Repeating Islands

The New York Times reports that Cuba has been once again paying for sex change operations, a program begun in 1988 but then suspended for two decades, after many complained the communist government had better ways to spend its scarce resources. The operations have begun anew under President Raul Castro’s daughter Mariela Castro, Cuba’s top gay-rights activist, and 22 more transsexuals are waiting to have it performed. Castro says the government is moving cautiously, doing only a few per year, adding that “There has been a lot of resistance because homophobia remains strong in our culture.”

The young advocate, Castro, has seen to it that the state formally recognizes transsexuals. A state-trained kindergarten teacher with a degree in sexuality, she runs the National Sexual Education Center. It spent years lobbying communist officials, who finally agreed to lift bans on sex changes in 2008 — though the resolution was never made public to avoid unwanted attention.

When the first successful Cuban surgery was announced in 1988, many Cubans claimed their country was too poor to pay for the procedure; religious objections were not a problem in Cuba. Leclair said a male-to-female change can cost $10,000 to $25,000 in the U.S., or up to four times higher than that, depending on all the procedures performed. About a dozen American doctors do between 1,000 and 2,000 such operations a year, she said. Canada, Britain, France and Brazil are also among the countries that offer government-financed sex changes. Despite a global recession that has hit Cuba especially hard, prompting Raul Castro to announce unspecified cuts in health-care spending, his daughter says the state can’t afford not to perform the surgeries.

The article gives a human face to the debate by interviewing Cubans who have already had sex change operations, such as Yiliam (formerly William) González, and transsexuals that are awaiting the go-ahead for surgery, such as Olivia Lam. The latter, who has been formally classified as transsexual since 2008, says that although the government now accepts her, getting her own family to accept her circumstances has not been easy.  She says, “I don’t think any parent wants their son to be different, but they understand that you’re not like this because you want to be.” Also speaking of acceptance, González states that opponents [of sex change surgeries] “don’t know what a person who is transsexual suffers. It’s a prison you can’t get out of.”

For full article, see http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/03/10/world/AP-CB-Cuba-Sex-Changes.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2&ref=americas

For photo of Mariela Castro and interview, see http://www.cubaprofunda.org/artmeditar.php?ID=85