It's our time now
By: Erline Andrews (tnttimes.com).
The Coalition Advocating for Inclusion of Sexual Orientation (CAISO) has only been around for about five months, but that’s long enough, it seems, for it to be responsible for the imminent destruction of Trinidad and Tobago.
“I listen to a gospel station on a daily basis,” says Simone Roach, one of the members of the fledging gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) NGO. “About a month ago I heard this pastor speak about taking back Trinidad and Tobago because CAISO raised this issue about GLBT being excluded from the gender policy. And he’s saying that he’s rallying all his troops.”
CAISO has troops of its own. It brings together the resources of five organisations as well as some individuals. Since its formation, it’s been feverishly organising events and initiatives, including a community discussion with Father Clyde Harvey and Reverend Dr. Knolly Clarke and an ecumenical church service hosted by Archdeacon Steve West and Reverend Shelly-Ann Tenia.
Its blog – mainly reports about GLBT in the region - has received more than 5,000 visits. A Facebook group has more than 400 members. The coalition is forming links with local universities and international organisations and has gotten the attention of the City University of New York, which featured CAISO in a seminar on GLBT organising in the Caribbean.
Members have been appearing openly in print and broadcast in more numbers than local GLBT have in the past. The idea of gay rights seems to be slowly percolating the Trinidad and Tobago zeitgeist and CAISO is pushing the effort.
“This is an exciting time to be gay and lesbian in Trinidad and Tobago,” says CAISO-nian Sharon Mottley, who sat down to talk with TNT Times along with three other members of the organisation: Roach, Colin Robinson and David Soomarie.
TNT Times: Why the need for CAISO?
Robinson: The actual moment that formed CAISO was a moment of political negligence. A government minister got up and told the media that the National Gender Policy wasn’t going to deal with sexual orientation. The reason for coming together was to be more powerful. CAISO is party promoters; it’s NGOs; it’s individual activists as well. We all felt like we could be stronger and we could catalyse a GLBT movement in Trinidad and Tobago by pooling forces and by supporting and enhancing all the work that had been happening before that moment.
TNT Times: What are you fighting for? Or is that too simplistic a question?
Mottley: I think that what we’re fighting for is basic, simple equality, not just on paper but in practice. As contributing members of this society, our human rights should be respected in the same vein as every other citizen of Trinidad and Tobago.
TNT Times: When you formed you said your agenda was “a website, monthly meetings, fundraising at home and abroad, educational activities with public and religious officials, and collaboration with local and international research, advocacy and human rights groups.” Have you been successful in carrying out your plans? And what are your plans going forward?
Mottley: We have a laundry list of activities planned, and we’re taking it step by step. We have had some media presence. We’ve tried to let Trinidad and Tobago know that CAISO exists and we’re here and what we stand for and address some of the concerns that the wider Trinidad and Tobago community may have. The support within the community isn’t as full as we want, but that’s to be expected because people have for so long lived in the shadows and so they slowly need the opportunities to emerge. Last week there was a CAISO retreat to revisit some of our missions. I think we’re off to a good start.
Soomarie: Right now we’re looking at doing a history project because a lot of our own gay history has been lost somewhere in the shadows. So we’re in the process of engaging different people who’ve had different experiences within the community to talk about where we’ve come from with a view to kind of create a new wave and a new spirit of activism within the community. It’s going to happen through a series of workshops with different people coming together and sharing stories. We plan to compare the best stories and do a Pride production for 2010.
TNT Times: Sharon said she wanted to address concerns that some Trinidadians and Tobagonians might have. What do you mean by that?
Mottley: I think there are many people out there who have a lot of misconceptions about what it means to be gay or bisexual. You may have the haters who you cannot reach. But I think a lot of us are middle of the road and have questions.
Roach: All we’re looking for is understanding and acceptance. As long as we continue to show up in a very positive light I think we can win those hearts over.
TNT Times: What is your assessment of the gay rights movement in Trinidad and Tobago right now? Have you seen significant changes in the last few years? What have been the major ones?
Mottley: From my perspective the gay rights movement is now coming to the forefront. As Colin mentioned earlier, the minister’s comments that there was no room for us in the gender policy sparked something. While people quietly were living in the shadows and we would congregate among ourselves, I think that has shown us that unless we get up and say that we are here and that we want to be afforded the same rights and respect as anybody else it won’t happen.
And so I think this is an exciting time to be gay and lesbian in Trinidad and Tobago because we have young voices, we have powerful voices, we have a diversity of voices coming to the front and we’re not stopping. We are ready to move. This is our transformation, and we have to keep this momentum going. There are challenges, but the energy is there, the positivity is there, and I think that it is our time is now.
Robinson: Ditto. I mean there’s been incredible bravery that we’ve seen both on the part of individuals and people coming together, particularly over the last five years or so. There’s an incredible social scene that we can draw on. We just wish the Government were as brave as many of us are being.
This is probably the one place in the English-speaking Caribbean where either party that’s likely to end up in government can do the right thing in terms of removing discriminatory laws against people based on consensual behaviour. Either the UNC government or a PNM government could do this and who would its supporters defect and vote for? There’s no political risk. This is probably the one place where there’s no risk and no leadership. People in Barbados, in St. Kitts, in Guyana, folks in Jamaica have taken incredible risks on these issues in a climate where it’s genuine risk. There’s no political risk here and our leaders have taken very little leadership.
TNT Times: What are the biggest challenges facing gay people in Trinidad and Tobago?
Soomarie: I think it's issues with the acceptance of self. Because of how the stigma exists it adds to this breakdown of sense of self. So you have younger gay people coming out in a world that is one, challenging, and two, not accommodating. So you have to try and figure out how do you negotiate your sexuality in a way that’s heterosexual or find your space, and that often leads to people making very bad decisions.
Mottley: When you look at what is being portrayed in music and what our young people are listening to and the challenges faced by our young gay population within the school system, even if you’re not gay, even if you’re just a boy who likes to read, you’re under a lot of pressure. And there are practices that are encouraged in schools—that it’s OK to tell someone ‘you’re so gay’ or ‘you’re a batty man’—and we allow our children to use certain words. I think that’s what the challenge is: We as adult society have to say that some words are not allowed. Like nigger and coolie are not acceptable words, batty man, faggot, zami are not acceptable words.
Soomarie: I think if you want to put it in one word it will be homophobia. Whether it’s internalised homophobia or external homophobia. That’s what it boils down to.
Roach: What about the spiritual warfare as well? You have young gay men and women who want to play an active role in their churches and don’t feel comfortable as a result of all the negative ads that certain pastors publish in the newspaper. And so we have to deal with that as well. Spirituality should not be discriminatory. It’s between you and your God.
TNT Times: I’ve noticed that more gay rights activists are appearing openly on television and in newspapers. Correct me if I’m wrong, but this is a major change from even five years ago, isn’t it?
Soomarie: I think it is a major change. Before we had the Godfrey Sealys – God rest his soul. One or two of them would come out and do their thing then they’d disappear into the shadows. Now we have a group of people. It’s not just one person. It’s a whole group of we now, so there’s a power and a strength in numbers.
Mottley: What is that phrase you use?
Soomarie: It’s not about you and me. It’s about all ah we.
Mottley: Exactly
TNT Times: On the spectrum of gay men being tortured and killed with impunity in Iraq and Iceland appointing a lesbian prime minister and GLBT being allowed to marry in other parts of Europe, where do you think Trinidad and Tobago falls in terms of acceptance of homosexuality?
Robinson: (laughs) Somewhere in between.
TNT Times: Smack in the middle?
Mottley: We’re not as bad as Jamaica where people hunt you down and beat you to death because you’re gay. My Prime Minister, I don’t know what his sexual orientation is, but I know we’re not at the point of electing an openly gay Prime Minister or any openly gay minister. But I will say, though, how Trinidad is perceived by GLBT citizens from other countries in the region is that they look very favourably on us. In Trinidad and Tobago, we have openly gay parties. We have our gay Mecca, our centre. This does not happen in other Caribbean islands. (People from) other Caribbean Islands come to Trinidad and they’re always in awe.
And then at Carnival time you can have men dress up almost like women, leading (mas band) Island People’s frontline section going down the road. That does not happen in other Caribbean countries. We have a long way to go, but to be able to sit here and comfortably say that I’m a lesbian woman, have this interview, I think that puts us ahead of a lot of other countries.
Robinson: I’m always resistant to that whole quantification thing. I agree with everything that Sharon said, but I would also say that things are good enough here that there’s hope for organising and I feel confident that we have the organising power to hold government accountable. But things are bad enough that people are still losing their lives and their ability to be free, and that always makes the work necessary.
TNT Times: What would surprise the average Trinidadian and Tobagonian about the gay rights movement in this country?
Soomarie: That there is one?
Robinson: How many people in their family are part of it.
TNT Times: You recently held an ecumenical service for GLBT people and you’re doing other things to allow GLBT to worship as themselves, but what role do you think religion plays in people’s attitudes towards gays and how do you answer those who quote holy book passages that seem to show God does not approve of homosexuality?
Soomarie: I think that people conveniently use scriptures. It’s easy to quote Sodom and Gomorrah and Leviticus. But then again, religion has scarred a lot of gay people, made them feel they are less than human. No real religion or spirituality in any form or expression is supposed to do that to anybody, to demean people. One of the things that I learned as part of having to deal with my own sexuality and spiritual struggle is to take those parts of the scripture that make sense to me. If the Bible says, “Before you were in the womb I knew you,” it means that God knew very well before I was born that I was going to be gay.
But we really can’t have a religious ... I don’t like the word debate, a religious dialogue, because it’s going to become very heated and very intense and scripture versus scripture and very emotive. What you need to have are discussions based on logical and reasoned thinking. In other words no society, religious or not, should support the killing of any man because he’s gay. So those are the things you need to argue on and move it away from the religious issue because it’s always going to be there.
Robinson: There’s a huge impact that religious stigma has, more so than the laws. It really cripples people’s sense that they’re worthy. Argument is not the solution. The opportunity we have is the notion that people create faith communities. All these new fundamentalist evangelical religions don’t have the long histories some of the mainline religions have. So how do we begin, as people of faith, to create those faith communities that are scripturally based, yes, but that build on the scripture in affirming ways, in modern and life-sustaining ways.
Soomarie: Let me bring it home. Let me show you how real the religious stigma is. I can apply it to my life. Me being an openly gay and HIV positive man, part of my own struggle was the fact that (I thought) I got HIV because I was gay or that God punished me for my sin. That’s what was taught to me in a kind of sly way, and that’s what I unconsciously adopted. I was told I could be healed of having HIV if I give up this lifestyle of being gay. So there was always this battle between the two, and that’s how the religious stigma, particularly in the context of being gay and HIV positive, works. It made me feel I was punished for being gay.
TNT Times: (At Robinson) You’re a big fan of calypso and you recently held a listening party at Alice’s Yard in Woodbrook, to expose people to the various ways homosexuality has been dealt with by local calypsonians over the years. It was a very enlightening event. Calypsonians are both more virulently homophobic than I thought and more accepting than I thought. Talk to me about local popular music’s depiction of homosexuality and how this affects or reflects society’s attitudes.
Robinson: What the event was intended to show was that there was variety historically and contemporarily in the ways in which one aspect of popular music in Trinidad and Tobago treats with this question. And that there’s an incredible wit and imagination that’s included in that. We often let this notion of Jamaican popular music and how it treats with sexual difference speak for the region as a whole and we let Jamaica’s experience speak for the Caribbean as a whole. There is a strong influence that Jamaican popular music is having on our popular music, yes, and it is bringing with it this notion of a certain kind of masculinity that doesn’t tolerate not just homosexuality but oral sex – which I’ve never quite understood. But there are also other traditions in the music that engage with sexual difference in different ways. Some of them, they’re not the most embracing of people’s humanity, but they’re not violent, and there are ways in which they’re very playful and witty.
TNT Times: But there were two shocking calypsos – one from Sparrow and one from Cro Cro. And there were songs by Bunji Garlin that seemed to even encourage violence.
Robinson: There’s only one Bunji tune I have found that explicitly talks about violence. But (gay people) get lumped in with a whole lot of other people in the fire (chuckle). Bunji has a very strong tradition of moralising in his music, some of which is salutary and some of which is really, really problematic. What I was trying to do with that presentation is kinda nuance the conversation.
You have people like Sparrow, who in his old age running out of topics to sing on and so he decided to sing on Adam and Eve and Bible and thing. Sparrow, who - well you know Sparrow’s history and his relationship to sexuality. So I think it’s just amusingly ridiculous that somebody with Sparrow’s history wants to try and pull that off.
And Cro Cro and (Sugar) Aloes have made a kind of stock in trade, as many dancehall artists have, of presenting a certain kind of negative view of same sex desire, particularly between men, and I expect they would continue to do that. That’s one aspect of the music. It’s an aspect we can speak out about and have conversations about but it’s not the total sum of what calypso is doing. And so it’s about revealing the complexity but also revealing a lot of the positive stuff. People who came to that show, to my surprise, were really entertained and affirmed in ways that I didn’t expect.
TNT Times: Share some of your worst and best experiences growing up a gay person in Trinidad and Tobago. (Robinson laughs.) What is the importance to you of community, of having a place where you can come together to talk, plan, share, party, pray?
Soomarie: My worst experiences were me trying to figure out my sexuality in a world that was harsh and cruel and engaging in sexual activity with the most socially unacceptable of persons. It became a habit. I would go to particular public restrooms to find men to engage in a particular sexual behaviour. It took me a long while after to figure out that was wrong because older men were taking advantage of me because I was younger.
Then added to that was the fact that I became HIV positive later down the road, so that was another challenging part to accept that at such a young age - I was 21 when I was found out I was HIV positive – to have to deal with a positive diagnosis and the fact that you have all these gay feelings you don’t know how to deal with. And you’re trying to figure out what to do now with your life.
That’s why I feel so passionate about the community that I’m a part of, because I know where I came from and it kind of drives my passion to want to do something meaningful for the community, because when I hear the stories of people being taken advantage of it’s almost like I’m hearing my story again. So it has this emotional connect that I can’t separate from. The most powerful time was me being on TV6 talking about CAISO on the morning show. When I left there I was, like, “Oh my God, my father is a pastor! I carry my father’s name!”
Mottley: My experience is a little bit different from the lesbian population as a whole, given that I came into the life only recently. I came into the life as a grown woman, so I didn’t go through a lot of the heartache. I also was not here for 14 years. So I told people that by the time I moved back to Trinidad I didn’t know what a closet was, so I had no intention of going into a closet.
I’ve always been different and I knew I was different from very early. And for me that difference meant power. I refused to be fettered even as a child, as my mother would sadly recount. When I decided that I loved women I saw absolutely nothing wrong with that, and I’m a mother. I chose to love who I chose to love, and I don’t feel ashamed by it. I’m a very active member of my church. I wasn’t when I came back. My son asked me to come to church. My mother keeps saying, “What about your son?” So far it has not had a negative impact, and I hope, knowing people like David and Colin, that he understands that we’re all just citizens.
Robinson: At maybe 12, I can’t remember how old I was, one morning I broke down in tears and I told my mother that I thought I was a homo. I was very clear. I knew what it was, I knew what the feelings meant. And her response was to tell me that it confirms one of her worst fears - that with the separation from my father I was predestined to be this way. So she sent me to a psychiatrist. But at age 15 I ended up at the home of a relatively well known teacher of mine with a sheaf of love letters and suicidal ideations. He and my mother conspired to get me back into therapy with Trinidad and Tobago’s television psychiatrist Edward Moses, and that’s essentially what led to me coming out.
The other interesting thing is that when I applied recently for my first job working for the government in the Office of the Prime Minister I came out in my application because I thought it was relevant to the job, and I was hired nonetheless. So I don’t know who read it or who was prevented from reading it, but yes, the government’s cowardly on these issues, but at the same time that did not become a barrier to my being employed to work in the Office of the Prime Minister.
TNT Times: And the last part of the question – what is the importance of having a community where you can just be yourself?
Robinson: Well just that you can be yourself. It’s about the affirmation. It’s about community rituals. The same reason people go to mosques or to church. It can be really powerful, especially when you organise to do things that you can’t do by yourself - that’s the power of community: the power of people coming together to accomplish things – even if they don’t like each other, to recognise that there are things we can accomplish by working together that we can’t alone and that when we actually get those successes and we celebrate it’s sweet. I’ve had some of those experiences already in CAISO. That’s what makes the work worthwhile.
