Lesbian and bisexual women in the Caribbean

Sexual choice as a Human Right Issue

D. Michelle Cave and Joan French

Woman-woman relations of a sexual and intimate nature exist in the Caribbean. They are repressed publicly and privately by the dominant social and cultural norms. This repression is reproduced in our legal systems.

Woman-woman relationships are denigrated on the basis of denial of sexual choice, just as women are denigrated on the basis of gender, class, sex, colour and race, all of which constitute a denial of human rights.

Lesbian relationships exist between women who happen to love women. The right to love is a human right. The right to mate or couple is no less.

While we recognise that the homophobia which is so strident in some territories of the region places male homosexuals in particular, in open peril of their lives, we do not feel competent to deal adequately with the concerns and perceptions of male homosexuals. For that reason, we have chosen to focus in this article on the significance of the control of female sexuality in the construct of patriarchal society.

Human beings, as sexual beings, move in their lifetimes through a variety of sexual impulses and experiences; between heterosexual and same-sex constructs, sometimes at different periods of life, sometimes consecutively, and sometimes concurrently.

Choices are conditioned by the violence and war which mark so much of female-male relations in patriarchal society. It is therefore very hard to define who is a lesbian, since lesbianism exists not so much as a construct into which persons are permanently defined, but as a form of relations into which people move by impulse or choice, sometimes at different times in their lives, sometimes interspersed with heterosexual relations, and sometimes permanently.

So while it's easy to define lesbianism as a form of relations, to define a lesbian is a much more difficult issue, and indeed an unnecessary effort. Women are sexual beings and relating to each other sexually is an option which may or may not be chosen. that other persons choose it permanently could be considered a choice like any other, were it not for the fact that the strength of the patriarchal taboo converts it into a supreme act of courage, a supreme act of defence of one's basic human rights.

The social ostracism to which women who love women are subjected, the individual and social violence, the criminalisation of their relations, the failure to recognize the families they establish, the denial of their right to parenthood, are not acceptable in the context of human rights.

The freedom of choice which is so avidly defended by human rights activists in relation to political, religious, cultural and other civil rights should also apply to sexual rights.

Woman-woman relations of an intimate and sexual nature exist in the Caribbean. There are established, long-term, consensual sexual relationships between women. Such relationships are not the discovery of the decadent post-War period, nor are they a product of the new feminist movement of the 70s, nor of the social disintegration of the 80s and 90s, nor are they merely examples of the importation of decadent ways from the white North. Such relationships have existed among church-going women in the Caribbean since time immemorial. However, the recording of the history of these relationships is fairly recent.

Nevertheless, we hear from Makeda Silvera of Jamaica, of the lesbian relationships of her grandmother and her mother's generations - relationships of ordinary: Miss Bibi, Jonesie, Aunt Vie, Cherrie Rose and Miss Gem, Opal, Pearl. In the words of her mother's friend, "These women still went to church, still got baptised, still went on pilgrimages ... Close people around knew, but not everyone. It wasn't a thing that you would go out and broadcast. It would be something just between the two people."

Every society in history has been marked by the practise of lesbianism: It is as natural as loving men, having babies, or touching a friend. It is a natural impulse which is restrained or expressed by choice.

Shared experience has identified such forms and preferences among the broadest range of social groupings in the Caribbean: Churchwomen, Afro-Caribbean as well as Indo-Caribbean women, higglers, market women, professionals of all kinds. The list is endless. The stereotype of lesbians as muscular. with short-cropped hair and a preference for male clothing is just that - a stereotype. There is little which distinguishes lesbians from other women. The range of types, styles, forms of beauty, mix of 'feminine' and 'masculine' traits are the same. Lesbians are women who love women or who find themselves in love with a particular woman.

In the Caribbean, the stories of these sisters, for the most part remain unspoken, or spoken only to women they love, or the closest of friends. Increasingly, they penetrate the "Dear Christine," "Dear Janet," and "I Confess" columns of newspapers in the region. But a few Caribbean women have spoken out openly, in print, about lesbian relationships. An Indo-Guyanese woman speaks to the fear of isolation from her wider community: "I haven't come out at anybody except my closest friends. I think that if my parents found out, or my siblings, they would reject me, and I would be isolated."

The general attitude to such an appeal is illustrated in the following reply from "Dear Christine" to a woman who is seeking help to overcome her isolation by meeting other lesbian women. "... I hope these disturbing feelings of yours are just a phase that will pass," she says. "Maybe a talk with a psychologist can help you cope or sort out your feelings," she adds. This typical response mirrors the terror and shocked silence evoked among the mainstream of Caribbean society, both male and female, by the discovery that a friend or a sister or a mother is in love with another woman. It causes women in lesbian relationships to deny and cloak these relations. Even collective organising by women is contained and constrained by these fears; more often than not as soon as women begin to bond together, to take collective action in defence of their own independence or to give each other support outside of the control of men, they are accused of being "a bunch of lesbians."

Why are lesbian relationships viewed with such fear? Why has this issue been muted even within the Caribbean feminist movement?

The structure and manifestations of patriarchy in the Caribbean are well-known. They can be seen in the subordinate position of women in the family, in the church, in politics, in the economy, in the structure of paid and unpaid labour, in the structure of responsibility for the reproductive tasks of society and in the taboos which are brought to bear on women's social relations. The role of the control of sexuality in the maintenance of this scheme is often not recognised.

The attitude of Afro-Caribbean patriarchy to the control of female sexuality has been quite consistent throughout Caribbean history. In the debate about the 'black family' it has manifested itself in the thesis which says that the black male is not a family man/does not display attitudes of responsibility because the white backra massa castrated him by not allowing him to have control over 'his' woman, just as the white massa had over his. In either construct, as women, our bodies, our sexuality, our selves, are perceived as owned and controlled by men.

Sexuality is the most resistant area for transformation because it is at the very root of patriarchy. Lesbian relationships are the ultimate threat because they posit total autonomy of the female in the sexual realm.

No constitution in the world asserts sexual choice other than the South Africa Constitution. No existing Caribbean laws assert the right to sexual choice. Recent years have seen legislation criminalising homosexuality extended to women under the guise of the movement toward 'equality.' In Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Antigua and Barbuda and the Bahamas, legislation which previously made no reference to lesbianism, now 'equalizes' its repression alongside male homosexuality, by enshrining heterosexuality as the only acceptable form of sexual relations between consenting adults. The lack of a developed strategy within the Caribbean feminist movement has rendered it impossible to launch an effective challenge at either national or regional levels.

Discrimination is violence. Discrimination on the ground of sexual orientation causes high levels of physical and psychological violence in both public and private spheres. This discrimination should be considered illegal alongside discrimination based on race, sex, class, age, gender and religion. This specific form of discrimination limits lesbians' full exercise of their civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights contemplated in all kinds of international declarations. In this Caribbean region, issues around women loving women should be put on the Human Rights Agenda once and for all. "Freedom of Sexual Choice" should be established as an inalienable Human Right. To that end, instruments should be established to outlaw discrimination against same-sex relations in general.

Families headed by same-sex couples should be included as a legal option in social legislation, according them the same basic rights as heterosexual families. Sexual rights are human rights. Sexual choice merits the same protection as religious, political or cultural choice. Discrimination on the basis of sexual choice is just as repressive as discrimination on the basis of class, race or sex.

Do we have the capacity to rise this challenge?