Chicana Feminism
Overview
Identifying as a Chicana means more than just identifying with Mexican culture, it is also a political stance that involves a political and social awareness of existing inequalities. “Chicana Feminism” seeks to achieve social, political, and economic equality among the sexes, as well as incorporating a political stance and direct opposition to the evils of patriarchy. Furthermore, Chicana Feminism analyzes and recognizes numerous other forms of dis-empowerment and oppression such as racism, homophobia, and class inequality, in hopes of giving a voice to the silenced. Chicana Feminism incorporates intersectionality; the act of claiming your gender, race, ethnicity and culture simultaneously, without placing one identity over the other.
Chicana Feminists seek liberation and emancipation from both sexism and racism. Chicanas and Chicanos belong to a race and culture that is constantly under attack because it is construed as negative and inferior in comparison to the dominant American culture. Chicana Feminists want to destroy this misconception of inferiority and achieve cultural integrity and dignity for all Chicana and Chicano people. Chicana Feminism emerged in the mid 1960’s, in the midst of an era categorized by radical organization and mobilization by many minority groups in the U.S. that felt un-represented and discriminated against. Many separate movements began to emerge, including The Chicano Movement and The Feminist Movement, following the great Civil Rights movement.
Key Voices
One of the seminal works of Chicana feminism is La Chicana by Elizabeth Martínez, in which she writes of the triple oppression from which the Chicana suffers through racism, imperialism, and sexism. She claims that a re-examination of Chicano culture is needed to deconstruct the double-standard attributed to the Chicana and reinstate the image venerated by the Chicano feminist: The Chicana woman of La Raza is a fighter, a worker, and a revolutionary; she does not inflate the male ego with her passivity and weakness. In opposition to the women’s liberation movement, Martínez argues against a separatist feminism, declaring that working closely with their men is necessary for true liberation.
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Patricia Zavella writes of the crucial differences in epistemology between white feminism and Chicana feminism in her article, “The Problematic Relationship of Feminism and Chicana Studies.” At the time of her writing in 1989, Chicana feminism was beginning to become more well-defined as a separate concept of academic thought that incorporated theories from both “mainstream feminism” and Chicano activism. Chicana activists struggled with the white, middle-class focus of white feminism and their criticisms of the traditional family, while also debating the denial of equality within the Chicano nationalist movement. Zavella states that Chicana feminists are primarily “concerned with the simultaneity of experience: how race, class, and gender are experienced by Chicanas concurrently” (Zavella 28).
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Another leading voice in the Chicana feminism movement is Anna NietoGomez. In her article, “Chicana Feminism,” she addresses several important questions pertaining to the ideology of Chicana feminism. NietoGomez believes the movement supports work engaged in bettering the position of the Chicana, including providing education, erasing the double standard, and creating equal opportunity and representation. She writes that the Chicana feminism movement is employed in gathering women to build a base and getting the Chicano movement to advocate for women’s issues. Like other leading voices, she discusses the race and class issues that differentiate Chicana feminism from Anglo feminism and notes that naturally they have separate interests in many ways.
Relevance Today
The work and role of the Chicana feminist is like many of the other marginalized feminist groups. They work to continue to reconstruct the stereotypes put on Chicanas. The major issues that are focused on by Chicanas today are Abortion, Employment, Education, Rape and Abuse. Every year since May 1971, there is a National Chicana conference that takes place in cities across the country to further unite and solidify the movement.
Relevance to Other Texts
Alma M. Garcia’s The Development of Chicana Feminist Discourse provides a basis for the Chicana Movement by giving it a space of its own to realize it for the unique movement that it is. The text highlights the unique experiences Chicana women experience from their intersecting identities and oppressions to which they are tied, but also situates the Chicana Movement in parallel to the Black Feminist and Asian Feminist movements.
Along with Garcia, Kimberlé Crenshaw’s Mapping the Margins as well as Nash’s Rethinking Intersectionality all touch on the disillusionment with the white feminist movement. They offer criticisms towards its focus which is solely on gender and its identification of the enemy: the male species as a whole. All three authors argue for the necessity of an effective feminist movement to include topics of race, sexual orientation, class, ability, etc. alongside gender. They also find fault in turning their backs on the men of their communities who are undeniably also experiencing oppression, just in a different way.
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Garcia and Crenshaw describe violence against Chicana and Black women, respectively, that comes from each individual community and society at large. Both highlight what Crenshaw deems “representational intersectionality” which describes the burden women of color carry if they are in a situation where they must decide if seeking help for their own safety is worth tarnishing the image of their culture as a whole. Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands, La Frontera: The New Mestiza discusses violence against Chicana women specifically, making a similar argument to that of Garcia that the violence stems from a higher system; a system that is inherently flawed.
Garcia mentions the idea of the “Ideal Chicana”, a strong, long-suffering woman who had endured and kept Chicano culture in the family intact despite oppressive and sometimes violent gender roles, and puts it up against the idea of the “Machismo”, the “myth propagated by subjugators and colonizers which created damaging stereotypes of Chicanas as passive and docile women”. Like she mentioned, both of these concepts were created by a white America to keep Chican@s in their “place.” I was reminded of the concept of the “Strong Black Woman” as discussed by bell hooks and how this, too, is an unfortunate irony that these women- Chicana or Black- are strong while failing to mention that they are so because of the oppression they have faced.
Works Cited
“Chicanas.com Again....” Index, Chicanas.com Consulting , 1996, chicanas.com/intro.htm.
Crenshaw, Kimberle. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review, vol. 43, no. 6, 1991, p. 1241., doi:10.2307/1229039.
Garcia, Alma M. “The Development of Chicana Feminist Discourse, 1970-1980.” Gender and Society, vol. 3, no. 2, 1989, pp. 217–238. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/189983.
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Hooks, Bell. “Aint I a Woman.” 2014, doi:10.4324/9781315743264.
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Isaad, Virginia. “Latina Reads: 13 Mexican And Chicana Authors You Need To Be Reading.” Fierce, Mitú Inc., 26 May 2018, fierce.wearemitu.com/fierce-boss-ladies/latina-reads-mexican-chicana-authors-make-room-your-bookshelves/
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Martínez, Elizabeth. “La Chicana.” Chicana Feminist Thought: The Basic Historical Writings, by Alma M. García, 1997, pp. 32–34.
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Nash, Jennifer C. “Re-Thinking Intersectionality.” Feminist Review, no. 89, 2008, pp. 1–15. JSTOR,www.jstor.org/stable/40663957.
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NietoGomez, Anna. “Chicana Feminism.” Chicana Feminist Thought: The Basic Historical Writings, by Alma M. García, 1997, pp. 52–57.
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Zavella, Patricia. “The Problematic Relationship of Feminism and Chicana Studies.” Women’s Studies, vol. 17, no. 1/2, Nov. 1989, p. 25. EBSCOhost.
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