While being without a partner does not as such threaten a woman’s heterosexuality and gendering, for a man, living without a female partner may quickly lead to questions about his heterosexuality. The social expectation
97 See Lutz 1988: 129-132 for a similar description on the significance of food as conveying care and affection on a Micronesian atoll.
that Cubans place on persons to continuously have a partner concerns men more crucially than women.
When a man’s relationship with his partner ends, he usually starts very quickly dating someone else (even if he may still be in love with his ex). If a man stays sad over a break-up for some time and does not quickly find himself a new woman, his position as an assertive male is rapidly questioned. This undermines his masculinity and – if the situation continues longer – his heterosexuality and thereby his gendering. If a man is never seen with women and never brings girlfriends home, he is immediately taken to be gay. Caridad explained this to me: “Norma’s son Wilber is gay.” I asked: How do you know?
Caridad: “Everybody knows it.” HH: Does Norma know it? Caridad: “No, I don’t think that they know it at home. But how can you have a son who is already past 30 years and has never had a woman?” Thus, men need to be with women in order to affirm their heterosexuality (see also Rosendahl 1997: 69; Padilla 2007: 124).
However, even being publicly seen with women is not always enough to prove a man’s heterosexuality. Talking about her daughter’s problems in finding a permanent partner, a female informant stated: “There are many men here nowadays of whom you think that they are men (hombres), but then they go out with men. They go out with [both] men and women, and you think that they are interested in you, but then they are maricones [a very insulting word for a homosexual], here it has become fashionable, bisexualism, and she is afraid of that.” This fear seems to relate to the state’s recent openings towards sexual diversity. My informants were of the opinion that homosexuality had become much more prevalent in Cuba since the 1990s. This statement also connects with a particular telenovela (soap opera) called La cara oculta de la luna (The hidden face of the moon), aired in 2006 and featuring a bisexual male character (Lundgren 2011: 139-144). While the purpose of the TV series was to create greater tolerance for sexual diversity amongst the public, in some of my informants the series seems to have inspired most of all fear. This leads me to examine some aspects of the cultural logics of Cuban notions of “homophobia”
(Allen 2011: 67; Hamilton 2012: 117-148).
A child’s homosexuality may represent a serious crisis in the family,
exemplifying the degree to which sexual and love relations take place between social persons embedded in larger webs of kinship relations. While some parents have no problems with a child’s homosexuality, more often I was told stories of very difficult family crises. All the cases that I was told about concerned male same-sex sexuality. Sometimes, (as in Caridad’s statement about Norma’s son), a man’s homosexuality was represented as a public
secret that “everybody” in the neighbourhood supposedly “knew” but was never brought up especially with his parents. Other times, a son’s confession of his homosexuality was described as inciting a violent reaction from his parents. A female informant told me about a male relative who had confessed his homosexuality to his parents. As a result, his mother “wanted to die”
and the father “got angry, (…) wanted to kill him [and] didn’t want anything more to do with him.” Yonder’s homosexuality led to a serious breakdown of his relation with his parents: his father forced him to leave the house and for years, his mother said to kin that he had died. However, after some time, mothers often re-gain contact with their children because their connection is seen to be so strong that there is “nothing else” they can do. But for fathers the rupture is easily more absolute.98
As this case shows, homosexuality may represent a highly difficult issue on both a personal level as well as in the family (see also Lumsden 1996: 98, 135-136). However, as parenthood is significantly gendered, so are also the ways in which homosexuality influences the relationship between a parent and a son.
If a woman’s only son is gay, she will never become a grandmother because the expectation is that there will be no children.99 A man’s same-sex orientation may thus influence strongly his mother’s life course. Yet, a gay son may end up living his whole life with his mother, taking care of her throughout her old age.
For fathers, however, the disruption may be so serious that there is little possibility for reconciliation. This suggests that a son’s same-sex orientation not only disrupts the possibility of a gender-based father-son companionship – which tends to be more important than the father-daughter bond throughout the life course – but also that the son’s same-sex orientation carries the potential to question his father’s masculinity. Since it is seen primarily as the father’s task to teach a son how to be a man, the son’s homosexuality falls partly on his father’s assumed ‘inadequacy’ to perform his role. This may thereby question the father’s position as a machote, making him lose respect amongst his peers and suffer ridicule. Men not only have to prove constantly that they are true men, they also have to be capable of producing true men in order to qualify as proper machos. While a woman may also lose social respect over a son’s same-sex orientation, for a man this seems to carry the potential of fundamentally questioning his gendering and social position.
98 As siblings may break their relationship with a same-sex-oriented person as well, this may easily leave a person with little family support, making other kinds of networks crucially important, as shown by Allen (2011).
99 Obviously, not all heterosexual men end up having children either, but the potential is seen to be there. Child-lessness represents a possible problem also in women’s same-sex relations. I met only two lesbian women, but one of them had a child and the other was an activist reclaiming lesbian women’s right to motherhood. For men, such claims would be much harder to present due to the cultural centrality of mother-child bonds. I have never heard a Cuban gay man express a desire to have children.
Same-sex or LGBT-identified persons are often described as “introverted”
(introvertida). ‘Inwards turned’ implies the idea that same-sex oriented persons are seen as ‘turning away’ from social relations.100 Therefore, this suggests that heterosexual Cubans are seen as ‘outwards’ oriented, constantly looking to create more connections. Thus non-heterosexual Cubans come to be seen as refusing to make the gendered alliances that are conceptualised as central to
‘normal’ life course.
But same-sex unions can be seen to represent a new form of alliance because they do create relationships – but different kinds of relationships. For my research participants, the potential to have children is at the core of heterosexuality: a person is supposed to enter into sexual relations with someone with whom s/he can have children.101 Many see same-sex sexuality as problematic because it is perceived as denying this possibility. Homosexuality raises crucial concerns about the future of family continuity – in a way that is surprisingly similar to Fernandez’s (2010: 149-174) description of the types of worries that her informants had over the influence of interracial relationships to family genealogy. Homosexuality thereby intertwines centrally with issues of family continuity and reproduction – in more than one way.
There is considerable ambiguity in the way in which my informants
conceptualise homosexuality as something between nature and nurture. On the one hand, homosexuality is seen as ’contagious’ – not as an ‘internal state’
– for there is a considerable worry about children being exposed to homosexual influences and developing similar tendencies in imitation of adults because
“a child does everything that the parents do” (el niño hace todo lo que los padres hacen; see also Lumsden 1996: 84). On the other hand, homosexuality is seen as existing as an internal state since it ‘cannot be changed’: a homosexual man does not react to women no matter how beautiful they are. Moreover, it is recognised that not all children raised by a same-sex-oriented parent become homosexual themselves (for instance, a lesbian woman’s adult daughter was never hinted to have similar tendencies herself). Thus, homosexuality is not seen as a state that is directly ‘produced’ by the parents, although they may be seen as bearing a certain responsibility for the situation. In another conceptualisation that I heard, both of these views were combined with a
‘biomedical’ explanation, as a young boy’s homosexuality was explained with
100 See also Lumsden 1996: 106, who describes 1980s Cuban state sexual education manuals labelling homosexuals as “anti-social.” The term introvertida may have originated from the concept of “inverted” used to characterise homo-sexuality in psychology in the beginning of the 20th century (I am grateful to Simo Määttä for pointing this out to me).
101 This is also the reason why my informants were so preoccupied with trying to avoid sexual relations between pos-sible siblings; they were worried about the effect that such unions might have on the children. This fear of incestuous relations relates interestingly to a classical novel Cecilia Valdéz (Villaverde 2005 [1839]) where due to white, upper class men’s multiple sexual relations, a young couple – in keeping with gendered and racialised meanings: a beautiful mu-lata and a white youngster – fall in love without knowing that they are in reality patrilateral siblings. The relationship results to be destructive to the man. (See also Fernandez 2010: 121-122).
the fact that he has a twin sister: “He took of women (…) because of her, as they were [‘squeezed’] so close (…) in the same womb.” This view combines a notion of biogenetics with relational personhood in such a way that closeness in the womb transfers qualities of personhood in ways that confuse the standard gender division. This way gender – and sexual desire as an aspect of gendering – becomes defined as something internal that one is born with but in such a way that the boundaries of the individual body are permeable and may to a great degree absorb qualities from those around, which come to form part of the individual’s personhood. This reminds Busby’s (1997) description of South Indian notions of gender and personhood.
This way of conceptualising sexuality and personhood intertwines with more general notions of gender. As we have seen, homosexuality is perceived as much more of a ‘threat’ to men than to women. Parents worry about their sons being gay if they do not have girlfriends at the age of 11-12 (Rosendahl 1997: 62-63) and if boys do not seem to be into fighting and hanging out in the street, and if they show too much inclination towards staying at home, doing housework, or – even worse – playing with dolls. Performing female practices such as doing housework, childcare, or paying too much attention to his looks may endanger a man’s gender and sexuality (cf. Gutmann 2007 [1996]: 3, 74-79, 96-88, 151, 156). I never heard anyone express similar fears for girl children, which reflects the social invisibility of female same-sex sexuality (Lumsden 1996: 84, 186; Allen 2011: 11; Hamilton 2012: 172-190) as well as a considerable cultural focus on male sexuality (in the sense that male sexuality is somehow more under scrutiny than female sexuality). This constant concern over male (homo)sexuality makes male gendering relatively fragile – the dominant gender has to ‘prove its place’ constantly. Due to machismo, the limits of acceptable behaviour seem to be narrower for men without risking one’s position as a man.
At the same time, homosexuality itself becomes conceptualised via the dualistic view of gender that centrally defines social relations and individual life course. For instance, same-sex oriented persons are often described as reversing the usual gendered expectations regarding the body: men are beautiful and women have short hair. Homosexual men are conceptualised as ‘not men’ since they are persons who act ‘as if’ they were women (see also Lumsden 1996: 30). This view is evident in a statement from a female informant who was amazed by the highly feminine clothes worn by male cross-dressers: “They are more women than women themselves, they dress in very daring clothes…” Thus, gender, bodily appearance, and sexual desire become tightly intertwined and conceptualised in a binary way.
This provides an opportunity to revisit the views of the early revolutionary policy on sexuality, when homosexual men were placed on UMAP camps and women were located in re-education centres in order to get rid of prostitution (see Chapter 1). These state efforts centred on heterosexuality: while the danger to female sexuality was considered to be its commercialisation, exchanging sex for money, the threat to male sexuality was considered to be the ‘wrong’ orientation of male sexual desire.102 These same themes continue to ‘trouble’ gender relations today: the potential threat to women is seen to be the commercialisation of their sexuality, whereas with men, the concern is located in the proper orientation of their ‘very strong’ sexual desires. Such views thereby draw on more long-term local notions of gender and sexuality.
However, Cuba’s recent change of attitude in its sexual politics seems to be making more room for sexual diversity. While I know only a few openly same-sex oriented same-sexual persons in Havana, same-sexual diversity has definitely gained more visibility and occupies people’s minds both in the state discourse as well as in the streets. Recently, Mariela Castro has been advocating for Cuba to pass a law legalising same-sex unions, but the bill has not so far managed to be passed in the National Assembly of People’s Power (Poder Popular). But in early 2013, I received an email from Yuniel stating that he had assisted a “lesbian wedding,” something that is “totally taboo here.” This suggests that same-sex relations present a new emerging form of union in Cuba. How this will influence the dominant views about heterosexuality as central to a person’s gendering and gendering as fundamental to being, remains to be seen.
Conclusion
Men’s and women’s reciprocal contributions in a relationship are gendered expressions of love and care that both create and reproduce alliances. As sexual and love relations are formed between social persons who live in networks of larger kin relations, heterosexual relations easily create gendered conflicts between a person’s consanguine and affine kin. These conflicts focus most importantly on competing claims on a man’s material contributions between his mother and his partner. Simultaneously, a woman’s contributions of nurturing care are constantly assessed by her partner’s mother in a moral economy of care. While notions of romantic love are central in Cuba, gender relations develop in tight interaction with larger kin relations. This suggests that notions of love as romantic passion do not always co-exist with individualism but can also be experienced in the context of more relational notions of personhood.
102 Interestingly, the reverse was not considered even as a possibility; the threat of the ‘wrong’ orientation of the female sexuality towards women or the fear of male heterosexual prostitution.
Along with reciprocal care, sexual desire, jealousy, and control are all qualities that affirm the alliance between men and women. However, these same qualities may also lead to a break-up when their scale changes. Reciprocity becomes distorted in the practice of one-sided care, neglect, excesses of control, infidelity, and physical violence. For both men and women, love relations entail a constant effort to balance between excessive possessiveness that may make their partner leave them, on the one hand, and being possessive enough in order to affirm the alliance, controlling one’s partner to such a degree that the partner feels him or herself desired and does not cheat on them, on the other hand. Practices connected to such dynamics are importantly gendered and relate to notions of agency. In a relationship, men try to gain positions of power via direct confrontations, whereas women pursue their desires by engaging in indirect agency. Nevertheless, when relationships are broken, both men and women engage in indirect agency, for no one wants to be seen as the one that is harming social bonds.
However, due to the easily distorted nature of gendered reciprocity, women may prefer to live alone, whereas men without money find it hard to fulfil women’s expectations of material contributions. If the distortions of reciprocity are seen as excessive, relationships break. This illustrates the dynamics of instability and fragility associated with Caribbean gender relations for a long time.
The body represents the site where reciprocal care takes a visible form: an ugly or a suffering body displays neglects of care from the part of one’s partner or kin. The body is also the site where emotions are experienced. Sorrow over a break-up, longing for one’s loved one, and loneliness take away the desire to eat; sensual dancing and beautiful bodies incite desire and (potential) love towards partners, and a man’s intense feelings of jealousy may take the form of physical efforts to control his partner through violence.
The body also connotes a person’s sexual orientation, as women’s beautiful bodies become both the signal of their heterosexual desire towards men and the means for inciting it. Men need to prove that their sexual orientation is directed towards women by reacting to their beauty and through a strict avoidance of the bodily practices that are classified as feminine. Heterosexual desire affirms and reproduces gendering: being the object of male desire affirms a woman’s femininity and being sexually active with women proves a man’s masculinity.
My informants’ understandings of love and sexuality suggest that gender is something with which one is born, reflecting a dualistic division
that centrally defines life and makes persons both different from and complimentary to each other. At the same time, gender as a difference has to be continuously affirmed and reproduced via bodily praxis by means of gendered reciprocal care as well as through heterosexually oriented desire.
This connects with a view of the personhood and the body as “permeable”
(Busby 1997: 275), as open to influences and connections to and from other people.
In this conceptualisation, sexuality is importantly something that can be incited or provoked by others. For instance, female beauty is seen as
‘automatically’ inciting male desire. Sexual orientation is thus not seen as entirely internal to the individual as it is strongly dependent on social incitement. Male sexual desire in particular is seen as something that is so strong that it may easily become oriented ‘wrongly’ (to men). This makes sexual desire relatively unstable in time. This conceptualisation of sexuality as relatively open to social influences illustrates why heterosexuality needs to be constantly affirmed. The focus of this affirmation is on the ‘appropriate’
orientation of male desire, worked out by emphasising the desirability of women’s bodies as well as by maintaining a keen eye on men’s bodily practices.
Engaging in a continuous affirmation of their heterosexuality is thereby more crucial for men than for women, although women need heterosexual desirability to affirm themselves as women as well.
Engaging in a continuous affirmation of their heterosexuality is thereby more crucial for men than for women, although women need heterosexual desirability to affirm themselves as women as well.