Akash Sama­roo

You wouldn’t be blamed for be­ing pes­simistic that T&T so­ci­ety’s dis­re­spect to­wards women is an un­break­able cy­cle.

The “Psst famalay!,” “Smile nah girl” or the misog­y­nis­tic key in which many of our pop­u­lar songs are writ­ten, tran­scends gen­er­a­tions.

But how do we com­bat the fac­tors that prop­a­gate be­hav­iour that is of­ten re­ferred to as this coun­try’s rape cul­ture?

Ac­cord­ing to one ac­tivist, men will have to play a big role in that ef­fort.

“Over the course of my life, I have seen so many cir­cum­stances where women were dis­re­spect­ed and when I was younger, I felt help­less, and as I got old­er, I re­alised I wasn’t very in­formed at all, and I met peo­ple like At­til­lah Springer and Gabrielle Ho­sein who taught me a lot about my­self and fem­i­nine en­er­gy and as I got old­er, I re­alised that men had to speak be­cause if women are the on­ly ones call­ing for it, it will be dif­fi­cult to get in­to the ears of men,” said Muham­mad Muwak­il, of mu­sic group Free­town Col­lec­tive.

Muwak­il and oth­ers in Free­town have been rais­ing aware­ness through com­mu­ni­ty out­reach and their mu­sic for years.

“When we talk about rape, we talk about con­sent, right? So, peo­ple think about rape and they some­times just go to the full ex­tent, which is the sex­u­al vi­o­la­tion of a hu­man be­ing by an­oth­er, but that type of rape is on the far end of the spec­trum and it be­gins on the oth­er end with the things that we see as mi­nor, the stuff that fills in the in be­tween is what we call the rape cul­ture and the rape cul­ture takes you from some­body who will nev­er do that to some­one who found it easy to,” Muwak­il ex­plained.

Muwak­il said the ob­jec­ti­fi­ca­tion of women leads to men not see­ing them as equal and then not see­ing them as hav­ing feel­ings and opin­ions that are equal to their own.

“And if you see some­one as not on that lev­el with you, then it’s okay for you to call them out in the street, it’s okay for you to go fur­ther and touch them in­ap­pro­pri­ate­ly, un­til you have ac­tu­al phys­i­cal vi­o­la­tion.”

With re­spect to the ques­tion of some artistes prop­a­gat­ing rape cul­ture in Trinidad and To­ba­go through their mu­sic, Muwak­il was mea­sured in his re­sponse.

“We do have a cul­ture of deal­ing with sex­u­al­i­ty in our mu­sic that is healthy, so I will nev­er want to start by say­ing our mu­sic en­cour­ages rape cul­ture, but then, as with every­thing else, we go over­board with cer­tain things. If you have mu­sic that is heav­i­ly sex­u­alised, you should al­so have mu­sic that is teach­ing the oth­er as­pects of them­selves, but be­cause of the com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of sex­u­al­i­ty, we con­tin­ue cre­at­ing mu­sic that is fo­cused on sex.”

So how do more men and boys be­come sen­si­tised to the ef­fects of these seem­ing­ly in­nocu­ous ac­tions?

“It’s dif­fi­cult, I sup­pose that it oc­curs through work like what I’m do­ing now with the Unit­ed Na­tions (UN) through the Spot­light Ini­tia­tive and try­ing to get in­to the schools to speak to young boys. This is why I say the onus is on men, and I think at some point every man in his evo­lu­tion, he comes to cer­tain truths about women and re­al­i­sa­tions and the ones who come to that re­al­i­sa­tion have to dis­sem­i­nate that in­for­ma­tion to the boys be­cause they’re not al­ways go­ing to get it from their peers.”

The He­roes Foun­da­tion is an al­ly in this bat­tle. The or­gan­i­sa­tion’s fo­cus is work­ing with youth and teach­ing re­spect for women is high on its agen­da.

“For the last year, we’ve been de­liv­er­ing a project in sec­ondary schools and 110 mi­grant chil­dren fo­cused on end­ing vi­o­lence and abuse against chil­dren, we de­vel­oped a pro­gram through UNICEF and the Spot­light Ini­tia­tive that re­al­ly fo­cus­es on build­ing gen­der sen­si­tiv­i­ty aware­ness and abuse,” said foun­da­tion CEO Lawrence Ar­joon.

Ar­joon said the pri­ma­ry tar­get is chil­dren be­tween the ages of 11 to 17 years and so far, he is see­ing pos­i­tive signs.

“I have a lot of hope in our sec­ondary age stu­dents right now but what we need to do is start to lis­ten to them and pro­vide them with the sup­port they need for the world that they’re liv­ing in.”