The Tribune

By IAN BETHEL-BENNETT

Walking across a crowded area the other day, a group of young women were talking among themselves while others milled about. The conversation was loud and suddenly two words that packed a huge punch because they are usually used to degrade women were shouted. Those two words are usually kept in the bowels of the basest bar rooms where men talk drunkenly among themselves. The conversation would be inappropriate in most settings, and yet there it was issuing forth from the mouth of a lavishly be-weaved, be-made up, bejewelled young woman. I was shocked. It made me think about the appropriateness of the way we live now. Public decency has disappeared.

We often talk about male crudeness and the need for change, but this incident showed a whole new masculinisation of women. What is more, it bears witness to the degradation of the public space and the behaviour of young women in that space as they enact violence upon one another.

Videos are shown everyday with girls beating other girls in schools, yet boys are the problem. It has to be highlighted again that violence transcends the physical and is often embodied in verbal exchanges. People speak in a degrading fashion to each other more frequently now than ever before. Behaviour has become something of an unimportant matter in the Bahamas.

Once upon a time, parents and grandparents insisted that good manners and proper speech were essential as they reflected family worth; they showed where one came from. Today, it seems that people disregard this idea as completely antiquated. How appropriate is our society? Perhaps we have all begun the move towards blurred lines. There is no longer a distinction between the way we act in public and the way we act in private. Manners are unimportant, according to how youngsters speak to one another and to their elders. Do they know how to carry themselves any differently?

Video culture may also share some of the responsibility for the shift in public behaviour. Young people get many of their ideas from those around them, and leaders in society are most influential. The appropriateness of these leaders directly influences the youth of the country. That is further complicated by video culture where YouTube often glamourises violence and sex, as well as female degradation. Female degradation also speaks to a problem with self-respect. If one values oneself, one is far less likely to degrade someone else. On the other hand, when one has nothing to base respect on, nor has seen anything other than disrespect enacted in the environment, there is little chance that there can be any other type of behaviour.

A recent song enacts this degradation well. The song “Blurred Lines” by Robin Thicke featuring T.I. and Pharell is catchy and enjoyable, but what message does it send? It simply says that I, a man in a position of power, am objectifying you: “I know you want it”. While the song is not overtly suggestive, the video that accompanies it, delivers a Huber intense message of female degradation. Does this problematize appropriateness of music and performance? It seems to ask whether we have followed a broken cultural model too far and are ultimately, now, unable to distinguish between what is appropriate where and when.

The C word is one of the most degrading words used to define women as nothing more than an object of male desire and power. What we have to ask ourselves is how appropriate is the way society teaches young people to behave and how appropriate is the state in acting the way it often does? “I know you want it’” encourages men to understand that no means yes. Blurred lines is all about confusion and misunderstanding. The message is blurred and so allows inappropriate behaviour. Does the state ever follow this trend? Rapists are often given a year in prison for their crime and are out before that because the prisons are crowded. However, there was a case recently that sparked concern; a woman was sentenced to one year in jail for a slap. How fitting is the punishment to the crime? Ironically, we have a backlog of cases that take months, years if not a decades to get to trail, but this one was taken up immediately. Amazingly no one noticed the irony.

Murderers, rapists, child molesters and gunmen enjoy years of awaiting trial during which time, anything can happen. Yet, a woman is expeditiously sentenced to a year in the lockup because she, vexed beyond reason by a terribly broken system that is excused for its infuriating ineffectiveness, acted without control. We cannot excuse her behaviour, but we can ask why she was made a public example of. She was then unable to produce the fine the court imposed that would have facilitated a shorter sentence.

Do we see any irony in the way this example has been used to illustrate the effectiveness of swift justice, yet tourists are beaten and robbed and the bandits remain at large? Rapists and murders roam free but the country punishes a woman who has acted inappropriately, but not beyond the realm of what we encounter on a daily basis in many spheres of society.

Ultimately, men can mangle the hand that feeds the country, they can rape and murder, but if a woman is driven to slap someone who has failed to do his job reasonably, according to reports, she is imprisoned. Yes, it is wrong, and there is no excusing it, but how many times a day do we see the same behaviour on the internet, on the streets and in our places of work? The message being sent is clear and inappropriate: a man blurring the lines between no and yes can be excused because she asked for it, and the state will not swiftly enforce justice for such offences, yet the state will imprison a woman for inappropriately acting out her anger.

Meanwhile, a young woman can use the C word publicly with absolute disregard in a place where behaviour should be mannerly. The lines certainly do seem to be blurred.

• Dr. Ian Bethell-Bennett, Associate Professor in the School of English Studies at the College of the Bahamas, has written extensively on race and migration in the Bahamas, cultural creolisation and gender issues. Direct questions and comments to iabethellbennett@yahoo.co.uk.