The Tribune

By DR IAN BETHEL-BENNETT

This piece is in response to an awful outbreak of sexual violence and exploitation that the state claims is the fault of the people. The people struggle under the yoke of the state’s exploitation and the anger and violence they feel explodes in ways that show domination and power. Sexual violence is one of the leading expressions of the underclass’s need to dominate and release its anger and rage.

We often talk about the need to control violence; in that we usually focus on murder and the terrible unsafe feeling many people have in this small island.

At the same time though, we do not challenge the cheating, tardiness and lack of productivity.

The red light is run at least 1,000 times a day, and no one ever gets caught. There is simply lawlessness at all levels. The state responds to this lawlessness with threats of violence. In fact, the state is the sole body that can really apply violence on its population, and it does. It can create violence through the way it treats its people and it can encourage violence by allowing some to exploit those they see as less equal.

We often see this as a form of structural violence, where the system uses violence in an extremely organised and systemic or systematic way to achieve its goals or the goals of those in high office. This may be seen by the citizens as random, disorganised and arbitrary, but in fact it is extremely structured. It usually takes advantage of inequalities and poor educational attainment to ensure that it goes undetected.

When this kind of violence runs high, all other kinds of violence increase. One kind of violence that is particularly common is interpersonal violence and this often translates into sexual violence and the violence of domination. Poor men, women and children experience this kind of violence far more commonly than other groups. That is not to say that other groups do not experience it as well, but rather that the former experience it more often.

In the working classes and the very poor, violence becomes a way of life because they often feel most discredited and underappreciated. They see that they are exploited and disregarded and they respond with like violence which they aim at the state. In turn, the state retaliates against them with extreme violence and further social exclusion/marginalisation. They are lumped together in a group and told that they make up the nation, but are not allowed to enjoy the benefits of the nation.

They absorb the brunt of all the violent policies and, because of their extremely unequal standing and their inability to access decent services, find themselves easily exploited and very angry. Working class mothers, many of whom are usually single and have children with multiple men, find their inability to function well in society more vexing. They often take this anger out on their children who experience nothing but abuse and hatred in their home lives. While many of these mothers may not see themselves as inflicting violence on their children, they are in fact creating monsters. These monsters show up later when they are no longer subject to the cruel and arbitrary treatment of their mothers; the slightest infraction will produce a well-placed motherly loving slap or a punch.

While we blame absentee fathers for a great deal of the strife, which could in part be true, it is far too simplistic. Yes, fathers are needed, but many of these men are not father material. They have children because man does bread woman, but they are not fathers.

Just like those men, women who are having the children are not real mothers except in as far as they have given birth to their offspring. Many of the men, however, ‘teach’ their children that girls are to be sexualised and boys are to sexualise them. They are not equal. They will beat and insult their women. They will ‘interfere’ with other people’s daughters and create a serious chain of events, but see no reason why they should be held responsible for any of it.

They are, though, teaching their sons to treat women the same way. They are showing their daughters that this is how women must be treated and that they must accept it. The more they talk about woman being man’s punching bag, the deeper it becomes ingrained in children and the more it spreads. These are the men who are leading the charge. Later, the violence that they may have only talked or joked about, becomes a fact in many relationships and in the streets.

Their roles as ‘fathers’ and ‘positive’ role models cannot be challenged!

As the children from these environments grow up and the state continues to inflict its violence on them, their response becomes increasingly violent. At the same time, they are taught to disregard and to disrespect women, they are also taught to disregard men who they see as their lesser. The trash talk of the gangs is real! They must hide their own feelings of powerlessness through violence, trash talk and hypermasculinity. Some poor men must be hypermasculine or they risk being treated as inferior. They have few others ways to express their ‘agency’ other than through anger and violent domination. Rape and trashing women become important avenues for their self-empowerment. This sexual violence has been transforming the tourist landscape as the young men who work on the unregulated pleasure rentals assert their learned hypermasculine identities by forcing themselves on young tourist women. Again, we must remember that this is a social ill and it is not about sex, though it translates into a sexual act. It is about violence, anger, social inequality and the demonstration of a disempowered person’s ability to assert power. The state then responds by clamping down on these manifestations of state-sanctioned masculinity and demonstrations of individuality. The state responds with more violence through empowering police and its other agents to ‘control’ the bad element.

The state has encouraged this kind of behaviour by allowing it to go on unchecked for years, by officially trash talking women and by encouraging the images of black male domination and violence to proliferate. The state’s agents that are used to respond are as likely to exploit as the young men they are sent to control. The cases of state agents using sexual violence to assert their power over the subjects they are here to protect are becoming troublingly numerous.

Meanwhile, the state speaks out and further empowers these same agents. They ignore the need to change these behaviours earlier, to address the social language and image their agents create.

Our society is unravelling, not because there are no good people nor because all people believe in this kind of violence, but because we have allowed those people who do behave in such learned ways to steal the show. When power is taken from people and placed in the hands of agents of the state who knowingly exploit those over whom they are empowered, the situation worsens. When they are held up as leaders in a community, they are empowered to control the bad element through further violence, we then have an even greater problem.

When no one is responsible for anything they do or say, but months later, after a serious problem with sexual assaults that are undermining the country’s economy and the nation’s stability, we can blame no one but our selves. This is not a new problem, the state just chose to ignore it until now.

We are teaching an entire country that, notwithstanding whet we say, trash talking women and then behaving violently towards them will be tolerated. There is no difference between a local woman and a tourist woman. Has the state in its choice to punish people after the fact not figured that out?

Once sexual violence is a problem in the society, it will be a problem for those who are outside of that society too. Sexual violence and violence in general do not respect boundaries. When the state creates these huge inequalities and allows violence to proliferate with impunity, it is encouraging all levels of the nation to fall apart. The far too many rapes of women will not be solved by sending out more agents of the state who behave in the same way.

The state must rethink its policies and the country must begin to challenge who is really in power. Right now it looks like we are choosing to allow the state’s violence and its creation of hypermasculine poor, black men through state violence to destroy the entire country. Do we really want to let this happen?

The state has failed the people it claims to be the servant of, and the more this happens, the worse the situation will get.

State agents need to be challenged as they push to create a more unequal place where men and women cannot walk around in peace because of their failure carry out their jobs properly, to educate, to humanise. When it leaves this responsibility to those who replace it in its failings, all bets are off.

The state has failed and it continues to fail in its failure to address the serious problem with violence and regard for life. This failure is holding the entire country hostage and it will only get worse. When bad men are the national role models, what else can we expect?