VivirLatino

So this woman has received death threats for doing *exactly* what we’ve been told we’re supposed to do–i.e. have lots of babies and don’t ever ever abort never ever because then you would be a murderer and not a real supporter of life and femininity.

I’ve wondered for a while if this woman was a woman of color or queer or something because unlike other women who’ve had tons of children, she’s been getting flack from the beginning. Now we know that at the very least she is a single mother (horrors of horrors), and still has to go through school. Is that what has got everybody all in a tizzy? That she’s a single mother? Well, let’s see:

So that’s…woman, living with parents, no husband, no job. If she has all those things, would she be allowed to have kids with no rich white male media makers calling for her to have her children taken away from her? I wonder, could it be possible that this woman could be a good mother even if she *is* a woman that lives with her parents and has no husband or a job?

Choosing to abort a fetus means you are a bad woman, choosing to have a child means you are a bad mother. Either way, it’s the woman that gets screwed. What tests will men have to pass before they’re allowed to have kids without being threatened on national television?

When I first came to Chicana feminism, I felt much the same way Bianca did. I lived in the Midwest, so I had only heard of “chicana” in a very passing sense. Nobody knew what the word meant exactly (are you a Mexican from Chicago?), and nobody explained that there had been a whole group of women that had etched out a fierce commentary against the sexism and violence they were subjected to, even living in “radical” communities. As I tripped around more and more with the Chicana feminist community, I gradually got to feeling more comfortable in my own skin–but even today, I identify more with this than I do with Chicana feminists:

When I first started to hear about “Latina Feminisms” it was presented to me as “Chicana Feminisms.” I was initially resistant to the terms “Hispanic” and “Latina” for numerous reasons, but primarily because I KNEW how restrictive and exclusive the terms were. Today, I’ll identify as “Latina” in communal settings (hence the title of this site) and for collective purposes, but I’m more connected to Caribbean communities. You see, when I was finding my way I was pushed away from “Hispanic” and Latino spaces and embraced without question by Caribbean peoples. I was raised in a Caribbean home, not a Latin@ one.

I was so unclear of the terminology as nobody had told me what the term Chicana/Xicana represented or how it was created. For a very long time in such discussions, I felt excluded. I felt like US feminisms had been expanded, but only for US Black women and Chicanas. How could all of the activism of women from the Caribbean have been excluded?

I felt like “Chicana” meant “California” or “Texas”–absolutely NOT Michigan or South Dakota or Idaho etc. My experience did not include “border” except in a more marginal sense. And I absolutly did not and in many ways, *still* do not know how to negotiate a more open space for myself and other Chicanas like me in Chicana/Latina feminism.

But yet, I firmly feel that it’s SO necessary that we *do* negotiate that space. That women who are in some way connected to each other through the assimmilation, immigration, colonization experiences come together and organize and talk. And name experiences.

I don’t know if that’s possible. We are SO varied, and SO different. Can there be a Latina feminism? Specifically, can there be a Latina feminist *movement* that reaches not just certain regions, but all of the U.S.? And maybe even our homelands?

What do you think?