JE 3A

As a lesbian woman of Mexican background, I experience multiple borders overlapping simultaneously, causing what Prof. Gaspar de Alba defines, a Cultural Schizophrenia. In addition, my social, cultural, and political identity took form at the geographical border between the United States and Mexico. The metaphorical borders became exacerbated with placeness, that is, a subjectivity situated in a geopolitical border. I have felt torn between many "selves" of me. In Mexico, my gender performance and presentability already disrupt the norm of "la buena mujer" (the good woman), or "la niña de casa"  (the good home girl, not "homegirl"). My sexuality removes me even further beyond the "Law of the Father," the heteropatriarchal structure that orders women into motherhood, virginity, or the nunnery. In Mexico, I am too out there. Too out of the closet. "Too Queer to be here," my semi-closeted friends would say. Yet, when I established in Los Angeles three years ago, I realized that for the "American"context I am too closeted. Too straight-looking. Too femme. Not so butch. I have been wrongfully accused of "passing." When I realized that my closest friends, peers, and even my former partner had of the impression that I was deliberately trying to pass as a 'white' heterosexual woman, I crashed into (another) existential crisis in my life. As mentioned before, what is impermissible south of the border, it is a shy cry for "passing" unnoticed in metropolitan L.A. This perceived sexual and gender performing discontinuity of my body enraged me. I was enraged at the queer community in Los Angeles, my friends, and especially the (in)famous "ex." I rebelled in the most productive way possible (thank Yemayá). I looked myself at the mirror and chanted Jackson's words of advice: "I'm looking at the [wo]man in the mirror. I ask if [s]he can change [her] ways." I cried. I weeped. I read the only person I believed could help me: Yoyita, or Gloria Anzaldúa. She understood me, and I understood her. Like her, our catholic values and cultural traditions clashed with the white queer protestant ethic. But instead of feeling trapped in my own cage, I decided to liberate slowly from that trap. Acknowledging my sexual and gendered, social and religious borders is only the first step, and I am still in that stage. But I can say that it feels damn good to know I suffer from a cultural schizophrenia. And my intuition dictates that the remedy is also inside of me. I can either use these borders to pull me apart, or to bring myself closer together.