In TT, the penis has become weaponised

THE EDITOR: IN TT, the vagina is under attack. Not by an enemy which she has harmed, but by the very object of her affection – the penis, that male organ repurposed to “mash-it-up,” to own, punish and kill her without remorse.

Adana Stacy Dick was on her way to the police station to report a case of domestic violence but never made it. She was stabbed to death at a bus shed.

Seventeen-year-old nurse-aspirant Netanya Mohamdally’s body was found stabbed, chopped and partially submerged in a ravine. Schoolgirl Ashanti Riley was found naked in a shallow stream – beaten and stabbed.

To a large extent, the culprit behind these killings is an embedded culture of Trinbago male disrespect for women. A culture reinforced and maintained by the blunt lyrics of kaiso.

In his attack on vagina, the Mighty Shadow’s approach was not to mash her up, but to treat her with distrust. When a young man asks for advice on marriage, Shadow’s response: “You working? No!…You stealing? No!...You dealing? No! You looking for horn; plenty plenty horn, boy.”

In other words, Shadow’s advice to young Trinbago men is: Do not see Trinbago women as loving and loyal marriage partners. See them as unfaithful gold-diggers. When you working, they are loving; when you not working, they are horning. Advocates for family and women gave Shadow a bligh; for few if any, criticised this anti-marriage woman-bashing kaiso.

And in the Mighty Sparrow’s narrative of a man who has lost respect for himself and women, we hear: “Tell yuh sister to come down quick, I have something here for she. Tell she is Mr Benwood Dick the man from Sangre Grande. She know me well; I give she already. She must remember me. Go on, go on, tell she Mr Benwood come.”

What these narratives do is reinforce the Trinbago man’s belief that power comes from a weaponised penis, an organ he perceives as not being ordained for reproduction but one created for his abuse of women, to gain self-empowerment. Woe betide a woman who rejects a Trinbago man with this belief. Only death will satiate his rage.

However, to be fair, this culture of disrespect did not begin with kaiso men. It originated from a culture whose foundation, for the purpose of slave profit, was built on the specious argument that Africans were sub-human, worthy of interminable bondage, a notion continued after Emancipation with succeeding institutions of economic degradation and exploitation, ie, colonialism and East Indian indentureship.

If we are to eliminate the historical legacy of dehumanisation and the culture it created, which today expresses itself as self-hate in the form of brutal killings of both women and men and also concretised in the vulgarity on display during Carnival, then it is imperative that we embark on a cultural reset, one that requires a generational effort – 25 years of community reconstruction.

Measures we can deploy to minimise male disrespect for women and build a more humane and caring society are:

* Provide a $30,000 tax refund incentive to married couples whose combined income is less than $120,000, to encourage marriage in low-income households.

* Replace SEA exams. At age 12, most failed SEA students develop an inferiority complex, a self-esteem killer and gang-membership promoter.

* Implement a lottery system for prestige schools’ intake, to address inequality in education.

* Create a three-year volunteer national military service programme for 16-25-year-olds which includes vocational training.

* Defund bacchanal Carnival orgy and increase funding for creative Carnival with attractive prizes for steelband participation. Promoting bacchanal Carnival to attract tourist dollars is inimical to building dignity and self-esteem.

* Promote Panorama on the road featuring an international steelband parade along Frederick, Henry and Charlotte Streets as a tourist attraction on Carnival Monday.

* Construct a new prison to reduce overcrowding and human degradation.

* Appoint a police commissioner whose professional career includes administrative on-the-job experience and knowledge in forensic science.

* Clean up the lyrics, sanitise Carnival and build respect for women. For a society in which the penis is weaponised to own, punish, and mash-up vagina, the end result must be depravity, disrespect and ultimately, the continued brutal murder of our women.

EDMUND NARINE

Massachusetts