BySheila Rampersad

On behalf of all the people of this country-those living at home and those living elsewhere-I extend deep condolences to Mark Rattan’s immediate and extended family. Trinidadians and Tobagonians everywhere mourn with the family who suffered an extraordinary grief following their son’s most ordinary of activities.

Any non-vegetarian national who has travelled outside of Trinidad and Tobago for any length of time understands the call of Royal Castle and KFC; for some reason many of us miss the chicken and chips which, somehow, tastes better here than it does in any other country of the world. Nationals living overseas usually requisition Royal Castle from their family and friends who visit them. It is not unusual for Trinidadians and Tobagonians to discreetly tuck away in their hand luggage a box or two of Royal Castle chicken to present to their friends and/or family abroad. This is one of those unwritten aspects of our national character.

Mark Rattan, home from Grenada, felt that common urge, even in the face, I am sure, of an elaborate Christmas menu at home. So he borrowed Daddy’s SUV, a most ordinary thing to do, and drove to Royal Castle in Curepe, a most ordinary outlet in a most ordinary location, at 9.30 p.m. or so, a most ordinary time, to buy an ordinary meal.

The outcome was most extraordinary. And perhaps it is the extraordinariness of the outcome that casts him as a romantic hero in a romantic tragedy. Mark Rattan-young, bright, beautiful, law-abiding, musical-unexpectedly confronted by villains, the evil, the uncivil, the unconscionable. The romantic hero rises to the challenge and is felled. Mournful music plays and the picture fades.

But the reality of the Mark Rattan murder is much more complex, much greyer, less of a stark contrast between good and evil, right and wrong, light and darkness, hero and villain than we think.

In this tiny theatre of conflict, what we see are young men attacking other young men and they all live within the same, all-too-restrictive ideas of youthful masculinity. In this way, and I do not mean to offend the grief of the Rattan family but only to offer a different perspective in our national considerations of crime, Mark Rattan and his attackers are acculturated in the same notions of what it means to be a man. Not to reconsider these ideas of youthful masculinity is to occlude a significant part of the troubled reality of young men and young women.

Young men sketch for themselves a warrior character. They think they should be defenders of theirs and others’ honour, that they must be protectors of themselves and others. In an age of gangsta identity and notoriety, these otherwise noble ideas have become perverted so that masculine identity, especially among the young, is now overdetermined by often-murderous aggression and “respek”.

Not only do young men expect this of themselves, but young women also expect this behaviour of them. This is a challenging reality, a provocative reality. When young men harass young women who are in the company of other young men, what is to happen? What is one to do? When young men on the sides of the roads grab at a passing woman, or say something sexually offensive, when they objectify the woman’s bottom or breasts or lips, what is her male companion to do? There is an expectation by women that their men are to defend them in these instances; there is an expectation from commentators and song writers that men are forever the fearless warriors and that to be anything else is to be less than a man; there is an expectation by other men that men are to be defenders of themselves and their property and their women.

Young men are entrapped by this masculine ideology. They live between a rock and a hard place because to challenge this code of conduct, to live differently, to react less confrontationally, to walk away, to retreat to fight another day-or maybe not at all, to withdraw from conflict is to be seen as sorf men, wimps, or worse, mama-poule men.

So Mark Rattan fought and we may disagree on whether he should have or not but “he was not a submissive kind”, we are told, and why, indeed, would a strong, bright, handsome 18-year-old not resist violation? This resistance must, I imagine, have enraged his young attackers who had the weapons-those extensions of masculinity -and perverted ideas of respek.

We cannot avoid serious consideration of these marks of contemporary youthful masculinity. This will be one of the central ideas discussed during Workingwomen’s Anniversary celebration on January 22 at 3.30 p.m. at the All Saints Church Hall, Marli Street, Port of Spain. The theme of the event is “Eye on the Ground: Commonsense Approaches to Crime Fighting”.