The Tribune

By IAN BETHEL BENNETT

According to gender stereotypes men are supposed to cuss and carry on, be rough, hard drinkers. Women are supposed to be demure and gentle. What we see in society today is that everyone has taken on more masculine behaviour or what Bahamian society tells us is male-type behaviour. Society, though, continues to tell us that men fight and ‘carry on bad’ in public, but women must now fight and ‘carry on bad’ in public too. One time ago, you would lose the respect of those around with such behaviour. Nowadays, if you do not carry on badly in public, you lose the respect of your peers. How has this change occurred?

The social decline of society could have something to do with it. Certainly, we have lost most of the positive role models. Public figures are actually terrible examples of bigotry and bad behaviour. So, when we talk about youth violence versus youth empowerment and we talk about tourism being the pillar of the Bahamian economy, how do we resolve the tensions between the contradictory forces?

Walking on the beach the other day, after being accosted by what felt like 500 young men trying to sell me something without any care about their approach, it came home to me yet again, how absolutely disconnected from any kind of civility the country is. The language that spewed from their mouths was colourful. They cussed a female tourist lady with whom they had just had an exchange.

One time ago, people claimed that it was the minority who were disruptive and rude. Now it seems that it is the majority. They cuss, they swear, they fight, yet they want tourists to come to them to be abused. How does this work? And worst of all, the government encourages this behaviour by selling tourism without addressing the problems we have.

The older women were for the most part just as coarse as the young men. This made me think of all the young women who think they are above being corrected, who are above everyone else and who make no qualms about how they carry themselves and express their contempt for anyone who attempts to talk to them or work with them. They can miss work for days because they have a baby at home and no babysitter and then become offensive when they are reprimanded It is not their fault. That lack of responsibility was clear. The young men talked about the “gyals” they had children with using derogatory and dismissive terms. The dearth of any kind of responsibility or apparent humanity was alarming. The authorities talk about crime, but they have produced a bunch of people who seem full of contempt and without emotional connection to each other.

However, as the talk around town goes, we do not have a problem with violence nor gangs. Officials argue that gangs are not serious in the Bahamas. However, Sunday’s events on Kemp Rd and then on into Nassau Village show that they are mistaken. Both sexes participate in gangs. Sunday showed us that gang violence is a reality in the country. Further, it connects with the behaviour demonstrated by the young people on the beach. They fight and cuss in front of the tourists. Why would the tourists want to pay to witness this in paradise?

Sadly, what will ultimately happen to these locals, and it will be a further rolling back of democracy, is they will be kept off the beaches. However, their masculinity and femininity are founded on behaving badly in public. They are required to cuss people in order to demonstrate their position and that they will not be taken for granted. The lack of self-respect and the need to demonstrate violence seem to go hand in hand.

This cannot all be blamed on the disintegration of the family, however. We have condoned these images of manhood and womanhood for the last decade at least and are now reaping the benefits of what we have sewn. Officials talk about swift justice and getting tough on crime, but they seem disconnected from the realities on the streets. They do not create programmes that address the real kinds of problems that young people face.

If we want to talk to young men about being reasonable, to discourage them from joining gangs, to show them that there are options to the family that gangs offer, then we must meet them where they are. We cannot open centres of empowerment and expect them to come in; they will not come. If they do, they expect hand outs. We must go to them. There are male initiatives like CariMAN that are prepared to work with young men and boys, but they have to be allowed to do so.

The country seems to have this idea that if government creates a centre with a desk and four chairs, people will come to it and it will solve all the problems. Ironically, this has been proven wrong. Yet, still the government opens centres and creates office-bound programmes that will solve the problems without addressing the issues that have brought us to this point.

Conversely in Brazil, for example, governments and organisations create social programmes that are dynamic and transformative. They have beach volleyball and football if one goes to Rio de Janeiro and other programmes if one goes to Sao Paulo, but they realise the need for these initiatives. Sadly, the Bahamas, despite all the literature and all the studies that illuminate the need for truly transformative programmes, has continued to shy away from real investment in social programming that will address some of the problems that promote youth disenfranchisement. One of the first things we need to do is talk differently.