The Caribbean is One of the Most Homophobic Places on Earth
I can't tell you how many times I've heard this statement being affirmed as truth; especially within international spaces. It really grinds my gears for a few reasons.
Let me break it down for you.
Homophobia and transphobia aren't indigenous to the Caribbean.
We've grown accustomed to hearing that homosexuality is a modern, Western import. Anti-LGBT campaigners then ironically use imported Western religion to justify these claims. But gender and sexual diversity were not thrust upon us. Quite contrarily, before the mass colonial genocide, Barbados and other anglophone Caribbean territories were inhabited by the First People who have historically recognised the sanctity of gender and sexual diversity. Today, indigenous communities still celebrate and normalise this diversity through their Two-Spirit community. "Two-Spirit" is an umbrella term which encompasses queer, trans, non-binary, gender non-conforming and even polyamorous people. The corruption of these ideologies filtered its way into the region through Colonial occupation and the subsequent imposition of patrician, Christian morale.
Many enslaved people in the Caribbean were stolen from African societies which didn't adhere to the confines of a gender binary and normalised same-sex intimacy. Colonisers often subjugated and shamed enslaved African men through forced anal penetration and mandating them to wear "women's clothing". It can be argued that the feelings of intense vitriol expressed by many black cis-het Caribbean men, today, have roots in these violations.
During the British occupation of the Anglophone Caribbean, single male settlers immigrated to Barbados from Europe, en masse and same-sex intimacy was commonly practised. Moral panic by the Church led to the criminalisation of same-sex intimacy and anal sex throughout Britain and its colonies. Britain repealed these laws from their own legislation in 1967, but they remain entrenched in constitutions across the Caribbean.
In Barbados specifically, during the 1960s and 1970s, though the LGBT community was not free from systemic discrimination, general attitudes towards gender and sexual minorities were much more liberal than the subsequent decades. The Queen of the Bees Drag Pageant attracted national crowds and LGBT people associated openly. Things changed when the HIV/AIDS epidemic hit the region in the 1980s. The virus' association with gay men consumed the public with trepidation and the region witnessed an upsurge in imperial, anti-gay, Evangelical messaging. Following the epidemic, there was also a significant spike in violently homophobic dancehall music.
To flippantly label the region as "one of the most homophobic places on earth", erases the narratives, realities and lived experiences of thousands of Caribbean LGBT people. Of course, throughout the region, LGBT people are particularly vulnerable and endure marginalisation at institutional, social, economic and domestic levels. LGBT people (especially youth) face violence, lack of access to resources, homelessness, are more vulnerable to contract HIV/AIDS, often cannot access healthcare and are subject to a multitude of human rights violations.
However, these violations are fueled by ignorance and erasure. The rhetoric that "LGBT people are not welcome in the Caribbean" is harmful and reductive to the queer and trans people who actually live full lives here and contribute to all facets of society in meaningful ways through the arts, culture, politics, the legal system, academics, activism, entrepreneurship, education and more. LGBT people in the Caribbean are mothers, fathers, siblings and friends. The sentiment is also reductive to the decades of work that have been and continue to be executed by LGBT organisers across the region. Our movement is delicate but irrepressible. In 2018, communities across the region publicly commemorated Pride with scores of people taking to the streets to celebrate diversity, unapologetically. Failure to acknowledge this breeds the inflammatory narrative that LGBT people are not integrated into a functional society but are "other" and it perpetuates the concept that the Caribbean is a hopeless wasteland of bigotry, waiting to be saved by neo-colonialists.
The sentiment that the Caribbean is one of the most homophobic places on earth also promotes a neo-colonial rhetoric that stratifies the Global North and Global South without historical context. It glorifies the Global North as the yardstick of development by which the rest of the world should measure itself and simplistically ignores the fact that we are relatively new Independent states who are still foraging our paths and grappling with the aftereffects of violent colonisation.
Of course, there are extenuating factors which impact a queer person's ability to live comfortably and freely within the region. Privileges like race, ability, access to resources, education and class contribute to one's ability to survive in any space. Being LGBT in the Caribbean is by no means easy, but it isn't easy being marginalised anywhere. There are Queer and Trans people who leave the Caribbean to seek refuge in the Global North and are then confronted with the harsh reality of anti-black racism in addition to homophobia and transphobia.
Continuing to spread trope that the Caribbean is unbearably homophobic & transphobic isn't helping anyone. Instead, what we can do is continue to increase comprehensive representation of LGBT people across the region and elevate the voices of those who need to be heard.
