Zahra Gor­don

In 1993, when Ja­maican dance­hall artiste Shab­ba Ranks re­leased the song Bed­room Bul­ly, the mu­sic video, which fea­tured nu­mer­ous young women gy­rat­ing around Ranks while he sat on a bed, drew lit­tle scruti­ny.

The lyrics of the song didn't gar­ner ques­tions ei­ther, al­though they could be in­ter­pret­ed as vi­o­lent. Ex­cerpts from the lyrics in­clude lines such as "I'm a bed­room bul­ly with­out mer­cy/in my bed­room is my ter­ri­to­ry/any girl come test they can­not leave me." In the song, Ranks al­so sings about his fa­ther "bed­room bul­ly­ing" his moth­er.

A bul­ly is de­fined as a per­son who us­es strength or pow­er to harm or in­tim­i­date those who are weak­er. The re­la­tion­ship be­tween the bul­ly and the per­son be­ing bul­lied is abu­sive. When this term bul­ly is trans­lat­ed to sex­u­al ac­tiv­i­ty, the re­sult­ing im­agery be­comes marred by vi­o­lence.

In 1993, the vi­su­als used to de­fine a bed­room bul­ly were not as con­spic­u­ous as those im­ages that be­gan sur­fac­ing on the In­ter­net ear­li­er this year with the re­lease of the re­make of the song by an­oth­er Ja­maican dance­hall artiste Busy Sig­nal.

The im­ages can­not be linked di­rect­ly to Busy Sig­nal, but be­gan show­ing up around the same time the re­make was re­leased. The memes fea­tured im­ages of a woman hid­ing be­hind a bed and a man stand­ing up and point­ing at the bed as if com­mand­ing her to get in. In an­oth­er car­toon a man is pic­tured drag­ging a woman in­to a bed.

Some­time af­ter these im­ages ap­peared they were re­made to re­verse the roles be­tween men and women. Be­cause these im­ages were memes, it may not be im­me­di­ate­ly clear to view­ers that what is be­ing de­pict­ed is rape. The im­ages are now avail­able on t-shirts. There is a herbal ton­ic drink al­so named Bed­room Bul­ly made by a man­u­fac­tur­er Zion Or­gan­ic Inc.

Prof Gabrielle Ho­sein, from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies' In­sti­tute of Gen­der and De­vel­op­ment Stud­ies, says the song is not an ex­am­ple of dance­hall sub­cul­ture, but a sig­ni­fi­er of a cul­tur­al sys­tem of male dom­i­na­tion.

"The cul­ture of mu­sic that cham­pi­ons men's dom­i­na­tion of women and al­so forms of mas­culin­i­ty that are as­so­ci­at­ed with vi­o­lence and pow­er are not by them­selves the cause of rape or its ac­cep­tance or its si­lenc­ing," she said.

"They are a part of a wider cul­ture of mu­sic, ad­ver­tis­ing bill­boards–for tiles, cars, car bat­ter­ies, al­co­hol, et cetera–mu­sic videos, pub­lic talk and gen­dered re­la­tions that col­lec­tive­ly re­in­force the idea of women's sex­u­al avail­abil­i­ty on men's terms and to re­in­force men's sta­tus in the eyes of oth­er men."

She added that women are taught to be con­stant­ly on their guard to sub­scribe to men's in­sa­tiable sex­u­al needs.

"The be­liefs and val­ues in our so­ci­ety re­in­force the idea that men have an ac­tive and even un­con­trol­lable sex­u­al­i­ty that they can't help but sat­is­fy, and that women must lead their lives as if they know and should ex­pect this," Ho­sein said.

"We should there­fore be care­ful of our dress, move­ments and bod­ies and so on, liv­ing as if our ba­sic right to ful­ly con­trol and de­cide what hap­pens to our bod­ies and sex­u­al­i­ty can­not be guar­an­teed."

Ho­sein said the male dom­i­na­tion ev­i­dent in songs like Bed­room Bul­ly are di­rect­ly con­nect­ed to the po­si­tions of oth­er cul­tur­al in­sti­tu­tions.

"It's al­so to­tal­ly cen­tral that our in­sti­tu­tions � law, fam­i­ly, re­li­gion and school­ing � do not pro­tect and pro­mote women's full con­trol over their bod­ies, sex­u­al­i­ty and fer­til­i­ty by le­gal­iz­ing abor­tion on re­quest, teach­ing sex­u­al ed­u­ca­tion in schools be­yond ab­sti­nence, mak­ing con­doms eas­i­ly avail­able with­out stig­ma and by pro­mot­ing a cul­ture of si­lence re­gard­ing child sex­u­al abuse, in­cest, forced ear­ly sex­u­al ini­ti­a­tion, mar­i­tal rape and date rape."

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian, Ja­maican-born fem­i­nist crit­ic and au­thor, Joan Mor­gan, said re­spond­ing to a par­tic­u­lar song or graph­ic was more like plead­ing than deal­ing with the larg­er, glob­al prob­lems of sex­ism, misog­y­ny and rape cul­ture.

"These mo­ments come up and we re­act to the mo­ment and not all the non mo­ments," she said.

"The num­ber of things that I could say about it doesn't make a dif­fer­ence to me. The larg­er prob­lem is that we're quick to chal­lenge graph­ics like these and artists for their lyrics, but it's the women who are ac­tu­al­ly be­ing bru­talised by rape whose sto­ries are nev­er told and that we've ac­cept­ed this si­lence that needs ad­dress­ing."

Mor­gan de­fined rape cul­ture as a "sys­tem of or­gan­ised and in­ter­sect­ing op­pres­sion, racism and pa­tri­archy that com­bines to make women's rights to their own bod­ies ir­rel­e­vant. When we talk about rape cul­ture, we talk about rape as a sys­tem of con­trol, rape as a sys­tem of keep­ing down women and chil­dren, and some­times men who are not at the top of the pow­er struc­ture."

The re­cent is­sue with Amer­i­can rap­per Rick Ross was a rare ex­am­ple of an ef­fec­tive strat­e­gy ac­cord­ing to Mor­gan.

In March, Ross came un­der fire for lyrics in his song U.N.E.N.O., where he spoke about tak­ing a woman home and hav­ing sex with her af­ter drug­ging her. Ross, who was a Reebok brand am­bas­sador, lost his con­tract af­ter a pe­ti­tion for his re­moval was pre­sent­ed to the com­pa­ny.

"With Rick Ross the ap­proach that peo­ple took in ap­proach­ing his spon­sor was re­al­ly ef­fec­tive and be­cause they did pull spon­sor­ship, and he'll prob­a­bly nev­er have an­oth­er lyric like that, but it's very rare when black women's bod­ies are linked to cor­po­rate en­ti­ties in that way."

Fig­ur­ing out how to ad­dress these is­sues in our com­mu­ni­ties would be cul­tur­al­ly spe­cif­ic, added Mor­gan.

"Some strate­gies are more ef­fec­tive than oth­ers but it has to start with an over­all ed­u­ca­tion about rape be­cause a lot of men and women just don't know what con­sent is."

Mor­gan added, how­ev­er, that she does not be­lieve in cen­sor­ing artists. But she does be­lieve a cul­ture of ac­count­abil­i­ty needs to be cre­at­ed.

UWI stu­dents share opin­ions

The T&T Guardian vis­it­ed a gen­der stud­ies class at UWI to get their views on the Bed­room Bul­ly song and graph­ic.

Stu­dents were asked about their ini­tial re­ac­tions to both, whether or not any­thing they saw or heard seemed vi­o­lent and if they thought this was cul­tur­al­ly spe­cif­ic to dance­hall mu­sic.

Monique Wick­ham, 20,

so­ci­ol­o­gy ma­jor

"First time I heard it I hat­ed it be­cause I know what the song means and how so­ci­ety is say­ing it's nor­mal for men to act like this. It's vi­o­lent and peo­ple don't recog­nise be­cause they get caught up in the beat. It sig­ni­fies the cul­ture at large and is not iso­lat­ed. It's part of our so­cial­i­sa­tion that con­tin­ues to per­pet­u­ate over time."

Dy­lan Sa­hab­dool, 20,

French ma­jor

"I think it fur­ther helps to ob­jec­ti­fy women, so in­stead of her be­ing a per­son she's an ob­ject. It re­in­forces rape cul­ture and it's hap­pen­ing in larg­er so­ci­ety as well. Men jus­ti­fy rape as though it's some­thing they do be­cause they can't help them­selves, but they can."

Aly­cia Par­ris-Ross, 39,

psy­chol­o­gy ma­jor

"The man (in the im­age) looks like what the name says–a bul­ly. It looks vi­o­lent, like she's hid­ing from him. I think it shows how we are in so­ci­ety in gen­er­al. Noth­ing hap­pens in a vac­u­um."

Sha­neece Noel, 20,

gov­ern­ment/po­lit­i­cal sci­ence ma­jor

"To me, the girl be­ing dragged says it all, that the man is a bul­ly but it doesn't seem vi­o­lent to me; it just seems heav­i­ly sex­u­al­ly-ori­ent­ed. We find these type of over­ly sex­u­al lyrics in all gen­res, not just dance­hall."