All posts tagged: Gender

MasC Off: NE9 brings artists of different disciplines together to challenge social binary views on gender.

By Kevanté A. C. Cash, NAGB Correspondent. During conversations of sex and sexuality do we rarely address the elements of gender, gender identity and gender expression. However, what is gender? How is it different from sex? How is it expressed, and who gets to claim it? Over the last decade or more, millennial culture has started dialogues and much-needed debates over the complexities, toxicities and nuances of masculinity and femininity. Breaking down the stereotypes of such, debunking the myths and redefining it for themselves through the power of the “interweb”, social media, art and artistry. When singer, songwriter and recording artist Rashad Leamount-Davis joined forces with photographer Allan Jones for their project ‘MasC Off’ with the Ninth National Exhibition (NE9), their mission was simple: to address these complexities, toxicities and nuances that exist within the realm of masculinity, specifically for Black Bahamian men, some of whom may or may not identify as LGBTQ+ members of society.

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Gendered norms and deconstruction: The body, the image and the ability to speak out for self.

By Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett.As The Bahamas moves into a new administration, 50 years of Majority Rule and over 40 years of independence have done little to remove the boundaries around free expression and positive self-imaging.  Basking in its Victorian properness, as long as it is useful, the tourist destination boasts a particular image of Caribbeanness that is acceptable and palatable to the population because they have been taught to accept it. 

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Gender and the Dream: Confronting Stereotypes in Black masculinity.

By Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett

The dream sold is of young men being told that they are prosperous, only to realise that they are imprisoned in a tangled web of failure or underachievement.  Young men from the inner city, once the thriving home of Blacks–forced by segregation and reduced circumstances to live in particular parts of town–is cast as the worst place in the country, a place that only produces criminals. 

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