My coming out experience was drenched in effeminate male energy. My click was a bola of loud and proud young jotos too queeny for their own dam good. They faced taunting from the jocks, cowardly threats left at night stuck to their dorm room door and the snickers from girly-girls as they, these young, brave, smart queeny boys, made their way across campus skipping hand in hand. These hombres, with their staunch rebelliousness against anything boring, intolerant and hetero-normative taught me about standing up for my right to be who I am. I learned to be proud, outspoken and how to be comfortable in my butch skin. Yes, they even helped me feel desirable- I do make a cute boi after all.
“I like your sideburns,” he said then giggled.
“Thanks! Why do you laugh?” I asked
“Cause I don’t think I’ve ever told a girl that before,” he replied and giggled some more this time he covered his mouth with his palm, very ladylike.
We both laughed and continued to walk across campus, him leaning his tall lanky body on me the way a prom queen would lean on her king’s shoulder; we walked on to class ignoring the stares. I laughed cause I’ve never had anyone comment on my sideburns, long and always trimmed and I laughed at how I was sure not many other women had ever been complimented on their facial hair. My boys were young Latino men who didn’t take shit from their daddies and definitely not from any asshole walking the street feeling entitled to shout any homophobic comment that came to mind. They were fiery fieras burning with gayness and pride- explosively showing all the disappointed mommies and daddies of the world that despite being jotos they were men in their own right. No one was about to take their manhood and humanness away from them. Together we were a tight bunch ready to wittingly cut down any homophobe that crossed our undergraduate paths. We were young, educated jotos/dykes after all; the world had already looked us in the face and spit in our eye as far as we were concerned. What did we have to lose? We didn’t come all the way from our barrios to the privileged world of Westwood to fail. We were not going to return back to our hoods with our heads hanging low, shit save that for the fun stuff -if you know what I mean (Wink).
I make us sound aggressive huh? That’s not what we were we were more like uncompromising when it came to who we were, UNWILLING to shed part of our identity to make others be it friends, family or society more comfortable. Blood is thicker than water but not heavier than hate and intolerance. We were a tight bunch, we were each other’s friends when all the other Latino organizations on campus decided that the issues they actively addressed such as; immigration, family, higher education, women’s rights, etc had nothing to do with who we were cause we were gay. We were each other’s family when our families chose not to welcome us home and closed the doors to our haven because we were gay. We were each other’s support system when the news flashed on about hate crimes and violence committed against other gays in LA, California the nation cause we too were gay. You have to understand my jotos had been fighting for their right to just be for more than half of their lifetime; for some it began the minute someone noticed that something was “funny” about them and used that “funny” factor to continually oppress them. And since then they had to be fighting, verbally, physically and spiritually scratching their way to the top, their right to be. So they had years of experience with fronting toughness, invulnerability while I was just beginning to see and experience it first hand. But that’s how in “your face” we had to be so as not to be silenced and rendered invisible in the utopia, micro-microcosm of society we inhabited.
The truth is that we were harmless, a nonviolent group of Queer activists enjoying the fact that we destabilized many with our mere presence. We were definitely stigmatized. For example:
“Boo!” I ran up to Marcos, this guy I met at the summer program, Marcos was cool ,very smart and I liked talking to him. He had a cold look on his face. “Did I scare you, little ole me? Nothing still from him. “I’m the same one that used to meet up with you in between classes, chit chat about this and that.
“Yeah, I know, how was your summer?” he said followed by nervous laughter.
“My summer was good, things changed, I’m sure you heard by now…”
I had changed, I had morphed into my self. That was the last time I talked to Marco- he seemed to avoid me. I didn’t understand why folks didn’t like me anymore, some said they missed the old me. But since I now paraded around campus: a butch lesbian with sharp sideburns surrounded by a bunch of jotos, loud, flamboyant and affectionate with one another I seemed to have inadvertently repelled some folks. People chose to reject us rather than be labeled “gay by association”. We dared to show we loved each other and ourselves. Que cosa mas disgusting. These jotos, maricones, puñales, putos were my brothers unidos por la puteria that ran through our veins. And as I learned about Chicana/o consciousness in class, understood how our families were the pinnacle of our existence as a community and as individuals; we conceal our bastardized hearts, the sting! With our loud, smiling rainbow colored pride. We turned that rejection from our families on its head by becoming family to each other.
Many of the feminists/activists I read as an undergraduate talked about their relationship with gay men and painted a picture of sorrow, relationships built around the need for survival, need for support to fight the disease known as AIDS that was ruthlessly taking away all the jotos. I got a picture of an era full of men weak from not enough T-cells and too many opportunistic infections. I pictured an era where not enough resources or sympathy towards the black and brown jotos to far off the radar of any white gay activist to survive. Seem familiar? Seems familiar, things change and things stay the same. Now I find myself, a student of life, and employee of an HIV/AIDS organization and as a Professor at CSUDH for a year now continue to fight the fight for the survival of our communities. And we can all do it in our own way. Each semester I have made it a point to talk to my Sociology students in ‘Women in Society, because:
• Women of color (especially African American women) are the hardest hit.
• Younger women are more likely than older women to get HIV.
• AIDS is a common killer, second only to cancer and heart disease for women.
For those of you not familiar with HIV and AIDS, or GRID (Gay Related Immune Deficiency) as it was once called because it was originally thought to affect mostly gay men. But women have always been affected too. And even though more men than women have HIV, women are catching up. In fact, if new HIV infections continue at their current rate worldwide, women with HIV may soon outnumber men with HIV. That is why it’s important to talk about it with our friends, families and communities. That is why it is important for us to talk about it here today at CSUDH where 65% of the undergraduate and 75% of the graduate population is composed of women. We have to talk about it because it doesn’t make sense not to.
For many of the feminists/activists, theirs was any era where lesbians nurtured their dying brothers, an era where everyone- lesbian or gay attended more funeral services that one should endure. I then looked at my relationships with my gay male friends, how we were all so young, full of life-not attending funerals at ridiculous rates. I’m sure that our foremothers and fathers knew it would get better, they had to believe or else things would fade as fast as their brothers were. I felt lucky, for myself to have healthy friends, lucky to have ancestors who had given us the chance, through their activism, their loss- to have greater opportunities and more attention to the education and prevention needs of communities of color. I felt lucky just to have them with me. I’m one of the lucky ones, rejection is the worst I’ve experienced. For many of us listening to these words makes things feel pretty bruised inside and out, feelings get so silenced and the pain in our hearts gets louder- we may only see one way out. But there are other ways to turn things around. Our survival is crucial for the change. It can start with one thought, one word, a page a book on things getting better, that you read then submit for the next issue of it or start another one, build on to take on the next degree of the struggle, one so beautiful, needs to be kept alive. Like a chain letter only this doesn’t end with a warning or cursedly ending…
