QUEERING THE GAME OF LIFE

trash-woman:

LA RAZA!

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Chicana liberal feminism centers on women’s desire to enhance the well-being of the Chicano community, with a special emphasis on improving the status of women… They believe, however, that Chicana subordination can be redressed through institutional reforms that improve Chicanas’ access to education, employment, and opportunity. They emphasize bringing Chicanas into the political and social mainstream…

Chicana Insurgent Feminism draws on a tradition of radical thought and political insurgency… This perspective locates the source of Chicana oppression within the cultural expressions and social institutions of a hierarchically stratified society. Reminiscent of Chicano cultural nationalism, the informant cited above calls for Chicana self- determination which encompasses a struggle against both personal and institutional manifestations of racial discrimination, patriarchy, and class exploitation… In general, Chicana Insurgent Feminism engages in a critique that calls for the radical restructuring of society. Chicanas voice commitment to developing alternative theories, empowerment through political insurgency, and social action to realize Chicana self-determination…

Chicana Liberal Feminism accepts the premise that the life chances of Chicanas can be enhanced through programs aimed at incorporating them into all facets of existing social institutions while fostering changes through established political processes… Chicana Insurgent Feminism provides the most sweeping analysis of domination based on class, race/ethnicity, and sex/gender. Those who fall into this category question the value of social integration by offering a vision of society that requires a revolutionary transformation, placing gender liberation as a prerequisite to human liberation.

Beyond Indifference and Antipathy: The Chicana Movement and Chicana Feminist Discourse, Denise A. Segura and Beatriz M. Pesquera

I feel like this clearly differentiates between radical and liberal and that is something I always have trouble wording

yaqui1991:

firme chicanas at the car show

lowrider 1981

wonder where they at now?

(via rosadefuego)

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Why do they fight us? Because they think we are dangerous beasts? Why are we dangerous beasts? Because we shake and often break the white’s comfortable stereotypic images they have of us: the Black domestic, the lumbering nanny with twelve babies sucking her tits, the slant-eyed Chinese with her expert hand — “They know how to treat a man in bed,” the flat-faced Chicana or Indian, passively lying on her back, being fucked by the Man a la La Chingada.

The Third World woman revolts: We revoke, we erase your white male imprint. When you come knocking on our doors with your rubber stamps to brand our faces with DUMB, HYSTERICAL, PASSIVE PUTA, PERVERT, when you come with your branding irons to burn MY PROPERTY on our buttocks, we will vomit the guilt, self-denial and race-hatred you have force-fed into us right back into your mouth.

We are done being cushions for your projected fears. We are tired of being your sacrificial lambs and scapegoats.

Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa, Speaking In Tongues: A Letter to 3rd World Women Writers (via sinidentidades)

PhD student Iris Lucero presented research showing that media images, like the one above, “promote Chicanas as one-dimensional, inconsequential and unacquainted with Eurocentric standards of beauty.”

Lucero’s research, conducted along with fellow UCLA student Maria Olivares Pasillas, focuses on how teacher perceptions of student styles - specifically so-called “sharpie eyebrows” - impacts their expectation of those students. Basing their study on Critical Race Theory, Olivares Pasillas and Lucero argue that such perceptions put students at a deficit in the classroom, thus impacting their educational potential and opportunities. A similar study at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, “Brains, Brow and Booty: Latina Iconicity in U.S. Popular Culture,” came up with the same findings. Essentially, what both studies revealed is that teachers shouldn’t judge a student strictly by their style.

(Source: tierracita)

nueva-bordena:

fyqueerlatinxs:

On Actually Keeping Queer Queer: A response to Cherríe Moraga

Cherríe Moraga’s essay, entitled “Still Loving in the (Still) War Years: On Keeping Queer Queer,” is a two-part essay that was first published in 2009. The first part is a brilliantly written critique on the mainstream gay rights movement’s focus on marriage equality. The second part is a misguided and misinformed attack on the trans* community in general and the transmasculine community in particular. Moraga is well known within QTPOC activist circles and the purpose for this response is to facilitate an inter-generational dialogue that is both effective and salient. I want to bring our best to the table by continuing to challenge and critique, while at the same time to honor and recognize those that have come before. In short, I want to change the world and the only way to do that is to work together.

In the first half of the essay, Moraga outlines how the gay rights movement is flawed in its mostly white, single-issue politics. She says that the movement is “prompted by the entitlement of race and class” which the mostly white queer proponents of the movement possess.  In other words, she states that the contemporary gay rights movement seeks not to challenge those systems of power that keep people oppressed, which is what it’s original aim was, but instead desires to assimilate into those very systems- both as individuals and as a movement.  Moreover, she argues that the movement fails to recognize the way white queers are implicit in the cultural imperialism involved in transnational adoption and “the support of immigrant rights for gay couples but not for migrant workers”…

continue reading

[Submitted by kararikue]

A real badass Transwoman wrote this, and I totally recommend it.  In fact, this shit should be required reading for Chicanos/as/@s.

(Source: xQsimagazine.com)

I’m Done

nueva-bordena:

This seems more relevant now that this whole “cotton ceiling” thing has gone around.

I’m done identifying as “Trans*”.  I’m done trying to force my way into these movements and groups that are so overwhlemingly white.  I’ve already spent three years trying to, I don’t plan to spend the next ten or twenty doing the same.  I’m exhausted from fighting for acceptance outside of the trans* group, I don’t see any need to keep fighting within that group.  I don’t see why I should try to be included in a space that works so ardently to keep me and people like me out.  It’s a waste of my time, and I believe it will ultimately be hurtful to myself and others like me.

Don’t be surprised, the entire trans “consciousness” comes from a place of incredible whiteness.  Not only from its attempts for inclusion within the lesbian and gay movements, but within its discourse.  Kate Bornstein, Leslie Feinberg, Riki Wilchins, S. Bear Bergman, and Julia Serano are all white.  The people defining my identity and supposed community are all white, we share nothing in terms of culture or ideology.  In fact, the reason I celebrated finding Feinberg and Bornstein was because they were such a good alternative to the dominant, ALSO incredibly white, narrative when I was first coming to terms with my gender.  This is like rejoicing at finding a band-aid after being stabbed, because the dominant narrative had me questioning all the time what I was, whether I was trans enough, whether I was feminine enough to even be trans, all that bullshit.  I didn’t feel any kind of peace within myself until I read Gloria Anzaldua’s “Borderlands/La Frontera” at UTEP.  Until then, I had been combing through what Feinberg and Bornstein had written in hopes of making sense of my gender. 

And if I remember right, Jameson Green said that the term “transgender” was thought up by Virginia Prince, someone who didn’t believe people should have access to surgeries,  and who denied gay men and transwomen entry into the organizations she created. Why would I chose to use a label to describe myself that was created by someone who would hate means hate my use of it? Ignoring that history is one of the most problematic things I could do, and I’m not accommodating or excusing anyone by contributing to that. In fact, the only word I really identify with is “Mestiz@”, and within that I don’t need a signifier for my gender, the “@” does that for me. To me, that single letter, or symbol, I guess, shows how I am a combination of male of female, and how my understanding of “male” and “female” are based in Chicanism@.

Ademas, the people who I look up to as my TPOC ancestors didn’t identify as Trans*. Even Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson identified as drag queens and transvestites. Y Sylvia even said in an entrevista that she only identifies as herself. We, and I do mean ‘we’ because I’ve done this myself, ascribe transness to her postmortem because that’s the understanding of the space she occupied that we have today. Maybe she would have argued with that. So my history isn’t something I share with white trans people, and with that goes my last theoretical connection to white trans people. Because really, we have no more in common than I do with the average white cis person, except for some of our medical histories. I realize this means that I’ll have to create a community for myself, to find new ways of defining myself that don’t exist in white queerness, and I intend to. I will (re)create a space in Latinidad for myself and people like me. And I will never give up on that.

I’m going to continue my work.  I’m going to keep working for Trans* rights and TPOC.  I’m going to dedicate my life to doing everything I can to help those communities, because it’s the least they need.  It’s the least I can do.

So nothing’s different, really, except now everyone knows.  And everyone saw me call you out.

chicanoarthistory:

Mari Hernandez. Self Portrait. 2012

ofanotherfashion:

Photographs of 1940s White servicemen dancing with and kissing White women are a familiar part of our cultural imagination but non-White American men also served during both World Wars. This photograph is a stunning reminder of this aspect of U.S. history. Here, two Mexican American men (at least one of whom is a serviceman) pose with their sweethearts in 1940. (The railing is an in-studio prop.)

Notice the floral design peeking out between the life preserver on the woman’s skirt. Its placement seems almost purposeful, as if she wanted to make certain that the prop didn’t obstruct a view of her lovely skirt. Style matters - even, or perhaps especially, when posing with one’s sweetheart.

Credit: Los Angeles Public Library

(via rentless-mistress)

"And if going home is denied me, then I will have to stand and claim my space, making a new culture — una cultura mestiza — with my own lumber, my own bricks and mortar and my own feminist architecture."

—Gloria Anzaldua

My life mantra: I hand wrote this out recently and pinned it on the wall facing my bed so I can wake and sleep to this message. 

(via corigami)

(Source: tierracita)

New tumblr for Jot@s—Queer chican@s!

joteria:

We were tired of not seeing our vibrant community visible on tumblr. 

Reblog this so we can create a community of fuerte jot@s!

Que vive Joteria!