LGBT people have become the pre-Civil Rights Negroes in Trinidad, expected, as they clearly are, to go to the back of the social bus. Last Friday, a woman, elegantly dressed in slacks and flat shoes, was denied free entry to a nightclub on "ladies' night"–but would have been allowed in if she paid the admission price for males!
In Trinidad, as Lloyd Best pointed out, everybody gets to feel second-class, but it's nice to know that the homos and lesbos are always in a second-class by themselves. Even the Chinese, Trinidad's most scantily respected racial grouping, look down on LGBTees–and there's a frontrunner for last place, socially, in this place: a Hakwai homosexual. (Trinidadians, prejudiced even in bigotry, rate light-skinned lesbians above dark male homosexuals; provided, one supposes, they wear high heels.)
Some people have attacked the nightclub for a theoretically open sexual orientation policy that turns out, in practice, to be biased against people because of what someone else decides is their sexual orientation. One wag, whose name I swear never to reveal (Mr Live Wire of Wired 868), treated the issue as pure comedy, suggesting that the only sexual orientation being treated unfairly at nightclubs was full price-paying heterosexual males.
In the satire game, it's easy for even your own team to misread the play, but it seems to me that this is not one of those where you poke fun at the person under fire; we still need to mock the right people.
Indeed, though those of clerical level intelligence might dismiss last Friday's events as trivial compared to, say, foreign exchange scarcity, this is exactly what allows all of Trinidad's crises to keep on keeping on: the contemptuous dismissal of the very humanity of someone relatively powerless by someone else with power. It could be a "UNC" Central Bank governor and a PNM Minister of Finance or a teacher waving a panty at a Carnival fete, but our arguments are never made to the principle but to the man; or, on occasion, the woman dressed as a man.
This cornerstone of neo-slave societies–the unthinking and unquestionable dismissal of personhood–was laid in our social foundations with every Great House on every planation over the last 500 years, and is repainted every day at every gate of every car park in Town. "You cyar come in here! Do something, nah! Let we see if you name 'man'."
I imagine the bouncer involved has been fired by now but I would like to see her rehired at places where she could really do some damage to what she sees as pretentious Trinidadians who need taking down a few pegs. Here, then, are some news reports she might yet help ground; I'm hoping the substitution of another sweeping prejudice ought to convey how savagely a citizen was treated last week; but, with Trinis, you can rarely tell the difference between prejudice and policy.
Prime Minister denied
admission to House
Prime Minister Keith Rowley was on Friday denied entry to the sitting of the House of Representatives at Waterfront Plaza. Dr Rowley was turned away at the door by a female security guard for not being sufficiently prime ministerial. Dressed in the uniform of a Parliamentarian in a tropical country–a thick jacket and tie–and sweating like a pig before the rotating knives in an abattoir, Prime Minister Rowley protested that he was the PM of T&T. "Not a firetruck of that," replied the lady bouncer. "You dressing like a white man but you can't fool me. I could look in your heart and see you really black. Also at your face." Bitterly upset by the episode, Prime Minister Rowley posted a long rant on his Facebook page but no one took it seriously because he was seen as just a nigger in a suit.
Gangster turned away
from robbery attempt
T&T's most wanted man was on Wednesday night refused entry to the casino he intended to rob. The clean-shaven man in his early 20s, dressed in full-length, straight-cut Levis and a button-down, long-sleeved shirt, scaled the fence of the casino's parking lot and took a waiter emptying a dustbin as a hostage in an attempt to force his way through the back door into the casino office, where the cash is kept. A female security guard, however, shut the door in his face. "You ent no bandit," she told him sternly, "you must be one of them good little boys who even uses to be a acolyte. You shouldn't even be coming in a cassy-no! G'wan from here!" The young thug protested that "it had a robbery with V waiting to happen inside, and I bringing the violence," but the security guard insisted he was really a good Catholic boy and gave him her niece's number and made him promise to call whenever Mass/his prison sentence was over.
West Indies Test team
forced to play badminton
Rumours are rife that the West Indies cricket team will be refused entry to the second Test v Australia at the Sydney Cricket Ground on Boxing Day, by a female bouncer flown in from Trinidad by the West Indies Cricket Board. The bouncer, well known for making women better-looking than her pay full price, will be flown first-class, to Australia to sneer at captain Jason Holder and his alleged team. "You all only dressed like cricketers," she will reportedly tell the team as she slams the dressing room door in their face, "but you all only play the a--!" The female bouncer will give the West Indies Cricket Board president a tall ladder and a lot of beer, so he may continue pissing on West Indies cricketers from a height.
BC Pires is denying everything until it is proven. Email your alibis and G-strings to him at bc@winetonline.com