What's the Deal with Dominican Men?
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[00:00:00] Hello, welcome to the Bar is in Hell. I'm Danielle Gates. This is episode two. I'm actually really nervous to record this podcast to be honest with you because I feel like I'm gonna get a lot of heat for it, and I get so much heat, but I also think it's an important one. I put a question box on my stories the other day on Instagram and asked for podcast topics, and a couple of things were repeated.
One of them was toxic relationships, and one of them was Dominican men. And so last night Yohan and I had a tour with our tour company, El Tio Tour, and we took a woman and later her Dominican boyfriend to ba Bayahibe out to dinner. And it was the first time he and I had seen each other in a while.
And the last interaction that we had was not a positive one, but I also know that he is going through it. I know that he needs money. So when the opportunity came up, I brought him on. I felt like this [00:01:00] morning after that experience and after meditating on it this morning would be a good time for me to talk about Dominican men because I think that people who only know me from 90 day fiance have a lot of questions, and I think that it's important.
I am a history teacher first and foremost. Before I did anything else, like real career wise, I was a history teacher and I think that understanding context in any situation is so important. So first I wanna share a little bit of the context of where I'm coming from.
As someone who. Has some wisdom around Dominican people and Dominican men in romantic relationships In particular, I was a teacher in New York City and so I had a lot of Dominican students. 'cause there's a huge Dominican population in New York City, so a lot of Dominican parents. My son was a student in New York City, so he ~had a lot of Dominican friends.~
~I ~had a lot of Dominican [00:02:00] friends 'cause I was a teacher. I had a pretty big network 'cause I did a lot of professional development. So when you're a teacher in New York City and you do a lot of pd, you're not just with the teachers in your school. You also do like weekend classes or spring break classes with teachers from all over.
So my network was pretty big and diverse. I also dated Dominican men. Like the majority, with the exception of Taylen, I pretty much only dated Dominican men from 2012 until the present. , I would say I've had four romantic and whatever context that was Dominican partners in that time.
, A couple of them public, a couple of them not. And I've also lived in the Dominican Republic. I lived in Bayahibe for a year, and now I've been in Punta Capna since February. , And I also lived for a couple of months at a retreat space in La Romana that hosted retreats for Dominican residents [00:03:00] of a very different class from Yohan's.
, People who can afford to travel from San Domingo and go to a retreat in La Romana for the weekend and just chill and relax. I also did many plant medicine ceremonies with Dominican people from all walks of life. University professors.
Real estate investors, business people here, yogis, , Dominican politicians, I've had a lot of different experiences with Dominican people and so I wouldn't say that I'm an expert in anything really, but I would say that I have. A lot of experience.
And so I share all of that to say, I know that's a lot of context, but I want people to understand that I'm coming to this from a place of love and a place of understanding and a desire for people to see what's happening, what happens, and to just have some understanding as they move through the world.[00:04:00]
So Dominican men have a troupe. Very machismo, very toxic masculinity. Wow. Gizmo's very offended. I'm sorry, gizmo. I didn't mean to offend you. I'm talking about his daddy. , Yeah, super masculine, super toxic, very Latin like I'm the king of my home. , And I wanted to talk about where that comes from a little bit.
And maybe not where it comes from, but how it was reinforced specifically here. So Trujillo , was a dictator in Dominican Republic. Really from 1930 to 1961, officially, he was president from 1930 to 1938 and 1942 to 1952, but he had these puppet presidents in place of him, including his brother, between 38 and 42, and then again in 52 to 61.
He was assassinated in 1961, but [00:05:00] that was a really long time, two generations to have influence over people. He was very machismo, very hyper masculine. He was a soldier. He presented this image as like a provider, a disciplinarian, everything about his regime and his government was like parades and uniforms and like these ridiculous portraits of him everywhere.
And he was like seen as this. Virile guarantor of order and prosperity and this I am king mentality. In 1955, he hosted a fair of peace and fraternity in Dr. Where he really reinforced this idea of not just masculine power but power in the family. And he unified the idea of family and nation.
And at this fair, he crowned his daughter Angelita. Queen of the fair. So you have this [00:06:00] image of this super hyper masculine father and this beautiful, pure, pristine, queen princess, and you have this duality of masculine and feminine that's like super , exacerbated, I guess is the word.
He's like almost enthroning, feminine purity and representing this. Paternal sovereignty In 1954, he signs, , a document that formally makes Dominican Republic a Catholic state in alignment with the Vatican, and he creates these formal regimes around marriage, around sexuality, around female respectability.
This idea that women are virtuous, that they're self-sacrificing, and these women are modeled after the Virgin Mary. And so you see this like image of these pure, beautiful, perfect women and these really strong masculine men. So this image is constantly reinforced throughout [00:07:00] his regime whether he's in the presidency or not.
Between 1930 and 1961 that. Is the image that men and women are seeing and learning and acquiring in Dominican Republic. It's also, if you think about that time period, it's World War II and there's two main things that Trujillo is remembered for. He's remembered for being the only country to openly accept refugees from the Holocaust at a mass scale.
I think he offered to take a hundred thousand, , refugees. In reality, I think only 700 people actually settled here. They offered 5,000 visas, roughly between 600 and 700 people resettled in UA on the north coast, , the government supported them in creating this agricultural community.
, I think the name of the company was Productos Sosua. And he's remembered for that kind of in a positive light, but. The reason he does that is because the year before, during the Parsley massacre in 1937, [00:08:00] he also is responsible for directing troops at the Haitian border to, , assassinate.
There's different records of how many Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent were actually assassinated, but no less than 13,000 could be upwards of 30,000 people were murdered in all. , heinous ways. He takes in all of these refugees from the Holocaust, but really only to whiten the population because in addition to this like patriarchy that he's creating, he's also reinforcing this idea of white supremacy and this idea that you're, the closer your proximity to whiteness, the more powerful you are.
, And reinforcing this Spanish colonial idea that existed before in Dominican Republic, before they were independent. So I don't wanna say that he creates this hyper-masculinity because I do believe that it's rooted in colonialism and , white supremacy. But I will say that his regime very much reinforced it.[00:09:00]
And made it the law of the land. And so when we think about what happens in someone's home, what happens in their family, what happens in their school, what happens in their community, in their town, in their city, in their state, in their nation, in the world, we think about what are the models from the top down.
And so when your government is presenting this hyper-masculine. Toxic masculine image alongside this, , purest, feminine, delicate female image. You are going to recreate that in the home and in familial relationships. And so Dominicans, regardless of class, I have seen this idea transcend class. Men are in power, men make the law.
And even though there are women in politics, those women that are in politics have to maintain this level [00:10:00] of feminine energy. There's no Jasmine Crocketts, there's no, , women who act outside of . That like pure soft alignment. They're strong and they're powerful, but when they get too loud and too strong and too powerful like Tokisha, and they violate traditional Catholic norms and feminine norms, they're not accepted.
I also wanna talk about some statistics. Actually made sure that I wrote them down. 'cause I think when we talk about Dominican men, we also have to talk about Dominican women and their experience. , I got these stats from UN women. Most of them are from 2018, but. I think they're significant. 31.5% of women age 20 to 24 were married or in some sort of formal union before the age of 18.
Quick note on marriage, it's not customary in Dominican Republic for people to get married with papers. There's a lot of, I think it's called [00:11:00] Union Libre Day where it's just common law marriage where people live together forever but they don't really get married. . 10% of women aged 15 to 49 have been subject to physical and or sexual violence by a present or former intimate partner.
In the last 12 months, 10% of women, by the way, you're gonna see the number 15 in the age 15 a lot. As I go through these stats, that's really when they start documenting adult behavior Here. It's when we start talking about work, when we start talking about relationships and marriage and all those things.
. 17% of women age 15 and older spend time in unpaid care and domestic work compared to 3.8% by men. The unemployment rate for women 15 and up is 8.5%. For men, it's 3.3%. People who are able to receive a pension and actually get one [00:12:00] 9.9% of men, 5.5% of women. The literacy rate, interestingly enough, is 93.8% for both.
So we're not talking about a gap in education when we look at these statistics. ~, So ~I just wanted to share those because , I want you to see how these government regimes and government structures create experiences for people in a place. I also wanna talk about, , this idea of a Sanky pany. I think that a lot of people who watch 90 Day Fiance.
They call Yohan Sanky and they think he's a Sanky Pany. And some people don't know what that is. There was a movie, I think they actually just remade the movie. I saw a poster for it, but I haven't actually Googled it. But there's , this idea of a sanky panky, which is like a hotel employee, usually a man who schmoozes the hotel guest. . Yohan. When I asked him the [00:13:00] definition of a sanky panky, he said, no, I'm not a sanky, because sankies don't care if you're a man or a woman. They'll take your money and do whatever. I don't fuck with men like that. , He doesn't think he's a sanky for that reason, which I thought was interesting.
But, , they basically fall in love with you immediately. They like love bomb you. . Everybody thinks that they just ask you for money at the jump, but that's actually not it. They, , really have this like intense emotional, , experience with you right at the jump. They'll call you their wife, day one.
They'll call you your family day one. , They immediately want you to meet their family. Sometimes , it's a red flag if they want you to meet their family right away. Sometimes it's a red flag if they don't want you to meet their family at all, usually it's like very intense at the beginning.
And then right after, , you have this experience as a tourist and this hotel employee falls in love with you, they start to request money for emergencies. Oh my god, my mother's in the hospital, or my house is collapsing, or, I lost my job, or I can't pay my rent, or whatever it is. Can I just have , this sum of money?
I [00:14:00] promise I'll pay you back. , Send me a wire transfer. There's this term called Western Union Daddies. At Dominican Republic, everything works by wire transfer. Like the banking here, everybody does ACH transfers. It's kind of like American Zelle. But, , they ask for wire transfers a lot.
That's a big one. , There's also a lot of stories around like housing. Like who do you live with? Like, when I first met Yohan, he told me he lived alone. Then he told me he lived with his parents. It's. It's, there's really like a very specific script and an MO that they follow. , So this is just a note.
If you are a tourist and you meet someone in a hotel or you meet someone anywhere in Dominican Republic and you have these experiences, they love bomb you at the jump. They call you their wife, they promise you a future, and babies and all of these things in 48 hours. You need to run as far as you can.
I didn't know this. I think that people assume that I'm like a sex tourist or that I go on vacation and date all these guys. I don't. I'm a [00:15:00] Scorpio, like we don't really fuck with casual sex. Like yes, there are certainly times in my life that I've gotten wasted and like did stupid shit, but like this was not that.
I basically saw Yohan and like fell in love with him in a second, like as soon as I saw him. And I also really appreciated that when I like his job at night was to like dance in the lobby with all these people, women who wanted to dance with him. And I could tell that he hated it. And I kind of found that really endearing.
This is not what he wanted to be doing with his time. He hated it. He just hated it. And I thought that that was cute and I was just, I chose him, you know? It's not like he sought me out, I chose him. I was like, oh, I want that man. I like him. And so it was also COVID and I feel like all the choices that we make during COVID don't really count.
But anyway, I digress. You know, that was kind of my experience with him. , But one thing that I think is important to note is that the first night that we hung out and we were gonna go to a hotel, I've never told this story before. [00:16:00] We got to the hotel and he tells me I have to pay for it. It's 3000 pesos.
And I got really upset. Like I think I might have cried. And I was just like, what? What do you think? I am? Like, I'm not a bank da da. Like, 'cause I kind of knew like the stories, but like I just didn't wanna believe that was him. Like it really hurt me. And he got really upset and he was like, oh my God.
Like he really assumed that I was just like all of these other ladies that go to the resort. , I guess this is what they do and the more I'm here, the more I'm learning. Like, yes, there are women who come to Dominican Republic, they come to the same resort a couple of times a year. They hook up with their guys and then they go back and live their lives.
And I'm like, I had no idea this was a subculture. I didn't know this was a thing. , I don't usually think of myself as naive, but you know, like I again, assume that the world is how I am. And that isn't the way that I move. So I don't, and I don't know anybody in my circle who moves that way. So it [00:17:00] just if we meet people, we marry them.
That's kind of how it's always been. I don't even really date. I just like get married or get into super committed relationships very fast. I don't know what that's about. That I guess is a different podcast, but. So anyway, so that was like our initial meeting and our initial, like, I made it very clear to him that like I was not going to be sending him money.
I was not going to be paying for his life and all those things. And contrary to popular belief, I really didn't, all of our fights and all of our problems are because I always held him to a standard, I always made sure he pays his shit to this day. To this day, and we are married, but we don't live together and I still make sure he handles his own shit.
I do not hand him cash. I bring him to work so that he can earn money and I model for him how we earn money and work for it and how life is really amazing and blessed if you do shit the right way. And so, again, I'm trying to help him unlearn all the shit that I'm talking about. [00:18:00] This like hyper-masculinity, this, I have to take from people so that I can stay ahead.
Which is interesting because you think you have this like toxic hyper-masculine provider culture. Then why take from women. Even if they're foreigners, like why not instead provide for your own women. And that's where the colonialism and the white supremacy piece comes in. Because these white American, Canadian, European tourists come into the resort.
They have all this money. They just swipe these cards and they have everything handed to them. I want some of that. How do I get that? I marry you. Okay. 'cause I don't see any other way. I'm getting it. As Americans, we have. Social mobility. We have financial mobility. We can move from one class to another.
It's not easy, but it's possible. We don't know anything of what if it's not possible. And when I say that in Yohan's community, I won't say it's [00:19:00] impossible, but it is very, very hard. If you have a family of hotel employees, like very, very hard. It makes you unmotivated. And it makes you unwilling to work hard and more willing to do things the easy way because you don't have evidence that working hard will get you what you want.
And it's why there's, I think, so little value in education for Dominican students. It was both my experience as a teacher and it's also what I see here. Public schools, kids go to school for half a day. There's really no motivation to work hard, I think that all of those circumstances combined the history of Dominican Republic, the role of the Catholic church, the education system, white supremacy and colonialism, like all of those things combined create what has been my [00:20:00] experience with Dominican men.
And why they explode in anger, why they're so possessive, why they, think that women are their property, why they think they can cheat. Because, you know, I didn't talk about this in talking about Trujillo, but he also was very much about like having lots of young girls around him. And I hope that as you're hearing this, you're hearing parallels between what we're currently seeing in some other places in the world in modern day.
Like very clear parallels, which is one of the things I loved about teaching history is that, you know, you can always use this moment in time wherever we are, whatever classroom we're in, whatever year we're in, to look at how this moment came to be and how it's been repeated over time. And so knowing all of those circumstances and knowing how, you know, this idea of the Dominican Man is created and how.
And why they move the way they do that [00:21:00] allows me to have a lot more compassion and understanding and empathy, which is always my fatal flaw. Knowing the why behind people's behavior often makes me a lot more compassionate towards them, and it makes me tolerate a lot more of their bullshit.
Whether or not that has a significant negative impact on my mental health is to be seen. As hard as some things can be, I feel like I'm doing pretty amazing. So, you know, I think that for at least in my individual case, in my personal case, , knowing the why helps me find forgiveness. And when you find forgiveness, you can heal.
And so I think I talked about this a lot in my last podcast. What I learned from my grandmother and my experience with her and my father. I feel the same way about Yohan. Like understanding how this culture, his behavior, the things that he does, like how that came to be. It makes me have [00:22:00] more compassion for him and make me.
Want to show him other ways of living and that's why I will continue to work with him in our tour business for as long as he's respectful and does his job well. When he has time. I have hired someone else, so, it's not always him, but, I think that, constantly bringing him into spaces where different behaviors, models can only help him.
It can't hurt him. , Because I want him to learn that you don't have to do things that way. And in fact, your life is so beautiful and so blessed when you treat people with love, when you don't engage in physical violence, when you don't lie, when you don't steal, like life is really blessed. And so maybe in recording this podcast, people think I'm recording it for women, but maybe you also need to send it to your men so that they can understand A, what is our experience with them. [00:23:00] I don't even know if that was really clear in this, but you know where that experience comes from and is there a willingness to unlearn both for us as women and.
How to stand up for ourselves and use our voice, and we don't have to live in that purist, super soft feminine ideology that is fictional.
I just hope that, , people see that there are models for different behavior and there's lots and lots of evidence that moving with love instead of violence, , and not tolerating violence. Is fruitful. I hope that was helpful. , ~, it did not go in the direction I wanted to. I realize you do this randomly, guys.~
I should probably write scripts and stuff maybe one day, , . Someone will pick this up and help me with all of that, gimme music and intros and actually teach me how to use the microphone that I have that's sitting on my table and I dunno how to [00:24:00] use it with my computer. , But until then, I'll be sharing a question box, asking for more topics.
If you're listening and you enjoy this, tell me what you want me to talk about because I respond. Sending you all lots of love. Have a beautiful day.
