Dub­bing state­ments by for­mer Health Min­is­ter Fuad Khan to­wards Can­dace San­tana in a now-vi­ral rant on so­cial me­dia as “shock­ing,” Wom­antra head Stephanie Leitch says Khan’s view­point has no sci­en­tif­ic ba­sis.

Leitch made the com­ment at the 3rd An­nu­al Women’s Rights Ral­ly and March at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, even as Khan stood by his com­ment and San­tana said she for­gave him for his com­ments de­spite the hu­mil­i­a­tion it has caused her.

San­tana shot in­to the spot­light on Ash Wednes­day when she post­ed her ex­pe­ri­ences of be­ing body-shamed over the two days of Car­ni­val on her Face­book pro­file. Most peo­ple re­spond­ed with love and sup­port for San­tana but Khan did the op­po­site. In a video, he rant­ed about San­tana’s size, telling her to “shut up” and that he doesn’t want his chil­dren of T&T to be­come obese be­cause she speaks about fat-sham­ing.

Yes­ter­day, Leitch said San­tana is brave and has giv­en a voice to many women.

“I think that Can­dace San­tana did a very brave thing by shar­ing her sto­ry on her so­cial me­dia and the fact that it went vi­ral, stands tes­ta­ment to how pow­er­ful that was and I think she gave a voice to many women who don’t fit this very cook­ie cut­ter, cap­i­tal­ist mod­el of who should play mas and what kind of bod­ies should be on the road,” Leitch said.

Just be­cause San­tana ex­ists, Leitch said, does not mean she is en­cour­ag­ing oth­er peo­ple to be fat.

“I just find it ab­solute­ly shock­ing that Fuad Khan would make those kinds of state­ments, par­tic­u­lar­ly on In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day. He is a doc­tor, a for­mer min­is­ter of health, which he is proud­ly say­ing in his video but what he is say­ing is just com­plete­ly un­sci­en­tif­ic, not to men­tion de­hu­man­is­ing by say­ing that be­cause she ex­ists in her fat body, she is en­cour­ag­ing oth­er peo­ple to be fat. That has no ba­sis in re­al­i­ty and to me, it was com­plete­ly un­called for.”

She said Wom­antra stands in sol­i­dar­i­ty with San­tana, es­pe­cial­ly now when women are be­ing per­se­cut­ed for just ex­ist­ing as they are.

About 250 peo­ple turned up for the march yes­ter­day, some bear­ing plac­ards, some wear­ing stilts, feath­ers and glit­ter. As the pro­ces­sion made its way around the sa­van­nah ac­com­pa­nied by a mu­sic truck and live tas­sa, many of the par­tic­i­pants chant­ed and danced.

Dr An­gelique V Nixon, grad­u­ate stud­ies co­or­di­na­tor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies In­sti­tute of Gen­der and De­vel­op­ment Stud­ies, said this year the lo­cal arm cel­e­bra­tion of In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day is push­ing the in­ter­na­tion­al theme of Bal­ance for Bet­ter, fur­ther.

“We are re­al­ly ex­cit­ed to be out here march­ing for gen­der jus­tice. We have tak­en the in­ter­na­tion­al theme, which is #Bal­ance­for­Bet­ter and we are push­ing that even more to say de­mand bet­ter, march for gen­der jus­tice,” she said.

Stu­dents from St George’s Col­lege opened the for­mal part of the pro­gramme with a mono­logue per­for­mance that drew loud ap­plause.

Cana­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er Car­la Hogan-Rufelds, who was al­so present, said Cana­da takes gen­der equal­i­ty and gen­der jus­tice very se­ri­ous­ly. She said for the coun­try’s bud­get, every pol­i­cy de­ci­sion that was made was on­ly done af­ter gen­der analy­sis and she is hop­ing that Cana­da can part­ner with T&T for greater gen­der bal­ance.

“Here we are hop­ing to work with the Gov­ern­ment of T&T in the area of gen­der-re­spon­sive bud­get­ing. Cana­da has some ex­pe­ri­ence in that as I men­tioned and we are al­so hop­ing to pro­vide some train­ing in gen­der-risk analy­sis,” Hogan-Rufelds said.

“I want to en­cour­age you to keep go­ing, as Cana­da joins T&T in em­pow­er­ing women and girls as we know this will ul­ti­mate­ly change the world for bet­ter.”