A Historical Mapping of Jamaican Queerness as a Marginal Position
For the History and Politics section, Lia Parker explores the position of Jamaican queerness in a geo-spatial situation where the violence of men widely goes unchecked and where resistance is vast in all forms.
The Jamaican queer position has historically existed on the fringes of Jamaican society; queer ontology in the wider Jamaican understanding is limited to slurs in dancehall music and implicitly queer men in femme dress as the butt of jokes in secular cultural theatre. As such, this marginal position refers to both the everyday existence of queer-ness as well as any comprehensive conversation or understanding of praxis that falls outside the cisheteronormative. This places queer being (and breath) as the marginal position in a setting that is both predominantly black and irrevocable from the wider, already always–relegated context of the Global South. The dominant voice being black, male and quasi-Christian means that there has never been space for alternative conceptions of Being to be safe or upheld. Here, the alternative encompasses everything from tastes in music to personal style to hobbies, and of course, sexuality. This compositional contribution of queerness to subculture has resulted in the oppressive dominant culture of cisheteronormativity ascribing "queer" as an implicit virtual quality to any material reproduction of the alternative: goth style, skateboarding, rock music, and so on. Queerness both becomes cause and effect, serving as both genesis and revelation for the inescapable othering that is destined to take place.
A scale of social ordering evolving out of slavery placed the cisheteronormative experience at the top of the organising hierarchy. This, coupled with patriarchy after colonialist expansion in the west, creates the perfect setting for the othering that lives within any hierarchy. This reproduces masculinity as the othering measure that Kimmel refers to in his 1997 paper. Masculinity, as the dominant position in relation, relegates all subsequent gendered/sexual experiences to the subordinate position; relationally subordinate due to not fulfilling the rigid standards for the cishet masculine experience. Here is where we encounter the queer position. The masculine experience only allows creativity if it upholds the violence necessary, and the male's seemingly inherent and inescapable desire to other. To empower alternative expression is to fail the masculine requirements and to be relegated to the "ben" descriptor. Heterosexuality in this context is not sufficiently satisfied just by the exclusive sexual and romantic pursuit of women; rather, it requires the masculine–presenting individual to (1) commit to violence and (2) disavow all processes of expression that are seen as falling short, what Kimmel calls the sufficient masculine performance: the willingness to enact violence as a sanction in response to unsatisfied standards of masculinity. The Jamaican (cis-hetero) masculine position encompasses blackness, poverty and expectations of violence; this means that in Jamaica (and more extensively, in the Global South), cisgender-heterosexual men feel shorted by their subordinate position which they are barricaded into by exclusion from the privilege of whiteness on one side and by their cemented position in the working class on the other. This paradoxical intersection of a lack of awareness coupled with the patriarchy-empowered ideas of the "inherent" superiority of men describes the relationship between Jamaican men and their circumstantial impotence. It is through this exclusion from perfect execution of masculine prowess that the Jamaican masculine position justifies violence; that is, if Jamaican men can uphold the violence that the classification of masculinity requires of men, they can perform this violence to whatever vast degree they feel "makes up" for not being white and not being rich.
Being excluded from the acquisition of traditional markers of masculinity led non-white, working class men in the Global South to code other things as sufficiently masculine; inherently, this would necessitate achievability. In Jamaica, this predominantly takes three forms: 1) high sexual promiscuity, 2) evidence of sexual prowess and virility through fathering many children and 3) frequent, overt and distinctly–destructive violence. In this way, a diminutive masculinity is created with the consequence of material harm being caused to a wide selection of people including women (regardless of their investment in patriarchal standards), queer people and other men who are deemed to not satisfactorily adhere to the standards of the masculinity they are evaluated against. Here, things which are otherwise neutral and innocuous become queer-coded, as a method of justifying violence against them, as well as augmenting the already pathologised position of queerness with prevalent, everyday behaviours and situations that just happen to undermine the execution of the diminutive masculinity localised in the Jamaican masculine position. This means that men that value women as anything more than conquests, men that do not impulsively have children, women that rebuff the public advances of men, lesbians or women who have otherwise decentred romantic relationships with men, and queer men all become deserving of violence through the lens of Jamaican masculinity. Here, it becomes evident that queerness is a positionality which incurs violence, but more precisely, anything that contributes to the prevention of the execution of this crafted, diminutive masculinity. Even amongst themselves, Jamaican men use the threat of assigning queer as a descriptor as a behavioural sanction to ensure their peers are sufficiently othering people that do not enable the masculine position to function. Even a lax participation in othering becomes worthy of violence.
While the exposition on how queerness is pathologised elucidates the impossible, self-destructive standards of cis-hetero black men, to honour the tenacity of life and expression despite a constant shadow of possible violence, it is also necessary to understand how the queer position takes form in accordance. This means that in the understanding of what has become unacceptable behaviour under Jamaican patriarchy, people have fashioned their own coding and indicators of queerness; there is a transgressive donning of what would likely be evaluated in global north contexts as "stereotypes" or "caricatures" of queer people. However, this position would fail to consider the context in relation: in a geo-spatial situation where the violence of men widely goes unchecked, resistance is vast in all forms. The queer position, in rebellion, suffuses itself with gentleness and individuality. Here, men (even cis-hetero ones that might be "alt", or otherwise not in accordance with masculinity standards) find spaces that welcome self-determination. That gentleness and acceptance that becomes radical in men however are on the other hand, expected behaviours for women. Women then, queer and otherwise divested from the social contract of service to men, are also radically self- determined, though this may look like staunch personal boundaries, no-nonsense attitudes and consistently speaking their mind and asserting their agency. Again, it is the understanding that men do not have some divine right to their agency at the expense of others that empowers this transgression. Additionally, for the queer position, inclusion takes the determinative role in the paradigm in a parallel way that othering does the same for the diminutive masculine paradigm. Queerness then, in the Jamaican context, comes to involve retaliatory violence but also protection from this violence in a community of people that are all survivors. Cathy J. Cohen, in an article from 1997, talks about radical associations like these: along class, gender and sexuality lines with the ultimate goal of implicit definition of the punk community. Similarly, the radical queer position in Jamaica comes to represent a kind of inclusion which is not found in the wider community, due to the investment in patriarchal paradigms of cultural violence.
“Patriarchy still finds its way into queer spaces with cis gay men privileging themselves and others like them at the expense of queer women and trans people shouldering the bulk of the burden as far as everyday societal existence.”
Concurrently, though, oppressive forces regrettably evolve. Patriarchy still finds its way into queer spaces with cis gay men privileging themselves and others like them at the expense of queer women and trans people shouldering the bulk of the burden as far as everyday societal existence. One clear manifestation of this is Billy Porter being the only cast member of Pose — a revolutionary series about, by and for trans women — to be nominated for an Oscar; affirming trans women by nominating them in women's award categories goes against the cisnormative ideals of network television, as well as The Academy. This has led to the construction of in groups and out groups, restructuring the queer position. In the wider context, queer coding has become both reality and pathological stereotype. Establishing that the queer position is indeed a separate paradigm, how is it stratified and how did inclusion become identity-based cliques? Moreover, what are the repercussions of turning oppressive forces into community? It is at this point we have to ask: what is the work being done, and not only by, but for, whom?