So anyways i'm doing this research for a prof whose writing a book and it's mainly been on racial identity but this week i was doing the section on gender identity and i came across a lot of really interesting stuff like the origins of gender identity and black feminist critical race theory. So critical race theory is basically this way of looking at the word of academia with they refer to as "the academy." And what it says is that the academy should acknowledge that they are a hegemonic system that is not promoting objective knowledge but rather a one sided Eurocentric perspective on learning. It promotes European American male values and presupposed that they are the right way of being. And when women enter these academies they are forced to subconsciously or consciously suppress their femininity. Well Black feminist critical race theory takes it a little further and says that Feminism itself is a hegemonic way of looking at womanhood as it promotes ideals of the upper middle class white woman. But what about other ways of being a good and right woman? so anyways i read this awesome quote that really resonated.
"The price of good education, a euro american education, in short, was, and still is, the denial of one's Black cultural identity. This is the price of entry to the middle class. It is this legacy of education as a double edged sword that creates a similar suspicion towards black teachers on the part of black students as exists on the part of the black community towards black members of the police force. The presence of black faces does not changes the essential nature of an institution, nor does it alter it's ethos
All that talk about suppressing minority women's voices made me wonder how much of who i am has been silenced at one point or another. In many ways i feel that to get to where i am i had to hide a lot of myself growing up. I had to act a certain way to make myself desirable to my teachers. I had to not be mexican and not be loud and prove that i was as good as the guys. All that shit. I kept the real me for my homelife and my family. And when i got to college i made a promise to myself that i would not be someone that i didn't want to be anymore. So i just let myself be, and that was probably where all of my issues started because i had been suppressing all these various aspects of myself for so long. But whatever, it was for the best.
Ok so anyways this got me thinking about the gays, my gays and how they have really made my life better. Initially I was reading some basic gender identity developmet stuff talking about when the concept of "gender" starts to form. At about 7 kids start to have a sense of gender permanance where they realize that it is unchangeable. It is at this age that kids start to hang out with their own gender and all of this start to perpetuate commonly held gender social roles of how to be. So girls will play with other girls and boys with boys and so on. I was thinking about this time period and i remember having female friends and then i remember not having them. And i was thinking of why this happened. My first pre school friend was Ryan, a mo. We were bff and then that whole gender thing hit and i had a few girl friends but at a really young age i realized that hanging out with girls was not fun. I found it to be really limitting. Girls would say things like "we can't do that, that's for boys." And when you hung out with all girls guys treated you a certain way, like they were better than you. And i always thought that was dumb. Thus began my love affair with the gays. I have this distinct memory of one of my first gay friends in 1st grade bringing his my little pony to school. he got so much shit for it from everyone. Other kids would say, "you cant' play with that! that's for girls!" and i remember kind of admiring him because his response was "so waht. i want to play with it." The gays weren't the weird kids to me. They were my friends, the only ones who let me be who i wanted to be. I wasn't "Cristina, a girl.' I was just me, and i loved that about them. And to me they weren't guys, they were just my friends. We acknowledged each others underlying humanity. And i remember as we hit puberty and i started getting crushes on guys it always bugged me how straight men treated me different. I had to act a certain way around them. I couldnt' let them know that i was smart and funny and stuff. I just wanted to be treated like me, and liked for who i was regardless of whether i had boobs or was thin. The gays accepted me and for that i am forever grateful. They made me who i am today. And actually i think my issues with straight men all stem from these early relationships i had with gay men. And this is probably why I am still friends with gay men. They reaffirm who i am, who i really am. And i don't have to be the ideal woman or worry that they won't want me if i talk to much or have an opinion. So some of you have probably heard me talk about my hate for women who claim to be fag hags but really they just use the gays because they want to say they have a gay friend. this little tale i told you tonight is why i hate them! The reality is true hagdome runs deep. A real hag loves her gays because being with them is like being home. Not because they dress well and can dance. So to all you fake hags out there i have 2 words for you.
YOU SWEAR!
So in conclusion, this one is for all you queens out there who through your struggles and unconditional friendships made me who i am today. A hot hot mess of a woman.
1 comment:
this was just all a bit too much. i am just friends with the gays cuz i am a closeted lesbian. simple as that.
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