CUBA: Homosexual Couples Suffer Identity Crisis

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Aug 28 2002 (IPS) - Gay and lesbian couples in Cuba have a hard time establishing their own distinct identities, and usually end up reproducing the traditional heterosexual relationship model, while they tend to live in isolation due to the social rejection and stigma they face, according to a new study.

“If any group is suffering an identity crisis, it is homosexuals, who are trying to build their own identity, and to get it accepted,” said Aldnay Maqueira González, who holds a psychology degree from the University of Havana.

“The current gender categories are based on a preconception that being a man or a woman means being heterosexual. If identity is what defines and differentiates us, we must ask ourselves what being a gay man or a lesbian woman is about,” she said.

“Beyond Gender: Six Short Stories on the Countercultural Family”, considered a novelty in Cuba’s academic community, is the title of Maqueira González’s thesis, which she presented in July.

The study, to which IPS had access, is based on a broad bibliographical review and interviews with, as well as observations of, six Cuban families, three gay and three lesbian.

The homosexual family was defined as two people of the same sex who live together, and share expenses as well as a long-term life plan based on responsibility, stability and mutual commitment.

In Cuba, “we have focused a lot on the female and male gender perspectives as well as the oppressive cultural roles assigned to each,” but “we know little about the homosexual identity,” said psychologist Patricia Arés, a professor at the University of Havana.

Arés added that there is widespread ignorance about the “existential suffering” that Cuban society, “which is still homophobic and patriarchal, inflicts on homosexuals,” as well as “the multiple defence mechanisms to which homosexuals and their partners resort to survive this social anomie.”

Although laws passed in the late 1990s prohibit any sanction against homosexuals, gays and lesbians are still victims of discrimination and rejection by the dominant “machista” or sexist culture, said Arés.

In this socialist island nation, there are no associations of gays and lesbians, homosexuality remains a taboo subject for the media, and demands that have been successfully pressed in other countries, like the legalisation of domestic partnerships or the adoption of children by homosexuals, are not even discussed here.

“If people don’t even accept me as I am, do you think I can start defying society by demanding that we be allowed to adopt a child?” a 42-year-old gay man, who has lived with his partner for six years in a small Havana apartment, asked IPS.

As in any study of families, Maqueira González found enormous diversity. But she was also able to outline some common tendencies, above and beyond the varying cultural levels of the couples.

For example, the study found that the social constructions that characterise female and male gender roles in heterosexual families also mark homosexual relationships.

The psychologist reported that when homosexuals reproduce the only available model, the traditional heterosexual model for relationships, it is the older partner or the one with the higher educational level or greater economic clout who tends to assume the traditional male role, with the resultant responsibilities and dominant position.

The extrapolation of heterosexual stereotypes to homosexual couples means, according to Maqueira González, that one of the partners “assumes the behaviour and attitudes characteristic of the opposite sex, with which they tend to consciously or unconsciously feel uncomfortable.”

The researcher also said that “the reproduction of traditional conjugal roles” tends to include some degree of machismo or sexism.

She also pointed out that as with heterosexual relationships, there are gay and lesbian couples who do not follow the traditional patterns, and who have a more reciprocal and communicative relationship, in which neither has power over the other.

One of the most marked differences between the gay and lesbian couples who were studied was that the lesbians based their relationship on expressions of mutual affection and tenderness, while the men put the top priority on sex, said Maqueira González.

Meanwhile, all of the couples were found to have conflicts with at least one of the partners’ families, and they shared a tendency towards isolation from society as a defence mechanism amidst a homophobic social environment.

Most of the couples have little communication with others outside of the workplace, and merely all social exchanges are merely formal in nature, with the couples tending to open up only towards other gays or lesbians.

The study adds that the couples “are focused inwardly, on themselves, to the point that they frequently appear to merge to a degree that undermines the expression of their individual identities.”