My final paper for a Chicana Feminist Theory class, where I immersed myself in feminism, praxis, and the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality.
The Reconstruction of Female Self
The Chicana is beginning to face true genesis and transformation through the power of praxis, poetry, and alliance with other third world women. However, she fights the legacy of the patriarchal woman. Social constructs formed by patriarchal rule work to suppress any idea of the female self, any exploration of one’s own power, and have successfully stripped the identity from the woman. The Chicana is in a marginalized group that is particularly affected by the dismantling of the individual. She struggles to know herself, pulled into two realms of self: the steadfast spirit of the erotic and the submissive good mother, socialized into creation. Feminist writing forcefully closes the gap between the two worlds, refining the relationship between woman and world, reinserting her into a life beyond the home. As we begin to redefine the relationship of the Chicana to the world, a new force occupies the borderlands. Creative writing threatens to make audible the silenced Chicana, challenge the traditional structure of family, and reclaim the bodies of women of color.
Third world women become allies through their shared intersectional oppressions. Chicanas involve themselves in the struggle of third world women as a way to amplify their voice and emphasize the political power of the creative social minority. During colonization racializing bodies became a necessary strategy for establishing supremacy. A body of color was easily distinguished, vilified, and sexualized. The medicalization and display of the female body of color during colonial expansion secured a tradition of violent dismemberment revolving around female sex. Anzaldua writes in The “Coatlicue State”, “Though darkness was ‘present’ before the world and all things were created, it is equated with matter, the maternal, the germinal, the potential… Now Darkness, my night, is identified with the negative, base and evil forces – the masculine order casting its dual shadow – and all these are identified with darkskinned people”(Anzaldua: 71). Here Anzaldua shows how the naturally feminine qualities of bodies and earth have been manipulated to represent evil forces.
The third world woman is constantly vilified and fetishized by men. The results of this are women internalizing this dehumanization by dismembering themselves, tearing apart their own images in an attempt to understand their constant feeling of incompletion. This emptiness is a void that lacks the feeling and joy of the erotic. Lorde writes, “When we live away from those erotic guides from within ourselves, then our lives are limited by external and alien forms, and we conform to the needs of a structure that is not based on human need, let alone the individuals.” (Lorde: 58) A body torn from the erotic and stripped of community faces the patriarchal world on her own. A lone body charged with intersectional inferiority has much to fear, and is epitomized as “the other” in American society, distancing her further from any sort of community. The efficiency of this classification is that it affects the victimized body on an individual level and on a communal level. While the individual struggles with internalized blame, hatred, and terror, the body in community suffers from a position of silence and invisibility.
The hyper sexualized woman challenged the indigenous tradition of equal political contributions from the sexes. As the patriarchy tainted woman’s relationship to her community through the rejection of sexual impurity, she was restricted to a more controlled role, eventually dismantling the matriarchy as a whole. Mexican culture today is rooted in post-imperialist patriarchal traditions, leaving women as politicized bodies, therefore something to be feared and controlled for the good of the community. The identity of the Chicana has been formed by language, stereotypes, and sex roles all decided and defined by the man’s political power. The all-encompassing “role” of the Chicana is a blueprint of stifled female existence beneficial to powerful men. What is the Chicana’s role in society? She is well bred, quiet, obedient, devoted, submissive, pure, domestic, and docile. “Hocicona, repelona, chismosa, having a big mouth, questioning, carrying tales are all signs of being mal criada. In my culture they are all words that are derogatory if applied to women – I’ve never heard them applied to men”(Anzaldua: 76). This restriction is a result of a woman’s sex, and is therefor a permanent fault of the woman never to be questioned or remedied. Her inferiorities are explicitly tied to her sexuality, and whether she is the virgin or the whore, she is ostracized.
With the “role” of women came a domestic specialization effective at for dominating and controlling women. Women’s sphere of influence was narrowed to the home, authoritative to none but her children. Within the home the mother is in charge of the maintenance of the house, care and nurturing of the children, and devotion to her husband. A woman is allowed to function within the construct of “the good mother”, a stereotype created to normalize the restricted influence of women. Her relationship to the world is all but destroyed, and her relationship to her husband and children will always be clouded by her compliance or defiance towards her role as “the good mother”. “The good mother” is self-sacrificing, taught to deny all wants and desires and remain faithful to the duties demanded by her family. Both the stifling effects of the intersectionality of “the other” as well as the pre-established lifestyle that comes with her role as “the good mother” denies the Chicana the chance to discover her true self.
“As women, we have come to distrust the power which rises from out deepest and nonrational knowledge. We have been warned against it all our lives by the male world, which values this depth of feeling enough to keep women around in order to exercise it in the service of men, but which fears the same depth too much to examine the possibilities of it within themselves” (Lorde: 53-54).
As patriarchy teaches women to suppress their voices, a reserve of power becomes lost and forgotten. This creates a submissive woman and a fortified man at the same time. “The good mother” is the ultimate embodiment of this suppressed power.
We cannot discuss the dismantling of women’s role as “the good mother” without understanding the polar role of the man. The Chicano rules over all matters of the home, granting or denying permissions to the wife and children. His authority is absolute and his will is unquestionable. We can argue that a being in a position of power will hold onto his power at all costs. The Chicano faces the unique plight of being denied any power in the American hierarchy, leaving him a victim of aspects of intersectionality. The oppressions of race, class, and sexuality wield great power over the marginalized mind. The Chicano is denied the privilege of manhood, stripping an entire race of their gender privilege. This causes a critical backlash within Chicano culture, where Chicano manhood still holds merit within the community and the home. The desire to compensate for the power they lack in political and economic representation is evident by the dominance men assert over their women within the home. This destructive imbalance of authority between men and women causes violent opposition to changes in women’s roles. In order for women to gain any power in the Chicano home and community, the men would need to give up some powers they currently posses. Fear permeates this potential shift in power. Women face the fear of attempting to gain power and failing. Men face the fear of losing their existing power. This fear dilutes the efforts to instill change within the Chicano community, which could potentially lead to change within the American hierarchy. The pen is one of the only weapons poignant enough to challenge the patriarchal tradition and redefine the relationship of women to family and community.
Third world women writers have recognized the power their truth instills in others. It is in the creative truth that oppressed bodies create discourse for transformation. Lorde writes, “For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we dedicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action” (Lorde: 37). This action takes root as we begin to redefine culture outside of the parameters of patriarchy and imperialism. La raza cosmica celebrates the blending of cultures, the mixing of peoples. It first recognizes its opposition to colonialism and systematic oppression and then continues to transform the culture into something new and constructive.
“A counterstance locks one into a duel of oppressor and oppressed; locked in mortal combat, like the cop and the criminal, both are reduced to a common denominator of violence… At some point, on our way to a new consciousness, we will have to leave the opposite bank, the split between the two mortal combatants somehow healed so that we are on both shores at once”(Anzaldua: 100).
Ending in opposition only goes so far as revolution. But when the existing structure falls and the revolutionaries are left without a plan, they have lost all sight of the original goal. The power of la mestiza lies in the scheming and collaborating, the exchange of ideas that result in action. This cultural mixing creates a people who defy borders and reject the Truth made to easily oppress bodies.
In a space where clarity is acclaimed and distinction is appreciated, blurring the lines of something as oppressive as race confuses and irritates white superiority. This attitude towards hybridity encourages flux in cultural appropriations. Anzaldua describes this as tolerance: “The new mestiza copes by developing a tolerance for contradictions, a tolerance for ambiguity” (Anzaldua: 101). It is the creative experience that allows such an understanding of ambiguity. The duality of Truth, men and women, dark and light, individual and collective, are constructs to be healed by a process of the soul. This process comes with love, the breaking of internal conflicts, and the urge to be heard. The new mestiza is called to destroy her role as woman, as mother, and reinsert herself into a relationship with the world. The dismantling of the Chicana’s role as “the good mother” denies her access to her culture, her race, her religion, and her land. As a woman free from her role, she enters a larger community of dispossessed people across the world. This is where the Chicana finds allies in third world women through writing. The utility of liberation becomes a utility of connection.
A family rooted in a patriarchal structure cannot withstand the change of a woman assuming a progressive relationship to family and community. When a woman shifts her role without the compliance of society, she is left with a neglected home and the reputation of betrayer. In order to support the new relationship of women with the world, the role of child-raiser must be dispersed throughout the family and community. With the assistance of men, community leaders, neighbors, and extended family, a woman could afford to be a powerful member of society while assisting in raising moral children. Community unity is essential not only to the well being of its children, but also to the financial strength and safety of the neighborhood. The affects of strengthening working-class communities would be sustainable and support the pull away from individualism towards a more representative collective Truth. The support of men and community are essential to women’s migration into the world. Men and community can be convinced of the importance of women reclaiming their relationships through the written testimonies of oppressed beings. Audre Lorde writes, “As we learn to bear the intimacy of scrutiny and to flourish within it, as we learn to use the products of that scrutiny for power within our living, those fears which rule our lives and form our silences lose their control over us” (Lorde: 36).
As Chicanas living under the oppressive forces of imperialism, we write as a form of rebellion. To write is to piece together our broken image of self. A woman who has come to know herself despite the forces breaking apart her identity is a powerful threat to the American hierarchy. The third world woman writer exposes the injustices of intersectionality by politicizing the personal. Her truth becomes Truth to all oppressed people, allowing them to speak words that contain power. “I could name at least ten ideas I would have found intolerable or incomprehensible and frightening, except as they came after dreams and poems” (Lorde: 37). As hatred and inferiority is internalized, our voices omit powerful ideas that are formed deep in our erotic subconscious. Writing is the fearless expression of that inner consciousness, the voice of a woman who has never known dismemberment or terror. This strong voice paired with the fragile, intimate experiences of the oppressed Chicana creates a narrative that speaks to those living in the borderlands, verifying their realities.
In Sister Outsider Audre Lordes speaks to the importance of feeling and joy within a craft. The third world woman writer is substantial because her craft entails using knowledge and information accessed through the erotic as a source of power. By understanding feelings and irrational thought, the erotic functions not as an agent of pleasure for the man, but as a source of affirmation and joy for the woman. The suppression of the erotic in the female body works as a tool to place sex and stimulation of men on a pedestal. The woman serves as a utility of physical stimulation, turning an erotic experience into one of pornography lacking joy and the attainment of knowledge. This distortion of sex and sexuality draws all power away from the woman. Accessing emotion through writing is a way to tap into the erotic, allowing it to permeate all aspects of self and satisfaction.
The new mestiza crosses boundaries of self by accessing the erotic in her life. This well of untapped power is essential to the cultural shifts of supporting a woman living outside the role of “the good mother”. By using erotic as a tool for expression and joy, both men and women will need to respond to shifts in power. The conscious woman will offer knowledge and wisdom imperative to the success of any great people. The specific consciousness of third world women will not only speak to the defiance of gender roles, but also will lead to the dismantling of institutions of race, class and sexuality. Sexuality will become joyful and expressive, void of empty pornographic distortion. Race will fall apart due to the celebration of the female in all its forms. Class distinctions will gain equality with the abolition of race and sexuality as tools to degenerate bodies.
The Chicana writer has the power to dismantle the long-standing imperialist structures of patriarchy and white supremacy. Through expression of personal truths, allies form in other women of color, family structures are challenged forming a new sense of community activism, and women will gain the power to reclaim their bodies through the wielding of the erotic as power. Women will continue to question their oppression, defying the silence forced upon them, making art that has the power to tip the balance of power. Lorde writes, “In the forefront of our move toward change, there is only poetry to hint at possibility made real”(Lorde: 39). The Chicana woman, the new mestiza, makes her transformation real by accessing her true self as a way to piece together the broken bodies of women in the world.
Works Cited
Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands: The New Mestiza = La Frontera. San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute, 1987. Print.
Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Trumansburg, NY: Crossing, 1984. Print.
Moraga, Cherríe, and Gloria Anzaldúa. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. New York: Kitchen Table, Women of Color, 1983. Print.
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