I have the same problem using Awesome WM. After switching to a different workspace (i.e. desktop), when I come back, the text cursor is invisible. Makes things really hard to use, in my case gedit and gnome-terminal. I am using a different window manager because of it, would really like to use Awesome again! Probably also applies to other programs than gedit and gnome-terminal. Seems like a GTK issue or something like that, rather than a gedit bug.
