Re: Cuban Women: Randall's Reassessment

[Xxxx Xxxxx Xxxxxx <xxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Very well said!

Xxxx

Louis Proyect wrote:

> Actually, this is not right. Revolutionary societies in underdeveloped
> societies make all sorts of demands on people that transcend all sorts of
> democratic rights. There were 100,000 prostitutes in Cuba in 1959. In a
> country that was under the gun from imperialism and that had witnessed the
> exodus of skilled professionals to the United States, it was urgent to
> regulate what work people did and under what circumstances they did it.
> While I don't think jailing prostitutes was a good idea (and I'd need more
> information on how this actually took place in revolutionary Cuba), it is
> completely understandable why there would be social pressure and even
> forced 'rehabilitation'. It was a matter of survival to teach not just
> prostitutes, but chambermaids and other nonproductive members of society
> like shoeshine boys, etc., how to operate a tractor and to shoot a gun.
> That's the reality of Cuba and any other country under the gun of US
> imperialism when it breaks with the system. It is a big mistake to project
> academic feminism into this social reality and in particular it is
> ahistorical to project it onto a society that was filled with machismo. In
> the context of 1959 Cuba, there is no other society in history that has
> done more to liberate women.
>
> Finally, I can't understand why you are using the formulation 'let women
> decide'. Put yourself in Cuba back in 1959, Yoshie, and tell us what you
> would have advocated.
>
> Louis Proyect
> Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/

--

Xxxx Xxxxx Xxxxxx
PhD Student
Department of Political Science
SUNY at Albany
Nelson A. Rockefeller College
135 Western Ave.; Milne 102
Albany, NY 12222


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