This evening I was idly killing time scrolling through my Twitter feed when I stumbled onto a tweet about the Gully Queens of Jamaica. It immediately triggered in my brain the fact that about a week ago I was having a conversation with a lady at work who had just returned from a vacation to Jamaica. She told me that she had heard of a documentary called Gully-something (she couldn’t remember the name) and told me to look it up. I had every intention of looking it up until I forgot….which made me VERY glad I stumbled onto this random tweet tonight. It was about this very same documentary!
The tweet led me to an article that was very well written and published on Vogue.com. This article, Meet The Gully Queens, is SUPER intriguing, although sad, sickening and…..well….typical Jamaica. If you didn’t know before reading this blog post, homosexuality in Jamaica isn’t just frowned upon, it’s a matter of life and death. I urge you to read the article. It’s a huge eye opener.
For those of us who aren’t Jamaican and don’t live there, we simply can’t understand the discrimination of being homosexual in a society where you will never be accepted and you will ALWAYS be at risk of dying long before your time due to violence.
Through a link in that Vogue article I found the full length documentary as well. I’m about to watch it right after publishing this post, so I have no comments about it yet. But I’ve included the documentary video below so we can all watch it.
If you’re inspired to add your comments in the comments section below, be my guest. I’m highly anticipating your thoughts on the video. There’s also a GoFundMe campaign set up for the Gully Queens, and if you actually read the Vogue article you’ll know why.
PLEASE share your thoughts in the comments section below!
Comments
7 responses to “Gully Queens of Jamaica”
All I see are HUMAN BEINGS trying to live their lives just like everyone else. They have joy, they have fun, they have tears and heart break. Just like anyone else does. Maybe they wouldn’t be such a disruptive group if they were just treated like human beings. It is unfortunate that simply because of the country they were born in, they have no means to just LIVE.
I’ve seen this documentary before around three years ago. In terms of the extreme behaviour towards gays, if you do intensive research on Jamaica the slave masters used to have a term called ‘buck breaking’ that they used on rebellious slaves. They used to rape the male slaves to humiliate them and pacify them, this almost exclusively happened in Jamaica and as a result there is a culture of hating homosexuality perhaps more than other islands. It was a way of demasculating and controlling the men.
You have to research history to fully understand why things are the way they are today. Colourism, religion many things have been handed down since slavery.
Laws and religion were set out by England including anti buggery laws in places like Jamaica and Nigeria and just because they have in the past three years overturned those laws in the U.K. and certain parts of America you can’t expect other countries to follow suit and be moving at that pace.
And I personally know people who are gay and flamboyant and go about their daily lives in Jamaica and nobody hurts them.
There are gay clubs etc in Jamaica but gayness is frowned upon.
It’s only recently that it’s widely accepted in the 80s and 90s the west wasn’t as tolerant as now.
I agree that the country has to move at its own pace to change something that is so deeply rooted. But some of the things that were said in that video are simply inhumane. Like police telling them they got what they deserved, however they would NEVER say that to a regular rape victim. Only a gay rape victim. It’s actually very eye-opening to read the comments following that video on Youtube because many of the Jamaicans who have commented think it’s their duty to cast judgement on everyone who doesn’t see it their way, but isn’t there only ONE true judge in the end? For such a heavily Christian country the hypocrisy was pretty blatant in the comments.
It is unfortunate, no VERY hypocritical that we Jamaicans make a distinction between what we call ‘big sins’ & ‘little sins’. We’re experts in reading the ‘Sodom & Gommorah’ passages & blatantly ignoring the ‘He that is without sin cast the first stone’. I don’t see Jesus holding a machete to any homosexual’s throat. Some of us may not like or comprehend their lifestyle… but they ARE still human beings. Thanx 4 posting this. I never saw it before.
I’m glad you made that comment GrafixKing, because I was going to post the exact same thing about casting stones. No one is perfect and therefore NO ONE has a right to judge!
Hi Kristi, long time I haven’t spoken to you. I used to correspond with you on your forum as caribja. I worked with these young men along with my mother Yvonne McCalla Sobers who is mentioned on the gofundme page. It has been quite a rollercoaster for those young men. I have always admired the love and compassion you show towards Jamaica. Whatever one’s personal feelings about homosexuality, nobody deserves to be treated like this. Continue your good work.
Hi Pierre! Long time since the forum huh?
How amazing that you got to work with these individuals. I would have loved to be a part of that. Thank you for the compliments and I agree with you 100%…no one deserves to be treated this way. We’re all human beings regardless of our preferences.
Thank you so much for the comments and for finding me again. Stay blessed!