Readings: Emma Pérez and Mónica Palacios

Reading assignment for Monday, March 26, 2012. Emma Pérez, “Irigaray’s Female Symbolic in the Making of Chicana Lesbian Sitios y Lenguas (Sites and Discourses)” and Mónica Palacios “Tomboy” (both from Living Chicana Theory)

Your reply (under Comments) is due before class. Your response should demonstrate you’ve done and thought about the readings. Be sure to check and make sure your response posts.

11 thoughts on “Readings: Emma Pérez and Mónica Palacios”

  1. The poem “Tomboy” by Monica Palacios to be honest caught me by surprise. At first I could relate to the tomboy inside herself as she was a young girl wanting to always play with the boy’s toys, the machine guns and cars but never the dolls. Her dad being her advocate and buying the toys she really wanted. Although I can’t relate to Palacios life in her later years I felt for her. She was a women surrounded by her male counterparts and their hormones and I am sure many girls can relate to the vulgar things men can say. But she got past the aggressive behavior and found herself and identified with being a lesbian. I believe Palacios is brave to write a poem like this because it is very honest, detailed but also very personal.
    I really enjoyed all the readings assigned, they gave personal accounts the authors narratives toward how they experienced being a lesbian. All the stories seem to have a thing in common all have men acting outrageous but they all stood their ground. Emma Perez was one of the women that stood up for herself. Being called names, she just yelled back just as loud. It is inspiring to hear their stories because there aren’t many women that would do the same. Overall I really liked these readings.

  2. When reading the poem “Tomboy” the capitalized words and sentences really stood out like neon signs to me. I can picture her performing this piece on stage and while reciting the poem having a conversation with the audience. It was an interesting way to tell the audience about her life. The text written by Emma Peréz carries the same message found in the Gloria Anzaldúa text about identity. The quote that stood out was “without our identities, we become homogenized and censored” (89). Her idea about marginalized people having sepreate places to find themselves makes sense. Not meaning to isolate ourselves and block communications from others that aren’t like us. Her story of the conference where they came up with new transgressive vocabulary in poems wouldn’t have happened if so called “outsiders” were attending the conference. I understand where she is coming from about how the conference couldn’t be as “free, or as nurturing”(98). I think that there are some times when people want to speak up and speak their opinions and ideas but are afraid to because they are afraid of what people may think about them or view them differently.

  3. Emma Peréz uses Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s deconstructive theory called strategic essentialist which to my understanding is the creation of a space where regulations (like a constitution in an organization) are established to resist powers of dominance. This process “gives voices to each new marginalized social or political group […] a type of caucusing, which each new caucus making its own rules, agreeing upon its demands” (Peréz, 87-88). Essentialism in this essay is knowing the self and asserting one’s own identity, therefore Peréz argues, “for marginal marginalized lesbians and women of color to continue framing our decolonized spaces and languages, sitios y lenguas” (Peréz, 91). These sitios y lenguas is the strategy toward essentialism; through dialogue and reflection women of color who are continuously marginalized will become liberated (Peréz, 95). Peréz provides an example of how Chicana Texana women who created their social/political space felt empowered. Through renaming and invention of words to replace those that were meant to subjugate women, the women felt empowered. Through this self-naming process Mónica Palacios in Tomboy “was ready to embrace” herself and other women (Palacios, 309).
    I really liked both readings, although it did take me a while to understand Emma Perez’s essay.

  4. Mónica Palacios poem is a source of resistance to the pervasive institution of heteronormativity enforced through different agents of socialization like family, friends and dating. At an a very early age she started exploring her sexuality and questioning it but she felt the pressure to conform seen when she says “I-I don’t know what possessed me, perhaps societal pressure-I got this doll” ( Palacios, 306). However the poem is not solely about sexuality and desire, but the underlining issue of power and how women are deprived of it because they don’t possess a phallus. Although Palacios does desire power, she also acknowledges the importance of embracing her sexuality. This reminds me of Audre Lorde’s article “Erotic as power” which is reclaiming the erotic as a tool of empowerment. The erotic has been exploited, invaded and abused my men. It relates to Perez’s politics of invasion. The erotic is a very powerful feeling and knowledge of the female self which can be a form of la facultad. Only women can experience it because it is unique to them. Furthermore I noticed in Palacios poem her very strong and bold language which relates to Perez’s connection of reconstructing language for the needs of women. Irigarayan’s essay “When Our Lips Speak Together” creates a transgressive female language that is crucial in the creation of female discourse ( Perez, 92). Not everyone will accept Palacios poem due to it’s graphic and vivid imagery but is a step towards creating Irigaray’s concept of female symbolic by making everything female centered. In addition it is very provocative but it gets people mainly women thinking and talking which is needed to build a space for women like Yara mentions is needed to affirm the self.

  5. Reading Pérez and her discussion of the uncomfortableness that the male or heterosexual might feel when reading about the female body and her sexuality was interesting especially after I had read Tomboy. I think that it was definitely a discussion that need to be had because its not about the sexuality discussed in either piece but the Male Sexual Power that is the norm in our society. We give into that idea and loose the equality we are fighting for. Going back to Mary/ Malinche or Virgin/Whore discussions we have had earlier in class. Pérez expresses and defends this with scholarly language while Palacios uses a anecdote, whether fictional or not, whose language meets in the same place, the Male Sexual Power.

  6. This past reading has been one of my favorites, specifically the section Sitios y Lenguas en Tejas y Chihuahua, of Emma Pérez’s writing. Like I’ve said before, I love delving into modern cultural analysis/discussions, and the group meetings discussed fit into that perfectly. The idea of third world feminists gathering to discuss anything and everything is very entertaining to me. I wish I could have been there to hear how they transitioned from topic to topic such as aging, mothers, dancing…Protestantism, films…butch/femme, coming out, and especially the discussion on the cultural differences/similarities between Chicanas and Mexicanas. I imagine the women present switching between these topics in the way that Pérez lists them and I’m sure it would have been a very interesting and lively exchange to have participated in, much less to have heard. It makes me think of the discussions that I used to hear between my aunts, or older cousins, or other older women in my life when I was younger. I think of how easily they’d get comfortable with each other and soon stop trying to speak cryptically (due to the presence of a younger me) and just talk about anything that was constantly interrupted with roars of laughter.

    I do believe, as Pérez states, that it would have been difficult for me to fully understand, not being lesbian. But I also believe that I would not have had a hard time keeping up since their Chicana selves would have stood out just as much. Having read the poem by Mónica Palacios makes me believe this even more since, again despite not having had the experience of coming out or loving someone of the same sex, I too have been in serious relationships and have been challenged by my tomboy childhood.

  7. An interesting topic was mentioned in Emma Perez’s essay, which presents the issue of the dominant voice speaking for everyone. As opposed to the marginalized minority speaking for themselves or even if they could speak for other marginalized minorities. One of the fundamental changes that would result out of this topic would be that of the women imaginary not being in the scope or realm of the male imaginary. It would be very interesting to see what true and new thoughts would emerge about women if they weren’t influenced by the male imaginary. The original concept of this theory is explored more in depth by the French feminist Luce Irigaray, who is attempting to “secure a place for the feminine within sexual difference.” Lisa Jardine is a critic of Irigaray who says that her theory “falls prey” the very thing it challenges which is the male symbolic order. The males argue that the need for their own space is needed, however I think that is exactly what Irigaray wanted, to create womens own space without a male influence. Another point of dispute about Irigaray’s work is the language and the way she uses it. For some people such as Jardine the language is too strong and can make a person uncomfortable which is precisely why the males argue they need some amount of room. Perez seems to understand however the challenges of creating such a theory, “she constructs the female imaginary as she negotiates for its creation.”

  8. Perez points out in her writing how women sometimes don’t get their feelings out the way they want to, but the way men would want them to. Perez points this out when she writes, ” The female imaginary would persevere without being subsumed by the male imaginary, women would stop masquerading for and as men (90 Perez). The writer Jardine, that is refereed to in Perezs’ writing has a totally different style of writing from other women authors who are even in the feminist movement. While Jardine talks about sex explicitly in her writings, other women might write about the struggle in the womens movement. I think it is alright to have different styles of writings as a women, as long as you don’t just write what you expect the male dominant country to accept. I think such writing is what Perez is against. Since there are different female opinions in the feminist movement alone, there writings should reflect their different opinions.

    In the Tomboy, Palacios showed her want for the power that she observed men had. When she wrote, ” I liked my girl body. I just wanted what they had-Power! (307 Palacios)”, I think a lot of women can relate to her. Just because a women yearns to be in control doesn’t mean she is a lesbian or wants to be a man. A women can still be straight, yet want to have the same respect and power that men have from others. It is unfair to instantly stereotype women who who yearn for power as wanting to be a man or a lesbian.

  9. Separate spaces foster progress, but separatism is the antithesis of progress, and it is this line that must be tread carefully. I agree with Perez in that separate spaces are necessary for marginalized groups to create their own rhetoric. If marginalized groups do not facilitate outside the hegemony, outside the patriarchy, outside the dominant groups, then are trying to develop inside a framework that is designed to work against them. If they can develop outside this framework, then they can better approach from a place of cohesiveness and strength. The problems arise, however, when these separate spaces lead to separatism.

  10. Just kidding, that response isn’t complete yet! I posted by accident and I don’t know how to delete.

  11. Separatism is the denial that anyone from a different space than you should be allowed access. It is important to have separate spaces to exist in, but it is also important that you expand the understandings and bridge the gaps between groups, both dominant and non-dominant, but especially among the non-dominant and marginalized. Even if all of our intersectionalities do not align, we have much to gain from connecting our positions to the positions of other marginalized groups, to create larger and stronger coalitions.

Comments are closed.