Mark Wignall | Selling flesh in a lopsided society
Published:Wednesday | May 2, 2018 | 12:00 AM
The Gleaner recently published a feature which brought into sharp focus the economic reality and social horrors faced by the most vulnerable in Jamaica, the poorest, most uneducated, and the young female adolescent.
It's not exactly a new story but as employment picks up, there will be those seeing better things happening for others but only more of the same for their households. Any uptick in employment will provide linkages even if it is as simplistic as a man having more income to buy an extra beer. As areas in the country become more urbanised and fast-tracked in its economic culture, sex as a commodity to be traded will be seen as passport even for the next meal.
Tel Aviv in central Kingston is the area where I was first held up by about 15 boys. The year was 1981 and it seems that apart from the resuscitation of some of the buildings burned out in the violent 1976 to 1980 political conflict, many of the same debilitating social constructs still exist.
Older men who visit these areas are seen as ideal patrons for underaged girls encouraged by their mothers or aunts to 'talk to him nuh' in the hope that that sex will provide a regular meal. Most of these men are not in the business of asking for birth certificates, so while the entire community may know of the open behaviour of a paedophile, so many are involved that few consider it a subject worthy of undue worry.
Mothers in the rural areas of Jamaica constitute the last bastion of those trying to hang on to old family values such as nurturing, educating and protecting the youth in the community, especially sexually vulnerable young girls. As urbanisation spreads, knowledge increases and, unfortunate-ly, sex-for-dinner among our poorest pushes itself into the playbook.
This is no blanket condemnation of all mothers living in inner-city pockets. What The Gleaner has highlighted and what I have known for many years is that economic desperation will drive some households to adopt what is seen as the easiest way out of their plight.
Most vulnerable
We have been informed that there was a significant decrease in the unemployment rate and it is now just under 10 per cent, the lowest it has been for some time. Where years ago a high school certificate would suffice for an entry-level job, now there are university graduates lining up for those jobs. What this means is that those youngsters who failed in school will find themselves the most vulnerable.
The boys will find favour with oldsters in their favourite gangs and some girls will sell their bodies. One mother who 'invited' me to take out her 15-year-old daughter in the early 1980s told me, when I questioned her, "Mi know yu married and mi know yu love yu wife, but if mi daughter breed, mi prefer shi breed fi you."
Governments around the world have not yet quite solved the problematic puzzle of growing an economy equitably across all social sectors. New growth, it seems, will always cluster around the those at the top at first until the linkages and entrepreneurship increase in the SME sector. Vocational training is also a key factor.
I see the sex trade in most of the inner-city pockets that I visit. There is no shingle hung out advertising the trade. But, at a dance in any inner-city pocket it is often difficult to separate the sexual antics of 12-year-old girls from the general behaviour of their mothers, aunts and big sisters dancing beside them. That is the first ad. The sale comes next.