#DearJamaicanmen, we’re tired of the abuse

MORE Jamaican women are standing up to abusers, using social media as a platform of empowerment through the creation of hashtags such as #metoo, #weknowwhatyoudid, #saytheirnames and #dearJamaicanmen.

For many of these women, law enforcement, courts, HR departments and others have failed them, and their justice and empowerment came through social media platforms which fuelled condemnation and shone light on the abuse they suffered and buried for many years.

The allegations against Hollywood’s Harvey Weinstein caused a ripple effect, leading to a few famous men facing repercussions for their actions. Locally, there has been fuel added to the hashtag fire, many women having started the advocacy with the Tambourine Army’s recent usage of the hashtag #saytheirnames, and also the revelations that #dearJamaicanmen brought to light.

Karen Lloyd, human rights advocate, explains that naming perpetrators gives a sense of “I can now deal with it, not just for myself but for other survivors.”

“With the hashtags, as more women come out, it gives other women support and confidence. Social media works in a way that it transcends real life. One feels safer to say ‘I’ve been a victim of violence’, more so sexual violence. The biggest win is that other women feel encouraged to say something too. It leads to forming communities to realise that what happened is not insurmountable. We can take a stand, and if there is a chorus it will further help us to deal with the issues. In light of everything that has happened, these hashtags organised a network of people like the Tambourine Army that is a support group that does healing work,” Lloyd explained.

Further, Lloyd spoke of her own experience with abuse, recounting that a few years ago while walking on the road, a man driving his car wound down his window and grabbed her breasts. She said she wrote a letter to the editor about it and the response was overwhelming. She said people proceeded to ask her what she was wearing, and to top it off, there was a response from a man using an analogy that if he walked into a market and saw goods on display, he would touch them.

“It will take a cultural shift for us to start seeing women differently and to stop blaming the victim. We also need to teach boys to take responsibility for their behaviour. As an adult, how can you expect a boy to be responsible when he wasn’t taught, and the norm was that girls should be caregivers while boys are allowed to go roaming? Our policies need to be addressed, and when women say this has happened to them we need to believe them. Yes, some people lie, but you can’t use that to judge everyone. Some may ask, why didn’t you say something 10 years ago? But women are often afraid to reveal this as their integrity is often questioned, especially if the aggressor is someone of influence,” Lloyd said.

Sasha Solomon, volunteer at Safe Space Ja, a mental health support group, and We-Change Jamaica, said from the point of view of the Caribbean, naming perpetrators online has created safe spaces for women to tell their stories.

“We are not good at processing pain, and I would love if people would be open and listen to people’s stories. You don’t have to go through it to empathise, and by empathising I mean putting yourself in the person’s shoes. Women are people, not walking vaginas, and what I find is that a lot of men find out that this is prevalent from stories their girlfriends or wives tell them,” she said.

“There are numerous accounts of street harassment and I have had that experience, and instead of it being complimentary it makes you want to jump out of your skin. It’s not OK, and it has contributed to body dysmorphia. It has contributed to ill feelings about my body. Street harassment locally is unlike anywhere else, and there are no provisions made in the Offences against the Persons Act about it,” she said.

Solomon recalls her own experience with harassment — she spoke of leaving Sovereign Centre a few years ago on her lunch break and having a security guard tell her he would “buss her head” (assault her) and take her home.

“I don’t think he realised it was violence, and I was genuinely scared. I crossed the road to head back to work and I kept looking behind me. In my mind he was telling me he would kidnap me. And people need to realise that women will not come forward and feel safe to speak out unless there are social changes and legal changes, as many aspects of law enforcement make it difficult to report these cases,” she shared.

Abby-Sade Brooks, advocate and co-founder of Tambourine Army, shared that during the #saytheirnames campaign she named her aggressor. Besides breaking the silence and shedding light on what women face on a regular basis, this act empowered her.

“The response was overwhelming. I could finally tell my mother. It felt as if for once I was in control. The support came from unexpected places. The individual was well known and it was mostly women naming perpetrators, and men were more cautious as we were naming people,” she said.

Brooks added that in order to make this bold step, women have to realise that this must be done in their own time, because no level of healing will come if they are not ready.

“You have to be prepared for the backlash. Be mentally prepared, and know that there is a network of women who support you. We live in a very patriarchal society, and sadly some women are also misogynistic. But if we don’t start somewhere, it won’t stop. We walk on the roads and we are constantly objectified. Men are calling us names. One day they may just touch you. You have to draw the line somewhere,” she stressed.

Julie Mansfield, coordinator of GLOWpower, a camp geared towards helping and empowering girls who’ve been sexually abused, said that the number of survivors who have summoned the courage to name their aggressors would surprise most people.

She said it’s no easy task, given the cultural climate, so it is encouraging that so many survivors are finding their voices, and in her case, she will continue to name her abusers.

She said the camp teaches survivors to literally reassign the shame, blame and guilt as a critical part of healing.

“It’s a physical handing over, if you will, where survivors give the shame, blame and guilt back to their rightful owners — the perpetrators. Would it not be highly hypocritical and in fact counterproductive not to name the perpetrator? It is their burden to bear, not our secrets to keep. Not naming the perpetrator is complicity; it’s saying we did something for which we need to be ashamed,” she pointed out.

Mansfield said abuse, and in particular sexual abuse, is an incredibly isolating experience where survivors feel they’re the only ones experiencing it, therefore by reassigning the shame, talking about the experience — all aspects of it including the perpetrator – it is incredibly liberating and helps to build sisterhood.

“It removes feelings of isolation, of marginalisation. Empathy is a natural offspring of sharing experiences. So is the camaraderie that comes from knowing that judgement is reserved for the perpetrator — not the survivor. We have literally built pockets of sisterhood by sharing experiences. It is endlessly empowering to know we are not alone, and as unenviable as it is, when we say “me too,” we know we stand with millions of survivors all over the world,” she stated.

She said the cultural acceptance of harassment, particularly street harassment, is a disgrace.

“It is a relic of a patriarchal society to see little or no value in women, and what is really most disheartening is seeing young people, despite access to technology, buy into the denigration of our girls and women. What we perhaps fail to realise is that words are damaging — they ricochet and help form the foundation of how we see ourselves. It’s not uncommon for a grown man to yell at a girl, ‘Mi cyaan wait fi breed yuh’. Naturally that girl — unless she has a healthy sense of self-worth and self-esteem, begins to see herself as nothing more than a breeding vessel,” she explained.

In essence, Mansfield said we ought to start teaching our men to respect women and girls and stop telling them to just “brush it off”.

“’Brush it off’ has not worked and will not work. Well, not if we want to advance civility,” she declared.