Powerful women

Keith Noel, Contributor

Celebrated Jamaican poet, Lorna Goodison, in her poem For My Mother, describes a strong, self-sacrificing woman who could "feed 20 people on a stew made from fallen-from-the-head cabbage leaves and a carrot and a chocho and a palmful of meat". Many a Jamaica dancehall artiste has also described their mothers in this type of glowing terminology.

In fact, to say that your mother had weaknesses and frailties and had no almost-magical abilities to make everything all right, to comfort and care for you and everyone else, is to declare that she was a bit of a failure as a 'real' mother.

I remember, some years ago, describing my mother as 'a good woman, hard-working, kind, respectable to a fault, loyal to my father and loving to her children' but having none of the remarkable qualities that others claimed their mothers had. I was seen as disloyal and disrespectful to her memory by those in the group who knew her.

This burden we put on women is patently unfair. I believe it is the cause of some of what is wrong with our society. We perpetuate a kind of 'Eve/Madonna' dichotomy where women are seen either as the temptress, the gold-digger, the skettel or as the wonderful, caregiving, heart-of-gold healer. So we grow up thinking that there are two kinds of women. There are those who are true mothers and who should be revered and cherished. Then there are 'other women'. These are fair game for abuse and disrespect or to be ignored and disadvantaged.

I know many men who cannot see their mothers as sexual creatures. To suggest to them that their mothers had a lusty sexual appetite or even that they enjoyed the act would be seen as an insult and could lead to a violent attack. They would also be offended if one said this about their wives, the 'mother of their children'. As a teacher, I also had to sit in judgement over many a case where a boy attacked another one viciously and his only defence was that the other had 'tell mi about mi madda'. And then be horrified when I adjudged that that was no reason to strike the malefactor over the head with a chair!

Loose reputation

But then these same men, and some women agree, who would show little sympathy for a girl who had been raped if she had the reputation of being loose, or even simply because she 'dressed like a skettel'. This suggests that if a woman is known to be having sex with more than one man, she should no longer have the right to refuse any man's advances.

This reminds us of the custom they had in India (and I am told still persists in some areas) where a rape victim would have to undergo the 'finger test' where fingers would be inserted into the woman to measure "vaginal laxity" and thereby ascertain whether she was "habituated to sex" before the alleged assault.

We even have problems with marital rape. The idea seems to be that a woman 'belongs' to her husband - half person, half property - and has no right to refuse to have sex with him. This, even if they have just quarrelled because he was coming straight from another woman's arms!; or if they are estranged and she sleeps in a separate bedroom; or even if she has moved out and is living alone (or with another man)!

Lust-satisfier

Part of the problem of our disrespect for women, I believe, comes from this idea we create of the ideal woman, the mother figure, long-suffering, creative, absolutely all heart, all loving, all giving. Those who don't live up to this ideal, or who we see as not having the potential to do so, can easily fall into the category of the 'gyal', the property, the lust-satisfier, the 'piece'.

So it is with great interest and no small measure of satisfaction that we see women now creating a new category for themselves, a new ideal. No longer is the Madonna figure the ideal woman, but the 'powerful' woman - competent, hard- working, intelligent, sensuous, flawed even, but 'in your face'.

More power to them!

Keith Noel is an educator. Feedback may be sent to columns@gleanerjm.com.