Letter of the Day | Pastor Jennings is not alone!
Published:Friday | June 1, 2018 | 12:00 AM
THE EDITOR, Sir:
I am among those who listened in disbelief to the sexist and misogynistic pronouncements of Pastor Gino Jennings. But are the utterances of Pastor Gino Jennings that unfamiliar to Jamaican women and the general Jamaican society? Is he alone in these views and beliefs? Do we not live in a society where women's bodies continue to be policed by the colonial minded who appear trapped in the legacy of the Victorian age?
Have we not sustained the environment in which a Pastor Jennings could insult us, because we continue to be bound by the shackles of colonialism; and participate in, and continue to perpetuate, oppressive structures using half-baked ideologies?
Otherwise, how is it that almost 56 years after Independence, our Parliament, schools and government ministries maintain outdated regulations barring women from wearing sleeveless, capped sleeve and short dresses to enter their premises? The length of girls' skirts in some of our schools also continues to be the subject of debate among those who question the rationale for such an imposition.
Jennings' beliefs may be grounded in sexism and outmoded biblical teachings, but they are also grounded in the enduring legacy of the Victorian gender order, introduced by British planters and missionaries during the Victorian age, in their efforts to control women after the abolition of slavery.
The period was characterised by the sex-typing of work/occupation, gender discriminatory wages, religious and Eurocentric education, anti-black racism, injustice for the working class and teachings about what women should wear and how they should live their lives so that they would fit their ascribed role in a patriarchal society.
In some ways, we are trapped in that age. Our society, like that of other postcolonial societies, is characterised by the attitudes, beliefs, perceptions and ideologies inherited from British colonialism; and these govern our institutions and interactions from pulpits to Parliaments. Within this context, the policing of women's bodies continues.
I applaud all the men and women who have condemned the recent woman-insulting speech by the pastor, but I still have to ask: How much longer will we continue to allow the Gino Jenningses of Jamaica to continue to spew their rhetoric and impose their outmoded rules on us unchallenged?
VERENE A. SHEPHERD
Social Historian