Also from this week’s PostSecret post:
Policing takes so many forms: humiliation, bullying, social ostracism, disrespect… and violence.
Policing October 26, 2008
subtitle: another Postsecret post. Yes, indeedy, I am fascinated by these cards.
In class the other day, we talked about those people who don’t feel they fit into the available social categories. What if, like Tiger Woods, you are both black and white, and choose not to choose one identity over the other? (In contrast, arguably Obama *has* made a choice to identify primarily as African American, even though he acknowledges his mixed identity too. Of course, given the power of phenotypical methods of identification used in the U.S., it is unsurprising to see Obama make that choice.)
When you choose not to choose, you are fighting against the social policing that asks you to choose. (I.e., questions of authenticity from the outside: are you black enough, white enough, feminine enough, etc.). Most of us on borders choose, then. We decide we’ll claim whiteness, or blackness, or straightness, etc. We choose in part because, as Foucault made clear in his work, outside forces of discipline naturally become inner forces of discipline and punishment. As individuals, we become determined to clarify which categories we fall into, because there are consequences when we are unplaced, unmoored from these dominant categories.
In my case, when I realized that I wasn’t being seen as Latina–and it was important to me that people saw me as such–I made sure to use the Spanish version of my name, and to practice my Spanish, and etc. etc. (As I’ve gotten older, I have to admit I have grown less worried and anxious about policing my identity. I feel more comfortable with it–and less frantic about how others see me.)
This postcard offers one of those moments where the author worries about not being seen as a woman, because she is so tall, which is not typically seen as a feminine attribute.
But what I find interesting about this postcard is that her worry is NOT that she’ll be seen as a masculine woman or, in that vein, a lesbian. She’s worried that people will think she’s a transvestite.
I’m not quite sure how to read this person’s anxiety–that she’ll be read as a man masquerading as a woman–except that clearly she is aware of a spectrum of gender… she’s not operating on the binary of male/female. However, she’s also –to me– invoking a set of fears about that spectrum of gender. It reminds me of a recent spate of blog posts I’ve seen recently about transgendered individuals in the media. It seems that transgender is the new frontier of “other” identities that make people question the stability of the social categories we use to organize our lives.
Postsecret-border secrets October 15, 2008
One of my not-so-secret addictions is the Postsecret site where you can see postcards that others have sent in about their secrets. Frank, the guy who started the whole phenomenon, has now published four books that collect all the secrets he receives.
I *love* these postcards. I am fascinated by their double-speak, the way they announce secrets at the same time that they preserve anonymity. Some secrets are funny, some are tender, and some are heartbreaking. Many, many, many deal with brown in that way that I talk about in my ‘about’ page: “a metaphor that starts in lo Latino–and in my particular mix of Mexican and American–but then also moves into considering and dismantling reified American identity politics.”
This week’s postcards were interesting, but this one stood out to me:
I can relate to this anxiety of reproduction–of wanting your children to feel more ‘at home’ than you did. I certainly had to defend my Latina identity during high school and college. I made sure I learned Spanish well in part as a defensive move. (“See! I AM Latina!”) Of course, this also has a lot to do with not feeling perfectly “white,” either (whatever whiteness means). So the postcard writer signals her own painful past, of not fitting in to her family/community the way she wanted to. And she passes that anxiety on to her imagined children. ‘Cause living in a borderlands feels hard enough without having your children go through the same identity confusion.
Interesting, too, that the picture the writer chooses is that of an apparently white baby. Of course, the baby might have Hispanic/Latino roots, but they are not visible/legible on his/her body. She/he is not phenotypically–stereotypically– Latino.
When I teach Latino Studies, I always try to help students get past the idea that Latinos all look a certain way. The expectation of the cloned body politic so easily bleeds into their expectations that all Latinos talk the same, think the same, feel the same.
So I want to tell that postcard writer that it’s ok. That Latinidad comes in a lot of different shapes and colors.
But I understand her. Because when you look like what your community expects, you belong more easily. When you don’t, you have to fight to belong.
As Gloria Anzaldúa says in her classic Borderlands/La Frontera:
Because I, a mestiza,
continually walk out of one culture
and into another.
because I am in all cultures at the same time,
alma entre dos mundos, tres, cuatro,
me zumba la cabeza con lo contradictorio.
Estoy norteada por todos las voces que me hablan
Simultáneamente.
The ambivalence from the clash of voices results in mental and emotional states of perplexity. Internal strife results in insecurity and indecisiveness. The mestiza’s dual or multiple personality is plagued by psychic restlessness.
What’s funny, when you think about it in historical terms, is that the postcard writer is striving towards brownness. Assimilation into whiteness is no longer desireable, as we might see in literature about passing of the early 20th century. Instead, the writer strives to assimilate, marry into brownness, into a cultural identity felt inside but invisible outside. The postcard suggests the dream of marrying a Latino man and having a Latino child; with that Latino family she will then feel less marginalized by her people.
