Re: Marriage and prostitution

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

>Yoshie:
> >No, an old-fashioned belief that is tragically still current in many
> >places is that marriage is based upon *duty*, not love.  Hence
> >community & clerical pressures upon many women to stay in marriage
> >without love, even when they get beaten, raped, etc. by their
> >husbands.
>
>This is not in question. What is in question is the notion that marriage
>and prostitution are somehow equivalent. This argument can only be put
>forward on a very high level of abstraction and can not address the
>determination of revolutionary societies to eradicate prostitution. Would
>we say that the Cuban revolution was somehow amiss when it did not target
>marriage as well? We can say that it is important for such societies to
>educate men against abusive and sexist treatment of their partners. This
>was the goal of the great Cuban film trilogy "Lucia". But if marriage and
>prostitution are somehow equivalent, then why not work to rid prostitution
>of its more glaring abuses? Why not set up socialist whorehouses with
>madams who had read "Origins of the Family"? I think the answer is obvious.
>Sex for sale is qualitatively more degrading than marriage or picking sugar
>cane. I think this notion of emancipated prostitution is an innovation of
>the radical milieu of the 1980s and 90s. Speaking as an old fogey, I still
>identify with Fanon's "Wretched of the Earth" and those scenes in "Battle
>of Algiers" when the FLN cleaned up the casbah, prostitution included.
>
>Louis Proyect
>Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/

Under socialism, sex won't be for "sale," since nothing will be (not
for nothing I'm against market socialism).  Sale exists under
capitalism.  I simply believe that _under socialism without gender
oppression_, people should decide whether sex should be work or not.
If there are men & women who would like to offer sexual service
professionally -- like therapists offering counselling, masseurs
offering massage, etc. -- then it should be considered to be a
legitimate option.  Perhaps as a kind of helping profession (e.g.,
helping people overcome their sexism, phobias, performance anxieties,
discomfort about bodies, etc.) -- maybe more helpful than
psychoanalysis. :)

While I love Cuba as much as you do, I'm afraid that in the early
days of Revolutionary Cuba, there was an unfortunate view of
sexuality, which included repression of gay men and lesbians.  One
reason that motivated the repression of gay men especially was that
(aside from machismo & homophobia) gay men, being (allegedly)
cosmopolitan-minded, were believed to be more susceptible to
"bourgeois decadence" & foreign seductions that would endanger
national security (ironically, during the Cold War, America also
persecuted homosexuals for a similar ideological reason).  BTW, Fanon
also thought that black gay people were not normally gay but only
acted gay under the corrupting influence of money in the West (see
_Black Skin, White Masks_).  Exorcism of perceived "decadence" &
projection of it upon "foreign" lands tend toward tragic political
repression.  Cubans (unlike Algerians), to their credit, have slowly
changed their minds about homosexuality, though transformation is not
yet complete.

As for prostitution, unlike bourgeois reformers, Revolutionary Cuba
made some real efforts to provide prostitutes with better
alternatives.  However, again, the temptation to dismiss all things
considered bad or embarrassing as "things of the colonial past" made
the efforts sexist:

*****   By claiming that North American visitors were the principal
exploiters of Cuban women, the revolution avoided any serious
analysis of sexuality and social power.  In truth the principal
clientele of Cuba's sex industry was Cubans themselves.  Indeed the
euphoria of the revolutionary triumph of 1959 reportedly brought a
boom in business for Cuba's thirty to forty thousand prostitutes. [37]

Law 993 of 1961 outlawed any form of prostitution and stipulated that
anyone associated with it could be identified as socially
"dangerous."  Authorities had three options in sentencing: therapy,
reeducation, or imprisonment. [38]  Pimps were sent to prison or to
work farms.  The government at first did not treat prostitute
harshly.  It viewed them as hapless victims of the old system and
sent them to schools to be rehabilitated.  These schools provided
ideological and vocational training and taught the women basic
etiquette, table manners, and how to avoid "overly ornate" hairstyles
and clothes. [39]  Prostitutes with families to support were given
stipends, and FMC volunteers minded the children while their mothers
attended classes.

Many, but not all, of Cuba's prostitutes were grateful for the
opportunity to study.  Although the rehabilitation program was at
first voluntary, it soon became compulsory.  Some prostitutes left
the country.  Those who refused to give up their profession were
ultimately imprisoned.

[37]  Oscar Lewis, Ruth M. Lewis, and Susan M. Rigdon, _Four Women_
(Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1977), p. 277.
[38]  "La eliminacion de todas las formas de discriminacion contra la
mujer en Cuba," _Boletin FMC_ (Havana, 1984), p. 12.
[39]  Lewis, Lewis, and Rigdon, _Four Women_, p. 279.

(Lois M. Smith and Alfred Padula, _Sex and Revolution: Women in
Socialist Cuba_, NY & Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996, pp. 40-41)   *****

It's a wonderful thing to offer sex workers an option of going to
school & give family stipends, *but* compulsion & imprisonment should
not be necessary here.  Also, the content of "rehabilitation": basic
etiquette, table manners, style tips???  Attacks upon prostitution
didn't really amount to attacks upon sexism at all -- the program
simply schooled ex-prostitutes into another kind of sexism.
Unwillingness or inability to fully confront sexism in marriage,
family, etc. made the Cuban "reeducation" of prostitutes sexist as
well (schooling ex-prostitutes into domesticated femininity), despite
the Party's undoubtedly good intention (and where were reeducation
camps for ex-johns???).  Perhaps paternalism got in the way of
serious thinking, too, in that Revolutionary Cuba, as well as
middle-class feminist reformers, thought of prostitutes as "hapless
victims" to be "rehabilitated," not as *subjects* of labor who make
history thought not under circumstances of their own making.  Even
though, on the subject of gender equality, male leaders of the
revolution, alas, weren't in a position to "reeducate" ex-prostitutes
at all.  They needed "reeducation" themselves....

I'm not saying that the Cuban should have been able to move the
mountain -- it seems to me that unfortunately all social revolutions,
bourgeois or socialist, have hitherto incorporated an exercise in
sexual repression of some kind, at least at some point.  This is not
just a political error -- it's perhaps fundamentally caused by the
nature of political & military struggles necessary for the overthrow
of the ancient regime & repression of the (real & imagined)
counter-revolution.  Nonetheless, we must overcome this tendency
somehow -- otherwise, the "Thermidor in the family" would eventually
help destroy the revolution from within.  Cuba is still socialist,
and I attribute this fact in part to the Cubans' willingness to admit
errors and try to correct them.

Yoshie

P.S.  The best Cuban movie on the subject of women's oppression is
_Hasta cierto punto [Up to a Certain Point]_ (1984), Directed by
Tomás Gutiérrez Alea.