‘Our people know the difference, black is a race, jew is a religion, f*g**tism is a sin’

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. For newspaper reports about the events of 2004, see Guardian, 16 Aug. 2004, 25 Aug. 2004, 3 Nov. 2004, 10 Dec. 2004; Jamaica Gleaner, 27 June 2004, Jamaica Observer, 16 July 2004, New York Times, 6 Sept. 2004, Village Voice, 15 Feb. 2005. 2. Ann Laura Stoler Stoler , Ann Laura . Race and the Education of Desire. Foucault's History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things . Durham : Duke UP , 1995 . [Google Scholar]'s work has also been influential in this field (see especially Race and the Education of Desire). See also Diana Fuss's important analysis of Fanon's disquieting discussions of femininity and homosexuality. Fuss, 154. 3. Many of these arguments are rehearsed in Cooper (although she is not responding directly to the events under discussion here); see Cooper (especially, 39, 153, 160, 168, 178) for discussions concerning ‘insider’ readings of ‘indigenous cultural texts like Buju Banton's “Boom By By”’ (168). Cooper argues that such texts have been ‘taken all too literally out of context’ by non-native ‘outsiders who do not understand the multi-track discourse of the dancehall’ (39). According to Cooper, an increasingly empowered ‘outernational massive – the gay community’ (47) and ‘powerful organizations of homosexuals in the North Atlantic like GLAAD seem to be playing the role of imperial overlords in the cultural arena’, so that Jamaican deejays must often ‘run for cover’ (177). On the other hand, ‘“[h]omophobia” in neo-African societies like Jamaica is often conceived as an articulation of an Africanist worldview … [and] an affirmation of Afrocentric norms of sexual propriety’ (163). Cooper concludes that ‘the battle for the fundamental transformation of Jamaican society must first be fought and won on native soil’ (178), and that although ‘[m]ost male homosexuals in Jamaica seem content to remain in the proverbial closet … the door is wide open’ (162). Notwithstanding the claim made by Cooper and others that ‘lyrical violence’ and actual violence have no connection to one another, in 2005 Buju Banton was charged with – and acquitted of – participating in an attack against six gay men in Jamaica; and his virulent but enduringly popular ‘Boom Bye Bye’ was allegedly sung at the murder scene of Brian Williams, Jamaica's leading gay activist, in 2004. See Sanneh Sanneh , Kelefa . ‘Dancehall's Vicious Side: Anti-gay Attitudes’ . New York Times 6 Sept . 2004 . [Google Scholar] and Ireland Ireland , Doug . ‘Jamaica, Island of Hate’ . Gay City , 5.40 , 5–11 Oct . 2006 . [Google Scholar]. 4. The choice of suffix in that curious, and curiously self-censored, nonce noun ‘faggotism’, suggests a quality (eg chauvinism), or a belief system (eg Puritanism), or a doctrinal stance (eg fanaticism), rather than a sexed/gendered identity, or even a group of sexual acts that would putatively define this ‘faggotism’. Why not ‘faggotry’, as in the ‘buggery’ that is proscribed in the Jamaican constitution; or, one is tempted to say, as in the ‘bigotry’ of such attitudes? 5. ‘Jamaica (Constitution) Order in Council, 1962’, chapter 3, section 76, specifies that ‘the abominable crime of buggery’ is punishable by imprisonment and ten years maximum hard labour. Section 43 groups ‘buggery, either with mankind or with any animal’ under ‘menaces’, along with rape and assault. In Laws of Jamaica vol. XXIX. 6. See Guardian, 6 Aug. 2004, for a review of Beenie Man's Back To Basics. According to the reviewer, now that Beenie Man has given up violence against queers as a ‘lyrical topic’, he is left only with the subject of his penis. 7. Although she does not read dancehall as a queer space, Donna Hope Hope , Donna P. . ‘The British Link-Up Crew. Consumption Masquerading as Masculinity in the Dancehall’ . Interventions 6.1 ( 2004 ): 101 – 17 .[Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar] identifies an increasing emphasis on male external appearance in dancehall culture. As a result, ‘the borders between masculine and feminine aesthetics, costuming and public display have become blurred, and men in the dancehall have striven to display their personhood’. Hope sees ‘global factors’ contributing to the subtle recreation of gendered norms in Jamaican dancehall culture, to the extent that men now practise formerly tabooed ‘feminine’ aesthetics and rituals, such as visiting cosmetologists for facials, manicures and pedicures. Hope's observations suggest the aptness of a reading of dancehall as queer (‘The British Link-Up Crew’, 108–09). 8. In this context, it is worth noting that the Human Human Rights Watch . ‘Hated to Death. Homophobia, Violence, and Jamaica's HIV/AIDS Epidemic’ . 16. 6 (B) , Nov . 2004 . [Google Scholar] Rights Watch report, ‘Hated to Death: Homophobia, Violence, and Jamaica's HIV/AIDS Epidemic’ cited religious intolerance, Jamaican popular music and the use of anti-gay slogans and rhetoric by political leaders as causal factors of the violence against queers in Jamaica (12–13). 9. cf. Michael Warner Warner , Michael , ed. Fear of a Queer Planet. Queer Politics and Social Theory . Minneapolis : Minnesota UP , 1993 . [Google Scholar]'s observation in his introduction to fear of Queer Planet, that as gay activists from non-western contexts become more and more involved in setting political agendas, and as the rights discourse of internationalism is extended to more and more cultural contexts, Anglo American queer theorists will have to be more alert to the globalising–and localising – tendencies of our theoretical languages (xii).