Feminism The Erotics Of Black Self Making By Cuba, And...

Jafari S. Allen’s â€Å"Venceremos? The Erotics of Black Self-Making in Cuba,† and Deborah Pruitt and Suzanne LaFont’s article â€Å"For Love and Money: Romance Tourism in Jamaica,† both assert arguments on how the changing of established gender roles impact the interactions between members of different sexes. As hegemonic masculinity was heavily emphasized during the Cuban Revolution, Allen shows his readers how heteronormative masculinity and expected female receptivity is still clearly presented in Cuban culture today. Pruitt and LaFont explore in their article what happens when resistance to an established heteronormative masculinity in a culture is present, as Euro-American women adapt masculine characteristics and assert authority over their male Jamaican lovers. Therefore, this paper will investigate how both authors explore masculinity and femininity as heteronormative constructs and how they must be looked at in regard to specific localities to se e how individuals are affected in everyday life. According to Allen, the early Cuban Revolution â€Å"legislated compulsory heteronormativity,† which is still present in the country today (Allen 67). This is due to revolutionary understandings and attitudes towards male homosexuals, as they were deemed to be â€Å"rapicous and flighty- concerned only with their own pleasure and unwilling to make sacrifices† (Allen 68). Therefore, they were not only supporting heteronormative gender roles regarding women by exhibiting feminine qualities, but