22385: Antoine: Men react to Manbo Racine's expose (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Guy S. Antoine <webmaster@haitiforever.com>


Men react to Manbo Racine's expose

Here's the second half of the survey, consisting of the
men's viewpoints. Make that 9 instead of the previously
announced 11.  Two of them were already separately sent
to the List.


MAN #1 wrote:

I knew about men calling others names as "kadejakèr", but I
never met a guy -God only knows how many braggarts I met
in my life- presenting himself as a champion when it comes
to rape women.

I saw men arrogating for themselves the right to touch
women, but I never heard of anybody glorifying himself of
being a rapist. Of course I heard stories about rape. I even
heard songs about it, and one can argue that those songs
might have been inspired by facts. On the other hand, I
heard or read that soldiers do rape women of a conquered
territory. Whether Greeks, French, Americans or Haitians.
It has been reported that the putschists and attaches did
rape
during the 1991 coup d'état. I would certainly not be
surprised that the same things are taking place today in
Haiti. Thanks to Abu-Ghraib in Iraq, it has become clear
that rape can be a militaro-political tactic. We also know
that Haitians soldiers copied European tactics from before
1804, and are implementing what they learned from
Americans during the years of the 1915 occupation.

The characterization of Haitian culture as being rapist may
not be substantiable.


MAN #2 wrote:

I liked her brash style of writing. I always felt I could
extract the grain of truth from the molehill buried under
the mountain of generalizations. Male attitude towards
women as property is certainly an age-old problem. Even
in the most modern countries, patriarchy retains its grip
in many ways. Ms. Gray uses colorful language, and gives
examples to back up her point. But a critical mind can sift
through the over-simplifications, and compare the many
cases of Haitian women respected and not raped, and the
many honorable Haitian men we all know, to understand
where Ms. Gray is right, and where she errs.


MAN #3 wrote:

Once I got over my initial anger, two simple questions came
to mind:

1. Why does Mambo Racine choose to live in a "sick, sick,
sick" land of rapists?

2. If, as she asserts, "Rape is most certainly an inherent
part of Haitian culture", then there should be a
disproportionate number of rapes committed by Haitians in
any community inhabited by them. I don't know the exact
statistics but I don't believe that's the case in the US or
Canada, for example?


MAN #4 wrote:

In the aftermath of the coup d'etat of September 1991, a
group of lawyers from Harvard Law School and Cambridge
Somerville Legal Services (Anker, D., Kelly, N.,
Willshire-Carrera, J., Ye, C. et. al. were able to convince
the US Immigration Court in Boston, MA that rape (documented
cases of women who were raped by FADH/FRAPH) was being
committed as political persecution. The judge agreed and
granted asylum to several women who had fled Haiti. It is
important to note that the judge's ruling became US
Immigration policy. To my knowledge September 1991 marks
the beginning of such political crimes in Haiti. But I am
also
aware while growing up in Haiti that there were a handful of
Haitian men who did not consider forcing a woman to have sex
as rape. Particularly, if the woman were to accept a ride
from one of them. I think the reason such cases are not
investigated and prosecuted is because the victims of rape
are generally regarded as being at fault; that is, they
somehow
caused the rape. This is unfortunate, but this view about
rape
is also prevalent in certain sectors of the US.  I say the
US
because, outside of Haiti, I am most familiar with the US.

With regard to this assertion made by Mambo Racine, that is,
"The fact is that Haitian men are raised to be rapists, and
rewarded for rape!"

All I can say is neither I nor my brothers (cousins, friends
and so on) practice this behavior, most importantly my
family does not condone rape, nor rewards it. Nevertheless,
I challenge her to study the prevalence of Haitians
convicted of rape in US jails (let's say Boston) compared
to other male rapist prisoners.


MAN #5 wrote:

What she wrote is truthfully, totally wrong and false.
However, certain positions are so outrageous, that I find
it a waste of time to even bother to answer to. It is, in a
sense, almost like giving legitimacy to something that
simply makes very little or no sense at all.


MAN #6 wrote:

If this is not considered as a racist statement, I don't
know what it is... She can consider herself as being blunt
and someone who calls it what it is by what she observes
and experiences, she cannot generalize this behavior to all
Haitians.

Yes there is in Haiti this macho attitude which needs to be
addressed because it make it difficult for some Haitians to
see the other as a person rather than a sex gender. I know
for a fact that sexual education was not part of the
curriculum when I was living there.

However my mother did not raise me as a rapist neither my
sisters as someone who considers her private part as a
source of income.

Hey! if Manbo Racine thinks the lwa give her the right to be
disrespectful to an entire nation, she needs to consult with
them again, she is on the wrong path.


MAN #7 wrote:

Mambo Racine seems to have touched a raw nerve among
some who prefer to insult or denigrate her rather than
address
the issue of rape in Haitian society. Some men feel overly
defensive about what she has said - why is that?

All I will say is that Haitian men seem to me less sexist
and prone to sexual violence than Dominican men. That's
about all I can say on the matter other than more idle
speculation...


MAN #8 wrote:

I would have dismissed her off-hand, if she did not go at
length with an effort to back-up what she said. First, she
generalized, then she exaggerated, and third she gave it an
education dimension. There is no question that her
conclusions are wrong. While she may have a point that our
system of justice has collapsed, and that rapes are not
prosecuted as they should, that is a far cry from her
accusations. When you mix poverty with that judicial system,
there is no question that it does not deter abuses. That is
the path that the lack of adequate leadership in the past
200 years has taken us.


MAN #9 wrote:

As far as I know, rape is not something that is
characteristic of Haitian men. It is outrageous of her to
say what she says, and her views are so extremist.

What I can testify about is the following: It is following
the coup d'Etat of 1991 that rape became a political tool in
Haiti. The Inter-American Commission on human rights
conducted an extensive investigation of Haitian women in the
resistance against the military coup, who described how the
FRAPH thugs systematically used rape as a political tool of
repression: young women, mothers, grand-mothers, pregnant
women were assaulted, gang-raped as to force them to flee or
to keep quiet. Mambo Racine needs to do a lot more research
before coming up with arguments such as the ones she
advances in her text.

Mambo Racine may have exagerated the sociological meaning
of her observations by implying that rape is a phenomenon
intrinsic to Haitian society and that makes Haiti a "SICK
SOCIETY".

First there is the language of the presumed macho man who
threatens to do things to a woman and then there is the one
that actually does it. These are two separate things.
Haitians of a certain class are fond of using obscene
language and language with sexual connotations. To say that
they will do this or that to a woman is often nothing more
than the mouthings of men who have not even the appropriate
tool to do it with. The Haitian woman I think of is not
intimidated by this sort of bravado and always has a
challenging repartee, which often sends the braggard running
with tails between legs, no pun intended.

Then there is the matter of the real rape. How do you define
it? I would say "sexual act initiated without consent". Rape
still remains a part of Haitian life as it is a part of any
society. As any deviant behavior, it becomes more prevalent
when there is a lapse in moral standards and a failing
respect for the law. In Haiti, laws are plenty on the books,
but few pay heed to them because for a long time the justice
system and its enforcing arm, the police, have become almost
non existent. This could be put under the general heading of
INSECURITY that everyone talks about. To rein in the
malevolents you have to have systems in place and in Haiti,
those systems have gone by the window. In addition, rape is
even tolerated in Haiti under certain circumstances. People
that have studied the Restavec problem in Haiti will tell
you of the testimonies. When did you ever hear of the son
of a well to do family being prosecuted for forcing sex on a
restavec girl? Right now in Florida a Haitian family is
being prosecuted for maintaining an imported teenage girl
under conditions of servitude, while the son in the family
was molesting her. When the case came to light, both the son
and father disappeared from the police radar screen. Did
these people learn this behavior here or did they come with
it?

Ms Racine may have put her finger on one of the symptoms
of Haiti's downward slide but may have misinterpreted its
meaning. Haiti has many fundamental problems and we are
seing the symptoms everyday: garbage on the streets, no
electricity, corruption and inefficiency in public
administration, kidnappings, burglaries and even murders on
the rise, and maybe an increase in the incidence of rape.
Those things are symptoms of a failing or failed system of
social construct.

As for the implications that mothers sell their girls, I
don't know how widespread this is in Haiti, but again this
may be a symptom of Haiti's extreme poverty and this
practice is not unique to Haiti. We know about many other
countries where this practice is reputed to be on a much
larger scale, and only in the poor classes. The only common
denominator is poverty. And who does exploit that state of
affairs? Those who have the money.