaty of Madrid in 1670,

became a key producer of sugarcane through the implementation of slave labored plantations

through the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries. Before the abolition of

slavery in the early nineteenth century, the British imported 300,000 slaves to Jamaica. Many

slave families that were imported to Jamaica, were broken up, and individuals were forced to

take on new names of the British Empire, as well as to go through a violent process of

seasoning.

Seasoning was the process in which the British would break the will and capacity of the

slaves, and in the process, make them subservient and passive. Along with this came the two to

three years process in which the British would ready the slave mentally and physically to endure

the living conditions of plantation slavery (E2BN 2009). This relationship between the plantation

owner and the slave is best defined by his terms of the settler and the native. These two parties

symbolize the colonial world; two distinct groups that live in drastically different worlds

characterized by racial apartheid and economic imbalance (Fanon 40). This violent surveillance
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of the plantation owner is driven by the implementation of detailing the native as insensible to

ethics, an enemy to values, but most importantly characterized as an absolute evil (Fanon 41).

This violent surveillance sets out to enforce the absolution of depriving the natives relation to

dignity; to keep into power the uncontested reality of slavery, starvation and brutal violence.

Constant whippings and lashings would shape the mental capacity of the slaves perception of

self to form an unquestioned obedience to the plantation owners authority.

This undoing of the slave relates to Fanons assertion that breaking the will of the slave

achieved unquestioned acceptance of the supremacy of white mans values. Through the

enforcement of Western culture, the settler aims to alter the savage characteristic of the native to

the ideal Eurocentric slave, In the colonial context the settler only ends his work of breaking in

the native when the latter admits loudly and intelligibly the supremacy of the white mans

values (Fanon, 43). The British implemented this seasoning process as method of physical and

mental violence, significantly damaging the slaves capacity to comprehend the conditions

he/she lives in. This seasoning in the native develops an anger instilled, that tread close to

upheaval and violence towards the oppressive settler.

The islands economy was predicated on the production of sugarcane deriving from the

intense labor of slaves on the sugar cane plantations. The working conditions on these sugar cane

plantations have been best described as exhaustive and deathly. A plantation slave would yield

up to six metric tons of crop a day, by working shifts of sixteen to eighteen hours (Meditz &

Hanratty, 1987). Slaves were burnt, strangled and worked to deathly levels of exhaustion. Many

of the slaves lived an average of seven to nine years on the plantation (E2BN 2009). In addition

to beatings, lashings and exhaustion, slaves also endured another form of horrific treatment,

sexual exploitation.
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On the Jamaican plantation, the British held hypersexualized beliefs about their African

slaves. Plantation owners viewed the plantation as a more sexually liberating place then back

home in Britain. What commonly occurred was, . . to engage in sexual exploitation with, and

the sexual exploitation of, Jamaican slaves. (J. Lovell, 88, 2016). This sexual exploitation

involved same-sex relations between plantation owners and their slaves. What resulted from this

prevalence of sexual exploitation of same-sex relations, was a newly conceptualized definition of

masculinity and same-sex relations by the slaves.

The new perception held by the slaves reflected British Christian doctrine of sexual

respectability and promises of salvation (J. Lovell, 89, 2016). Due to the Consolidated Slave Act,

the British crown required that plantation owners to build chapels to instruct the enslaved

Africans in religion (Charles, 8, 2011). The embodiment of these Christian doctrines and British

laws, developed a superiority complex that served as a way of differentiating themselves from

the sexually exploitative British by intensely identifying with moral sexual respectability. One

can assert that experience of sexual exploitation created a necessity for African Jamaicans to

regain their sense of dignity and preserve their stake in masculinity. This reconceptualization as a

passive method of opposition, would later inspire movements for decolonization (Charles, 9,

2011).

Decolonization

Jamaicas movements for decolonization were not as violent as some of the other

movements that fought back against British colonial rule. Jamaicas path to decolonization and

independence has been critiqued by some West Indies scholars like Louis Lindsey as,

..symbolic, rather than substantive, based on the nationalist leaderships desire to install

themselves in the colonizers place rather than transform the society (Thame, 75, 2011). The
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British instituted a middle class in Jamaica during the nineteenth century that was predicated on

racial status. Middle class membership required an individual to be of white and black ancestry,

also referred to as Brown (Smith 1990). These people served as the upholders of colonial

values and ethics that the colonizers forcibly seasoned in the Jamaican culture. The Brown

class functioned as the intellectual natives, who were more concerned with preserving their

ownership of land and sought out assimilation as a method of decolonization. According to

Fanon, the native intellectual does not speak for the immoral native, but rather explains to the

peasant native methods of overthrowing the oppressor in terms of overstressing details, that

neglect the real object of the struggle being colonialism. The intellectual native has ascertained

the poverty and extreme measures of violence that the peasant native endures every day.

Arguments of decolonization made by the intellectual native are predicated on colonial

ideals of self-determination, the rights of man to freedom, and the preservation of their power

(Fanon 59). Therefore, the unincluded lower class of Jamaicans became the revolutionary class

that enacts counter violence against the settler, in route for decolonization and national identity.

Violence is pursued by the native to seek out inclusivity and nationalistic identity. This counter

violence acts as a cleansing force that undoes his/her inferiority, despair and restores self-respect

(Fanon 94). The intellectual natives in Jamaica began to mirror the implementation of oppression

they embodied, and began to slowly take the place of the oppressor.

After slaves were emancipated, not decolonized under the British crown, in 1838, the

intellectual Brown class started to implement buggery laws that mirrored British law (Charles

2011). Buggery laws sought out to uphold heteronormative perspectives of sexual relationships

that were developed during plantation life. Men who were caught having sex with other men

were found guilty and sentenced to prison or even death. Heteronormativity became a defining
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characteristic of the model Jamaican who wanted absolute independence from the British. Other

early resistance movements like the Maroons, who used counter violence as a method of

decolonization; did not successfully cleanse the Jamaican culture of all oppressive influences of

the British. The Maroons fought in preservation of land rights, but not for total independence

from colonial rule. The Brown class ended up prevailing in leading the movement for

independence from the British through the implementation of two political parties, the Peoples

National Party and Jamaican Labour Party.

Forming political parties to ensure independence, according to Fanon, is not a successful

method of decolonization. The parties mirrored the British system of law, and did not aim to act

violently to ensure Jamaica Independence. Rather, these parties took the Western ideals of

democracy, equality and nonviolence to gain visibility in the eyes of the colonial oppressor.

Jamaica gained independence in 1962, through the United Kingdom parliament passing the

Jamaica Independence Act. What developed from this incomplete movement for decolonization

was embodiment of strict roles of masculinity and heteronormativity, which produced a notion of

citizenship that both excludes LGBT, and fails to recognize violence towards LGBT individuals

as proper acts of violence. To analyze this formation of citizenship further, I will turn to the

works of Maziki Thames and Ashley Currier.

Thames and Currier

Maziki Thames article Reading Violence and Postcolonial Decolonization through

Fanon: The Case of Jamaica, provides excellent analysis into how colonial Jamaican citizenship

traits of patriarchy and masculinity became the defining traits of a new nationalism that in turn

created citizenship in decolonized Jamaica. Thames provides key perspectives from different

Caribbean scholars that analyzed how this citizenship came to be in the Caribbean, while
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applying this analysis through a synthesis of Fanons work and historical happenings in Jamaica.

Thames provides an important framework in which one can make the argument for post-

colonial citizenship being productive in inciting violence towards LGBT in Jamaica.

Ashley Curriers article The Aftermath of Decolonization: Gender and Sexual Dissidence

in Post Independence Namibia, presents Namibia as an example in where nation building and the

development of a Namibian citizenship came into power through homophobia. Currier argues

that in a number of post-independence societies, states have deployed homophobic and

misogynistic threats to keep those with insurrectionary genders and sexualities in line. By

touching upon Curriers work, one can properly fit the whole LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,

and Transgender) community into the discussion of whether this post colonial citizenship in

Jamaica has produced a citizenship that is exclusionary and fails to recognize the violence

endured.

Citizenship in Postcolonial Jamaica

After gaining independence in 1962, Jamaica was readying itself to build a national

identity and citizenship. The same could be said for the rest of the Anglophone Caribbean

nations as British started to relinquish its colonial authority. Thames touches upon a key Fanon

principle that ultimately developed citizenship traits, the colonial construction of the natives

being (Thames 2011). Since the natives humanity was put into question by the British

oppressors, postcolonial Caribbean nations started to build citizenship through, . . skewed

understandings of humanness, specifically, questioning whether Blacks were truly human and of

value, whether they could truly belong and have rights and privileges in an independent nations.
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(Thames, 77, 2011). Important ties between the natives experience in colonized and decolonized

Jamaica can be made to further drive home the assertion that British values shaped the formation

of citizenship.

Under the British, notions of masculinity and patriarchy were central to the construction

of citizenship (Thames, 2011). This masculinity and patriarchy were heavily ingrained and

empowered in the ruling white bourgeoisie class during colonialism. Over time, it was handed

down to the Brown class that assumed power during the decolonization and post-independence.

This assimilation of European colonial values was similarly found in Namibias decolonization

movement (Currier 2012). The leading political party in Namibia argued procreative capacities

of the country were necessary for the countrys survival after decolonization. Nation building in

Namibia was heavily predicated in the absolute stake in patriarchy and the preservation of

heterosexuality. This assertion of masculinity and patriarchy in Jamaica, created a society that

enabled the poorer classes to freely enact violence against women, due to their insecurities of not

fulfilling the exemplary demonstrations of citizenship by the higher classes (Thames 2011).

An argument can be made for how these strict roles of masculinity can be translated to the

exclusion of citizenship and failure to recognize violence towards LGBT in Jamaica.

The Jamaican political elite, the Brown people, continued the Westminster system of

political governance, maintained laws passed and the power of the church continued to influence

political-moral discourse (Charles, 10, 2011). Moral policing was heavily implemented, which

supported policies that continued and reinforced legal sanctions against homosexuals. Laws such

as 1864 Offenses against the Persons Act were revisited in 1969 with the sole purpose of

reinforcing a morally constructed masculinity through legalism. Breaches of sexual mores of

respectability in Jamaica are legally identified as unnatural offenses and outrages of decency
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(Charles 11, 2011). Many that are found guilty of these offenses of homosexual conduct are

sentenced to years in prison, with the possibility of having to complete hard labour. These

Jamaican laws have taken the place of British colonial law, producing a . . legal code the

heterosexual consensus provides the regulatory framework that guides the behavior of Jamaicans

toward homosexuality in the post independence era (Charles, 12, 2011). Therefore, basic human

rights insured in Jamaican citizenship are not secured for the LGBT community. The

heterosexual majority agrees to this masculine and heteronormative conceptualization of

Jamaican citizenship, leaving the LGBT community vulnerable to violence.

Violence

This violence against the LGBT community in Jamaica is enforced and encouraged by

law enforcement. The police subscribe to these ideals of citizenship which portray the LGBT

community as an enemy of the national identity. In many instances, police will refuse to arrest

those who incite violence against gay men (Charles 2011). At times, the police force will join in

participation of such attacks due to the moral implications that being LGBT represents in

Jamaica. This public support of the heteronormative and masculine citizenship has the potential

to result in mob violence. In Mandeville, a mob of people descended upon a funeral and attacked

some of the mourners because they were perceived as cross dressers (Charles 2011). The

residents were described by witnesses as irate with aggression that could not be talked down.

This aggression mirrors the aggression Fanon discusses about in the peasant native class during

colonization. According to Fanon, the peasant native has embodied colonial violence in which an

anger and muscular tension has developed. He/she releases this anger in the form of vengeful

violence against other natives. Fanon describes this as,

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. .you will see the native reaching for his knife at the slightest

hostile or aggressive glance cast on him by another native; for the last

resort of the native is to defend his personality vis-a-vis his brother. . . the

native tries to persuade himself that colonialism does not exist.. Plunging

into a fraternal bloodbath allowed them to ignore the obstacle. . (Fanon

54).

Through the incomplete decolonization of Jamaica, the revolutionary class has evolved from

aiming violent measures towards the colonial oppressors, to enacting violence towards the

enemy of masculinity and heterosexuality, the LGBT community.

Another instance of violence that reinforces the importance of masculinity,

heterosexuality, and most importantly patriarchy is the willingness of the parent to incite

violence towards their child. In a 2004 article published in the Jamaican Observer, a father,

concerned with if his son might be gay, turned up to his childs high school and encouraged

students to beat up his son. This father sees his child treading away from the heterosexual and

procreative constructions of Jamaican citizenship and identity. This resulted in the students

assembling into a mob with the intent to do more than just hurt the boy, possibly kill him. As the

father began to see students begin to maul his child, he was seen to have just driven away. It took

an extreme measure of physically shielding the student from the mob to keep him alive (Charles

2011). The mob injured the boy and police officers that were called to the scene for protection.

The father was later found to have little to no regrets regarding his actions.

Conclusion and Recommendations

In conclusion, one can assert through the incomplete decolonization of Jamaica due to the

leadership of the Brown class, a citizenship heavily influenced through the assimilation of British
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values and political practices created a national identity and citizenship defined by patriarchy,

masculinity and heterosexulaity. With all of this mind, I would like to state that this paper,

amongst others, do not have definitive answers as to exactly where this exceptional level of

homophobia stems from. In addition, there could be further analysis into how patriarchy affects

the lesbian and transgender community in regards to their citizenship. What can be determined

from this argument is that the LGBT community from Jamaica is in danger due to hegemonic

homophobia enforced by law, masculinity and morality.

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Works Cited

Charles, Christopher A.D. "Representations of Homosexuality in Jamaica." Social and Economic

Studies 60, no. 1 (2011): 3-29.

Currier, Ashley . "The Aftermath of Decolonization: Gender and Sexual Dissidence in Post

Independence Namibia." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 37, no. 2

(2012): 442-61.

E2BN. "On the Plantations: The Abolition of Slavery Project." On the Plantations: The Abolition

of Slavery Project. N.p., 2009. Web

Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press, 1968.

Lovell, Jarret. "'We are Jamaicans:' living with and challenging criminalization of homosexuality

in Jamaica." Contemporary Justice Review19, no. 1 (2016): 86-102.

Smith, Michael. 1990. Culture, race, and class in the commonwealth Caribbean. Kingston,

Jamaica: ISER.

Thames, Maziki. " Reading Violence and Postcolonial Decolonization through Fanon: The Case

of Jamaica." The Journal of Pan African Studies4, no. 7 (November 2011): 75-89.