TeamZami

After reading The Mixquiahuala Letters by Ana Castillo, I thought about how I have internalized oppression within myself. It is not a question I'm unfamiliar with having grown up as an immigrant, ethnic minority, and non-heteronormative female. However, how deeply have I truly pondered on this question for myself? I figure it's high time that I confront certain behaviors and attitudes that I carry in life, especially as a soon to be gender studies graduate. In the book, even though Teresa does not speak directly about lesbianism, the content of the letters is still presented with a lesbian narrative because of the social restrictions she faces in professing her love for Alicia due to patriarchal and sexist environments. Her culture demands that her virtues as a woman are virginity, submission to men, tolerance for pain, and childbirth. Living in a society that places these kinds of expectations on women prevent them from expressing, enjoying, and recognizing their sexuality and also renders female to female love as taboo and incomprehensible because it conflicts with the patriarchal definition of womanhood. Like Teresa, I cannot fully be open about my sexuality in certain situations in which deviating from the norm would cause me significant conflict. I have been in relationships with Latin men and my queer sexuality was completely hidden from the members of my partner's family because they would not approve of me if they knew. I have also had to keep secrets from my own family members of relationships I have had with women because I feared that they would attack my female partners verbally and emotionally. Also, if my mother knew about me taking LGBT courses at UCLA she would refuse to pay for my tuition. So even though I profess equality for all and tell people to be out, open, and proud about their sexual orientation, I still choose to hide this essential part of myself depending on the convenience of the situation. How do I battle this hypocrisy? I also often feel left out in the LGBTQ community whenever I'm monogamously dating a heterosexual man. It's as if I'm viewed as having "betrayed" my sexuality or even worse people think that I'm only pretending to love women periodically to get attention from straight men who think that bisexual females are a hot commodity.

An Attempt to Overcome the Heteropatriarchal Slippery-Slope

How have I internalized oppression, and how have I oppressed is a question that would literally take me a book-length text to answer thoroughly and up to date (I would of course need yearly editions to rework the answer). But for the purpose of a blog post, I will state the prevalent and most eminent oppression (both enacted and suffered): heteropatriarchy. Since early age, I have been constantly struggling to not fall prey of what I can now name as heteropatriarchy. Before, and that is, back in Mexico, I identified it as a naturalized machismo mexicano.  Although I identified from an early age with Sor Juana's feminist poetry, Michael Jackon and Prince's androgynous personas, Danny Zucco's feminine masculinity, and Juanga!, I was still immersed in a world where gender transgressions was an extreme sport called "walking over egg-shells." My allegiances with the above mentioned jotos y jotas was a coveted personal matter, not public, not political. I have desired women since I discovered my sexuality. Nonetheless, I have always been extremely cautious of how I navigate heteronormative spaces, aka, the world. I have never been as open as I am now about my sexuality and identity. So to answer the question shortly is to say that I have been complacent and complicit to heteropatriarchy. Throughout the majority of my life, I have been skeptical to social norms, and defeatedly assumed that there is nothing I can do. But, doing nothing is just that, not doing anything for or against, it is being stoic. But, in this case, the stoic and conformist attitude is counterproductive as it feeds the hegemony with our complacency to the heteronorm. Do you all think that by our inactions against patriarchy, does that place us in agreement with the norm? I ask because I understand this is not a black-or-white subject, it is complicated complex and it can have various answers. This slippery-slope conundrum reminds me of the rape-consent argument, that if one does not resist, one is assumed to have automatically consent, and I want to step away from such type of fallacious thinking. I would like to hear what we all have to say about whether or not our complacency to the norm is agreeing with the hetronorm? 
Because heteropatriarchy is such a vast and overwhelming system of power operating at all levels of society, I would like to propose that we all think of one, just one way we can overcome or challenge heteropatriarchy in our daily lives. James Scott describes these minimal acts of political resistance as “infrapolitics,” the daily struggles embarked by oppressed members of a society which are visible only if we see beyond of what our traditional understanding of political acts of resistance is (protest, rally, picketing), and is invisible as a tactical approach “born out of prudent awareness of the balance of power.” What will be your infrapolitical activity challenging heteropatriarchy?  

-Kendy Rivera 
        

Thoughts on my own internalized oppression

I have let these two questions linger in my mind and soul for the past week since Profe announced them in class. Reflecting on my younger years, specifically around high school, I feel the judgmental environment I was in caused me to internalize my own oppression. Going to a Catholic high school, I was forced to believe there were many things about myself that were wrong and would send me to “eternal damnation.” Having school officials and religious leaders tell me that I am wrong in loving who I love and being a lesbian is not God’s plan for me, had a traumatic effect on me. For several years I believed them and would only be “gay in my room,” as I called it back then. Never in public did I feel comfortable enough to be myself. This took a toll on my relationship with myself as well as with others. It took a few years of searching within myself to end my internal oppression and realize all of those people were wrong. I am meant to be exactly who I am and I am not wrong in loving who I love. Simultaneously, I was also oppressing others throughout this time in my life. When I would hear of fellow classmates being queer, I would immediately put the shame I had on myself on them. As I began to accept my identities and began to fully love myself, I was able to accept and love others who also shared my identities. Despite my unconditional love for myself, due to hatred spewed out by society and communities around me, there are still fleeting moments where I feel as I did as a young girl. However, I make sure to remind myself of all the lessons I’ve learned that make me the proud Chicana lesbian I am today.

-Katherine Batanero

Reflecting on "The Cynic" side of "The Mixquiahuala Letters"

Hi all, I hope the weekend was restful and good to you. 

I'm writing this because I felt compelled to share my thoughts on my reading thus far. If you didn't guess it by the title, I'm quite digging Ana Castillo's The Mixquiahuala Letters. I was assigned the "Cynic" portion of the letters, and so far I'm making several connections to what we've discussed in class. I thought I'd give you the inside scoop on the Cynic reading since I know we're all reading the letters in a different order. The relationship between the two women, Teresa and Alicia, in this epistolary novel made me think of one of the quotes Profesora Gaspar de Alba handed out to us the first day of class. It was the following:

"Lesbian describes a relationship in which two women's strongest emotions and affections are directed toward each other. Sexual contact may be part of the relationship to a greater or lesser degree, or it may be entirely absent. By preference the two women spend most of their time together and share most aspect of their lives with each other."- Lilian Faderman, Surpassing the Love of Men, 17-18.

I'm aware that on that day we deconstructed this quote, it appeared to be inadequate for most of the class, since we pointed out that it left no room for the erotic and that as my notes reveal it provided a "middle-class, not women of color perspective". However, I'd like to come back to it for just that reason. The very walls we hit on that quote on the first day, I find are the walls that Teresa described but did not explicitly name in her letters to Alicia. The walls of patriarchy, of male privilege, of their  being constantly disappointed by men in life, of not 'fitting in' as independent self-sufficient women. The deep closeness and affection between them was by all means a relationship that the quote describes but reading from Teresa's perspective, their relationship could not be named "lesbian', they could not afford the luxury to explore their desire for each other. As this novel so eloquently puts it, there is a tension, not only between the two women but between them and the entrenched patriarchy and male privilege that has harmed them so. In my "cynic" reading, I read the love that Teresa expressed for Alicia, this love, the energy so "directed to each other" was so strong that at times it broke away from the letter format, into poetry and colorful memories of how much they both survived together, while traveling, while meeting up after a break-up with their respective male lovers. One of the most telling letters for me, was Letter #19, in which Teresa recalls how both of them were perceived whilst traveling alone in Mexico. Here, Teresa states,

"How revolting we were, susceptible to ridicule, abuse, disrespect. We would have hoped for respect as human beings, but the only respect granted a woman is that which a gentleman bestows upon a lady. Clearly we were no ladies."(65)

Here, Teresa describes the illegitimacy of two women's affection toward one another, two women who have committed to being companions in travel, and as the letters reveal, companions in life. The sight of two women traveling without a 'gentleman' means that they are vulnerable, "revolting" to look at and disrespected, their love for each other illegitimate within Mexican society. As Teresa succintly puts it later in the letter, "The assumption here is that neither served as a legitimate companion for the other" (66). And that, conveniently brings us to the quote I began with. The assumption in Lillian Faderman's quote is that the two women are seen, accepted and respected as companions for one another. As Teresa reveals in her correspondence to Alicia, this isn't so. A cynic is one who "believes that human conduct is motivated wholly by self-interest"(Merriam-Webster dictionary),  in other words, a pessimist. The order in which I read the letters is intensely pessimistic, showcasing the hardest struggles that Teresa and Alicia have endured. Adopting my role as the "cynic reader" I wonder why Teresa didn't act on her love for Alicia more, why she didn't explore her desire for her further. I also doubt that the letters were even sent, some of them left unsigned, and all of them a one-sided correspondence. This reading left me with many questions, some of the material I'm still processing. I look forward to discussing it tomorrow with you all. 

Happy, cynical/conformist/quixotic reading!

-Angélica Becerra

Working out my issues!

The questions posted by la profe are ones that I have explored all of my life. I will have many posts for these two questions. One of the sources of my oppression is my biological family. I must use the descriptor "biological" because as a queer person of color, I have my own queer familia, one that I have constructed. This includes my cohort, whom I love dearly. My traumas begin with my parents. My mother because of her actions, my father because of his inactions. I have read "Loving..." several times, but Moraga's words haunt me. Am I a traitor because I desire men and, thus, will not procreate? Not to the extent that Moraga and other Chicanas are because as much as I work at discarding my male privilege, I must concede that I will always have it. How do I work at being the most radical woman-centered feminist man? I never say the "b" word. I never use another derogatory term for women popular in the gay male community. I do what I can for women-specific causes, e.g. I donate to Planned Parenthood, I have participated in a breast cancer run, I educated myself about the mujeres de Juárez (with the help of la profe), I teach my students about patriarchy and male privilege, and I worship lesbians of color. I know I should be doing more, but I have no time. That is no excuse. What I can do is to theorize a non-patriarchal, feminist-centered masculine identity. We need to teach men, particularly young, straight men, not to rape. That's all for now. I love this class!

Attention Team Gilda Stories

Hello fellow team members! Just wanted to remind everyone we will be meeting Wednesday around 1 at La Valle. Also, I found several interesting reviews on Gilda Stories. It really helped me see the novel from a different perspective. Warning: Spoiler Alert! Don't view the articles if you haven't started reading and don't want to be spoiled. See you next week!

http://www.examiner.com/review/experience-vampires-with-sophistication-read-the-gilda-stories-by-jewell-gomez

http://taliesinttlg.blogspot.com/2011/08/gilda-stories-review.html

- Katherine Batanero

First Team Meetings

Now that you've actually met your other team members and exchanged contact info, I expect to see a lot more activity on this blog. Only about half the class has actually signed up as a contributor to the blog, so at least those of you who have should start the blogging process. If you've never blogged before, the prospect can be a little daunting at first, but you soon get used to putting your thoughts out into cyberspace, and the important thing is that you can share ideas with each other outside the class that everyone else can look at and respond to on the site.

Because of the very public nature of blogs, however, we should keep our class discussions confidential, and comment on them only in the letters you write to each other (or on Moodle, which isn't public). However, questions and critiques of your own that you come to in your own reading or that your team comes up with are all fair game in the blogoverse.

I want EVERYBODY in the class to sign up as a contributor to the blog by the end of Week 3, at the very latest. Looking forward to our discussion of Ana Castillo's The Mixquiahuala Letters next week.

I leave you with a picture of Xena and Nunzilla, engaging in a little swordplay. Feel free to comment. Or maybe it will inspire a story of your own. You can, of course, use this site to try your hand at a little fiction, if you choose.

Profe