Latino Heritage Month Meets Reproductive Justice & Sexual Health: Focus on Rigoberta Menchú Tum

Cross posted from my RH Reality Check Blog

For Latino Heritage Month I’d like to try to expand our understanding and conversations about Latino sexuality during this month. Read previous people highlighted: Gloria Anzaldúa and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva.


Dr. Rigoberta Menchú Tum
Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Activist

Activist and Guatemalean k’iche’ woman, Dr. Rigoberta Menchú has been a figure of resistance for many people in the Americas, especially indigenous communities. As some people my age, I was first introduced to Menchú through her book: Me llamo Rigoberta Menchu y asi me nacio la conciencia/II, Rigoberta Menchú. An Indian Woman in Guatemala published in 1983 when she was in her early twenties (and published in over 10 different languages).

At the time that I was assigned to read her book, almost twenty years ago, I did not completely appreciate the work she had done so early in her life. There were times when I actually complained about having to read her text, and I think that may have been connected to my own ignorance about the various forms of oppressions that occur(ed) in the Americas. I was also not really trying to hear all the Simón Bolívar Pan-American ideologies because I thought it too easily excluded Pan-African ideologies and that meant excluding me.

Today, I realize that her story continues to remind us that young people are powerful, and able to create and achieve social change. Having survived the murder of her parents, the Civil War in Guatemala that lasted over three decades (1960-1996), taught herself Spanish and other indigenous languages, and being the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner (awarded in 1992), Menchú is an amazing force for change. I’m reminded that youth can endure an amazing amount of terror and trauma and still heal. Often as adults, we need to remember this because sometimes we forget and project our ways of coping and healing onto youth, which may not be what they need.

As one of the founding members of the Nobel Women's Initiative, Menchú is one of six women from all over the world who have received the Nobel Peace Prize. The mission of the Nobel Women’s Initiative is described as follows:

It is the heartfelt mission of the Nobel Women's Initiative to work together as women Nobel Peace Prize Laureates to use the visibility and prestige of the Nobel prize to promote, spotlight, and amplify the work of women's rights activists, researchers, and organizations worldwide addressing the root causes of violence, in a way that strengthens and expands the global movement to advance nonviolence, peace, justice and equality. We accomplish this mission through three main strategies: convening, shaping the conversation, and spotlighting and promoting.

The Vision of the Nobel Women's Initiative is a world transformed, a nonviolent world of security, equality and well-being for all.

She’s been awarded over 30 honorary degrees from universities all over the world. But most importantly, and how I see her fitting into conversations of reproductive justice and sexual health, is how she shared the story of her community in her autobiography and how she responded to the criticisms.

When anthropologist David Stoll decided to research and disprove some inaccuracies of Menchú’s story, his argument was set in the ideology that we can only speak about things we have experienced intimately. When Stoll discovered that some of Menchú’s testimonio was not completely true, he failed to recognize the importance of the collective narrative and testimonio. Menchú has stated numerous times that her story is the story of her people. I very much appreciate this response to his critique and it really has impacted my work in ethnography and research as well.

Although many may be on the same page with Stoll not recognizing the importance of a shared narrative, many of us still refuse to recognize how imperative it remains. I’ve noticed that when people share their own testimonios, even those that we know are not unique to just one person, people still attempt to debunk in those narratives. For some reason people have more to say about people’s personal stories than about any other stories. All I need to do is look at the articles I’ve written here where I’ve gotten the most responses and they are all personal testimonios.

How will our ability to do intake, research, and create programs for communities expand when we embrace the reality that for many people, sharing a narrative is also a way of sharing the story and history of their community? How will this bring up new challenges in how to embrace these shared stories? How can we do this yet refrain from essentializing a community and recognize the differences and complexities for each individual? Finally, when will we in the reproductive justice movement recognize that government violence is not something that happens outside US borders, it happens here at “home” too? We have a collective history of governmental violence and violation that we have inherited. How are we making sure we recognize this history and work to maintain such oppressions do not find themselves here again?

As Menchú has stated: “We are not myths of the past, ruins in the jungle, or zoos. We are people and we want to be respected, not to be victims of intolerance and racism.”

Foto credit: Fundación Rigoberta Menchú Tum

Support “To The Other Side of Dreaming”

Support “To The Other Side of Dreaming”

In a flash of bold courage and brave vision Mia Mingus and Stacey Milbern began a journey of possibility the likes of which the world... well at least we’d never seen. “..two queer disabled diasporic Korean women of color in the process moving from the South to the Bay to create home and community with each other”?! While surely such a phenomena cannot be new to the universe, have YOU ever heard of such an amazingly beautiful thing?!

This radical act of love and reclamation cannot be performed alone. The costs of moving from coast to coast is daunting for anyone, yet even more daunted when dealing with the realities of our able-bodied and inaccessible world.

In an effort to lend our support to two of our favorite people we are working to help them raise the $12,000 necessary to make their dream a reality.

Energized by the collective spirit that their move embodies, we are calling on our communities to support their vision by giving what ever you can give!

Let’s put our money where our Disability Justice rhetoric is!

As Mia writes, “the reality that once we're there, there aren't even going to be that many places we can go to, get into, be with people in. Will we be able to go over to people's houses to build with them outside of public spaces (the limited accessible public spaces that is)? the knowledge that what we are doing here is finding not just space for us, but for community as well. we are finding home to be intimate with people in, to be queer in, to be women of color in. we are making accessible queer space, accessible queer people of color space, accessible disabled queer people of color space, for all of us; something that i have been yearning for for what seems like forever. places where we can begin to build past these concrete divides of stairs, money, bathrooms, doorways, reading, speaking...silence and exclusion.”

Don’t you want to be a part of this awesome vision?! Don’t you want to build this amazing inclusive community?!

We thought so! So here’s how!

Chip In!

$12,000 is a lot of money but it’s the actual, for real, no frills, cost to get Mia and Stacey to the bay.

* For Stacey and PA to go out to see a house and/or continue house/housing hunting on next trip flight for two - $750
* PA gas and tolls to get to Mia’s house in ATL- $150
* PA food for a week - $125
* PA pay ($150 x 5 days) - $750
* For Mia to go out to the bay again to either do the walk through (since the house won't be ramped yet) or go and continue looking for housing since Stacey won't be able to go and look at most things to see if they can be modified to be made accessible flight - $300

House alterations (if they get this house):

* Main ramp: $1,215
* Home modifications: $500

* Personal care attendants at 8 hrs a day $15 a hour for 2 months: $7320. This will be for the 2 months (we hope it's only 2 months!) when Stacey is moving her state services over to CA.
* Taxi from airport because of no access to van: $40
* Extra crip baggage: $50
* Shipping our stuff: $800

But building collective disability community... priceless!

If you’d like your contribution to correspond with one of the above needs, let us know by leaving us a note with your donation!

And of course, money isn’t the only way you can help! Check out these other creative fundraising ideas that folks have come up with!

* Etsy Sale - Join Teukie Jae in creating jewelry to sell w/ all proceeds going to The other side of dreaming
* Thaura Zine Distro Sale for The Other Side of Dreaming - people are selling books from their personal libraries to make it happen!

If you have other ideas (like you’ve got a moving truck or you and friends can build a ramp) please email us at totheothersideofdreaming@gmail.com!

In radical love,

the Quirky Commune aka 2/3 or simply, Moya & Yolo

The Beautiful Ones

After having a convo with my homegirl Sparkle, I have realized there is some kind of pattern: men of Color are not valuing themselves, are not putting their healing as a priority, and thus are not willing to give themselves permission to accept and receive the love we, radical women of Color, have to give them.

The Beautiful Ones always smash the picture; always; every time.

So why do these beautiful men of Color that we love and adore limit their transformation and healing? Better yet, what does this resistance result in for each of us? How are we changed? Unchanged?

The Beautiful Ones you always seem to lose.

I hope these beautiful men of Color do not allow themselves to be lost. And when they are ready they find another radical woman of Color who is willing to fill them with all the love, support, and acceptance and nourishment they need but did not allow themselves to accept from us. I hope someone is present for them in the ways they need.

Maybe they know too well that our love is exactly what they need but are not ready to transform for whatever reason. Maybe they know exactly what they are doing by resisting us, but are unaware of the consequences.

You were so hard to find.

Maybe they have no idea how rare it is that radical women of Color like Sparkle and I are filled with such love, affection, loyalty, and desire for one person in such a way that they don't realize the amazing and unique gift it is.

I may not know where I'm going, I may not know what I need, One thing's for certain, I know what I want.

I want you.

We want you. But you got to want to be wanted. You got to want to transform and heal with us, not for us.

Latino Heritage Month Meets Reproductive Justice & Sexual Health: Focus on Eduardo Bonilla-Silva

Cross posted from my RH Reality Check Blog

For Latino Heritage Month I’d like to try to expand our understanding and conversations about Latino sexuality during this month. Read my last post that highlighted Gloria Anzaldúa.


Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, PhD
Professor, Sociologist, Activist

In 2005 when I was pursuing a PhD in Women’s Studies I read a book in a graduate seminar I took at the University of Maryland with Dr. Patricia Hill Collins. Dr. Collins had been appointed to the Sociology Department and our class was called Critical Race Theory and included 15 graduate students. It was a small intimate class that met for 3 hours once a week. It was in that class that I was introduced to the work of Dr. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva.

His book Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States has been a book that I’ve gone back to again and again while doing work in sexual health and reproductive justice. Bonilla-Silva is an Afro-Puerto Rican scholar living in the US and focusing his work on racial stratification. His original goals for his research may not be centered in reproductive justice, but his findings have an impact on the work we are doing.

As a faculty member at Duke University, Bonilla-Silva has continued the work he has begun with Racism Without Racists and I remember vividly when I received his latest book, an anthology with Tukufu Zuberi, in the mail: White Logic, White Methods: Racism and Methodology. This anthology is an amazing contribution to the field of qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods data collection. Not only does it provide a critical analysis of how methodology limits certain narratives and experiences from being examined and collected, it also highlights how scholars of Color are forging a space to make methodology work in ways that are more inclusive and less oppressive. I wonder how many, if any, researchers and writers at major inter/national reproductive and sexual health organizations have read this text prior to continuing to collect and examine data.

In Racism Without Racists, Bonilla-Silva conducts several interviews over a period of time about people’s thoughts regarding race and “race relations” in the US. One part of his research is devoted to talking with White people from various class backgrounds and geographic locations. What draws me to his work again and again are his findings on/with working class White women in the US. He writes:

“…[Y]oung, working-class women** are the most likely candidates to be racial progressives. This finding contradicts the claims of most of the media and scholars (from Theodore Adorno’s The Authoritarian Personality onward), who contend “racists” are poor or working-class whites. These commentators contend poor whites project their fears, their sense of losing out, and their concerns with demographic, civil, and political changes in America onto racial minorities” (p. 132).

I can't recall where or who told me, but I do remember being told that working-class and working-poor White people were rarely on television or interviewed in the media because they do not have the knowledge or ability to mask their bias and racism. The stereotype that working-class and working-poor Whites are all racists regardless of geographic location is erroneous when utilizing a gendered lens, especially based on what Bonilla-Silva found. When I read Bonilla-Silva’s book I realized this stereotype is deep and still oppressive. He states, “[p]reliminary analysis of survey and interview data from these two projects suggest that younger, educated, middle-class people are more likely than older, less-educated, working-class people to make full use of the resources of color-blind racism***” (p. 71). This is a great example of how power is misused and affects us all.

If we recognize this in the work we are doing with White youth, how does our work shift with the conversations around reproductive justice and sexual health? Are we addressing the ideas of the “younger, educated, middle-class” people taking more advantage of race neutrality than their “older, less-educated, working-class people”? This is a shift when “younger, educated, middle-class” White people were who helped push a Civil Rights and Human Rights agenda forward decades ago. What would a program dedicated to “older, less-educated, working-class” white people look like and how would it be received by a provider/doctor/practitioner/educator of Color? Would it be similar to how Dr. Woodrow Myers, a Black male doctor, was received in 1987 who discussed HIV and AIDS in the US on an Oprah in West Virginia? What would happen if nationally supported comprehensive sexuality education curricula recognized class, ethnicity, race, immigration status, and how they intersect versus only focusing on sexual orientation and gender diversity?

Bonilla-Silva states that among respondents, most of them “admitted they had problems with interracial marriage in the interviews brandished a laissez-faire or color-blind view on love.” He discusses interracial marriage and dating in depth and states:

“Love was described as a matter of personal choice between two people and, thus, as no one else’s business because ‘love conquers all obstacles’… Yet, this endorsement of color blindness in romantic relationships cannot be interpreted in a straightforward manner. Most respondents qualified their support in such a way or lived such segregated lifestyles and their laissez-faire positions on this subject seem empty. Furthermore, too many whites express an aversion for blackness (‘negrophobia’) that casts doubt on their professed color blindness.” (p. 117, emphasis in original)

What assumptions do we as providers/educators/practitioners make about how and with whom our clients partner? One finding that Bonilla-Silva explores in depth after his interviews is the idea of working-class White women as committing “racial treason” because they are the most racially progressive of their cohorts.

“In this chapter I profiled white racial progressives…I found that young, working-class women are more likely than any other segment of the white community to be racially progressive. They were more likely to support affirmative action and interracial marriage, have close personal relations with minorities in general and blacks in particular, and understand that discrimination is a central factor shaping the life chances of minorities in this country. Most also admitted that being white is an advantage in this country” (p.144).

How have our experiences trying to build community and resources across race and ethnicity in the reproductive justice movement worked (or not worked)? I know I have very specific experiences which continue to this day, and I wonder how this ideology of racial treason, but in professionally and activist circles the practical part of this may get tangled. More so, how have some of us, people of Color, embraced a race neutral discourse in the movement? How do we begin to hold one another accountable while also building with one another at the same time?

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva has given us information, frameworks, and tools to begin conversations to create and build change, how can we use them in our movement? How are we limited or limiting ourselves?

** Bonilla-Silva’s qualitative interviews included transgender women and their beliefs and values are included in these findings.

***I am not a fan of the ablest term “color-blind racism” as it positions people with disabilities as being the “same” as people who embrace a race neutral ideology, which is a form of racism. I use the term because it is a direct quote. Instead, I will use the term “race neutral/ality.”



foto credit: Afro Presencia

Open Letter To Tyler Perry

Cross posted from my Media Justice column

Dear Tyler Perry,

I hope you are doing well because I really don’t want to even write this letter. I’ve actually delayed in writing you because I really do love writing and sending letters and fun things in the mail to my friends. As my homegirl Erika Lopez wrote in her book Flaming Iguanas: “It’s almost love, and sometimes it really is love. It means someone thought of you for more than the fifteen seconds it took to dial your number and leave the message for you to call them back.” Snail mail is a dying form of media and I seek to keep it going for as long as I can!

And I want to be clear that I don’t love you in the ways that the mail I send often transmits to its recipients. I do love you as a man of Color who is a survivor and a media maker. I don’t love the media that you make. It’s just not the media I need in my life to help me find affirmation, support, courage, and a desire to continue the work I am doing. I do find in your media more work for me to do. I’ve used some of your films in conversations, yet often those conversations are to deconstruct and critically examine the manipulation of gender, race, class, ethnicity, location, religion and choice as presented in your films.

So let me be clear: Please don’t (continue to) misuse your power. You’ve built an empire in the institution of “Hollywood” which is rare and a huge accomplishment. There is a lot of power that you have and whether you like it or not, that means that you may have power over people too. In building your empire (and history has shown us that “every empire eventually cease to be” as the Welfare Poets noted on their track “Color Me Red”), you’ve created what my homegirl Sparkle has called a “one stop shop.”

Unfortunately, the choices that one stop shop has made have been less than exceptional. I mean the posters for the film are horrendous! And why did you make the decision to have all the characters have their hair straightened (minus Whoopi who wears a head scarf for what seems to be the entire time)? For WHY?

When I thought about completing the writing of this letter it was because I began to reread a book that I did not enjoy on my first read: Avery Gordon’s “Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination.” Gordon writes about the idea of complex personhood and it really helped me to figure out why the work you do is important to so many people. As my homegirl Aiesha, aka Super Hussy, mentioned several months ago on Twitter (I’m paraphrasing): “Tyler Perry films fill a specific need for some people.” She describes complex personhood as the following:

“complex personhood is the second dimension of the theoretical statement that life is complicated. Complex personhood means that all people (albeit in specific forms whose specificity is sometimes everything) remember and forget, are beset by contradiction, and recognize and misrecognize themselves and others. Complex personhood means that people suffer graciously and selfishly too, get stuck in the symptoms of their troubles, and also transform themselves. Complex personhood means that even those called ‘Other’ are never never that. Complex personhood means that the stories people tell about themselves, about their troubles, about their social worlds, and about their society’s problems are entangled and weave between what is immediately available as a story and what their imaginations are reaching toward. Complex personhood means that people get tired and some are just plain lazy. Complex personhood means that groups of people will act together, that they will vehemently disagree with and sometimes harm each other, and that they will do both at the same time and expect the rest of us to figure it out for ourselves, intervening and withdrawing as the situation requires. Complex personhood means that even those who haunt our dominat institutions and their systems of value are haunted too by things they sometimes have names for and sometimes do not. At the very least, complex personhood is about conferring the respect on others that comes from presuming that life and people’s lives are simultaneously straightforward and full of enormously subtle meaning” (p. 4-5).

So in the spirit of complexity, I’m trying to meet you where you are at, or where you allow me to meet you at.

There have been many people in my life who have written about you and what you are doing and I see no need to redo what has already been done. I do want to thank you for at least two things: recognizing that people of Color, especially Black people’s stories are important and valuable. I also thank you for reminding me that I must embrace completely texts that changed my life and the life of so many people I surround myself with on a regular basis. “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Was Enuf” is a text and piece of art I used to teach and now I’m going to continue to do so because it’s important for everyone to be exposed to the artifact and let it speak to them on their terms versus having the text constructed for them in a particular way.

Power with, not power over.

Sincerely,
Bianca

For those of you who have yet to see the trailer for this film check it out below:

National Sexual Freedom Day

Today, September 23, is the first annual National Sexual Freedom Day. It is also the 144th anniversary of the Grito de Lares. There is so much irony in this day being held on the same day as Puerto Rico’s only attempt at independence.

When I think of a colonized body, how we put restrictions on what we, and other people can do with their own bodies, this, to me, speaks to the purpose of the Grito de Lares. I also think to the ideas of decency and what is proper, and how US presence shifted those ideologies in Puerto Rico and scholar Eileen J. Suárez Findlay writes about in her book Imposing Decency: The Politics of Sexuality and Race in Puerto Rico, 1870-1920. Findlay discusses how Whiteness was/is valued and connected to ideas of decency and respectability in a gendered and elitist way.

For me there is very little sexual freedom that can be experienced from a space that is still rooted in a colonial legacy. How can I find freedom if the homeland that I want to be a part of is not sovereign? I cannot “go back to where I came from” because the US will not give up our homeland. Wherever I go, the mainland of Puerto Rico or the US, there is no escaping the cultural imperialism that has been a part of the history, which I’ve inherited.

What does sexual freedom mean to me? It means the same thing when I think of what Puerto Rico libre means to me:
• Having a home to go to.
• Having a home that is safe for everyone.
• Self-determination.
• Affirmation of identity and rituals.
• An end to oppressions.
• Freedom to be and identify as anything other than racially White and not be criminalized or targeted.
• Dedication to communication, listening, and speaking.
• Supporting families in whatever form they are.
• Reshifting our ideas on poverty and attempting to eliminate it.

I don’t only hope for these things for Puerto Rico, I hope them for all of us. Sexual freedom is complex and interdisciplinary. There is no way for me to discuss sexual freedom without recognizing all that makes the ideas of freedom a challenge and struggle, yet one that many of us have dedicated our lives to.

Reflecting On HIV With Oprah

This is a video of Oprah reflecting on HIV and AIDS in the US from 1987.

Click here to find out where to get an HIV test.