Women, Resistance and Revolution (38 page)

Old ideas of masculinity can mean that a man feels threatened by any extension of female control which he can only see in terms of his own loss. In Cuba babies are still the proof of ‘manhood’. When a wife gets the ‘anillo’, the man may say ‘Me molesta’, although he can’t feel it physically, and get her to take it out. But these matters are beyond the bounds of the party line. Castro told Lee Lockwood in 1965:

Traditions and customs can clash somewhat with new social realities, and the problem of sexual relations in youth will require more scientific attention. But the discussion of that problem has not yet been made the order of the day. Neither customs nor traditions can be changed easily, nor can they be dealt with superficially, I believe that new realities, social, economic, and cultural, will determine new conditions and new concepts of human relations.
³⁵

This is all very true in the long term but in the short term we can all get pregnant. Immediate attitudes are pragmatic and varied. The Federation of Cuban Women predictably go cautiously. For this reason some people told Elizabeth Sutherland: ‘The federation isn’t on the same wavelength as the younger generation.’ The young Cuban women who came to London in autumn 1970 were troubled about how to present sex education in the schools. They asked us for ‘serious’ books or pamphlets on the subject. There are so many different levels of sexual moralities, from the old peasant women who still don’t like their daughters going out, to young girls from workers’ families in Havana who are concerned that they get their allowances as wives, to young militants on the Isle of Pines who are against casual sex and for serious relationships, to sophisticated black intellectuals conscious of the interactions between sexuality and racism.
³⁶

But behind all these levels there is machismo which continually sets the limits for female sexual liberation. For example, in 1960–61 there was tremendous propaganda made of communist boarding schools for school-children where the girls’ virginity was to be sacrificed in an orgy of red free love. This accounts for the sexual segregation in the ‘becados’ which made Allen Ginsberg explode in incomprehension in 1966: ‘What’s your program for these kids – masturbation?’
³⁷
But the reality of machismo is a tradition of the predatory male without ties who uses women sexually and the Cubans are afraid that ‘free love’ will only be interpreted as freedom for the men to return to their own habits. Castro personally has kept the situation very open. He’s well known for jokes about marriage and his personal opinions carry a lot of weight. On one issue at least machismo and the official attitudes are in agreement: homosexuality is an offence in Cuba. It occupies a special horror spot in the psyches of Cuban males. Castro tries nobly. He admitted a great lack of knowledge, that it would be unfair to treat anyone badly for something they couldn’t control, that some homosexuals might accept revolutionary ideas; but he shares the common prejudice. He said to Lockwood:

And yet we would never come to believe that a homosexual could embody the conditions and requirements of conduct that would enable us to consider him a true Revolutionary, a true Communist militant. A deviation of that nature clashes with the concept we have of what a militant communist must be.… In the conditions under which we live, because of the problems which our country is facing, we must inculcate our youth with the spirit of discipline, of struggle, of work.… This attitude may or may not be correct, but it is our honest feeling.
³⁸

This passage carries one hope – his obvious honesty. He makes it clear that his approach to the question comes from his own perspective and from the immediate needs of the Cuban economy for repression of eros. The dangers, though, are all too evident Because of their practical problems, the lack of a revolutionary theoretical tradition and the force of old ideas which were intensely suspicious of pleasure in sex without reproduction, the Cubans slip often into an exhortatory moralism in official statements which is not reflected in personal conversation or in personal life.

Both revolutionary homosexuality and active female heterosexuality imply the redefinition of masculinity – ‘revolutionary’ masculinity included. At this point the most revolutionary of comrades become paternalist. Women told Elizabeth Sutherland: ‘The idea that sex is for the woman’s pleasure as well as the man’s – that is the taboo of taboos.… Less change has taken place in this area than any other.’
³⁹
A few men were beginning to recognize the political implications of this for men as well as women – Tomas, for instance: ‘Cuban men will have to find new ways in which to be men.’
⁴⁰

None of us know how this is to be done. The Cubans face such rapid and uneven development it is hard for them to decide what to accept or reject. A most complicated example of this is the battle of the mini-skirt in Cuba. This was waged at several levels, from the apolitical conventional girl who thought they were immoral, and wouldn’t wear one until the revolution told her to, to a tendency in the party, which was point-blank opposed to anything western, to old ideas of modesty. There is not the same confusion about other aspects of the fashion and beauty industry. There are beauty shops even in the mountains on the Isle of Youth, though their presence is still not as ubiquitous as in western capitalism. The official attitude is: ‘We want all our women to be beautiful. Before the revolution
only the rich had the time or money to go to beauty shops. The revolution gives everyone the advantage of having this opportunity.’
⁴¹

Indeed, make-up for young Cuban women is often the symbol of defiant liberation from the traditional control of parents and the home, in contrast to its role as an integrator into passivity in capitalist countries. However, in another sense female decoration continues to be ambiguous because for centuries women have been dependent on men choosing them. And in Cuba male decoration, long hair and modern clothes are frowned upon as decadent.

There is a welter of contradictions here. Elizabeth Sutherland summarizes:

All in all, the status of women and sexual relations in Cuba was a curious but not so surprising mixture of past and present, and future; of Revolution and conservatism; of the situation in some highly industrialized countries and the situation in some very undeveloped ones. Giant steps had been taken and were being taken towards the liberation of women. But if that liberation is defined as freedom from old roles and definitions, with full availability of alternative life patterns, then it would be more accurate to define the changes which have taken place thus far as the basis for a total revolution rather than the revolution itself …
⁴²

… Even if the men who ran the country were willing, Cuba’s economic and political needs inhibited a revolution in certain areas, mostly outside work. The conquest of material underdevelopment had top priority; politically, people had enough gripes about things like rations for the regime not to take an unpopular position on gut issues like femininity and masculinity.
⁴³

However, it would be a mistake to think that no women were critical or attempting to create positive alternatives now in Cuba. Not surprisingly it tends to be the more privileged, like the university students whom Elizabeth Sutherland met in Havana, who are most exposed to the clash of incongruities, like the coexistence of ‘free love’ with semi-primitive ignorance, and the vacuum in official theory before matters which concern them profoundly. In 1967 a document circulated in Havana University which carries a note reminiscent of the revolutionary discussions in the Soviet Union in the twenties, and also relates very closely to the demands of women’s liberation in the western capitalist countries:

Economic independence is not enough. It is not a matter of a woman being able to pay her way but … of being able to transform her attitude toward life … the problem will not be solved simply by the incorporation of the woman in work. Extracting her from the role of housewife will not automatically change her attitude toward life. A woman working for the collectivity can continue to view problems through the prism of subordination and passivity. Change of occupation is only the basis for the transformation of women … her whole attitude must change. It is a process of personal realization, which does not lie merely in dedicating herself to a creative task but in shifting the centre of interest from the limits of one’s emotional life and events within the nuclear family, to a much broader area … which goes beyond individual interest, the interest centred in social activity. A woman realizes herself as a person when her viewpoint transcends egoistic interest.

The true feminine struggle is the rejection of all those childhood teachings, all those family pressures during adolescence, and even the dominant social thinking which affects her as an adult … the idea of femininity, of womanhood, as meaning the dedication of one’s life to finding and keeping a companion generally, at the price of being his satellite.
⁴⁴

Like the black people in Cuba, women face the particular subjection of a group colonized within a colony. The forms of possession vary but in essence they remain the same. The revolution within the revolution means seeing through your own eyes, learning to touch the external world with your own hands, translating experience in your own mind, shaping sounds, making your own words and dissolving the mask which is not just imposed but has grown into your own skin through centuries of being directed by someone else.

It requires a great act of revolutionary cultural creation – which is only possible through the possibility for human growth which comes through conscious combination.

Algeria

They will ask you about menstruation: say it is a hurt. So keep apart from women in their menstruation, and go not near them till they be cleansed.… Your women are your tilth so come into your tillage how you choose.… The men should have precedence over them. When you divorce women, and they have reached their prescribed time, then
keep them kindly, or let them go in reason, but do not keep them by force to transgress.

The Chapter of the Heifer, The Koran

The woman who sees without being seen frustrates the colonizer. The men’s words were no longer law. The women were no longer silent.

Frantz Fanon,
A Dying Colonialism

One of the trench-coated young men had taken charge of the column; there was blood on his trenchcoat: he had been carrying the deputy leader. He was giving orders to two other young men who wore the civilian blue trenchcoat that was a uniform of the F.L.N. hierarchy …

‘Get the women and children to the Métro at Sevre-Babylone. We’ll double back into the Boulevard Saint-Germain and draw them after us.’ He was speaking in French. Then he gave them his blessing in Arabic: ‘Barake.’

The parties divided but Nefissa marched with the men.

‘You should go with the women,’ Hanna said. ‘I’ll take you to them.’

‘I won’t go with them. They are just wives. I’m a militant.’

The new leader turned to ask what was the matter. He had a young face, pock-pitted and sad.

‘This girl refuses to go with the women,’ Hanna told him.

‘How dare you speak of me like that?’ asked Nefissa. ‘You who are not even one of us. I am a militant of the F.L.N. and my place is with the column.’

‘Go with the women,’ the leader told Nefissa.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m a militant. My place is with the column.’

‘Your place is to obey orders,’ said the leader.

‘You are not of my cell,’ Nefissa said. ‘I don’t take orders from strangers.’

‘I can’t force you to leave,’ the leader said. ‘You will have to look after her,’ he added, speaking directly to Hanna. ‘Barake.’

‘I’ll do my best,’ Hanna promised.

‘I can look after myself,’ Nefissa said. ‘I am a militant of my cell.’ But the leader had turned away …

… ‘This is a regulation search,’ the commandant said. ‘Made before witnesses. It must be thorough.’

When he raised Nefissa’s skirt above the tops of her stockings, Hanna started forward and felt a hand upon his shoulder. There were two flics standing behind him. They were laughing, but they had drawn pistols.

‘Remember that you are almost a French citizen now,’ said one of them, a brigadier. ‘You can watch if you haven’t seen it all before, but don’t move.’

‘But it’s disgusting,’ Hanna said. ‘Disgusting and degrading.’

‘Don’t move,’ the brigadier said.

Nefissa screamed once; she was straining to keep her thighs closed as the commandant’s hand quested beneath her buttocks. The commandant stepped back and hit her twice between the knees with the heel of his hand. When her legs gave he thrust his right hand into her crutch. Nefissa squirmed, then whimpered.

‘There’s something hard there,’ the commandant said. ‘And this time it isn’t a penis. I know you Muslim virgins. It makes a convenient receptacle for everything – isn’t that so, mademoiselle?’

Nefissa said something into the wall and cried out and said something more.

‘Don’t give me that, dear,’ the commandant said. ‘I was acquainted with the facts of life before you were born.’

The commandant removed his hand for an instant and tugged: Nefissa’s briefs fell about her ankles: they were white, as though in token of surrender.

‘Now we can resume the search,’ the commandant said.

Then Nefissa stepped free of the restricting nylon and elastic; she kicked backwards and caught the commandant on the shin with her sharp leather heel; the inspector said ‘Merde’ and caught her by the ankle: his unfettered right hand thrust upwards between her legs.