Navigating the liminal space between childhood and manhood in the Caribbean. How are cultural spaces and physical places divided between the sexes?

Abstract

Space is gendered. Private domestic space is classically considered to be a woman’s domain while public space is masculine. Of course, men are found in private spaces and women in public, but ownership is a reference to those who typically exercise day-to-day control of that space. It should be remembered, however, that women frequently act as proxies for men in private spaces too; in much of the world, domestic space is inherited by men who are traditionally considered heads-of-the-household. To complicate matters, masculinity comes in many forms and to reconcile these wide variations with narrow, widely-held stereotypes, Connell introduced the term hegemonic masculinity. We take this term as referring to idealised cultural stereotypes related to orthodox masculinity, which provide virtual benchmarks for manhood but which exist nowhere in their absolute form. Nevertheless, these stereotypes serve to map out male domains and they can hence also serve to exclude women, thus making space gendered. We further argue that a potent means of mapping gender domains is through taboos: these taboos designate physical places and cultural spaces that men should not be associated with and doing so can pose grave risks to a reputation and sometimes result in violent retribution. We explore how masculine obligations and taboos construct boundaries between both male and female domains (intergender divides) and create distance between the domains of ‘real’ men and males who fail to measure up (intragender divides). In particular, we will focus on how the passage to manhood is both deeply affected by, and translates into the everyday character, praxis and ownership of public space with particular reference to manhood in the Caribbean.