What would you do if you found out your child was gay? (Observer article)

Source

IT is a question very few parents ever ask themselves, and one that many think even less about since they believe it is something that only happens to 'other people'.

But finding out that your child is gay in a society that is still struggling to accept the lifestyle is something that a number of parents have to face.

In fact, it is estimated that between three to 10 per cent of the world's population is homosexual, meaning that it's an issue that parents face daily. So what would you do if you found out that your child was gay?

George H, father of four:

Well, it might sound harsh but I would disown him. I'm telling you the honest truth! It may seem harsh, but if he was a gunman it's the same way I would treat him. He would have to go and live his life and don't get me mixed up in it. The way I see it, the world can't run without families, you have to reproduce to make families, and two men can't reproduce. So that alone should tell you that it's wrong. If it was my daughter, she stands a better chance with me. Women can get away much more than men 'cause it's not so obvious with females. But I still wouldn't encourage it. I would do what I need to do to try change her mind.

Garfield Y, father of three:

It would be difficult as hell, but I would accept it. It would be easier to handle if it is my daughter as we could still maintain that father/daughter relationship. But it would be impossible to have anywhere near a good father/son relationship with my son.

Wayne W, father of one:

As long as she is happy, I wouldn't kill her. I would more be happy that she trusts me enough to tell me. But if I have a son who is gay that is different still. I wouldn't want to hear, but I wouldn't kill him. I would just stay far from him. Just the thought of him doing that with another man turns my stomach! But girl or boy, support done at 18, straight or not!

Hugh W, father of two:

I would be very upset, but if it's my daughter I would love her just the same. I would not condone the lifestyle but what am I going to do? I would still have to love her.

Angela H, mother of three:

I don't know, to be honest. A lot of people say it can't happen to them and then you realise that is when you are faced with it then you know how to handle it. But I would not judge.

Bobbette B, mother of one:

If I find out while she is in high school I would try and get counselling for her. If that doesn't work, then it would be very hard to accept because it is not something I believe in. But I couldn't put her out.

Olivia J, mother of one:

I would try and find counselling for her. But if I have a boy and realise he was gay, he would have to leave! Him couldn't stay in the same house with me.

Roxanne T, mother of one:

I wouldn't do anything. It's my child. I definitely wouldn't throw her out. She just couldn't flaunt it in my house, but I would have to love her just the same.

Andrae T, father of two:

With the knowledge I have now I would not throw out the child. But there would be a lot of rules in my house; for the boy: no tight clothes, no bleach-out hair and skin, no dressing in drag. He is still supposed to look respectable. And he still has to go to school. His occupation cannot be 'gay'. For the girl, no baggy clothes, no wearing of underpants — she still has to look like a girl. For them the rule is simple — like AIDS — you're not supposed to tell by just looking!

ENDS

hmph some of these answers sound so contrived to me and politically correct in others plus the typical reparative route hint such as suggestions for counselling yet the evidence out there shows otherwise with youngsters being thrown out of their homes repeatedly, just in March just ended my current stint at Aphrodite's PRIDE Jamaica as Outreach/crisis intervention rep (albeit we are not popular deliberately so) I have received four reports for that month alone alongside convenor as well who dealt with some cases on her own and our recently concluded Enterprise developmental project had some cases as well with participants but on the positive side some former displaced persons participated.

Fallouts related to social media use or misuse are still a concern to me as well and despite these challenges the leading groups are silent.

March 31st drama in New Kingston by the infamous gully (described for exaggeration as a sewer main by some)

The tough action now being taken by the police on the homeless MSM/trans youth in New Kingston is also of major concern while more join the ranks and others struggle islandwide.

I am not surprised though as generational ignorance has helped to bring us to this stage when sex and sexuality have been missing from both the national and educational discourse and engagement, lest we forget the strong resistance to the Home and Family Life Manual, HFLE by the Ministry of Education out of fear of "conditioning" students into homosexuality as expressed by the Minister of Education and supported by frightened religious personalities with misplaced priorities.

also see

Minister of Education says no to condoms in schools & grooming of children to see homosexuality as accepted

Insensitive parents & Displaced MSM part 2

Talk 'bout what you love (Observer) 2011

Gay Parenting (a view on the ground) Functional Bisexuality, family units & the discourse

Gay Parenting (a view on the ground) (repost from 09) ........ International Family Day

Paedophilia, the predominant sexual aberration says Psychiatrist and the church’s response.

Peace & Tolerance

H

Sexual Falsehood Top To Bottom .......................

In my original post on sister blog GLBTQJA my initial comment had a balance of perceived deception and the thine line of fulfilling Dwayne's female cisgender imperative, well I am pleased at how close Miss Carolyn Cooper is coming to examining the issue far more objectively more than even voices in the LGBT lobby. That entry read in part:

Frankly speaking young cross dressers or indeed pre-operative transwomen in their quest for the female cisgender imperative to live their truths need to be careful of the spaces they choose to do so especially in Jamaica with a general population not yet educated or sensitized enough about such issues, if deception was the deal here where the deceased was with a man who did not know "she" was a cross dresser or pre-operative transwoman that perceived deception is used as justification to attack such persons. If the partner knew he could may have to pretend he didn't in order to avoid attack on himself as well as has happened before. Older cross dressers or pre-op transwomen know all too well this business of passing or operating in stealth and know how to do so based on experience, this young one was not so lucky.

This also shows the lack of interventions towards the groups of pre-opertaive trans and cross dressers and understanding how to use stealth or passing in a public place, there are consequences (sadly death) in this case, this is not the first time in Montego Bay there has been such an incident but we always have to wait until something goes horribly wrong then the knee-jerk reaction comes. 

We MUST however remember this is NOT a homophobic incident as is promoted elsewhere whether mistakenly or deceptively. Also Effeminacy was met with a stern rebuke earlier this year during our annual carnival.

CLICK HERE for that story but here we have another case sadly ending in murder but clear effemophobic causation at work with conflated with homosexuality. Now comes this piece from the Patois doctor on the matter,

Carolyn Cooper, Contributor

I GOT several emails last week from angry people trying to persuade me that Dwayne Jones was responsible for his own murder. His crime was not cross-dressing. It was deceit. But since the whole point of cross-dressing is to deceive, this distinction really makes no sense.

Some people passionately argued that the men who were deceived into thinking that Dwayne was female were the real victims. And they had every right to take defensive action. One woman compared the deceit to rape. This is how she put it: "There is an emerging way of telling stories nowadays that lays no responsibility on the victims whatsoever and I don't get it.

"Dwayne was Jamaican. Why did he put himself at risk like that? He also put the lives of other men at risk. If no alarm had been made, some of those other men would have been labelled gay. Some of the men who were wined upon against their will may even have been traumatised for life. As my friend was when his schoolmates from a prominent high school raped him."

But the men who were 'wined upon' were quite willing to participate. Dwyane did not wine on them against their will. It was not rape. It was consensual wining. As far as the men knew, they were not dancing with a man. Dwayne had become the self-styled 'Gully Queen'. It was pure theatre.

Cross-dressing men are not necessarily gay. And dancing with a cross-dressing man doesn't automatically put a man at risk of being labelled gay. Full body contact between Jamaican men is not always taboo. It's perfectly acceptable on the sports field. Footballers passionately embrace when a goal is scored. It's a ritual of the game. I know it's not exactly the same as wining in the dancehall. But the body language is similar. It's just a different dialect.

Self-confident man

Perhaps I'm expecting too much of Jamaican men. But I think a self-confident man could have acted far differently to the outing of Dwayne. A real man could have made a joke of it. He could have just said, "BC, Di bwoy good! Im ketch mi fi true!" The profanity would have been enough of a judgement.

The so-called 'bad' word, 'B' is a perfectly good word of African origin, meaning 'vulva'. But like many other elements of African culture in Jamaica, the word has been devalued. The word shows up in Eric Partridge's 1949 Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English where it's described as "West Indian; orig[inally] a negroes' word".

Our own Dictionary of Jamaican English, published in 1967, notes that in the Zulu language there's a similar word, meaning 'pubic region'. So a cloth for the B, like a cloth for blood, is simply a 'sanitary pad'. How a clean cloth could become a very dirty word in Jamaica is a whole other story.

And talking of cleaning cloths, I got an informative email from a Jamaican living abroad: "When I first came to Asia, I noticed that many men carried a small packet of wet wipes. I asked what it was used for. I learnt only Muslims did this. I learnt that they used it in the bathrooms to wipe their penises to ensure there was no dribbling after they passed urine. Urine on clothing is considered unclean and it is avoided like the plague." So our male cross-dressers at Caribbean Fashion Week do have a point.

All of the angry email-writers stopped short of saying that Dwayne should have been put to death. They couldn't quite go there. But none of them laid any blame on the woman who let the cock out of the bag. I think she should have taken a less scandalous approach. She could have called Dwayne aside and said something like this: "Hey bwoy! Yu mad! Yu no know dem man wi kill yu if dem find out? Mind yu self!" But she didn't.

Mastering art of deceit

Dwayne's deception is an extreme version of the sexual games people play all the time. These days, women have mastered the art of deceit. They completely re-engineer themselves: false hair, false eyelashes, false nails, false breasts, false bottoms, false everything. You can actually buy panties in local stores with padded bottoms. And men have been known to stuff their briefs, especially when the contents are very brief. A most wicked falsehood!

Picking up a 'man' or 'woman' at a dance is a very risky business. You really don't know if you're going to get fish or fowl. It's a big chance you take. And as for online dating, that's a whole other kettle of fish. People just lie, out and out. I'm amazed by the statistics you hear on American television about all the marriages that dating services have arranged. I keep wondering about the divorce rates.

I got a most intriguing email about a Chinese man, Jian Feng, whose unnamed wife gave birth to a rather ugly baby, in his opinion. The child looked like neither parent. Feng assumed the child was a 'jacket' and accused his wife of adultery. But that was not her abomination. The rather plain woman had done extensive plastic surgery to make herself beautiful. Genes don't lie so the baby came out looking like the 'real' mother.

Jian Feng filed for divorce on the grounds that his wife had deceived him. He won the case and was awarded US$120,000, almost as much as the US$100,000 his wife had spent on plastic surgery. I suppose if Feng had been a certain kind of Jamaican man he would have batter-bruised his wife physically.

But divorce, in this case, is emotional abuse. Why couldn't Feng have lived with the fact that his wife simply wanted to be beautiful? In much the same way, Dwyane Jones just wanted to be the gully queen. Death is a very high price to pay for that forbidden desire.

Carolyn Cooper is a professor of literary and cultural studies at the University of the West Indies, Mona. Visit her bilingual blog at http://carolynjoycooper.wordpress.com/. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and karokupa@gmail.com.

ENDS

As we look at this transgender issue another popular cross dresser passed quietly, Barbie Love affectionately known as Peanut made her exit after a brief illness. You may remember this story of here in the now defunct XNews publication.

go HERE 

UPDATE August 14, 2013

Police personnel had to rescue a man dressed as a woman in Portmore, St Catherine, last Saturday after an angry mob who had seen him in the community threatened to flog him.

Reports are that about 9 p.m., the police were called to Portmore Drive in the municipality. When the team arrived, they spotted a person in an orange wig, b... rider shorts and a

blouse with brassiere showing. The Star learnt that the cross-dresser was spotted by a group of persons who attacked him. The individual ran on to a premises and the police were called.

When the team arrived, reinforcements had to be called in as the mob decided to harm him. The police managed to take him to safety.

Persons told The Star that the man's action had provoked the wrath of those who had decided to attack.

A senior police officer told The Star that last week the man had to be rescued from another section of the parish.

Just two weeks ago, a teenager was killed by a mob in St James after he dressed as a woman and danced with another man.

Carolyn Cooper on Dressed For Murder (The Dwayne Jones Trans murder)

also see: Female cisgender imperative thwarted: 17 year old pre-op transgender woman murdered

Carolyn Cooper of the University of the West Indies aka the Patois doctor addressed the latest sad issue surrounding the awful murder of young pre-op transwoman named Dwayne Jones, thankfully she addressed the historical context of gender expression that seems lost to all the other comments, blog posts and articles I have seen. As long as we do not have a population that is sensitized as as our Cuban neighbours where their national systems via public television (CENESEX) pass on information on sexuality we will see incidents such as this one. It read as follows:

DWAYNE JONES probably thought he was dressed to kill when he stepped out to that fateful dance. He couldn't have known he was going to be the prey. But he must have realised he was making a risky fashion statement. After all, the dance was taking place just outside 'Gyal-tego' Bay.

That's the new name for Montego Bay in the twisted vocabulary of super-sensitive Jamaican males. And Mandeville is now 'Gyal-deville'. It's not a joke. It's a very serious matter. Sexually insecure men are so fearful of appearing to be homosexual that they cannot go into a 'man' town or city. Only gyal.

It's the same 'reason' bad man don't eat guinep. Dem don't suck seed. And, despite all the bravado, they don't succeed in hiding their weakness. If you have to go to such extremes to reassure yourself that you are a real-real man, something must be fundamentally wrong.

It's the fear of being tainted by homosexuality that drives irrational males to commit acts of violence against so-called sexual deviants. In Jamaica, even cross-dressing is seen as a provocative sign of other crosses. But most male cross-dressers are not homosexual. And both men and women cross-dress for a variety of reasons. It should be nobody's business but their own.

ABOMINABLE FASHION

The diabolical mob that murdered Dwayne Jones must have been made up of men and women who believe that cross-dressing is sinful behaviour. The Bible is to blame. Deuteronomy 22:5 declares: "The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God."

The problem with applying the abomination rule to fashion is the indisputable fact that there is no universal standard of male and female dress. Gendered dress styles vary across cultures. In some parts of the world, men wear kilts and sarongs. They may look like skirts. But they are not 'female' dress. Many Fundamentalist Christian women don't wear pants because that "pertaineth unto a man". I suppose these pious women do wear underpants. Not to do so would certainly be an abomination.

The word 'abomination' turns up a lot in the Bible. But it's not only homosexuality and cross-dressing that are abominations. There are lots of other sins that self-righteous fanatics conveniently forget. Adultery is an abomination. But if we were to stone adulterers to death in Jamaica, there would hardly be any of us left.

Proverbs 6:16-19 gives a long list of abominations that includes shedding innocent blood: "These six things doth the Lord hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, an heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, a false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren". That primitive mob outside 'Gyal-tego' Bay was clearly very selective about their abominations. Their feet swiftly ran to mischief, shedding Dwyane's innocent blood.

CARIBBEAN FASHION WEEK

Most of us are much more sophisticated than those anonymous murderers. Take, for instance, the patrons at Caribbean Fashion Week. For the last several years, two male cross-dressers come to the event and no one would think of attacking them. In fact, I've seen other patrons taking pictures with them. They are part of the fashion scene.

The only judgemental response to them I've gotten is from a woman who heard one of them in the women's restroom asking for toilet paper. "Fi wipe wa?", she wondered. We have a wicked way of getting right down to the nitty-gritty. I did laugh at the observation. But laughter is a far cry from murder.

Fashion is often about transgressing boundaries. It's about role play. In 2009, the Trinidadian designer Claudia Pegus stirred up quite a bit of excitement at Caribbean Fashion Week. All her models wore masks. At the end of the set, one of the female models returned to the stage and unmasked. 

She was actually a male cross-dresser. In an article in The Gleaner, published on June 16, 2009, the reporter noted the "awe" and "in some cases disgust" that the male model's performance of female identity had provoked.

Some Jamaicans may be uncom-fortable with this kind of masquerade. But Trinidad and Tobago is the land of mas. On Carnival Monday, cross-dressing men use pillows to create big buttocks and breasts. They wear wigs and dresses. It's all playful. It's not about an identity crisis. Men play women and women play men. And they even play themselves.

JONKUNNU CROSS-DRESSING

We don't have to go all the way to Trinidad and Tobago to appreciate the arts of role play. We have our own forms of traditional masquerade and cross-dressing. Just think about jonkunnu. The Bellywoman character is usually a man dressed as a pregnant woman. And she gets a lot of laughs as she jiggles her fake belly while dancing.

There was a time when jonkunnu maquerades were seen as an abomination. They were vulgar and sinful. In 1841, the Mayor of Kingston banned the 'John Canoe' parade - as the word was then spelled. The current spelling acknowledges the African elements in the ritual. The banning of the parade caused a riot. Angry revellers clashed with the Militia and the Mayor had to run for cover. He was forced to retreat to a ship in Kingston Harbour.

It's a real tragedy that Dwayne Jones wasn't so lucky. There was no place of safety for him in 'Gyal-tego' Bay. A 17-year-old child was slaughtered because he was only trying to play himself. His murderers must be brought to justice.

A mob is made up of individuals who choose to suspend responsibility for their actions. As a society, we cannot afford to follow suit. In this season, as we celebrate Emancipation and Independence, we must liberate ourselves from those biblical 'abominations' that threaten to turn us all into truly abominable brutes.

Carolyn Cooper is a professor of literary and cultural studies at the University of the West Indies, Mona. Visit her bilingual blog at http://carolynjoycooper.wordpress.com/. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and karokupa@gmail.com.

ENDS

my two cents continued:

Sadly the lobby has missed out too the other historical piece to this that there are at least five other cross dressers/transwomen who have been murdered before in a street dance space and that said personalities have been going to such spaces as a rite of passage of sorts in the quest to fulfill their female cisgender imperative, trouble is one has to be careful when in such spaces and not be too outlandish or outperform the biologically identified females in the space especially when persons may suspect one is a cross dresser. Sometimes it is the over exuberance in the space that becomes the trigger point of for the attack as was the case here as new information comes forth. Young Dwayne was too inexperience here in navigating the space and did not make good his escape in time hence the fatal end to this.

Check out my older post linked above where I got into it more.

Peace and tolerance

H

The vacuum nature hates: Grassroots activism ... the bargain mall acid incident follow up

On the weekend preceeding the Heroes Day holiday an acid throwing incident occured at the bargain mall in Half Way Tree at a popular bar, this is the same bargain mall that featured in the so called k12 threat some time ago which I had done an extensive post on, there seems to be never a dull day in Jamaica well at least other members of the community are now taking this blogging thing seriously which is good for the forumatic activity and venting of the issues is required.

also see:

The K12 threat came and went ...

Also on Sunday afternoon as I walked passed a group of taxi drivers and others the issue was still being discussed and a member of the community who operates a clothing store and a gay club elsewhere (how they knew is strange to me) hurled veiled threats that "no battyman ting roun' ere"

Here is a post where the acid thrower was interviewed by the writer of the post on the queen's yellow brick road:

It is said you wont know what it feels like, until you have walked a mile in someone else’s shoe.

Drag Queens/Transgenders are perhaps the most maligned of the LGBT community, both within the community and within the straight world. For a very base appreciation of who/what a drag queen transgender is, a drag queen is a born male who is happier and most comfortable dressed and being female. This is a hard to swallow concept for many. why would a man want to dress and feel like a female? How is it that he only feels complete and whole if he walks and talks, looks and feels like a woman, and doing anything else would be fake? Who knows, it is what it is, and perhaps the same confusion is the cause of the marginalisation of gay people, as straight people struggle to justify how a woman can please and love another woman, or how a man can find masculinity sexy. For many of us as gay people, being attracted to the same sex is what is natural for us, where attraction to the opposite sex is unnatural. We would not feel complete or whole doing anything else?

The church says it is a demon, and perhaps like the inquisition against witches who were really normal women hunted and killed at stakes, the church orders/supports/influences such murders and then stay quiet while it happens. Families are ashamed, and try to ignore the ‘signs’, but can not help but convey the disgust, whether influenced by their fear of their loved ones being hurt or the pain that maybe they did something to cause it. The state ignores them and those sworn to serve and protect, abuse. A mile in these shoes would leave anyone with severe corns, manifested in anger, resentment, abandonment, hate and perhaps all the trappings of a wild life, living without the opportunity to have or believe in dreams…a constant nightmare.

Amber Rose:

I had the opportunity to meet one of the most beautiful young promising gay men, just entering the scene about 3 years ago…Rojae, he had the sweetest shy smile, gorgeous skin, nice body…clean and pretty attending school, not knowing much gay men, hanging with a bunch of lesbians and begging for the chance to go to a gay party, even if its all girls. I turned him down, because Pandora: The Magic City was strictly for women. I saw him staring at this pretty pink princess looking short dress, he wanted to try it on, giggling and blushing all the way…I zipped the dress up on him in the changing room, taking sad note of how excited he was to be in the closet at the back of the store, see himself in a pretty pink pumpkin dress. Looking at him, I never imagined his eyes would light up as much at the thought of putting on a dress, I had met the issues of transgenders and the struggles involved in living in the skin they knew was not theirs as it didn’t match how they felt inside. Seeing the peace in the smile of someone who is allowed to settle into themselves is heart warming and Rojae warmed my heart. I lost touch with him for a while, and then turned up Amber Rose…fierce drag queen very unlike his alter-ego in attitude, great dresser but unfortunately always in arguments and fights. The transformation from Rojae to Amber was hugely contrasting…night and day, black and white. In our 30 minute discussion about the incident at Bargain Mall, on Saturday October 13th, I tried to understand what happened. Rojae/Amber is now 19 years old, and has been living the fast and furious life of Jamaican drag queen. He has never been exposed to programmes at JASL or JFLAG (the leading agencies with access to and ‘working ‘ with gay Jamaicans , it has been a long held criticism that JFLAG and JASL only works with certain classes/types of gay men…whiles the others (like Amber) are ignored/marginalised.

Drag Queens and Butches arguably face the most challenges in attempting to survive everyday in this homophobic society, the poor ones, without family support have it even harder. In trying to find a solid enough base/launching pad in the absence of family and social acceptance from which to begin exploring life, the start off is usually shaky with support garnered from the available source of equally marginalised gay youth without guidance and launching pads.

When I asked Amber, what happened, what caused the change? His simple reply without thought was:


‘Mi just fed up, Mi just fed up of straight people a tek disadvantage ah wi, and mi just feel like a stoppage must put to it, and that’s why mi a stand up fi my community and a defend my community’.

The reaction to Amber’s standing up to what is regular and expected by so many gay people is met with varied degrees from appreciation to outright disgust and anger. Some people say the straight guy deserved what he got for attacking Amber and that they should start leaving gay people alone, saluting Amber for not backing down after being attacked in a club knowingly frequented by members of the LGBT community; while others are blaming Amber for her activities that will make straight people more mad at us.

According to Amber, she went into the club as she usually does, the bartender calls out to her, she wasn’t sure and turned to ask if the bartender actually called her, the answer was ‘no’. However, a straight patron decided to make his disgust with ‘battyman’ known and felt as he hurled a bottle at Amber. The typical response would be for the gay man and every other gay person in the club (despite the ratio of gay to straight) to leave, with common sentiments of ‘this is Jamaica and we don’t belong here anyway’. Not the evolved dragon Amber, she asked him what he knew of her and the guy threw another bottle, and the fraca began, Amber claims that in self defense she took out her weapon and stabbed the guy in his hand before he could hit her again. She said she only became aware of the acid incident on leaving the mall and feeling her own skin as if it were set on fire.

Amber has single-handedly, and it would seem by some supernatural power and divine influence, at 19 years old, decided to take on this fight with straight people as she is simply ‘fed up’. She is adamant that Jamaica is as homophobic because of the amount of illiterate people who populate it and that the government must recognise that gay people are people too and leadership is needed to address this. She acknowledges JFLAG’s presence but believe that the ordinary gay and lesbian need to chip in, and stop running and hiding, as they are also part of the struggle for change. She thinks more presence in the media, a peaceful and secured demonstration, as well as meetings with public and government officials sensitizing them to the plight of gay Jamaicans is what is needed now. She is very aware, and though she won’t readily admit it, that many people see her and her attitude as a curse to the gays being accepted. Despite that like Joan of Arc she is confident that this is something she must do, almost like its her purpose.

I shudder to think how this will turn out, will Amber get the support, guidance and partnership from JFLAG and the rest of the community to fulfill her passion for a Jamaica where gay people are free to be, or will her radical attitudes render her just another dead saint, who becomes a fable.

There are ripest opportunities in deepest darkness, it is just a matter of perspective, Amber has been on radio programmes and is willing to become a visible drag spokesperson, willing to do TV or whatever it takes to move this forward. Would it be better if we engaged her, exposed her to the big picture and try to see if, where or how she might be able to positively help create the change, or will we operate as normal, ignoring the true issues but focusing on the personalities we like or don’t like, to the detriment of arriving at a solution that is for as much people as possible…inclusive and not marginalizing?

Whose call is it? There is a vacuum.

Disturbed by Xnews Story on Drag Queen and Gay Cop

Several weeks after the Jamaica Observer and Television Stations carried a story on a drag queen in Clarendon and the subsequent radio call in show hosted by Ragashanti where it was said “she” phoned in The Xnews tabloid now has joined the frey.

With a full photograph on its front page (hidden for this post) they had the headline “Male Cross Dresser Barby says, ‘Cops a Blow up mi phone’” on December 3, 2009. The paper of course reinforcing the impression that police officers have been calling her in secret for hookups. Why now Xnews and why also carry the gay cop story nearly a year after his ordeal? In the radio interview where Barby was said to have phoned in, Barby did say that some of the cops from the police station at the time had been calling her but the host Dr. Kingsley Ragashanti dismissed her claims as spurious and that she was implicating the officers at the station at the time.

So why is the Xnews reviving this now, Is there a link here or is the Xnews saying that since there maybe more gay cops by the implication of the Barby story that they should also leave Jamaica via the asylum route? I am also very disturbed that another full photo of the drag queen was shown in full garb knowing the possible implications to her person. Doesn’t she have a right to dress how she feels without fear or incitement guided by a third party such as what the Xnews is now doing?

Why were pictures of other alleged drag queens (see above) shown in the story as well? They were not a part of the original ordeal. Where is the journalistic responsibility or am I asking the wrong paper this as the Xnews has been known for its “trash” element?

Jason McFarlane, Programs Manager from JFLAG was quoted in the story as well, “To my knowledge He is OK, he has not received any threats and I have spoken to him a couple of times and no threats, thankfully.”

“I don’t think they are going to start going door to door looking for him maybe if they saw him dressed as a man then there would be a problem.”

I am a bit puzzled at those remarks as well if they are so as quoted by the paper, they sound and strikes on naivety on the part of gay culture in real terms and a misunderstanding of what actually occurs on the roads in regards to drag culture or cross dressing in Jamaica. “Barby” is not the first and won’t be the last publicly identified cross dresser and some transvestites may be indeed transgendered identified individuals psychologically in my estimation. Other cross dressers before have been murdered chief among them was the ever so popular “Browning” who was stabbed allegedly by a “client” who she was negotiating a sexual transaction with some 6 years ago. The case to my knowledge was thrown out of court due to lack of evidence.

Meanwhile the Xnews again quoted Jason McFarlane on the asylum issue with the cop who was vilified after a newspaper interview. “Yes asylum was granted his case has gone through but maybe I shouldn’t say that just yet. He has applied and he has a good case particularly because of the media exposure he got, he is currently living and working in the UK, ……………. I last spoke to him three weeks ago and he was quite happy to be safe in a country where is rights are protected. 

I don’t know what sort of job he is employed in because it was just a quick check in I did with him but I know that he is happy.”
Probably too much information was given here and the comments seem too “by the way” to be believed. Maybe this may also be a way for the Xnews to say well all of us as gays should run away and leave Jamaica via the asylum route.

All this has left a bitter taste in my mouth. Weh unu feel?

Recent contact directly with Barbie by phone and some of my sources has revealed that she is livid in a sense, as she feels her conversations with key persons from JFLAG offices were leaked to the XNEWS, even if this is not true the country’s only official GLBT rights organization cannot be seen as untrustworthy to the community that it serves. Just by the type of newspaper the Xnews is perceived to be a quote or statement present in its content it may be viewed at negative towards whatever the subject matter is at hand.

The impact of this story has led to a noticeable decrease in movement by some of the captioned queens and Barby herself as a precautionary measure as normal weekend social gatherings at regular spots were visibly empty this weekend.

How can we fix this issue for the time being …… I really don’t know.

H

Transgenderism in Jamaica: A victim's ordeal

At around 2:40am Sunday September 21, 2008 the above photographed victim was befriended by two males at a park in Kingston, pretending to help "her" out. While sitting at a bus stop initially near the park, the two males who were passing by presented themselves as keeping her company, around some time after the men offered to keep her warm, as it turned out this was a front to launch their planned assault on the victim.

The victim who is a pre-operative transsexual presents as a woman so the men believing the victim was female attempted to rape her.

She fought vigorously to be free of her attackers, however not before sustaining the injuries photographed where a knife was used to slash her throat, strangulation and ripping her blouse and pants off, It was at this juncture that realising she was a "he" they inflicted the slashing.

The security guards on the premises nearby were not very helpful, when she tried to seek help partially nude, after escaping her attackers, who by this time made off with her cash amounting to $JA9000.00, a cell phone and other personal effects, one apparently attempted to pull his firearm and told her to get away.

It was a commercial sex worker on the strip who saw her and assisted her by calling the police. They arrived and took her to the hospital and instructed her to file a report after getting medical attention.

She subsequently contacted JFLAG representatives myself Howard Fulton Admin/FInance/Crisis Interventions & Programs Manager Dane Lewis who arrived at the hospital to her aid.

Please pray for this person and thanks to JFLAG.

Thanks.