Cuba Might Offer Free Sex Changes To Transsexuals

[bayano]

HAVANA, Cuba (Reuters) -- Mariela Castro is leading a Cuban revolution less well-known than her Uncle Fidel's -- one in favor of sexual tolerance within the island's macho society.

Castro, 43, is leading the charge from her government-funded National centre for Sex Education, based in an old Havana mansion.

As director of the group, she promoted a soap opera that scandalized many Cubans in March by sympathetically depicting bisexuality. The controversial show depicted, among other story lines, the life of a construction worker who leaves his wife and children for the man next door.

Now President Castro's niece is pushing for passage of a law that would give transsexuals free sex-change operations and hormonal therapy in addition to granting them new identification documents with their changed gender.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/americas/06/...reut/index.html (http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/americas/06/29/cuba.sex.reut/index.html)

mariela castro has said that she is not looking toward gay/lesbian marriage issues, tho she supports the struggles to ensure them equal rights as unions.

[Reuben]

cuba has far more pressing needs. There are only so many doctors while the resources in hospitals are limited by the US blockade and so cuba has to make choices, and as much as it will upset some people on here, i do NOT think that that believing yourself to be a man in a woman's body or whatever is on a par with needing a heart operation or a cast for a broken arm.

[JC1]

Transexualism and Gay Marriage are like the last gasp's of patriarchy.

Gay Marriage extend's familal oppression to homosexual's.

Transexualism posit's there are " Women in mens body's". We as communist's CAN NOT BELEIVE THIS becuase Communist's reject Gender Identity all together (To us, Gender is a biological issue).

That being said, I do not advocate the oppression of transexual's.

[TC]

I think that this is just a reflection of Cuba as the most progressive, democratic society even if the theory behind it is flawed.


Gay Marriage extend's familal oppression to homosexual's.

Thats pretty dumb, you're taking an ahistorical, non-marxists unscientific view of "familial oppression" which has no material basis.

You need to think in a marxist, scientific way about this.

Patriarchal oppression through the family unit only exists in scenarios where there is a division of labor between wife and husband, assigning the husband to lucrative labor and the wife to non-lucrative labor, creating an economic depedence of the wife on the husband, thereby creating a power embalance favoring the husband over the wife. This is a very real type of material, class based oppression.


But in a gay marriage where you have two people of the same gender, no division of labor between paid and unpaid work is very likely, so no patriarchal oppression can exist. (the same is true of heterosexual couples who both engage in paid work at an equal rate and couples who don't work at all).


Transexualism posit's there are " Women in mens body's". We as communist's CAN NOT BELEIVE THIS becuase Communist's reject Gender Identity all together (To us, Gender is a biological issue).

I agree with you, i think, but people should still be able to do what they want with their bodies. Even if their reasons for doing it are rather B.S. I mean people modify their body to feel more secure about their apperance all the time, theres nothing wrong with that.

[Avtomatov]

I think its a good thing, maybe i will move to cuba.

[afrikaNOW]

Originally posted by [email protected] 5 2006, 07:36 PM


I agree with you, i think, but people should still be able to do what they want with their bodies. Even if their reasons for doing it are rather B.S. I mean people modify their body to feel more secure about their apperance all the time, theres nothing wrong with that.
True but that doesn't mean that it should be free. Free surgeries for siamese twins, not for boob implants and sex changes.

[bayano]

cosmetic plastic surgery, which is not free and i dont even know if it is available in cuba, is not the same thing as a sex change. remember, many transexuals were born with more than one or mutated gentialia, and their doctors or parents decided both their sex and their gender for them. these are healthcare procedures that cuba is discussing.

what i dont understand is why, if they are willing to possibly go so far on this, they havent seriously considered the hosts of other fundamental social reforms that many of the bourgeois social democracies have considered: gay marriage, marijuana legalization (and trust me, illegal drugs might not exist to any major degree in cuba, but marijuana is a big exception), etc etc

[Mujer Libre]

Originally posted by afrikaNOW+Jul 5 2006, 08:41 PM--> (afrikaNOW @ Jul 5 2006, 08:41 PM)
[email protected] 5 2006, 07:36 PM


I agree with you, i think, but people should still be able to do what they want with their bodies. Even if their reasons for doing it are rather B.S. I mean people modify their body to feel more secure about their apperance all the time, theres nothing wrong with that.
True but that doesn't mean that it should be free. Free surgeries for siamese twins, not for boob implants and sex changes. [/b]
But what if (as is usually the case) NOT having a sex-change causes significant mental distress. This isn't just cosmetic, and trivialising it by comparing it to a boob-job is absurd.

[JC1]

I agree with you, i think, but people should still be able to do what they want with their bodies. Even if their reasons for doing it are rather B.S. I mean people modify their body to feel more secure about their apperance all the time, theres nothing wrong with that.

I didnt say they shouldn't be allowed to have operation's.

[afrikaNOW]

Originally posted by [email protected] 5 2006, 08:56 PM
cosmetic plastic surgery, which is not free and i dont even know if it is available in cuba, is not the same thing as a sex change. remember, many transexuals were born with more than one or mutated gentialia, and their doctors or parents decided both their sex and their gender for them. these are healthcare procedures that cuba is discussing.

what i dont understand is why, if they are willing to possibly go so far on this, they havent seriously considered the hosts of other fundamental social reforms that many of the bourgeois social democracies have considered: gay marriage, marijuana legalization (and trust me, illegal drugs might not exist to any major degree in cuba, but marijuana is a big exception), etc etc
I don't know what you mean by "alot", but i never heard of most transexuals being born with mutliated or more than one genitilia.

And to Mujr, cases can be fought that not having that boob job because the girl has A cup breasts is causing mental distress or her nose is "too big",etc.

[RevMARKSman]

Originally posted by Mujer Libre+Jul 5 2006, 06:17 PM--> (Mujer Libre @ Jul 5 2006, 06:17 PM)
Originally posted by [email protected] 5 2006, 08:41 PM

[email protected] 5 2006, 07:36 PM


I agree with you, i think, but people should still be able to do what they want with their bodies. Even if their reasons for doing it are rather B.S. I mean people modify their body to feel more secure about their apperance all the time, theres nothing wrong with that.
True but that doesn't mean that it should be free. Free surgeries for siamese twins, not for boob implants and sex changes.
But what if (as is usually the case) NOT having a sex-change causes significant mental distress. This isn't just cosmetic, and trivialising it by comparing it to a boob-job is absurd. [/b]
Thank you.
I am an FTM transgender person myself and certainly oppose stereotypes. It is a physical/mental disorder involving the body being bathed in hormones prenatally but the brain forming into an identity of the opposite gender.

[Severian]

There's a reason why Mariela Castro would say gay marriage is probably not the highest priority in Cuba: most social benefits there are not distributed on the basis of who you're married to.

But in many other countries, including the U.S., they are. Social Security for example. Communists are opposed to distributing social benefits in this way. But as long as they are, it's important that everyone has the right to marry.

It's ridiculous to say that gay marriage extends family oppression to gay people: it's already there. The social privileges given to heterosexual marriage over other relationships are one example of it.

[left-nut]

Sounds good for Cuba (free hormones and identification document changes, though not sure I agree about free sex change opreations).


I don't think gay marriage will ever become an issue in Cuba.

[Karl Marx's Camel]

It's quite interesting to see Cuba slowly becoming the most progressive nation in South, Central America and in the Carribean when it comes to homosexuality.

At the very least, the state has sponsored programs, films, series etc. which provide insight into homosexual life, and so on. I have not heard of any other state in South America using money on spreading awareness of homosexuality.

The real problem of homosexuality in Cuba, it seems to me, is the machismo. While the state has stopped a long time ago harrasing homosexuals, the people are not so welcome of homosexuality.

I've heard though, that transsexuals are still harrased by the police. The fact that the peasants are sent in to Havana to keep "order" probably doesn't make it much better.

[Janus]

This is definitely progressive especially when compared to other Latin American countries where the conservativism and machismo cultural trends would prevent something like this from happening.

Perhaps it is a sign that the government will be tackling other issues like gay marriage, etc.?