#BTColumn – Assume dignity

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by this author are their own and do not represent the official position of the Barbados Today.

by Jade Gibbons

When I was studying at Cave Hill, I made friends with a German girl. Before she returned home, we decided we should go out as we had never really interacted outside of class prior.

We went out three times: once sightseeing; once to a restaurant; and once to a bar.

At the bar, there were other foreign exchange students from Europe and North America.

We left the bar relatively early because a girl from my friend’s dorm had taken sick. The girl had drunk too much. My friend asked me to drop this girl home.

When we got into the car, an American girl, who had helped my friend carry the drunk girl, also got in.

This freaked me out because I did not know the American girl and we had not made any arrangements to take her with us. I had a mind to tell her to get out of my car but then I decided against it because my friend seemed to know her.

Recently I watched a documentary called Liberated: The New Sexual Revolution (2017) by Bejamin Nolot which examines the catastrophic results America’s 1960s sexual revolution had on the ideological upbringing of modern-day university students.

Some of the scenes in the documentary are vile but only because the actions of the students are vile. In one scene the interviewer asked a bunch of girls sitting on the beach if they felt safe on said beach.

All of them said no. Then one of them realizing that everyone had said no and how bad their answers made the environment sound, asked the interviewer if he wanted her to change her answer to yes.

My response to this scene was: Why are you there if you don’t feel safe? The answer to my question was given by another girl in a different scene.

The girl in this scene was indoors with a male friend and the interviewer asked her what she thought about the things that happened on the beach. Her response was that it is normal.

The vulgar behaviour of the males was amplified on the beach but it wasn’t unusual as it happened on her campus. This came as a surprise to her friend which prompted her to explain to him that she experiences similar treatment while they are at university.

The answer to my question clearly was: Because they never feel safe.

Then I understood the actions of the American girl who got into my car. She knew it was risky to get into a stranger’s car, but it was also risky to stay at the bar when other people were leaving.

So, she left too. On the ride to Cave Hill, this same girl mentioned that she had backpacked through Punjab, India for a month.

She mentioned that she had felt very safe because everyone she met was very concerned about the fact that she was a female travelling by herself and tried to look out for her.

It was once put to me that I should write an article about the rape culture of Eastern nations like India and Bangladesh because of the fact that legislations to protect women from violence are only now, in the twenty-first century, being put in place.

The slant suggested was to look at how it is possible that men are only now learning that these kinds of behaviour are wrong. I told the man who suggested it no because I felt it would be hypocritical of me. And mentioned that the same vile behaviour happens in the West.

There are only two differences between the rape culture in the West and the rape culture in the East.

The first is that in the West there are robust systems in place to hold perpetrators accountable while there are not in the East.

The second is the fact that the mentality of the perpetrators is not as endemic and rampant in the West as it is in the East. But the mentality is the same.

The only reason that the comments of the males in Liberated did not break my heart or crush my soul was because I had heard them before.

Both the BBC and the Guardian have done multiple reports and documentaries on Bangladesh’s brothel village Daulatdia.

The males that frequent Daulatdia made similar comments to the males in Liberated.

So you see, I can’t in good conscience call uneducated Eastern men backwards for having the same mentality that educated Western men have.

What I can say is that both are vile. Both ought to do better. Both need to appreciate that ‘all [humans] are created equal’ and that ‘human dignity is assumed rather than earned.’

Jade Gibbons is an arts and business graduate with a keen interest in social issues and film-making.