22224: Racine: Re: 22201: Dorval: Response to Racine 2215 (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Racine125@aol.com

> As far as
> Haitian women considering their vaginas as their capital goods; I can only
> say that I don't know any Haitian women who think that way.

I think Amy Wilentz has also documented this phenomenon - she reported on Haitian market women who come to town to sell produce and "my land", the land being their vaginas.

> Are you talking about some women that you know or Haitian women in
> general?

This is the attitude of the majority of majority-class women, certainly!  And I am not exempting the members of my own congregation.  I have never yet seen two women in Haiti cuss-fight, for example, without each of them immediately claiming that their vagina is better than the other woman's.

This is also why it is so hard to get heterosexual sex partners to use condoms.  The men don't want to, and a woman who says, "I don't like condoms" gets more play from the men, and sometimes more money per sexual encounter, so she considers herself more valuable and desirable.

> Rape is probably one of the worst things that could
> happen to a woman

No, murder is the worst thing that can happen to a woman.  If you survive a rape you might be able to later kill or imprison your rapist, but if you are dead, you can't.

> But to write that Haitian men are raised to be rapists just shows how
> little you know about Haitian people.

Yep, I've been living in Haiti since 1987, I'm a full time Mambo, and I know very little about Haitians, right.  Just the other day one of my congregation members, who has a pubescent daughter, had to move from downtown to a more rural area because the local boys had decided the time had come for her daughter to be "debute", to start having sex whether she wants to or not!

> Even though I experience racism very often, I would never write that
> Europeans or white people are raised to be racists.

Of COURSE they are, some of them!  What do you think, white racists reinvent racism every generation?  Naturally they learn if from other racists.

You know, when I went to school, we had very few black students in my school system, and I was so oblivious... I mean, of course I saw that they had dark skins, but practically until I was halfway through high school I didn't really understand that there were such things as "races" of people and their "race" was a little different from my own.  I guess I was a lost innocent, but honestly I didn't know there was such a thing as a "race problem" until black people told me there was.

But other white people have had very different experiences.  Certainly some whites are raised to think of black people as lesser, inferior, and undesirable, and plenty of those white people are encouraged to be aggressive toward blacks.  Surely you know this?

> I must tell you that I feel quite offended by your letter.

I must tell you that I feel quite offended by RAPE!  Are you a woman?  I bet not.  I feel offended by this constant, "Map kwenyen ou", I'm going to f-ck you; directed at me and at other women by almost any man who pleases!  I am offended by being threatened with rape by the man who ties his cow in my pasture overnight and steals my grass, I am offended by being threatened with rape by youths on the beach who want some cash, I am offended by being threatened with rape by men in my neighborhood because I dumped a boorish boyfriend!

Just have a look at the laws on rape in Haiti - there AREN'T ANY!  Rape, per se, is not a crime, it's a "crime against honor" and if the woman is not a virgin, she has no "honor" to lose.  There is no age of consent, there is no statutary rape.  And you want to tell me this is just an accident?  Who do you think made those laws, or failed to make them?  Haitian men, who want to make sure that they can rape with impunity.

I think you ought to walk around Haiti disguised as a woman for a few weeks, you might find your ideas changing.

Sincerely,

Mambo Racine