In Bahamas: Misogyny, fear of same-sex marriages, xenophobia

THREE weeks ago, Bahamians had the opportunity to level the playing field by placing women in every respect on par or equal footing with men by voting in favour of four bills — collectively called the Gender Equality Bills — in a referendum.

With low voter turnout (less than 50 per cent of the population participated in the process), voters’ distrust of the politicians and the process, an inefficient and ineffective parliamentary commission and commissioner, and misunderstanding of the process, the referendum exercise amounted to, in the words of

Nassau Guardian’s managing editor, Candia Dames, “a monumental screw-up”.

This does not augur well for the ruling Progressive Liberal Party who must take the nation to the polls before May 7 of next year.

According to Prime Minister Perry Christie, the referendum failed because “of the compelling urgency on the part of some people to pay us back …therefore [the] issue of equality was lost”.

In fact, Leader of the Opposition Dr Hubert Minnis has given the government notice that he is asking for international observers to come in and monitor the general elections because he does not trust the process. He is partially blamed for the failed process by Christie because, ostensibly, he agreed with Christie in every respect and then changed course midway after pressure from the religious bodies, and told his Free National Movement supporters to vote their conscience.

It was at this point that the bogeyman fears of possible same-sex marriages, the giving away of citizenship like confetti, intense xenophobia and misogyny took hold of the population, and the religious right slamdunked their divisive rhetoric and “saved the Bahamas”.

Columnist Nicki Kelly explained it best in her column Between the Lines. She wrote, “The Bahamian male is driven by two overriding insecurities — fear of women and fear of homosexuality.”

In Neurosis in the Sun, his ground-breaking analysis of the Bahamian psyche, clinical psychologist Dr Timothy McCartney argued that Bahamian men are “highly susceptible to homosexuality” and “subject to feelings of hostility toward the other sex”. This, he said, was due to the “unstructured family unit, the relationship the Bahamian male experiences without a proper father, and the disturbed sex identification process”.

The ambivalence of Bahamian men towards women and homosexuality was exploited and assiduously manipulated by the fundamentalist fringe of the church to defeat the four constitutional bills to extend to Bahamian women all of the rights now afforded to Bahamian men. In this they were aided and abetted by certain members of the legal fraternity with their own axes to grind, and disaffected voters looking to express dissatisfaction with the general performance of the government.

Therein lies the rub.

The latest statistics show that the unemployment rate is at 14.8 per cent nationally and among the youth, people between 15 and 24, the rate was above 30 per cent with no real job opportunities on the horizon. So it was against this dismal backdrop that this referendum was in some respects ‘foisted’ on people.

Women got the message that when everything was considered with respect to their legal rights, it was far better to remain unmarried. For example, today, since the failure of all of the four bills, all unmarried women can still pass their citizenship on to their children automatically, whether the child is born inside or outside of the country.

Columnist Catherine A Kelly summarised, “…The Bahamas is a matriarchal society living a patriarchal fantasy. The constitution supports this. The statistical data supports this and Christian fundamentalists herein continue to support this through their ill-conceived actions.”