CARIBBEAN SEXUALITY

AND GENDER RELATIONS

Introduction
History as we know it has been largely written by
men.
They were the ones who left behind written
sources as they were the ones who were largely
educated.
Womens education was discouraged.
This overwhelming emphasis on and by males can
be called andocentric - male oriented.
Historians have relied on sources generated by
male officials including planters, priests and
travellers.
There were limited sources generated by women.

Sources by Caribbean
Women

Caribbean sources such as Lady Nugents diary

and the diaries of Mary Prince and Mary Seacole
have given us a wealth of material to construct
the intimate lives of women.
Lady Maria Nugent came to Jamaica between
1801 and 1805. Her diary gives us a view of the
life of a wealthy white woman.
Mary Prince was born in slavery on the island on
Bermuda and spent much of her enslaved life in
Antigua. Through the anti-slavery lobby she was
able to publish her autobiography in 1831.
Mary Seacole was born in 1857 and was of mixed
race. She travelled widely as a nurse and her
exploits in the Crimean War made her famous.

Gender in Caribbean
Historiography
Euro-Christian norms concerning
women have always been accepted
in the Caribbean.
The values inculcated by JudeoChristianity urged women to be
chaste and subdued.

Defining Gender and Sex

Gender is determined socially. It is
the societal meaning assigned to
males and females.
Sex is more biological and is the
property or quality by which
organisms are classified as male or
female on the basis of their
reproductive organs and functions.

Gender and Religion

The Old Testament, Proverbs 31:10-31 gives a
good idea of the biblical role of the woman,
starting with:
Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far
above rubies.

The ability to bear children is also important,

particularly sons. Take this example from
Leviticus 12:1-5:The Lord said to Moses...A woman who becomes
pregnant and gives birth to a son will be
ceremonially unclean for seven days, just as she is
unclean during her monthly period...If she gives
birth to a daughter, for two weeks the woman will
be unclean, as during her period.

Note that the woman is unclean for longer with

the daughter than with the son.

Other laws emphasised that women should

be punished for adultery. This was to make
sure that the male blood line continued.
Numbers 5:11-31 gives the test for an
unfaithful wife.
Incidentally, there was no test for the
infidelity of the male. Number 5:29-31,
This, then, is the law of jealousy when a woman
goes astray and defiles herself while married to
her husband, or when feelings of jealousy come
over a man because he suspects his wife. The
husband will be innocent of any wrongdoing,
but the woman will bear the consequences of
her sin.

A woman who was not a virgin before her

marriage, according to Deuteronomy 22
could be stoned to death.

St. Pauls writings were very influential in the

formation of the early Christian Church.
He emphasised morality that advocated the
importance of overcoming the desires of the
flesh in exchange for the dictates of the spirit.
In Galatians 5:19-21, Paul writes that the fruits
of the flesh are:
sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery;
idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy,
fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions
and envy...

In verses 22-23, he writes that the fruits of the

spirit are:
love, joy, peace, patience, kindness and self
control.

According to Paul, the spirit and the flesh

could not be reconciled.

 In 1 Corinthians 7:18-20, Paul writes,

Flee from sexual immorality...Do you not know
that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit,
who is in you, whom you have received from
God?...Therefore honour God with your body.

Though Paul in 1 Corinthians 7 wrote that

bodies of husbands and wives belonged to
each other respectively, he later cautioned
that the woman cannot be head of the
house or the church.
The writings of St. Augustine emphasised
that female subordination was intrinsic to
Gods creation.
St. Augustine argued that the missionary
position was proper.
That with the female on top was unnatural.

Victorian Sexuality
The Victorian Era of the nineteenth century
became dominated by the belief that an
individual's sex and sexuality form the most
basic core of their identity, potentiality,
social/political standing and freedom.
Herbert Spence, Patrick Geddes and other
specialists constructed a stereotypical dyadic
(binary, consisting of two parts) model.
Herbert Spencer and Patrick Geddes put forward
the belief that men were active agents who
expended energy. Women on the other hand
were sedentary beings who conserved their
energy and stored what they had conserved.

 A dichotomy of temperaments defined feminine

and masculine: an anabolic nature which nurtured
versus a katabolic nature which released energy
respectively.
Since men only concerned themselves with
fertilization, they could also spend energies in
other arenas, allowing as Spencer says "the male
capacity for abstract reason. On the other hand,
woman's heavy role in pregnancy, menstruation,
and child-rearing left very little energy left for
other pursuits.
The Victorian male was not chaste. He was a
victim to his baser passions which had to be
released periodically with prostitutes.
The female was not supposed to be subject to
these baser passions and should she be, then she
was deemed unfeminine.

 Thus there emerged the thinkingthat a woman was

considered inferior to man in every way except
morally and she was only considered morally superior
because of the belief that women lacked sexual drive.
The legal position of women was inferior to that of
men in every aspect.
A womans place was in the home and more precisely
in a home of her own.
The corner-stone of Victorian society was the family.
The perfect ladys sole role was marriage and
procreation.
A popular writer of etiquette books at the time
counselled the unhappily married woman who
remembers that her highest duty is so often to suffer
and be still.
This is not to say all women, particularly the poorer
ones, could adhere to it. They were looked down upon
for their inability to do so.

 The polarisation of public and private spheres

becomes the foundation upon which the ascendant
bourgeoisie constructed the family and it's
sexuality.
The prostitute, homosexual and the solitary
masturbator emerged as entities posing the
greatest threat to heterosexual reproduction,
bourgeois morality and social order.
The Lancet medical journal in 1887 estimated that
there were approximately 80,000 prostitutes in
London. This is out of a total population of
2,360,000 or 3%.
Masturbation or what was termed the "solitary
vice" or "onanism" emerged as a veritable
epidemic, especially amongst children.
One nineteenth century doctor invented a device
which administered electric shocks to a sleeping
boy's penis upon erection.

 Throughout the whole Victorian Era,

homosexuals were regarded as
abominations and homosexuality was
illegal.
Homosexual acts were a capital offence
until 1861. A few famous men from the
British Isles, such as Oscar Wilde, had
homosexual liaisons.
Toward the end of the century, many large
trials were held on the subject. Wilde, for
example, was sentenced to two years' hard
labour for homosexual relations.

Gender in Caribbean Historical

Development
Historians have been able to add to documentary
evidence, archaeological and anthropological
evidence.
Gender in Indigenous Societies
In Neo-Indian societies there was a gendered division
of labour.
Women were seen as fertile in a reproductive and
productive sense.
They were responsible for the cultivation of food
crops.
They also did craft work such as spinning, cotton
weaving and making hammocks and other utensils.
Men were responsible for fishing and hunting.

In Taino societies, the males assisted

with the agricultural work of females,
performing arduous tasks such as
clearing the land.
Men were to defend of their homes.
Along with the parents of the female,
men decided the terms and
conditions of marriage.

 In Kalinago societies, gender divides were

institutionalised, males living in communal houses
separate from females.
Women acted as caregivers, providing the males
in these communal homes with food and drink.
The Kalinago males spoke a pidgin different from
that of females and children. This was used in
male initiation ceremonies and for trade.
Males and females ate separately, the women
eating after the males.
Polygamy was practiced in these societies.
However, a man could only have as many wives
as he could take care of.
In some societies, inheritance and political office
were decided along matriarchal lines.

Gender in Plantation
Society

According to one author

...women did not live the way men did,

that slavery as a social system of
oppression, had a different impact on them.
There was also a sharp differentiation in
the lives of women of different ethnic, class
and colour groups and little solidarity
existed across these lines.

The Life of the Enslaved Child

Family stability was non-existent as the
child could be separated and sold away
from their parent.
Those deemed unfit for field work were
given small tasks to perform such as
bringing water, food, collecting grass, etc.
Tasks were also gender based.
However, in field work, like their mothers,
both girls and boys assisted in grass and
weeding gangs; given no opportunity to
become literate.
Boys and girls were equally punished.

Household Management
Both white and African women had to
engage in household tasks.
In the domestic sphere, white women
assumed authority.
According to Hilary Beckles,
The images that emerged of white women
as slave owners in the Caribbean context,
then, suggest that they were generally proslavery, socially illiberal, and economically
exploitative of black women...

Parenting on Plantations
Surviving sources have suggested that motherhood
was traumatic for the enslaved women.
The reproductive role of enslaved women was
important for the continuation of the plantation
system, particularly after the abolition of the slave
trade.
White women were relieved of providing
sustenance for their children as the black women
acted as wet nurses. Poor white women also did the
same.
Males were often excluded from the reproductive
and child rearing process.
Enslaved black males felt much pain upon losing
their children.

Sexual Predation
Traditional history written by planters such
as Edward Long and Lady Nugent
contended that white men were the
victims of black and coloured temptresses.
However, the diary of Thomas
Thistlewood offers another view.
Thistlewood raped most of the women
under his care, providing what he viewed
as nominal payment.
He even kept track of their sexual
performance.

Allocation of Field Tasks

Gender played little role in the allocation of field
work. Choice of field worker depended upon strength
and health rather than gender. By the 1820s,
females were the majority in plantation society.
Mairs article, Women Field Workers in Jamaica
during Slavery, examines the evolution of enslaved
black womens participation in the plantation
economy. She notes that as the skilled roles were
abandoned by white men, the vacuum came to the
filled by black men.
Their field tasks were filled by enslaved black
women. It was furthermore believed that women did
not possess the capacity for technical and difficult
tasks such as carpentering, etc.

Work among Enslaved Families

The tasks relating to the production of food
crops on provision grounds was organised
along gender lines.
Production involved the planting of ground
provisions, the marketing of foodstuffs, rearing
of domestic animals and the production and
repair of clothing.
These tasks were considered domestic and as
such were carried out mostly by females.
Besides the production and marketing of
foodstuff, women were also involved in purely
domestic tasks such as food preparation,
cleaning, washing and child care.

Life in Towns
According to Barry Higman, most of the enslaved
people were located in rural areas.
Neville Hall and Franklin Knight have produced
works that focus on the lives of enslaved people in
towns, where the number of women outnumbered
that of men.
Enslaved women in towns worked mainly as
domestic servants, wet nurses, cooks and washers.
They were also involved in the informal economy
as hucksters and prostitutes. According to Hilary
Beckles in Property Rights in Pleasure: The
Marketing of Enslaved Womens Sexuality
The sex industry was an important part of the urban
economy and the relations of slavery, protected by
slave codes, created societal conditions under which
the maximum benefits offered by property ownership
in humans accrued to slave-owners.

Resistance Strategies
Enslaved women were equally involved in
resistance strategies to subvert the
plantation system.
Cecil Gutzmore in Caribbean Woman
notes on the voyages across the Atlantic,
in order to subvert the slave system,
African women responded by doing the
following:

Attempted escapes
Committed suicide
Feigned madness or real madness
Participated in open rebellion
Defended their culture

Against plantation society, women did the

following:
They were part and parcel of maroon
resistance strategies
They passed on African cultural practices
to the next generation
They were involved in uprisings against
slavery:
Cubah/Kubba (1760s, Jamaica)
Nanny Grigg (1816, Barbados ).
Nanny of Jamaica

There were gendered approaches to

resistance including African womens
control over their reproductive functions.

Gender and Creole Society

The move of females away from the estates in
search for respectability allowed for the
enforcement of gender stereotypes and the
enforcement of patriarchal norms.
As such, the image of mother and wife was
desirable.
Education was as more feasible for males than for
females.
Boys were apprenticed to artisans while girls were
taught genteel skills such as sewing.
After the mass migration of some men to seek
better paying jobs elsewhere, women had to take
over as heads of households.

They were also highly involved in peasant

cultivation and in some territories such as
Jamaica and Haiti they acted as
intermediaries and higglers.
This meant that women became the
temporary heads of households.
The burden of the day to day subsistence
was placed on the shoulders of female
family members.
Kinship ties were thus strengthened as
women had the double role of care givers
and providers while males were absent.

 With the spread of education at the turn of the

20th century and the growing availability of white
collar jobs for all unmarried women of all races,
new opportunities opened up that began to
negate the rigid economic dependency of
Caribbean women on men.
The most common jobs available to women were
in education, nursing, secretarial, clerical and
switchboard operating.
In traditional religions, women played subsidiary
roles as Sunday school teachers and participated
in fund raising activities.
Leadership, as we earlier saw, was relegated to
males.
In Afro-Christian churches e.g. Kumina in Jamaica,
women played dominant roles as leaders.

Entry into Public Spheres

One public avenue always open to women was
charitable works.
Early womens groups emerged from amongst
women of the middle class who were
responding to the perceived needs of less
fortunate women
The aim of these organisations was to
endeavour to improve the lives of these
women.
Though starting with the creation of day-care
centres, the provision of free food, clothing
and so on, many of these groups began to
identify other needs.

There was the emergence of such bodies as:

The League of Women Voters in Trinidad and
Tobago to help women understand politics;
The Girls Industrial Union in Barbados to provide
homemaking social and income earning skills;
The Womens Liberal Club in Jamaica and the
Womens Political and Educational Organisation in
Guyana.

Out of these womens groups emerged

women who lobbied for the extension of the
franchise in the 1920s and 1930s.
Women also started to sit on municipal and
legislative councils.

Organisations like the Garvey movement

were also instrumental in fight for rights by
women by stressing equality in contribution
by all members of a race.
Out of this emerged leaders such as Una
Marson in Jamaica and Audrey Jeffers in
Trinidad and Tobago.
The modern Caribbean Womens
Movement can really be said to have
emerged in the late 1940s and early 1950s
with the creation of a number of national
umbrella womens organisations to
coordinate the efforts of the womens
institutes through the region.

 It was their combined efforts supported by the

West Indies Federation which sought to
establish a Caribbean Womens Association
(CARIFWA).
Though both organisations failed, CARIFWA
had already established the strategic principle
of mainstreaming with governments of the
region.
Important founding members include:

Audrey Jeffers of Trinidad and Tobago;

Dorothy Lightbourne of Jamaica;
Phyllis Allfrey of Dominica;
Rita Guy of St. Lucia;
Grace, Lady Adams of Barbados.

Gender and East Indian

Society
Indian immigration encouraged the migration of
males over females.
However, by 1900 this situation had largely
reversed.
The women who migrated from India were seen
as contractually independent from their
husbands.
In the short term their lives were different from
that in India where they were bound to their
husbands.
In the Caribbean, these women were free to
choose their sexual partners and spouses rather
than the arranged marriages they were
accustomed to in India.

Many chose monogamous unions.

The relative sexual freedom of Indian women
led to increases in violence against them.
Uxoricide was the murders of wives,
concubines and fiances which stemmed from
sexual imbalance of the East Indian
population.
Indian women, were seen as less intelligent
and weaker than their male partners.
This led to males getting better paying field
and factory work and skilled jobs.
Women undertook less strenuous peripheral
field tasks which paid less.
Thus they were reliant on Indian men for their
economic survival.

As the nature of indentureship evolved over time,

both males and females focussed less on the
plantation and more on their independent peasant
production.
A gendered division of labour resulted with males
performing high paying factory and plantation
work and women and girls being involved in the
peasant production of food and cash crops.
They also reared livestock.
Tasks relegated to the private sphere, washing,
cooking, cleaning and making clothes were also
performed by women.
This gendered division meant that women became
increasingly dependent on their male partners who
exerted patriarchal dominance over them.

By 1919 the patriarchal authority of males

was re-established.
Similar to India, arranged marriages were
again made and the centrality of the
mother in law as the control figure for
younger females became entrenched.
The main authority figure of the Indian
family was that of the father or the eldest
male.
The woman gained recognition in the
home when she had children.
Indian women were effectively confined to
the private sphere and possessed little real
public roles.

Caribbean Masculinity
Hegemonic masculinity refers to the most
dominant form of masculinity or manhood; that is,
what is most acceptable in defining a male in a
particular society.
It refers to certain codes of conduct and value
systems. Sociologist R. W. Connell (1995) defines
hegemonic masculinity as
constructed in relation to various subordinated
masculinities as well as in relation to women.

Thus hegemonic masculinity points to the

acceptance of one form of masculinity over others
The definition by Connell looks to the power of men
over women and also the power of males over
others deemed inferior because of race, sexuality,
ethnicity, age or physical prowess.

Sexuality
In general, the ideal of being a Caribbean
man rests on the correctness of
heterosexuality.
The male/female sexual union is regard as the
basis of civil society.
Other stereotypical expectations may include:
Confidence
Bravado
The ability to take control in a situation
The ability to look after yourself
Leadership
Dependability and reliability
Success
Sexual prowess

In the Caribbean three dominant perspectives

support patriarchy:
The conservative perspective: This ideal holds that
traditional society is best. The division of jobs
along gender lines is believed to be along
biological lines.
The socialist perspective: This view points to the
centrality of the economic systems that dominate
the Caribbean. It holds that males are the most
important stakeholders in these economic
concerns and feminism only serves to divide the
labour class without bringing any feasible benefits.
Evangelical-Christian perspective: This perspective
relies on the rightness of biblical patriarchy. Men
should therefore be at the head of the household
and providers.

While these views still dominate in many sectors, other

perspectives have emerged to challenge these
ideologies; two of which are:
Gay Male Perspective: Adherents of this perspective
do not validate the masculine and feminine divisions
in society.
Pro-feminist Perspective: Feminists believe that
societys insistence that men and boys follow certain
hegemonic ideals of manhood results in men not
being able to experience the fullness of life.
The male marginalisation thesis: This thesis is
advanced by Errol Miller. According to this theory the
rise in the participation of women in the workplace
and in education as well as womens new social
freedoms are often related to the decline of the male
breadwinner and male privilege.

The Role of Sport in

maintaining Hegemonic
Masculinity
(This information is taken from an article by
Aviston Downes: From Boys to Men)
Public school graduates in England were
promoted as chivalrous knights, agents of
moral civilisation and defenders of empire.
Sport, enforced by popular juvenile literature
and paramilitarism, was at the core of the
creation of this masculine identity. The
masculine games ethos assumed hegemony
across Caribbean societies.

 Manliness involved the curious combination of

Christian gentility and the ruthless aggression of
Social Darwinism.
Making men out of schoolboys involved the stoicism
of the stiff upper lip, plus militant aggression, racism
and jingoism.
Oxbridge trained graduates in the Caribbean distilled
and used these ideologies to fashion their West Indian
schools into the nurseries of hegemonic masculinity
articulated in terms of political leadership, economic
dominance, heterosexuality, headship of a nuclear
family and chivalric defense of empire.
The masculinity of socially oppressed men was
questioned or devalued. Black men were portrayed as
being boys, or childish. For blacks, the post-slavery
period was not only about the search for economic
and civil rights, but also the quest to be
acknowledged as a man.

 The middle class schools in the Caribbean thus

played a central role in masculine identity
formation in the region. In Trinidad there was the
Queens Royal College.
In Barbados there was the Lodge, Harrison and
Combermere schools. In Jamaica there was the
Jamaica High School, Collegiate, St. Georges
College, York Castle, Potsdam (Munro) and
Titchfield. In Antigua there was the Antigua
Grammar School. These schools had a curriculum
quite consciously based on the public school
ideology of Britain.
Black men enthusiastically embraced sporting
codes. Cricket was seen as the ultimate scientific
sport as it involved strategic thinking that could be
linked to military, social and political leadership.
Thus women were discouraged from playing..

Conclusion
Historiography of the Caribbean was
traditionally andocentric. However, there
are attempts to reverse this trend.
Societies examined include indigenous,
slave and Indian social establishments.
Women have extended themselves into
the public sphere economically and
politically. As a result, the male
marginalisation theory emerges.
Perhaps tomorrow, the male and female
will be equally represented in all things
and being male or female unimportant.