At 02:44 PM 8/14/97 -0700, Louis Proyect wrote: >This seems nuts to me. After Castro took over, the government was faced >with the appalling legacy of Cuba as the fleshpot of the United States. It >was used for sex tours the way that the Philippines is used today by >American or Japanese tourists. In the current issue of the Village Voice >there is an article on a Queens travel agency that takes men to a 10-night >sex tour of the Philippines. The article states: > >"But if Big Apple is withering, the sex-tour industry is thriving.Fueled >by giant disparities in the global economy and the ever increasing ease of >travel, international gender exploitation has blossomed into what may be >as much as a billion-dollar industry, etc. I think you are mixing Big Apples and oranges, Louis. What does the sex industry & its horrors have to do with the patriarchal attituded of Cuban, Chinese, and other ML leaders, and for that matter -- the pre-1970 Left? Nobody is denying the exploitation of the "Third World" women by the "First World" entrepreneurs, albeit sex industry is but one form of such exploitation. Granted, the legacy of that sex industry in the developing countries is horrible -- not to mention the economic burden on the government (health care, crime control, etc.). But that does not havy anything to do with the patriarchal attitudes of the ML leaders -- which is the undeniable fact. My ex who took several trips to Cuba in a claer violation of the travel ban (complete with her request to stamp a Cuban entry visa in her passport -- which the Cuban generally did not do to the US travellers) was apalled by the persistence of patriarchal relations there, and the tolerance of those relations by the authorities. But she was even more apalled by the some of her fellow travellers who, in the name of poorly conceived "solidarity," tried to hush her when she voiced her criticism of those patriarchal relations. It is true that both Cuban and the Chinese revelutions eliminated the conditions that forced women into prostitution, selling their own children, etc. It is also true that virtually all ML government instituted some form of "women liberation" that eliminated the worst cases of patriarchal exploitation of women. But, at the same time, they instituted a milder form of patriarchy, one that allowed women to drive a tractor or truck, but effectivelly barred them from leadership. How many women could you count in any ML government? More to the point, the attitudes espoused by these governments toward sex were often puritannical and petty bourgeois -- and that is reflected in their treatement of anything that can be considered "kinky" -- not just prostitution, but homosexuality as well. Not to mention the fact that anything smacking of sex, nudity, and erotica was censored. Believe me, Louis, I am talking from personal experience -- during the Cultural Revolution in China, women who look too feminine were often accused of being "imperialist puppets," courtesans and what not. What does it have to do with economic conditions forcing women into prostitution that were eliminated for good some twenty or so years before the Cultural Revolution? cheers, wojtek sokolowski institute for policy studies johns hopkins university baltimore, md 21218 [EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: (410) 516-4056 fax: (410) 516-8233 POLITICS IS THE SHADOW CAST ON SOCIETY BY BIG BUSINESS. AND AS LONG AS THIS IS SO, THE ATTENUATI0N OF THE SHADOW WILL NOT CHANGE THE SUBSTANCE. - John Dewey
