…Working Girls’ Day
Bet you didn’t know that Sunday, June 2nd, was “International Whores Day”, or (more leftist!)
“International Sex Workers Day”. And that’s too bad. In an age when the British and Canadian Consulates can join our LBTQ community and march through the streets of Georgetown to push “Gay Pride”, we still have a whole community of folks who are stigmatised for EARNING a living!!
Now, sex work didn’t just pop up, did it? Selling one’s body (or various parts of it) for sex – dubbed “prostitution” – is accepted as the world’s oldest profession!! There isn’t a civilisation on earth without sex workers. In[RD1] fact, some of them – notably Chinese and Indian – were called “concubines”, and were highly trained before they could practise their profession. Music, poetry, and the arts were only a few of the subjects on their curriculum.
But, even before then, patriarchal norms had become entrenched, and women’s bodies had been claimed by males, and they decided what the females could do with their own bodies. Did you even think of that?
Every day of the week, good citizens are admired for going out and “selling their labour” for “wages”. But what’s this “labour” we sell? Can it be separated from our bodies? It really can’t, can it?
It all comes down to the negative value judgement placed on “sex work” – it’s “sinful”. And that’s the nub of the problem, isn’t it?
Some folks insist that the morality coming out of some tribal customs two millennia ago should dictate what women can do with their bodies today. But even here, there are some anomalies in Guyanese law. While prostitution is prohibited explicitly for males – who can’t even engage in the sex act with each other, much less sell the services — there is a more circuitous prohibition for women. For them, it’s forbidden for anyone to run “brothels” or “bawdy houses” (Criminal Offences Act s 357; Summary Jurisdiction (Offenses) Act, §165), and working girls can be rounded up and shamed.
Remember Simona “I is” Broomes raiding that hotel in Bartica and dragging those girls to Georgetown, claiming they were being trafficked”?? And, of course, as the recently departed social activist Andaiye pointed out, eventually the girls were actually charged for passport violations!!It was shaming the working girls and penalising the hotel owner for allegedly running a “bawdy house”!
Now, Guyana is supposed to have a Sex Workers Coalition, and your Eyewitness had hoped they would’ve been in the streets on Sunday demanding that sex work not be driven underground – where the workers can really be exploited.
Sex workers of the world, unite!! You have nothing to lose but your chains of shame!!
…the savage infighting
They say “Hell has no fury like a woman scorned”, but from bits and pieces seeping out of the closed doors of the AFC Headquarters — the one donated by that pharma importer in Kitty – it looks like the fury of scorned women has nothing on that of a scorned lackey!! Nagamootoo and his erstwhile bestie, Ramjattan, we know are locked in a deadly struggle to be the PM candidate for the PNC-led coalition. Kinda like a puppy-sized Guyana version of Godzilla vs Ghidorah!!
They assume, of course, that the PNC would again choose their Indian Guyanese token PM candidate from the AFC – rather a huge assumption, given their meltdown in support!! But rather than openly duking it out – if not with pistols at ten paces, then maybe in a debate – the two of them are using surrogates in the lead-up to their General Convention to control the delegates who’ll be voting for one or the other.
This weekend, seems that Nagamootoo’s water boy and attack hound wasn’t even elected to be a delegate!!
“Livid” isn’t even in the same universe!!
…the Army brass
We know Granger was once head of the army. But does he have to micro-manage our forces to the extent he decides when a private gets leave?
What does this do to the forces’ morale and initiative?