Sexualities In Conversation

No. 1 Sexualities, Part I MARCH 2008

Welcome to the first edition of Sexualities In Conversation. Rights & Regulation

This bulletin kicks off a series of in the Anglo-Caribbean reports to be published about

conference meetings and workshops Cave Hill, Barbados on emerging and on-going February 15-16, 2008 discussions about the construction

and regulation of sexual rights and Legal challenges to sexual autonomy, the impacts identities in the global South, of sexual health work and of the HIV/AIDS including through multiple industry on sexual cultures, and transnational transnational social, economic, efforts to secure sexual rights were some of the political and cultural entanglements issues considered by nineteen participants and relationships. An important attending an inaugural workshop in Barbados. objective of this project is the Researcher-activists based in , Trinidad engagement of conversations about and Tobago, Barbados, St. Lucia, Guyana, sexualities across academic and Switzerland met in Cave Hill to disciplines—in particular, between share their experiences of working toward sexual those scholars working in the areas of rights in the region. Four objectives were set for Law and , Culture, the event: and International Development— and between researchers, activists 1. Identify and engage key questions about how and policy-makers. sexuality rights are being framed, negotiated and Andil Gosine pursued in the Anglo-Caribbean Assistant Professor, York University [email protected] 2. Share and reflect upon advocacy strategies toward 'sexual citizenship'

•INSIDE• 3. Develop collaboration between researchers and advocates working in this area

Workshop Program…………….……..2 4. Discuss and develop future modes of engagement Participants list……………………....…2 around issues of sexual citizenship including conference panels, publications, and other venues Highlights: A Workshop Journal for intervention by Joel Simpson...... …………..4 “What we said”……………………….….5 For many, the workshop provided a first opportunity for colleagues working on similar The Vagaries of Justice: issues in different Caribbean countries to meet The Law Relating to Sex Crimes in each other, and identify and evaluate strategies the Caribbean for advancing their efforts. by Tracy Robinson ……………….…..6 Funding for the event was provided by UNIFEM, the Faculty of Law at UWI-Cave Reading list/Selected Works….…..8 Hill, York University and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. EGALE Canada also funded the travel of one participant.

Sexual rights and regulation in the Anglo-Caribbean

WORKSHOP PROGRAM February 15 9:30-11:00 Welcome from Workshop Convenors Tracy Robinson, Andil Gosine, Robert Carr

Naming and Framing the Issues and Contexts/ What’s happening on the ground Facilitated by Andil Gosine & Michelle Rowley

11:00-12:30 Session 1: Legal Challenges Presentations by Tracy Robinson, David Murray, Philip Dayle Moderator: Michelle Rowley

1:30-3 Session 2: The Promise and Pitfalls of organizing through HIV/AIDS Presentations by R. Anthony Lewis, Sharon Mottley, Rinaldo Walcott, Andil Gosine Moderator: Robert Carr

3:30-5 Session 3: Local, Regional and Transnational Advocacy Presentations by Robert Carr, Akim Ade Larcher, Joel Simpson, Karlene Williams-Clarke, Kenita Placide Moderator: Andil Gosine

February 16 9:30-12 Closing Session: Next Steps Facilitated by Robert Carr & Michelle Rowley

12 Lunch with guests from United Gays and Lesbians Against AIDS Barbados

PARTICIPANTS

Christine Barrow (UWI-Cave Hill) • Robert Carr (UWI-Mona) Philip Dayle (ICJ) • Stacey Gomes (SASOD) Andil Gosine (York) • Gabrielle Hosein (UWI-CDGS St. Augustine) Kamala Kempadoo (York) • Akim Ade Larcher (EGALE Canada) R. Anthony Lewis (UTech) • Sharon Mottley (CCNAPC) David Murray (York) • Kenita Placide (United & Strong) Nastassia Rambarran (SASOD) • Tracy Robinson (UWI-Cave Hill) Michelle Rowley (Maryland) • Joel Simpson (SASOD) Monique Springer (UNIFEM) Karlene Williams-Clarke (J-FLAG) • Rinaldo Walcott ()

♦ Highlights – A Workshop Journal ♦

By Joel Simpson

I think it’s safe to say that most of us agreed local progress on the ground. I talked mostly about to participate in this forum not knowing the organization I co-founded, Students Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination (SASOD). I exactly what to expect. We knew that a small identified our organizational challenges, and proposed group of academics and activists from a few strategies for moving forward: engaging the around the region and the diaspora would religious community; mainstreaming LGBT issues; be meeting for a day and a half, armed with and building alliances and partnerships with other an agenda to consider debates about the human-rights causes and civil-society movements for mutual support. Karlene Williams-Clarke and regulation of sexual practices and the Kenita Placide closed the day with presentations realization of sexual rights. Here are some about J-FLAG and United & Strong St. Lucia. of the highlights from the panel discussions: The presentations were very rich, but the Session 1: Legal Challenges meat of “Conversations” was in the Philip Dayle started us off talking about the work of moderated discussions that took place after the International Commission for Jurists (ICJ), including its support for Brazil’s resolution on sexual each panel session. We benefited from the orientation and gender identity to help focus the diversity of perspectives among us. Many discussion on human rights (as opposed to a times our discussions were not only cultural/domestic-level debate). David Murray passionate but emotional, especially as we asked “how do we translate advocacy for sexual rights discussed the implications of racism, sexism to movements on the ground?” He concluded that we need to give more attention to local vernaculars of and class to sexual rights organizing. rights. Rights-based advocacy needs to be put in local, For the closing session the next morning, cultural contexts to be more effective. Tracy we discussed next steps and decided a few Robinson (pg. 5) provided a detailed analysis of the key things. The group decided to stay criminalization of sexuality in the region. connected to work both as a collective and Session 2: Organizing through HIV-AIDS as sub-groups to work together on small R. Anthony Lewis explained how Jamaica AIDS projects that made synergistic sense based Support’s Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Community on where persons were strategically located. (GLABCOM) and Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All- We decided to start a listserv for workshop sexuals and Gays (J-FLAG) developed. Sharon Mottley offered a background to the AIDS epidemic participants, and thought it would be useful in the region and examined where we were addressing to make the in-person forum an annual rights issues for homosexuals. Andil Gosine meeting. considered the use of the terminology ‘Men who have It was great meeting folks I have been Sex with Men’ (MSM) by international development agencies. He questioned whether its use was an reading about and emailing! The workshop impediment to claiming sexual rights in local contexts, provided invaluable insight into some of the and highlighted the gender-biased implications of latest research and organising efforts in organizing under the MSM framework. Rinaldo the Caribbean region and the diaspora. Walcott discussed some implications of HIV/AIDS Indeed, the workshop has spurred ideas work in black communities in North America. about hosting a similar meeting in Guyana Session 3: Advocacy on July 23, 2008—exactly five years after Robert Carr discussed the “Stop Murder Music” parliament did not debate the amendment to campaign as “glocal” organizing. Akim Ade outlaw discrimination based on sexual Larcher followed up with a description of activities EGALE Canada is doing in this area. He raised many discrimination in the Guyana constitution. questions about how the Global North could more effectively support local-organizing efforts in the • Joel Simpson is Co-Chair of SASOD Caribbean without creating divisions and stymieing

In the opening session, we were asked “what are the issues and questions that are important to you?” We said— “Sexual practice and sexual identity. What are the stakes involved in “Issues of sexual making different claims?” economic agency and rights. How do “Coalition building.” economic conditions inform sexual “Mobilizing the gay community, practices?” which is male-focused. There’s an idea that ‘we don’t have “Isses of racism and lesbians in the Caribbean, we class.” have feminists…’ Who will stand up and be counted?” “Abortion. “

“An ethics of citizenship.” “TRANSNATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS.”

“Demonstration – creating spaces within the region for expressing sexual rights.”

“Recognizing “The crisis facing men and boys, what’s right in “Wrapping especially anxieties about the Caribbean.” our minds masculinity and .” around the opposition “The politics of love.” [to sexual rights].”

The Vagaries of Justice

THE LAW RELATING TO SEX CRIMES IN THE CARIBBEAN

By Tracy Robinson

Since 1986, seven of the eleven independent This seemingly progressive lawmaking has Caribbean countries have overhauled laws in fact become the contemporary mechanism defining and governing sex crimes.1 Only of retrenching sexual freedom, refining Jamaica, Grenada, Guyana and St. Vincent sexual outlaws and legislating more of the have substantially unreformed laws. And five sex we choose as dangerous to the nation. of the seven have specialised codes dealing So contrary to the popular account which with sexual offences. says the problem is antique laws, I am now Those reforms are prominent symbols of quite clear that contemporary progressive feminist mobilization and the violence lawmaking has been much more insidious. against women campaign in the 1980s and nineties. They were not an unmitigated Retrenching sexual freedom success for the women’s movement. In fact, M. Jacqui Alexander was one of the earliest Modern sexual offences law in the to highlight the problematic implications of Anglophone Caribbean has sharpened the new laws.2 Nevertheless they introduced buggery as an offence targeting male key initiatives that many feminists are homosexual sex. Historically buggery fittingly pleased about: in camera hearings, covered sex with mankind and humankind. protection of the privacy of victims of sex The contemporary laws have generally made crimes, abolition of the requirement of bestiality became a separate offence, usually corroboration, and limited use of last sexual less severely penalised. In most places it still history. includes heterosexual as well as homosexual anal sex, but the latest reforms in the 2004 St. Lucia criminal code have distilled the offence to being capable of being committed 1 Antigua and Barbuda Sexual Offences Act only by a man in relation to another man. 1995-9; The Bahamas Sexual Offences and Universally, the penalties for buggery have Domestic Violence Act 1991, cap. 99; Barbados Sexual Offences Act 1992, cap. 154; Belize increased. They moved from a maximum of Criminal Code (Amendment) Act, 1999-36, five years imprisonment prior to 1986 in 2001-42; Dominica Sexual Offences Act 1998-1; to ten years under the St. Lucia Criminal Code 2004, 2005 Rev., cap. Sexual Offences Act 1986. In the 2000 3:01; Trinidad and Tobago Sexual Offences Act amendments to that Act, the maximum 1986-27. penalty rose to 25 years. 2 M. Jacqui Alexander, 1991. ‘Redrafting Morality: The Postcolonial State and the Sexual Under the reformed laws in some Offences Bill of Trinidad and Tobago’. In Third countries rape has become a gender-neutral World Women and the Politics of Feminism, ed. offence and can include non consensual anal Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ann Russo and between two men. This only emphasises Lourdes Torres, 133—52. Bloomington and that the focus of the retained buggery law is Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

the prohibition of consensual anal sex. In a Both ethically and from an advocacy number of the new Caribbean sex laws, standpoint the turn to rights is important, gross indecency has morphed into the indispensable even. At the same time it gender-neutral offence of serious indecency, comes at a cost. I am not suggesting here a which now includes sexual activities sinister force, simply that human rights between women. It is defined as the use of discourse has limits that must be constantly the genital organs to arouse or gratify sexual weighed and evaluated. If one were to desire. litigate the scope of sexual rights in the The new sexual offences laws censured the Commonwealth Caribbean, the following activities of sex workers in an unprecedented are considerations that would have to be fashion. Historically, third parties benefiting taken into account: from sex work faced criminal sanctions, but sex workers themselves could only be 1. Human rights mechanisms are very charged with soliciting in public in what focused on individual complaints by were quite minor offences. The wave of affected parties—demanding an outing reforms to sexual offences laws in the that would cause many gays and lesbians Caribbean countries have enlarged intolerable vulnerability. solicitation into a general offence—which suggests that it can be committed in private 2. Nowhere are rights absolute. The as well—and transformed it from a minor process of weighing one right against offence to a very serious sex crime. another and the public interest—privacy In addition, non-disclosure of HIV status and equality against public morality for and transmission of HIV have become example—can sometimes leave litigants crimes in countries like Belize, Bahamas and with nothing. St. Lucia under the new sexual offences laws. Someone convicted of buggery in 3. Equality claims can be insidious— Trinidad and Tobago might now find pitting for expediency like themselves victims of a legal modernisation (marginalised) against like. One of the that imposes mandatory HIV testing and most viable constitutional challenges to post-conviction sex offender status and buggery laws in the Caribbean is that monitoring. the sexual activities of lesbians are not as heavily penalised as that of gay men. The turn to rights 4. This is a controversial claim but the I am increasingly convinced that articulation of rights is connected to impoverished notions of gender equality and democratic processes. It is quite clear meagre conceptions of woman under-gird that it will be difficult to get Parliament these developments that are ostensibly in aid to reform existing laws or the of women but in fact disengage sexual Constitutions. Approaching the freedom from gender equality. My own view countermajoritarian branch of is the repeal of these laws by Parliament or government—the courts—might seem by the courts through constitutional to provide an opportunity for unpopular litigation is pre-eminently a feminist priority. rights decisions to be taken. The Not surprisingly, we turn to rights, human trouble is, even if that is so, parliament rights, to make that case but the history of can take back the process, as they are the very laws we want to contest and attempting to do in Jamaica with the challenge reminds us that we need to be Charter of Rights and privacy, and in attuned to the vagaries of justice. Trinidad and Tobago with abortion,

through constitutional reform, a dynamic environment even through progress devastating backlash. Moreover, is never smooth or unequivocal. Things do progressive court decisions from a court and can change. like the Privy Council that is still the The present Chief Justice of Trinidad and highest court of appeal for most of the Tobago recently held that a law that said sex region, and which has serious legitimacy could not include sexual orientation for the issues in the region, might excite purposes of equal opportunities protection stronger hostile responses. could not be consistent with equality. Sadly that decision appears to have been overruled by the Privy Council but it signals that some Caribbean peculiarities Caribbean judges will take a progressive stand on these issues. In its most significant Quite apart from those larger concerns, decision, Joseph v Att-Gen, the Caribbean rights litigation in the Caribbean faces other Court of Justice has so far demonstrated challenges: that it wishes to be liberal forward thinking court. 1. The rules on standing to bring bill of rights litigation under the Constitutions We must also remember that even if briefly, are narrow; actions must be brought by Parliament in Guyana approved of sexual a person affected. There is a legitimate orientation being named as a prohibited worry about the risks to persons who ground of discrimination in the agree to litigants in cases involving Constitution; and the Belize Political sexual rights. Reform Commission said very clearly that sexual orientation should be a prohibited 2. The rights at stake are amongst the ground of discrimination under a reformed most underdeveloped in Caribbean constitution. constitutional law: equality, and privacy. These are the vagaries of justice and rights—incremental, often equivocal 3. Savings law clauses in the older progress. Rights are not a panacea or a independent countries constrain severely magic potion. We must engage them in constrain judicial review where the laws advocacy with self-awareness and an being challenged were in existence prior optimism that they take us on a potentially to independence. perilous and productive road towards citizenship. 4. In Trinidad and Tobago, the sexual offences law is a ‘special act’ which means it was enacted by special • Tracy Robinson is a Senior Lecturer in majorities and is thus valid despite Law at the University of West Indies. contraventions of the Constitution.

5. Caribbean constitutions have strong limitation clauses which say that you can Authors possess full copyright ownership of restrict rights where it is reasonably their material in this bulletin. Articles may required to protect public order, health, be reprinted with their permission only. morality and defence. Write to [email protected] with enquiries.

Despite this, rights advocates and activists should recognise that the Caribbean is a

Reading List/Selected Works

Alexander, M. Jacqui, 2005. Pedagogies of Crossing: Meditations on Feminism, Sexual Politics, Memory and the Sacred. Durham: Press.

Calixte, Shana L., 2005. ‘Things Which Aren't to Be Given Names: Afro-Caribbean Diasporic Negotiations of Same Gender Desire and Sexual Relations’. Canadian Woman Studies 24 (2/3): 128-37.

Carr, Robert, 2003. ‘On ‘Judgements’: Poverty, Sexuality-Based Violence and Human Rights in 21st Century Jamaica’. Caribbean Journal of Social Work (2): 71-87.

Genrich, Gillian L., & Brader Braithewaite, 2005. ‘Response of Religious Groups to HIV/AIDS as a Sexually Transmitted Infection in Trinidad’. BMC Public Health: 1-12.

Gosine, Andil, 2007. ‘’Race’, culture, power, sex, desire and love: Writing in ‘men who have sex with men,’ IDS Bulletin 37 (5): 27-33

Gosine, Andil, 2008. ‘Reading Mia Mottley’s statement on (homo) sex: an interrogation of HIV/AIDS scripts on sexuality (and a call to engage alternative strategies for sexual autonomy),’ in Gender, Sexuality and HIV/AIDS: The Caribbean and Beyond, D. Roberts and R. Rheddock (eds.) Kingston: Ian Randle

Kempadoo, Kamala, 2003. ‘Sexuality in the Caribbean: Theory and Research (with an Emphasis on the Anglophone Caribbean)’. Social and Economic Studies 52 (3): 59-88.

Kempadoo, Kamala, 2004. Sexing the Caribbean: Gender, Race and Sexual Labor. New York: Routledge.

Lazarus-Black, Mindie, 2003. ‘The (Heterosexual) Regendering of a Modern State: Criminalizing and Implementing Domestic Violence Law in Trinidad’. Law & Social Enquiry 28 (4): 979-1008.

Murray, David, 2006. ‘Who's Right? Human Rights, Sexual Rights and Social Change in Barbados’. Culture, Health and Sexuality. May-June 2006 Vol. 8, No. 3. London: Routledge/Taylor Francis.

Phillips, Joan L., 2002. ‘The Beach Boys of Barbados: Post-Colonial Entrepreneurs’. Transnational Prostitution: Changing Global Patterns, edited by Susanne Thorbek and Bandana Pattanaik, 42-55. London: Zed Books.

Robinson, Tracy S., 2000. Fictions of Citizenship, Bodies without Sex: The Production and Effacement of Gender in Law’.Small Axe: Journal of Criticism 7: 1-27.

Sharpe, Jenny & Samantha Pinto 2006. ‘The Sweetest Taboo: Studies of Caribbean Sexualities; A Review Essay’. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 32 (1): 247-74.

Wekker, Gloria, 2006. The Politics of Passion: Women's Sexual Culture in the Afro-Surinamese Diaspora. New York: Columbia University Press.

White, Ruth and Robert Carr, 2005. ‘Homosexuality and HIV/AIDS Stigma in Jamaica’. Culture, Health and Sexuality: 1-13.

Thanks to Kamala Kempadoo for sharing her bibliography, “Caribbean Sexuality—Mapping the Field”