Colonize This!: Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism (13 page)
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Authors: Daisy Hernández,Bushra Rehman
Tags: #Social Science, #Feminism & Feminist Theory, #Minority Studies, #Women's Studies
BOOK: Colonize This!: Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism
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My North and South American Ways
Latin men have long put Latinas on pedestals, convincing them they had all the power while in reality the women were in men’s possession. To this day, Latinas from South America still gain power in politics, society and in their careers for being beautiful, poised and for not having a tarnished reputation. It is our cliché: We love our men—and they
really
love us. For ambitious women in the United States, being beautiful will only jeopardize their reputation in any professional field aside from Hollywood. I don’t come from a long line of Protestant cool, suffragette movements and the 1960s feminist revolution. My heritage is hot Catholicism, where men and women are so intricately tangled that feminism becomes a dirty word. My mother and Tía Esthercita would never have used the F-word to describe themselves, afraid it would have meant they were lesbians or man-haters. I, as a modern feminist, straddle the contradictions of U.S. and Latin American identities—I’m not curvaceous and polished enough for Latin American standards and I’m too sexy and well-dressed for white-American standards. As a U.S. Latina, I can dance and think my way out of any situation, but for my sisters in the South, the economic chaos in Latin America is still inhibiting their movement toward sexual equality.
really
love us. For ambitious women in the United States, being beautiful will only jeopardize their reputation in any professional field aside from Hollywood. I don’t come from a long line of Protestant cool, suffragette movements and the 1960s feminist revolution. My heritage is hot Catholicism, where men and women are so intricately tangled that feminism becomes a dirty word. My mother and Tía Esthercita would never have used the F-word to describe themselves, afraid it would have meant they were lesbians or man-haters. I, as a modern feminist, straddle the contradictions of U.S. and Latin American identities—I’m not curvaceous and polished enough for Latin American standards and I’m too sexy and well-dressed for white-American standards. As a U.S. Latina, I can dance and think my way out of any situation, but for my sisters in the South, the economic chaos in Latin America is still inhibiting their movement toward sexual equality.
My family’s history has undeniably affected the person I have become. I know that Esthercita’s wild streak and my grandmother’s brave trip from the South to the North severed the patriarchal cord that strangled the women in my family for centuries. Today, in wartorn Colombia, where prostitution runs rampant, the number of young women bearing arms is increasing, and more and more women are being forced to head families and businesses because their men are getting killed off.
Tía Esthercita is not as rare a specimen anymore. She is buddy-buddy with my mother, who visits Bogota often. I love looking at current photographs of white-haired Esthercita, who can hardly speak anymore but still manages to do it all with her big brown eyes and shoulder-heaving laughs. There is one photo I own of Tía and my still quite sexy mother, who is approaching fifty, that fuels me—I am lucky to have them both as my feminine guides. Through them I have learned to be a liberated woman by emulating both their North and South American ways. Tía still has a gentleman caller, and you bet, he is married and she has known him for more than forty years. Both my mother and Esthercita have had their sorrow, their bouts of loneliness and unsupportive lovers. They have had some women tsk tsk them for their brazen behavior, and others become inspired by their ways. I say
muchisimas gracias
to these difficult
chicas,
my Tía, grandmother and mother, for never being silent, for being happily unmarried, for enjoying sex and for never suffering in pain like so many have. I thank them for showing me a new kind of feminism, one that includes plenty of pleasure.
muchisimas gracias
to these difficult
chicas,
my Tía, grandmother and mother, for never being silent, for being happily unmarried, for enjoying sex and for never suffering in pain like so many have. I thank them for showing me a new kind of feminism, one that includes plenty of pleasure.
Love Clinic
Soyon Im
“Don’t have sex,” warns my mother. It is Sunday morning and we are on the phone—11 A.M. her time, 8 A.M. mine. If I don’t answer her call, she’ll imagine a couple of disastrous scenarios, and I’m not sure which is worse for her—the thought of me lying underneath a wrecked car or a man. Once a week we talk, and every week she tells me not to have sex—sometimes at the end of our conversation, in lieu of saying good-bye.
My mother has been trying to keep me from sex since I was in elementary school. In fifth grade my friend Jenny had a slumber party and I wasn’t allowed to go. “A girl shouldn’t get used to sleeping at other people’s houses,” my mother said. The first time she suspected I might go astray was when she caught me slow dancing with David Kim. I was fifteen and David was the first Korean-American guy that I ever liked. We met at one of those six-week SAT prep courses that cost hundreds of dollars and convenes during the weekends in some glass-and-steel corporate park. My parents made me attend the classes in the hopes that I would score a 1400 and get into an Ivy League college.
David played tennis regularly and he’d often come to class right after practice, his gym shorts hanging easily on his tall, lean frame, the sides of his hair damp with sweat, his face slightly pink. You could tell he was still warm from exercise. During our tedious lessons I’d take furtive glances, relishing his beauty.
David has hirsute, indomitable legs,
I wrote in tiny letters in my notebook, using the new vocabulary we were learning by rote.
My boredom is abated by David’s pulchritude. David is sanguine and virile.
David has hirsute, indomitable legs,
I wrote in tiny letters in my notebook, using the new vocabulary we were learning by rote.
My boredom is abated by David’s pulchritude. David is sanguine and virile.
David actually lived only five blocks away from me, but because we were on opposite sides of the neighborhood’s school district lines, we went to different high schools, which was a good thing. If we’d gone to the same school, he’d have known that I wasn’t one of the cool kids, and he would’ve probably never spoken to me, except maybe to ask a question about homework or something dweeby like that. He certainly wouldn’t have invited me to a party at his house.
The party was small; there were eight or nine teenagers drinking wine coolers in a dimly lit half-basement. Wham! was on the stereo, and at one point David asked me to dance. “Careless Whispers,” a slow number, was on. He started by putting his hands behind my shoulders, then eventually dropping them around my waist. We weren’t so much dancing as hugging each other. I’d never stood so closely to a boy before, and the warmth of his body was exquisite. He didn’t kiss me, but every once in a while, he’d nuzzle his chin against my neck and I’d feel a tingle run all the way down my spine. We held each other like that for about twenty minutes when all of a sudden, my mother walked in.
What followed was a scene from a bad soap opera. She grabbed me by the arm, marched me up the steps and out of David’s house. Outside, she slapped me across the face. “Do you know how girls at parties like that end up?” she asked. Then she shouted, “They get pregnant! They get herpes and they don’t know who the father is!”
My mother had a long career as a gynecologist. I marvel at the irony of how she spent each day dealing with other people’s sexuality while denying mine. Then again, she did her residency in a Bronx hospital and saw every ugly disease close up. Sitting behind the metal stirrups of her examining table, she discovered the intimate details of thousands of strangers. Patients confessed to her secrets they wouldn’t share with their best friends.
My period is late. I have an itch down there. He gave me warts.
At night, in front of the TV, she’d read medical journals filled with photos of infected genitals turned pimply and black.
My period is late. I have an itch down there. He gave me warts.
At night, in front of the TV, she’d read medical journals filled with photos of infected genitals turned pimply and black.
My mother’s clinical exposure and her Korean conservatism made a fearsome combination. Like an evangelist, she tried to instill the fear of sex in me, thunderously lecturing on the calamities that befell sinners. Sex led to disease; sex led to death; and inescapably, sex led to more wanton sex.
The more she pressed, the more I had to go against her. As a teen, I was determined not to stay a virgin or marry early. I read women’s magazines like
Cosmopolitan
and fantasized about an older, grown-up me having lots of sex with lots of different men. A few articles on G-spots, multiple orgasms and the appeal of blue-collar men convinced me that I wouldn’t have to settle for less-than-stellar sex. I was a fuck-me feminist before I’d had my first kiss. In my mind sex wasn’t just about love or hormones, it was a key to my own identity. Sex represented a freedom that my mother had never experienced as a Korean woman—and there was no way that I was going to become like my mother.
Cosmopolitan
and fantasized about an older, grown-up me having lots of sex with lots of different men. A few articles on G-spots, multiple orgasms and the appeal of blue-collar men convinced me that I wouldn’t have to settle for less-than-stellar sex. I was a fuck-me feminist before I’d had my first kiss. In my mind sex wasn’t just about love or hormones, it was a key to my own identity. Sex represented a freedom that my mother had never experienced as a Korean woman—and there was no way that I was going to become like my mother.
Nor was I going to be like so many girls at school, ebullient when they were dating and then sobbing for days and weeks after they’d been dumped. I observed many guys who, in contrast, shortly after breaking up with a girlfriend, took up with another. How was it that they seemed so unfazed? Why did guys seem to have so much more control in relationships? Why did we girls allow them the power? Why did my mother give in to my father?
At the time I wished my mother would file for a divorce. My parents hadn’t lived together for more than ten years and I didn’t see the sense in them staying married. When my mother, brother and I moved to the United States, my father decided to stay with his corporation in Korea. He visited us for just a few weeks each year, and my mother essentially became a single parent. When I was sixteen, my father left his company and finally joined our family for good. It was a bad arrangement. He constantly picked on my mother and dismissed her views on just about everything. “Bird brain,” he’d utter in a poisonous tone that sickened us all. The worst was when he demanded money. Not having any work in the United States, he sought out doomed business ventures and expected my mother to provide the capital. She didn’t want to give up her savings—the money she’d earned as a doctor since coming to the United States—but he always got his way.
I’m ashamed to say I wasn’t supportive. I hated my father for weakening my mother, but I hated my mother more for not leaving him. At eighteen I left for college, thinking I was escaping my parents. Unfortunately, I left something crucial behind. Two weeks into my first semester, my mother came across an old diary in my room. She read it and discovered that I wasn’t a virgin. During the ensuing fight, she repeatedly yelled, “You betrayed me!”
I betrayed her? What about my father? Why was I the one being punished? Feeling angry and exposed, I retreated to my studies, devouring books by feminist thinkers. Olga Broumas, Naomi Wolf and Susan Faludi became my new role models. I befriended other women emerging from repressive pasts. Guilt-free sex was our credo as we hopped into bed with both genders. I dreaded the holidays when I had to go back home.
While feminism gave me a community of other like-minded women, it didn’t give me any clues on how to resolve two very different cultures, how to be both Korean and American, how to speak to my own mother. By the middle of my first year of college, my mother had started calling me on Sunday mornings to remind me not to have sex. At first I gave a good fight and tried to explain to her that being sexually active was acceptable behavior for someone my age and that few people of my generation believe in the good girl virgin stuff. After a while, I realized it was easier to lie.
A decade later I continue to live a secret life, as duplicitous and conflicted as a gay person acting straight to co-workers. I answer my mother’s phone calls, assure her that I’m not having sex while my boyfriend lies in bed next to me. I might be in love, but I am deathly afraid of sharing that joy with my mother. Of course I want to tell her the truth, but every time I try, we end up yelling at each other.
How do you talk about love and sex with someone who thinks nothing positive of dating? My mother never experienced the kind of first date where you eat dinner, watch a movie and kiss at the front door. When she came of age in Korea, men and women weren’t free to date without scandal surrounding them. When she was twenty-five, my mother’s dates were arranged by elders and consisted of drinking tea and shaking hands at the end. By the third meeting she would decide whether she wanted to marry her date. I imagine that for a man, the process is not unlike interviewing for a job. Only those who are well-educated, well-connected and who promise success need apply. There was no opportunity for the couple to spend time and really get to know each other, fall in love and have sex. There was also no opportunity to discover the flaws of a seemingly perfect spouse or the many little ways in which they might not be compatible. That is, until after they got married and it was too late.
Yam-ja-neh
is a Korean word used to describe women. It means nice, sweet, compliant. I’ve heard it applied to me many times by my parents’ friends, who don’t know shit about me. They meet me at dinner parties or wedding receptions, and because of the way I dress or the way I do my hair, they pronounce me yam-ja-neh and offer to set me up with their sons and nephews. I feel fifteen all over again, except now I have my mother’s consent—not to have sex but to meet prospective suitors.
is a Korean word used to describe women. It means nice, sweet, compliant. I’ve heard it applied to me many times by my parents’ friends, who don’t know shit about me. They meet me at dinner parties or wedding receptions, and because of the way I dress or the way I do my hair, they pronounce me yam-ja-neh and offer to set me up with their sons and nephews. I feel fifteen all over again, except now I have my mother’s consent—not to have sex but to meet prospective suitors.
Geography doesn’t matter when it comes to Korean matchmaking. My father’s golf buddy gives me the phone number of his son in Chicago. (That’s only, what, two time zones away from my home in Seattle?) “He graduated from MIT and is working as a software developer,” the man pipes. My parents smile, encouraging me to take the number. For them it’s the same game played years ago, when they were comparing test scores and college acceptances. Except now my parents are losing face, because I dropped out of premed to study writing. “Our daughter—we don’t really know what she does. Let her tell you herself,” my mother says to the programmer’s father, who continues to check me out. I look yam-jah-neh to him, but if the truth came out, I’d be out of the race. Which is fine by me. I mean, I’m not really going to call this geek in Chicago, so what’s the difference?
“Thank you,” I say to the man as I take his son’s number. I act out the role of the good daughter for my parents; it’s the least I can do for turning out the way I did.
“Don’t tell anyone about that ju-che-gi,” my mother tells me.
Ju-che-gi,
which means fool, is what she calls my ex-boyfriend, Ian, whom I dated for two years. Ian is Dutch and for the first year of our relationship we lived together in Holland. He came with me when I returned to the United States and we lived in a studio in Queens, a mere twenty-minute drive away from my parents. Because of our living situation, there was no hiding him. It was my most significant relationship, not only because of the duration but because of his contact with my mother. For a while she even liked him.
Ju-che-gi,
which means fool, is what she calls my ex-boyfriend, Ian, whom I dated for two years. Ian is Dutch and for the first year of our relationship we lived together in Holland. He came with me when I returned to the United States and we lived in a studio in Queens, a mere twenty-minute drive away from my parents. Because of our living situation, there was no hiding him. It was my most significant relationship, not only because of the duration but because of his contact with my mother. For a while she even liked him.
When I ask why I shouldn’t tell others about Ian, she answers, “Men won’t like it if they find out you’ve been used.” Because I didn’t marry him, Ian is shameful, and the two years I spent with him must be rewritten for others who may not approve, the random golfers and doctors we meet at Korean functions. As if I were one of her patients, my mother keeps my history confidential, striking out the love of my life like a disease.
Is it foolish to think that as we both get older, we’ll come to accept each other? Despite all the difficulties we’ve had, I still long to share more of my life with my mother. If we can’t agree on things, I want her at least to know why I make the choices that I do, including why I fall for the men I do. Lately, I’ve started telling her a bit about my boyfriend—while letting her entertain the idea that I’m not having sex with him. It’s better this way than not communicating at all.
Every once in a while, she surprises me and gives me hope. “I know American people carry on differently, but aren’t you tired of all this dating?” she asked me recently. I could argue that it’s better in the long run to learn from many different relationships, but as a commitmentphobe who attracts other commitmentphobes, I have to admit that all those dinners, movies and STD tests have lost their novelty. Yes, Mom, I’m tired of dating. I’m tired of the minirelationships that expire like milk. I’m tired of the breakups, even when they’re “mutual” and “amicable.” When my last boyfriend/potential husband/potential father to your grandchildren dumped me, he said, “I like you a lot, but I’m not sure if I can love you.” He may as well have sent me a form letter.
We have reviewed your resume and while we are impressed with your experience, we do not have a suitable position that fits your qualifications. Thank you very much.
We have reviewed your resume and while we are impressed with your experience, we do not have a suitable position that fits your qualifications. Thank you very much.
Even though I want a long-term, loving relationship, I wonder if I can truly sustain one given my track record. At the end of our conversation, my mother withholds her usual mantra. Instead, she says, “Just be careful who you get involved with. You’ve got a lot more to offer than you think.”
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