Re: Cuban Women: Randall's Reassessment

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Lou:

> >I would have advocated offering family stipends, educational
> >opportunities, better economic alternatives, etc. _without_
> >threatening prostitutes with imprisonment and medicalization.
>
>Okay, no imprisonment. I am not sure what medicalization is however. It
>sounds pretty bad, so I guess I am against it. In any case, since you seem
>to have no objection to Cuban prostitutes being required to go to the farms
>described in the interview for job training, etc., then that's that.

I'm glad you are against threats of imprisonment and medicalization.
There is no reason to approve of every little thing that a socialist
government happens to do through its trials and errors.  Just because
a government & its leaders are socialist doesn't mean that they are
free from bourgeois moralism.

As for the claim that the Cuban policy on prostitution was dictated
by an urgency to increase female labor (or labor in general) on the
farms & firms, however, I do not find it persuasive, because the
early years of the Cuban revolution took many urban women away from
work and allowed them to stay at home (outside of the labor force):

*****   But contrary to the hopes of the revolution, often women's
motivation for seeking -- or not seeking -- employment was purely
economic [hence moral exhortations for labor, paid or unpaid,
produced only very limited results].  In the early 1960s the onset of
rationing (1962) and the lack of consumer goods meant there was
little incentive for women to work.  Between 1959 and 1964 only about
eight thousand women per year joined the workforce.  Minister of
Labor Agosto Martinez Sanchez concluded that women's poor response
was due not only to Cuba's "underdeveloped economy," but also to the
revolution's inability to provide sufficient day care centers, school
and workers' cafeterias, laundromats, and other needed services.[17]

Ironically, some working women found that the revolution's generous
social policies [toward male workers] made it possible for them to
stop working outside the home.  For example, in 1969 only one-quarter
of the women in the Havana neighborhood of Buena Ventura were
employed, whereas more than 90 percent had worked prior to the
revolution.[18]

[17]  Augusto Martinez Sanchez, _Trabajo_, September 1964.
[18]  Douglas Butterworth, _The People of Buenaventura_ (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1980), p. 34.

(Lois M. Smith and Alfred Padula, _Sex and Revolution: Women in
Socialist Cuba_, NY & Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996 p.99)   *****

So, the early years' moral mobilization of labor (especially women's
labor) did not produce the results that the Cuban government wished
for.  The success didn't come until the Cuban government set aside
the focus on morality:

*****   The failure of the ten million-ton harvest led to dramatic
changes in the Cuban economy.  The moral incentives of the 1960s were
put aside in favor of material incentives.  Soviet advisors were
added to every ministry.  Then, in a serendipitous fillip, the price
of sugar began to climb.  The improving economy of the 1970s prompted
a boom in women's employment.  More than 350,000 new women workers
entered the labor force, and most stayed.  The percentage of women of
work age in the labor force jumped from 24.9 in 1970 to 44.5 in 1979.
At the end of the decade women represented 30 percent of Cuban
workers. [34]

[34]  Claes Brundenius, _Revolutionary Cuba: The Challenge of
Economic Growth with Equity_ (Boulder, Colo: Westview Press, 1983).

(Smith and Padula, p. 101)   *****

In other words, the Cuban government learned from its mistakes: from
moralism to economism.

The difference between the Cuban government's attitudes toward
prostitutes and female workers who are not labeled prostitutes, I
believe, originated in the government's ideas of sex, gender, &
sexuality in the early moralist fervor of Cuban socialism, and
repressive attitudes toward prostitutes are similar to repressive
attitudes toward gay men (and to the lesser extent lesbians -- I've
already discussed this) and abortion and other services for
reproductive rights and freedoms (on this question, see below).
Moreover, in the 60s, the Cuban government closed down not just
bordellos, sex shows, etc. but also nightclubs and dance halls, which
the Cuban people missed (Smith and Padula, p. 178).

> >What you say above, though, basically confirms oft-cited feminist
> >complaints that socialist men are not interested in women's
> >emancipation _unless_ it is good for socialist men's notion of the
> >good & transient necessities (actual or perceived) of national
> >exigencies.
>
>I am sorry, Yoshie. "National exigency" misrepresents what I wrote. Cuba
>had a socialist revolution. It was a big brothel for tourists from
>imperialist countries. "Godfather II" was an accurate description of what
>Cuba had to offer: big-assed, rumba-dancing, bandanna-topped mulattos (in
>Margaret Randall's words) who would fuck or give you a blow job for a
>dollar. If the Cuban government did not take forceful steps to change this
>immediately, then the revolution would have no credibility. Accepting the
>status quo in terms of "the right of women to decide" would have undermined
>the revolution from day one.

The idea that prostitutes mainly served dollar-bearing foreign
tourists before the Revolution cracked down on prostitution is a myth:

*****   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]

[37]  Oscar Lewis, Ruth M. Lewis, and Susan M. Rigdon, _Four Women_
(Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1977), p. 277.

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

The main clientele were _Cuban men_ and only secondarily tourists.
The idea that only foreigners visited prostitutes conveniently
sidestepped the need for the frontal attack on local sexism.
Besides, professional prostitutes constituted only a _tiny_ segment
of the island's female labor force & population.  The credibility of
the revolution in its early days would have been enhanced if the
government had gone easy on moralism & devised effective programs of
economic incentives to bring more women into the labor force (which
the government eventually did), while cracking down on sexism &
homophobia (which it has yet to do successfully).

In other words, moralism (repression of abortion, prostitutes, gay
men & lesbians, nightclubs & dance halls, etc.) was a detour -- it
didn't work, so the government changed its course.

> >Now, negating women's self-emancipation or subordinating
> >women's needs & desires to the program of national survival (e.g.,
> >denying women reproductive rights & freedoms in the interest of
> >pro-natalist policy in order to increase labor supply, especially in
> >Romania) may look convenient in the short term, but in the long term
> >it is counter-productive, threatening not just women but also the
> >very viability of socialism.  Denial of women's self-emancipation
> >sows the seeds of counter-revolution & capitalist restoration.
>
>Why introduce the right to an abortion. This is just a red herring. The
>right to make a living as a whore is not the same thing.

It's your single-minded focus on prostitutes that is a red herring --
surely women's rights encompass more than the right not to be a
prostitute (in the early days of the Cuban revolution, it was not a
right, however -- it was a state-imposed duty not to be a
prostitute).  As I mentioned, attitudes toward sexuality encompass
not just attitudes toward prostitution but those toward abortion,
homosexuality, etc.  The early Cuban moralism attacked _all_ of them.

*****   The early years of the revolution were marked by great
confusion in the contraceptive realm.  As a Cuban demographer later
remarked, the revolutionary government "made the prevention of births
difficult."[13]  It began rigorously to enforce existing antiabortion
laws....

Contraceptive materials remained in short supply throughout the first
decade of the revolution.  Condoms from China were of poor quality,
and imported birth control pills were too expensive.  Given the
dearth of birth control options, the government made female
sterilization available free of charge to anyone who wanted the
operation.[15]...

...The revolution was at first reluctant to promote family planning.
Some Latin American nationalists perceived family planning as an
imperialist plot to hinder population growth.  During the 1960s
doctors were authorized to respond to specific birth control
questions by patients, but they did not offer unsolicited information
or contraceptive devices.[17]

[13]  Barent F. Landstreet, "Cuban Population Issues in Historical
and Comparative Perspective" (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1976),
p. 199.
[15]  It is unclear why or how it was possible to offer tubal
ligations but not abortions.
[17]  Elizabeth Sutherland, _The Youngest Revolution: A Personal
Report on Cuba_ (London: Pittman Publishing, 1969), p. 178.

(Smith and Padula, p. 71)   *****

Again, during the 70s, the government changed its mind & began to
urge contraceptive use.  As for abortion, "Abortion had been illegal
in Cuba since the imposition of the Spanish penal code in 1879.
Under the 1938 criminal code, which remained in force until 1979,
abortion was allowed in only three circumstances: to save the life of
the mother, when the pregnancy was the result of rape, and to avoid
birth defects due to hereditary sickness or contagious disease.  A
decision to abort had to be approved by two physicians..." (Smith and
Padula, p. 73).  Increased enforcement of antiabortion legislations,
along with the flight of many Cuban doctors, made the early years of
the revolution difficult for women who wanted to avoid pregnancy and
childbirth or to space birthing effectively.  Needless to say, the
lack of reproductive rights and freedoms in those days flew in the
face of the government's need & desire to bring more women into the
labor force (how can you expect women to work when you deprive them
of control over reproduction?).  Moralism went against not only
women's rights but also economic rationality.

As I mentioned, changes in the 70s made abortion very popular.  "In
the early 1970s the legal abortion rate rose sharply, then leveled.
By 1979, 40 percent of all pregnancy ended in abortion....In the
1980s abortion was available to Cuban women without charge through
the tenth week of pregnancy....In 1989 there were 160,000 abortions
and some 200,000 live births" (Smith and Padula, p. 74).  While
liberalization of abortion laws was all well and good, the high rate
of abortion is a result of continued inadequacy of sex education and
family planning.

Worse yet, with the recent rapprochement with the Pope & resurgence
of religion, the Cuban attitudes toward abortion, once again, have
begun to turn repressive, though they have yet to have an impact upon
the rate & number of abortions.

> >BTW, being under the guns of imperialism does not explain changing
> >Cuban attitudes to prostitution.  The government tried to abolish it
> >then; now it tolerates it shamefacedly, without regulating it in the
> >formal economy, because it has come to rely on tourism.  At both
> >points in history, Cuba has been under the guns.
>
>The presence of prostitution in Cuba today is a terrible shame. It simply
>represents the power of the marketplace in the socialist world, just as the
>massive entrance of Russian and Eastern European women into the sex
>business marks it in the postsocialist world. Frankly, it seems beyond the
>power of the Cuban government to change this. In any case, there is no
>possible way to put a 'feminist' spin on this, is there?
>
> >Lastly, shamefaced toleration is as bad as top-down abolition with a
> >threat of imprisonment.  Since Cuban prostitutes exist under the
> >shadow of informal economy, they do not enjoy government protection.
> >If the government is going to tolerate it, it might as well bring it
> >into the light of formal economy where prostitutes would be safer &
> >less exploited.
>
>I think Cuban socialism faces a dilemma on this question. Creating Nevada
>style brothels would represent a step backward. I suspect that if the Cuban
>economy continues to recover, then fewer women will be willing to sell
>their body. This is just one of those things, like defecting athletes, that
>reflect a poor relationship of forces economically and socially. The goal
>is not to cave in to the status quo but to change it.

I'm saying that if the government is going to tolerate it, it might
as well bring it into the light of formal economy where prostitutes
would be safer & less exploited.  While the government is unlikely to
be able to decrease the number of prostitutes, it is _within its
power_ to admit the existence of prostitution officially,
decriminalize it, and regulate this sector just like any other sector
of commerce.  It is better for prostitutes to work in the formal
economy than to work in the underground economy.  Workers in the
underground economy have few rights, whereas workers in the formal
economy are covered by labor legislations.  Alternatively, the
government might discourage tourism, which it is very unlikely to do
since it needs foreign currencies that tourism can bring.

Don't tell me that national pride doesn't allow the government to
admit the existence of prostitution officially & _deal with it
rationally_.  Hypocrisy is an enemy of women.  The government already
legalized dollars & reconciled with the Pope, which, to me, are
bigger problems than prostitution.

Yoshie