Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar

A few weeks ago, a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter ac­cused a colum­nist and sen­a­tor of giv­ing "fem­i­nist" re­spons­es to a piece of leg­is­la­tion which might per­mit the forcible ex­trac­tion of a DNA sam­ple from a rape vic­tim. The min­is­ter has since apol­o­gised to the women, and re­it­er­at­ed his com­mit­ment to women's rights, but he might have (in­ad­ver­tent­ly) un­cov­ered an in­ter­est­ing is­sue. Many women I know (and this is as sci­en­tif­ic as this col­umn will get) de­test the la­bel, and some get of­fend­ed when you call them a fem­i­nist. One even threat­ened to stop the lap dance if I didn't take "that hate­ful, hurt­ful word back." Men al­so hate the word, even if most of them don't have any more dis­tinct idea of its mean­ing be­yond "an­gry, hefty chick."

It's a lit­tle strange, be­cause my sense is that most Tri­ni men and women (ex­cept those who make pol­i­cy) un­think­ing­ly sup­port equal rights, equal treat­ment, and spe­cial pro­tec­tion for women and girls from abuse. No one is un­der any il­lu­sion about what women can do, or have done. So why is fem­i­nism tak­ing a bum rap? The con­sen­sus seems to be it's be­cause one tribe of women that has locked it up. Much as I'd love to spank UWI's am­ple, lumpy seat for this, the grip its aca­d­e­mics have on the word is iden­ti­cal to sim­i­lar women (mid­dle class, mid­dleweight, and in­su­lat­ed, much like the cream in the mid­dle of a donut, from re­al­i­ty) in sim­i­lar in­sti­tu­tions in the metro­pole.

The for­eign in­sti­tu­tions do of­fer a va­ri­ety of per­spec­tives, but lo­cal­ly, fem­i­nism equals eth­nic­i­ty added to a lot of an­gry rhetoric about op­pres­sion, or quite hor­rif­ic tales of abuse. These are the kinds of fem­i­nists you see (or used to see) on tele­vi­sion here and abroad. The term "fem­i­nazis" was pop­u­lar at one time in some parts of the US. One of the things this per­cep­tion does is to cre­ate a schism: Fem­i­nists vs the re­al women. From my in­for­mal in­ves­ti­ga­tions, many women tend not to like fem­i­nists be­cause they take all the fun out of be­ing a girl, and re­al­ly don't put any­thing in. And the feel­ing seems to be mu­tu­al. In an in­ter­view with Glo­ria Steinem in the Lon­don Ob­serv­er on Nov 13, Rachel Cooke wrote that one of the rea­sons Steinem was hat­ed by the more "se­ri­ous" fem­i­nists, like Ger­maine Greer and Bet­ty Friedan, was be­cause she's beau­ti­ful.

Beau­ty seems to be a key un-dis­cussed fem­i­nist is­sue, and can mean a va­ri­ety of things. A re­cent book, Cather­ine Hakim's Hon­ey Mon­ey: Who Says Sell­ing Sex is De­grad­ed? (re­viewed in the No­vem­ber is­sue of Spiked-on­line), pro­vides the idea of "erot­ic cap­i­tal." In brief, beau­ty is a part of what women are. (And it's the part men are in­ter­est­ed in. Along with their per­son­al­i­ties.) To brack­et it out from fem­i­nism is to erase, well, beau­ti­ful women. I doubt beau­ti­ful women mind be­ing brack­et­ed out. They're too busy fight­ing off pla­toons of rich, pow­er­ful men the fem­i­nists need to in­flu­ence. In the US, pop fem­i­nism, es­poused by in­flu­en­tial fig­ures like Oprah and Saman­tha from Sex & the City, pro­vide the bridge to al­low beau­ty in­to "the strug­gle." But if you lis­ten to the dis­cus­sion about fem­i­nism in Trinidad (if you can find it), you might re­alise it's the prop­er­ty of the an­gry-eth­nic-op­pressed fem­i­nists.

The an­gry fem­i­nists don't do any­one any favours-and in par­tic­u­lar not the op­pressed women they pur­port to rep­re­sent. And to re­peat, be­cause it's im­por­tant, pok­ing at pro­fes­sion­al fem­i­nists is not to triv­i­alise im­por­tant wom-en's and gen­der is­sues, and rape and ex­ploita­tion are not the on­ly is­sues. But even these are not re­al­ly dis­cussed in any mean­ing­ful way. Among the many im­por­tant is­sues not dis­cussed are things which you can get in any un­der­grad­u­ate course in a US uni­ver­si­ty-like the com­merce among sex, sta­tus, and pow­er. For ex­am­ple, there is an up­scale Tri­ni sex trade (which is dif­fer­ent from what we think "sex trade" means), which is not such a sim­plis­tic is­sue, and of in­ter­est.

A dis­cus­sion could start, for ex­am­ple, with the clas­sic 1967 Cather­ine Deneuve film, Belle de Jour, about a mid­dle class French woman who de­cides to work in a broth­el for a few hours a day to re­lieve her bore­dom. Thir­ty years lat­er, a re­al-life young British doc­tor­al stu­dent, Brooke Mag­nan­ti, de­cid­ed to sup­ple­ment her in­come by work­ing as a call-girl, and wrote a blog about it, ti­tled Belle de Jour. And she's not an anom­aly. What does this have to do with Trinidad? Ever been to an up­scale bar in town? Any­one who's been to the night­clubs and var­i­ous oth­er places (in and out of Port-of-Spain) would have no­ticed the new/old sex­u­al pol­i­tics: the bustling trade in erot­ic cap­i­tal, and, as the ads for Car­ni­val ac­com­mo­da­tions spec­i­fy, for­eign vis­i­tors on­ly.

The point is, these undis­cussed sto­ries (and oth­ers) sug­gest that man­i­fes­ta­tions of pow­er, eco­nom­ics, and sta­tus as they re­late to gen­der, can be dis­cussed with­out the shame and sor­did­ness com­mon­ly as­so­ci­at­ed. None of this is to re­lieve guilt, or pro­vide rea­sons to not help women forced in­to sell­ing their bod­ies. But it ap­pears that some women, much bet­ter off, bet­ter make this choice with no more anx­i­ety than a ca­reer. (And so do some men, by the way.) When these so­cial con­ver­sa­tions are not re­spon­si­bly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly guid­ed, in the pub­lic sphere, peo­ple in need of this knowl­edge (or­di­nary peo­ple, and au­thors of sex crime leg­is­la­tion) are left ig­no­rant, and they pass on that ig­no­rance to the rest of us. Un­til then, young women and leg­is­la­tors con­tin­ue to be ed­u­cat­ed by the Kar­dashi­ans, Dance­hall, and Sex & the City. Any­thing but the an­gry fem­i­nists.