This assignment was particularly challenging for me, as my computer does not allow me to highlight texts from the PDFs we have read this semester. Since I did not have anything saved to work off on, I began collecting quotes by scanning through the texts and simply pulling phrases that I liked or that stuck with me. As my list grew, I noticed that while the quotes I selected focused on varying topics, I was able to string them along and make connections from one another. In this blog post I will be listing the quotes I collected, but they can also be found on neatly laid out on my Instagram post https://www.instagram.com/p/Bw99aKrHsIv/

1. Indigenous feminisms is… not a thing whose meaning is prepackaged and applicable across time and space. Indigenous feminisms are contingent upon the historical contexts and social relationships in which they are articulated as an ethic of responsibility, which I would suggest is grounded in the governance, territory, and culture of the polity but reaches out through an ethics responsibility across political, legal, and cultural borders to other communities and nonhuman beings.

• • • Indigenous Feminisms by Joanne Barker

2. The heretofore-marginalized knowledge of Indigenous and Third World peoples is central to imagining alternatives to colonial capitalism and to more just connections between humans and nature. But it is imperative to be cognizant of the pitfalls and problematics of representing this knowledge, that is, of the political economy of knowledge production in order to guard against simplistic claims about decolonial ontologies and postcolonial futures.

• • • Spivak and Rivera Cusicanqui on the Dilemmas of Representation in Postcolonial and Decolonial Feminisms

I started off this assignment with quotes that center indigenous ontologies. While it does not focus on specific ontologies and epistemologies, it highlights the importance of relationality to the land and others (both human and other living and non living beings.) These quotes also mention the failed attempts to embrace indigenous ways, whether it be through romanticization, appropriation, or colonizers capitalizing off of stolen and rebranded knowledge. In addition, these quotes explain the importance of not portraying these ontologies and epistemologies as simple and homogenous, as they are specific to each community and varied. However, as the last quote highlights, the capitalist world we now live in could benefit greatly by implementing these ways. Under our capitalist system, profit is but before human and environmental needs, which hinders us in all facets of life (even economic as surplus leads to economic crises instead of relief).

3. At best, what the United States displays toward Puerto Rico can be classified as “paternalistic toleration,” so called because the toleration is one extended by the majority as an act of self-restraint by the majority (as an act of social generosity) to share a social space with a culture that the majority believes does not merit to share such social space. For minorities, paternalistic toleration is often purchased at the heavy price of not being recognized as equal participants in the polity, ironically the very thing that toleration is meant to cure”

• • • A New Reality of Citizenship and Nation by Pedro A. Malavet

4. The government forces us to live like roaches, always in the garbage. When we can’t produce in sweatshops to make them more money because of high unemployment rates; when we can’t buy their junk because they won’t give us credit to legalize the rip-off; when we’re no longer any use and become a threat of possible revolutionaries, they exterminate us like roaches, always in the garbage…

• • • From the Frontlines, Abortions by Gloria Colón (text from Through the Eyes of Rebel Women by Iris Morales)

The next two quotes I chose to focus specifically on Puerto Rico and their relation to the imperialist and capitalist United States, which places Puerto Ricans both on the islands and in the diaspora as inferior. These quotes also focus on the empty promises of the United States and themes of colonial gaslighting. In addition, the quote from Gloria Colón mentions the criminalization of poverty and consequential radicalization of Puerto Ricans.

5. Recognizing the profound influence of racialization and gendering is essential to an adequate understanding of the past, to efforts to transform the present, and to strategies to envision and produce a different future.

• • • Coloniality of Gender and Power: From Postcoloniality to Decoloniality by Breny Mendoza

6. We have the Third World woman holding on to her pregnant body, watching her already born children nibble on lead paint in place of food, watching the rats that gather to nibble on the toes of her children, worrying about having her insides ripped-up during an abortion.

• • • From the Frontlines, Abortions by Gloria Colón (text from Through the Eyes of Rebel Women by Iris Morales)

7. “You’re nothing but a woman” means you are defective. Its opposite is to be un macho. The modern meaning of the word “machismo,” as well as the concept, is actually an Anglo invention. For men like my father, being “macho” meant being strong enough to protect and support my mother and us, yet being able to show love. Today’s macho has doubts about his ability to feed and protect his family. His “machismo” is an adaptation to oppression and poverty and low self esteem. It is the result of hierarchical male dominance.

• • • Borderlands, La Frontera by Gloria Anzaldúa

8. I mean, when I see brothers off the block, hustlers, you know, talking about, “I got to deal with my male chauvinism,” when I see that man, I feel like we can do anything.

• • • Palante by The Young Lords

This next set of quotes I selected begins to discuss the inextricable intersection of gender in the oppression of Latinx people. This form of oppression, and its byproducts such as machismo, were created specifically not only to impose Anglo traditions, but to further divide the population. Through this, organizing mass movements becomes far more challenging. However, as the last quote from Palante highlights, there have been great strides to progress past this form of toxic masculinity, which serves to hinder Latinx men with in white social spheres and Latinx women with in male dominated social spheres. In addition, the other quote by Gloria Colón gives us a visual of the specific problems faced by Puerto Rican women, such as struggles to support a family in such poor living conditions, lack of proper reproductive care, and sterilization.

9. There can be no discourse of decolonization, no theory of decolonization, without a decolonizing practice.

• • • Spivak and Rivera Cusicanqui on the Dilemmas of Representation in Postcolonial and Decolonial Feminisms (originally found in “Ch’ixinakax utxiwa: A Reflection on the Practices and Discourses of Decolonization” by Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui)

10. FALN [Armed Forces of National Liberation] solidarity with and on behalf of Palestinian self-determination served to illuminate the colonial reality of Puerto Rico by bolstering the claims of the political prisoners that they were “freedom fighters, not terrorists.”

• • • In Solidarity, Palestine in the Puerto Rican Political Imaginary by Sara Awartani

I purposely chose these last two quotes to conclude this assignment. The first quote reminds us that decolonization is not a metaphor, and in order to go through the process of decolonization there not only needs to be a plan, but actions to follow. In addition, the second quote refers to groups who have become more militant as a result of demands not being met. These groups are criminalized and therefore have a shared sense of public disapproval. However, instead of being discouraged, they are able to use solidarity work to empower and validate each others struggles.

 

The main focus of this blog is not to describe the varying gender identities and expressions around the world, as I am no expert in this field, I do not have a background in any of these cultures, nor have I ever met someone who is of one of these identities. Instead, I am going to discuss my relation to these other ways of being as an agender, white American citizen fighting for the rights of transgender, gender non conforming, and non binary people under the Trump-Pence administration. I would just like to preface that I will be using the umbrella term “trans” in quotations, as it is an English term that is not necessarily used by these other communities. In addition, I want to highlight the importance of not romanticizing or appropriating terms or identities as I admire the validity they give to my own personal experience.

As shown in my post on our Instagram (@fpod_spring_2019), gender identities and expressions beyond the binary have existed in various cultures and traditions over the span of time. One example of this is the two spirit people of North America. Two spirit is a pan-Indigenous term that refers to people with both a feminine and masculine spirit who fulfill sacred, spiritual, and ceremonial roles. According to Dancing to Eagle Spirit Society, two spirit people were often visionaries, healers, medicine people, nannies of orphans, and caregivers. Prior to colonization, they were greatly honored and revered, but now they are met with intersecting oppressions, violence, and sometimes even death.

Fred Martinez was a nádleehí, a male-bodied person with a feminine essence, of the Diné tribe. While their two spirit identity is seen as a gift in Diné culture, it was not accepted by the surrounding neighborhood in Cortez, Colorado. At only 16 years old, Martinez was brutally killed after their skull was crushed in with a rock. Despite clear evidence of the crime stemming from their gender expression and sexuality, it was not legally considered a hate crime. It is incredibly disheartening to think that if Fred Martinez had been born prior to the colonization of America, they would not have met the same fate.

White, Anglo imperialistic forces caused the erasure of a queer ontology that would later reemerge and be branded as a Western construct to many. After meeting with two spirit people in the TV series Gaycation, Ellen Page states, “To me [being] two spirit is such a clear example of how being gay or being trans is just a natural part of human existence. It’s, to me, a clear example and negates all the people that say things like, ‘This is a Western construct, [it’s] a modern privilege to even be thinking about… your sexual [or gender] identity’… It’s like the only Western construct is actually homophobia. That’s what we brought.”

While the remaining circumstances of colonization are horrific, I do not want to end this blog post on such a negative tone. Through learning indigenous relations to gender and sexuality, I have grown in confidence in my identity. I hope that other transgender, gender non conforming, and non binary people can also find comfort in these gender variant experiences around the world.

Hi! My name is Kayla and this is my understanding of the following terms I’ve learned so far in Feminist Perspectives on Decolonization 🙂

Colonial:

• Imposition of an imperial force on foreign land that prevents self determination of a region or group of people
• Allows the colonizers to thrive off of the oppression of the colonized
• Not there to benefit the people, only the mother country
• History of using genocide and assimilation to erase the original culture and people
• Intends on keeping those colonized powerless and seen as inferior when compared to colonizers and settlers

Anticolonial:

• Against coloniality and in favor of self determination
• When I think of this word, characteristics opposite of the colonial come to mind (people of color, non binary dichotomies, other cosmologies, non monogamy, queerness, religions other than christianity, etc)
• Highlights the resistance to coloniality

Decolonial:

• Process of deconstructing colonial epistemologies that are assumed to be natural, universal, and superior
• Both physical and mental
• Process of giving reparations to those oppressed under coloniality
• Returning of land and the power of self governance
• Destruction of borders as a means of separating people

Postcolonial:

• Time period after the process of decolonization
• No ongoing or new colonial imposition
• Reparations are made and other ways of living are made known and validated
• Needs of those who were formerly under coloniality are met

Hi! Kayla here from fpod 🙂