Scapegoating women

Wed, Aug 27th 2014, 10:58 AM

Dear Editor,
It is interesting that the authorities have sought to argue that women are the weaker link. They do not deserve the equal right to pass on their citizenship to their husbands and their children. They are required to marry Bahamian males, despite so many of our number being the most irresponsible souls around and eagerly willing to sell themselves for a song.
Yet, the women are the persons who are charged with being the risk to the country. They are the ones selling off Bahamian-ness. They will sell their souls and their citizenship to the men who come into their worlds. Why is it then, that the statistics so utterly refute this fact? How can it be that men are more often married to foreign women than Bahamian women are married to foreign men?
There are two facts that seem so utterly misrepresented: one, that Bahamian women are less than men and, two, that Bahamian women are eager to sell their citizenship as men are eager to sell theirs. Men seem to be eager to sell the Bahamian birthright, as land is so often called. They are happy to divest, get rid of, sell out from under, the very land people live on, but the people complain, exclusively, among themselves.
This is a serious matter, yet the men in the rum shop argue about the corruption between parties. They argue about their wives' cooking and the goodness of their MP, who just so happens to be selling off all the acres around them, yet our citizenship is not for sale. How can we reconcile these to positions?
While men are statistically the more dominant group to marry foreign women, they can pass their citizenship on to their children in most cases, but women are blamed for their lack of fidelity to the males of their race and nation. Ironically, we are producing a group of young men who seem unable to do much for themselves or anyone else other than drink, talk, and reproduce. They are eager to demonstrate their hard masculinity, but unwilling and unable to go beyond that.
The word "automatic" is really very misleading when it comes to citizenship and rights to be here. There is nothing automatic in applying for or being granted status in The Bahamas. There are rules, laws, processes and hindrances, so the idea that one sex should pass on their citizenship automatically is slightly off, especially if you have ever attended a meeting of Cabinet where the person applying for residency has had his her application deferred for five years because more important matters have kept Cabinet busy.
Why does this all have to go to Cabinet? Who decides who is better than whom? How does it work when a rich person buys land and is told that their application has been expedited because they have invested a sum of money that not everyone will have in the bank at the same time so they could buy that piece of land. Further, even if they wanted to buy it and had the money, would they be given that same treatment?
We seem to argue against discrimination when it comes to Bahamians not being able to access the same prices on land sales, but we are happy to discriminate against women because they are women, only, don't mess with my mother.
Somehow, it seems that mothers are honorary men. Men talk about their mothers as if they were sacred beings, or they hate them as if they were Satan incarnate.
Mostly, though, they hate the men who fathered them because of the way they treated their mothers. Yet, we seem more than happy to push all women into a corner and not give them access to rights. It is simply confusing.
What are the discussions in Parliament based on? Are these discussions and hard and fast inflammatory positions based on fact or are they pulled from the seat of someone's pants and used to promote a biased discriminatory regime?
Bahamian men do not "automatically" pass on their citizenship to their children in all circumstances nor do they "automatically" pass on their citizenship to all their children. The law is extremely paternalistic, but it is also clear. We Bahamians need to read better. The laws and the constitutions are all published. While they may be written in language that is outside of our common speaking and reading, we need to be able to understand what is being said.
Men sell land; men sell women; women sell women, but more men than women in The Bahamas are married to non-Bahamians. Why is it that parliamentarians think that only their mothers have sense and no other woman can be sensible and will marry any man who passes in front of them? Is that because so many men do it and know how to work the system for financial gain?
We seem to be a society based on discrimination: Bahamians cannot gamble in casinos but they can now gamble in web shops; Bahamians cannot get preferential prices on land because they do not have the potential to develop it as foreigners do; Bahamian women are not as smart as Bahamian men, so they will sell their citizenship as soon as they attain rights on a par with men's rights.
Can we try to eliminate some of these discriminatory practices and then see how biased we are against women? Men and women often argue that a woman whose husband has beaten her did something to deserve it because men are all rational, and women, being inferior, are the provokers. Let's try to be reasonable about this and seek out the information that will serve the country best.
We complain bitterly about being locked out of the country's progress, but we seem happy to lock others out based on their sex. And as far as biology goes, sex is male or female.
- Ian Bethell Bennett

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