Gabrielle Ho­sein

Al­most 40 years ago, Au­dre Lorde wrote: "We can sit in our safe cor­ners as mute as bot­tles, and still we will be no less afraid." Around the re­gion to­day, women are post­ing sex­u­al ha­rass­ment, abuse and as­sault sur­vival sto­ries as part of the #lifein­leg­gings move­ment, pre­cise­ly to over­come that si­lenc­ing and fear.

The hash­tag and post­ings were start­ed by Bar­ba­di­an women Ronelle King and Allyson Benn to high­light the per­va­sive­ness of sex­u­al vi­o­lence. Can any of us say that we don't know one woman who has ex­pe­ri­enced such threat, fear, harm and de­nial of choice, pos­si­bly many times?

They linked their ini­tia­tive to Bar­ba­dos' 50th In­de­pen­dence and, there­fore, to the im­pos­si­bil­i­ty of "de­vel­op­ment" with­out al­so end­ing gen­der in­equal­i­ties.

Caribbean states have paid scant at­ten­tion to the re­al­i­ties of rape cul­ture while re­fram­ing 20 years of lip ser­vice in­to a sto­ry of "too much fo­cus on women." Yet, the courage it takes to share these sto­ries sug­gests that si­lenc­ing re­mains more dom­i­nant than safe space for women's truths about their re­la­tion­ships, fam­i­lies, com­mu­ni­ties and na­tion.

Break­ing these si­lences re­mains a risk. Fam­i­lies are in­vest­ed in hid­ing sto­ries of sex­u­al pre­da­tion, telling women that it hap­pened in the past, or that it's more im­por­tant to just keep peace. Peo­ple re­spond that, some­how, you must have looked for that be­cause of your clothes, your job or smile.

Oth­ers' trau­ma at hear­ing what hap­pened to you has to be man­aged, some­times mak­ing it eas­i­er to say noth­ing. It's com­mon to not be be­lieved or to be blamed or seen as bring­ing down shame or want­i­ng at­ten­tion or, worse, as a joke.

Now isn't the time to say not all men rape, as­sault or ha­rass. Women are not ac­cus­ing all men, they are sim­ply no longer hid­ing what ac­tu­al­ly hap­pened to them.

Women are not re­spon­si­ble for pro­tect­ing them­selves, for "men don't mo­lest de­cent girls."

These sto­ries be­gin when we are chil­dren and mod­esty pro­vides no safe­ty.

Women don't want men's pro­tec­tion, we want their sol­i­dar­i­ty. There's one mes­sage that can change women's #lifein­leg­gings, and that is that men's sex­u­al self-re­spon­si­bil­i­ty has no ex­cus­es.

From Ba­jan politi­cians to Guyanese in­dige­nous women to Ja­maican reg­gae singers to Trinida­di­an uni­ver­si­ty ed­u­ca­tors to po­lice­women in St Vin­cent to dis­abled girls across the re­gion, every kind of Caribbean woman has sto­ries.

Imag­ine what it means when ed­u­ca­tion, class priv­i­lege, fame, age, eth­nic­i­ty or pro­fes­sion makes no dif­fer­ence?

Au­dre Lorde has writ­ten: "My si­lences had not pro­tect­ed me. Your si­lence will not pro­tect you." Al­most 40 years lat­er, in sup­port of #lifein­leg­gings, Tonya Haynes, in the Caribbean fem­i­nist blog, Code Red for Gen­der Jus­tice, wrote: "Women broke every si­lence. We spoke of street ha­rass­ment: girl, yuh ***** fat! Prin­ci­pals who made no room for com­pre­hen­sive sex­u­al­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion but slut-shamed girls who were them­selves sex­u­al­ly abused. Rape by cur­rent and for­mer part­ners.

"Years of sex­u­al abuse by fa­thers, step-fa­thers, un­cles, cousins. Sto­ries of men who told us that they're wait­ing for our four-year-old daugh­ters to grow up. Men who of­fered jobs or rides or food or pro­tec­tion on­ly to de­mand sex. On­ly to split our bod­ies open when we re­fused.

"Men who raped us be­cause we are les­bian, be­cause we are women, be­cause we are girls, be­cause they could.

"We ex­plod­ed every myth about how good girls and good women are pro­tect­ed from this vi­o­lence. That good men will pro­tect us.

"That all we have to do is call in our squad of broth­ers and un­cles and fa­thers. We asked, and who will women and girls call when our fa­thers and broth­ers and un­cles as­sault them? We af­firmed that ask­ing men to pro­tect us from male vi­o­lence is not free­dom.

"All men ben­e­fit from male priv­i­lege and un­equal re­la­tions of gen­der which dis­ad­van­tage and de­val­ue women and girls. We de­mand au­ton­o­my not pro­tec­tion! We split this is­land open for every woman and girl who has had her body split open. We split this is­land open and let all the se­crets fall out."

If you want to break your own si­lences, there is a #lifein­leg­gings gath­er­ing, on Sat­ur­day from 4-6 pm, at the Big Black Box on Mur­ray Street in Wood­brook. Go. Lis­ten. Share. Let all our own is­lands' se­crets fall out.