Caribbean Focus: Living in Jamaica as a Young, Queer Man

Through a long and complicated history of conquest, slavery, and colonization, Jamaica has emerged as a force in the Caribbean, known for its vibrant culture and picturesque coastlines. Alongside its fame as a paradise of sorts, is a malevolent reputation for violence and homophobia. Widely described as the most homophobic place on earth, this aspect of Jamaican ‘culture’ has widely been reproduced and reinforced through the island nation’s two greatest cultural exports – Rastafarianism and Dancehall music. Campaigns by international human rights organizations to de-platform Jamaican artists whose music is characterized with overtly homophobic lyrics have yielded partial success, while calls for more acceptance of gender and sexual minorities in the country continue to trudge on.
 
Scholars focusing on the Caribbean LGBTQIA+ history, culture, lives, and diaspora, provide some pushback against the blanket accusation of blanket homophobia in the Caribbean while also ackowledging the glaring inequalities faced by gender and sexual minorities in the region. When viewed from the outside, not enough –if anything at all – is being done to safeguard the lives and rights of LGBTQIA+ individuals in the region. But the personal stories and experiences of those from and in the Caribbean paint a much more nuanced picture of incremental change and a slow but steady public perception shift.
 
In the first installment of Caribbean Focus, a Barbadian expat living in China’s Southern city of Guangzhou, shares his experience living in the “most homophobic” country on earth, and why most preconceptions of Jamaica are wrong.

Editor’s note

Oxymoron would be the one word I would use, to sum up my experience living in Jamaica as a queer man. How could this be, you may ask? Well, Jamaica is known around the world as being “one of the most homophobic places on Earth” (Time Magazine 2006), where pretty much anyone who isn’t straight or gender-conforming is likely to face targeted violent attacks from fellow citizens and even law enforcers.

However, this was not my experience as an (admittedly) somewhat economically privileged, non-Jamaican queer man. Whenever people ask me how I survived living in Jamaica for 3 years as someone who could be easily labeled as gay by anyone who has eyes or ears, I would tell them that Jamaica was actually the gayest country I’ve ever lived in.

Now, pick yourself off the floor;  I know that this characterization may come as a shock to anyone reading this but yes, the “most homophobic place on Earth” for me, was actually the gayest place on Earth. During my time in Jamaica in the early 2010s, it was extremely hard to tell gay and straight apart, and not because people were hiding themselves because they feared persecution, but because most men who would say that they were straight donned the tightest pants on earth coupled with the thinnest eyebrows known to man, circa millennium Christina Aguilera).

These fashion choices were extremely jarring, since for me back home, these same choices would be clear indications that someone was gay. One could argue that Jamaican men were so comfortable in their sexuality that they could easily occupy gender-bending spaces and not bat an eyelid, but in my opinion, quite the opposite was true.

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If any man decided to wear pink, they would be labeled “batty boy,” a Jamaican slur used to denote gay and/or effeminate men; if a man decided to eat a banana in public they would instantly be met with shouts of “bun fyah.” It is easy to see why the first word I used in this passage was “oxymoron,” because the men who had razor-thin turn-of-the-millennium eyebrows weren’t even comfortable enough to eat a banana amongst their “bredren.”

Beyond that though, living in Jamaica for me was quite a great experience, through which I met some lifelong friends who also happened to be queer locals. Yes, they did intimate that they longed to live “inna foreign” where queer people actually have rights and are not persecuted into a life of fringe existence.  

But during my time there I did witness a general change in the public’s perception toward queer people. In 2016, Jamaica held the country’s first Pride Week (PRiDEJA) which was put on by both J-FLAG and Equality Jamaica, two non-profit organizations that seek to make living in Jamaica comfortable for anyone on the LGBTQ+ spectrum.

I remember how excited, yet scared everyone was to attend these events, which luckily went off without a hitch, thanks in part due to support from local law enforcement.  So yes, even though Jamaica has had a history of rampant transphobia and homophobia, the tide is turning and it is my sincere hope that one day, queer Jamaicans will be seen as equals both constitutionally and in society.

About the Author

Hailing from the gem of the Caribbean Sea, Barbados, Jevon has lived in three different countries and currently resides in China where he works in the gaming industry. Jevon has always identified as queer and his identity as a queer Caribbean man is of great importance to him.

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