Don't Blush Baby

They say empathy is the ability to understand and perhaps share the feelings of someone else. The conundrum is how do you understand it, if you've never felt it? Growing up I learned many gender roles, spoken and unspoken. A man provides, a woman cooks and cleans. Contra-positively a man is worthless if he can't provide, likewise for a woman who can't cook and cleans. Men are rational thinkers driven by a hunter's instinct. Women are feeble, emotional and are to be sought after and conquered. Upon this base gender model we superimpose ideas of equality, and modern sophistication. That merely serve as empty words that perhaps convince the privileged, men like me, that we're progressive.

The reality is quite more grim when we take the time to analyze. A friend of mine mentioned to me that 100% of the women I know in Jamaica have been sexually harassed. I never truly thought about it before but I knew once it was said that it was true. I need not do more than to walk down the street and see how women are spoken to. Cat calling is as Jamaican as Reggae music is. It's only now that I'm understanding that a woman's discomfort is the norm. For if she were to dare respond to the unwanted advances in a manner that truly indicated her revulsion she would be scorned and ridiculed and told that is why she's undesirable. Yes, she is undesirable because she has stood up to a cruel and uncomfortable precedent. It is considered an everyday occurrence for a man to make a comment on a lady's figure or a sexual joke which has to either be ignored or laughed away. If not they're considered to be uptight. We have developed a method of deflecting a woman's outcries, she's just being emotional, she's just overreacting, she didn't see that I was just joking (were you?). When are we going to grow up?

After coming to grips with this revelation I started to feel like I have no power to change the culture. I can only not be one of the perpetrators of these unwanted advances. Then my friend hit me with another blow. If you are unwilling to call out other men when they misstep then you are complicit. So...are you saying all the times I've sat and watched my friends/acquaintances make advances towards women in professional environments who brushed it off and pretended to not be bothered I have been complicit. Indeed I have. Being in a position of privilege gives us a blind spot to the plight of others. I do not know what it feels like to be a woman in this male-dominated world but I do know very well the feeling of being a minority in a white-dominated world. I hadn't the slightest of chances of making those in a position of privilege understand the discomfort that I had to endure. I can only imagine what a woman must endure, and endure they do. It isn't right, I am saddened that it has taken me this long to realize that there is a call to action. Whether or not we fall into the affected group we have to stand up for what is right. We have to be aware, we have to pay attention. If I'm to become the gentleman I aspire towards each day. I can no longer be a bystander with my hands up in the air. I have to speak up.

"But the human voice is different from other sounds. It can be heard over noises that bury everything else. Even when it's not shouting. Even when it's just a whisper. Even the lowest whisper can be heard - -over armies... when it's telling the truth."