In-QUEER-y: Why I Love the Gays and Whites

I’m gay. I’m Mexican. I’ve never been both, but I guess I am.

This last week Chris Woods, Program Administrator at the New York University LGBTQ Student Center, came to the College and gave some presentations on the intersection of identities pertaining to faith, ethnicity and sexuality and how to make Middlebury more of a space where people can exist as all their identities in comfort. One of the discussions was a conglomerate of Queers & Allies and people of color groups such as Alianza.

To be honest, I wasn’t really excited to go because I didn’t see a need to create a space where I could be all of my identities at once. After the discussion I now realize it is because I long ago abandoned my identity as a Mexican for the sake of being queer due to the very issues brought up by Woods.

People are multi-faceted and there are many layers to how a person identifies. I am an atheist, but I was raised a Catholic and I still feel very culturally Catholic. I love Christmas. Give me box of Christmas décor and I will give you a fabulous living room of Yuletide joy. But by definition I can’t be Catholic and be an Atheist.

While we as people exist as whole individuals, the labels we use to identify ourselves are compartmentalized and each come with their own conventions. You can’t be gay and be a Muslim. That’s basically a contradiction, no? You can’t be a priss if you’re a Mexican man. Islam does not condone of homosexual behavior and Mexican culture dictates that a man grows up firmly learning the rules of machismo and chivalry.

For some of us, these conventions are just silly rules that fail to recognize the diversity and complexity within and individual. But for people like myself, I don’t have such a strong filter and when I feel the culture of one identity telling me I can’t belong to another, I give one up.

I am gay. But I’m also Mexican. I was raised by a single Mexican-born mother and our stereotypically large Latin family. I never really fit in from the beginning. I wasn’t sporty and I hated piñatas. I also hated jalapeños and salsa. My mother taught me it was good I open the door for women because I was a man, and I told her I open the door for all people because I walk fast and it’s a nice thing to do if you get to the door first. Really, the most Mexican thing about me was being first generation and speaking Spanish. Even in school with 7th generation Hispanic classmates, I stood out as culturally different. To many, I was “the whitest person” they knew, not to mention gay. My voice was high, wrists loose, and I was … sassy.

Being an effeminate man simply isn’t something cool in Mexican heritage. As I grew older, I realized I wasn’t alone. I had the queer community and we had gay pop-culture. I was fabulous from the start and instead of rejecting me like the Latino community did, the queer community celebrated me. But the queer space is a white space. The more I embodied the queer pop-culture identity that I loved, the more effeminate I was perceived.

Both indirectly and directly I heard the message that I can’t be gay and Mexican. Well I knew I was gay. After a certain point, you really just can’t ignore it. So if being gay meant I couldn’t be Mexican, well then I wouldn’t. I distanced myself in my behavior from Latin culture. It was just me, the gays and the whites.

But identity is fluid and coming to Middlebury challenged the way I view myself. Maybe in San Antonio, Texas, I can feel white. But in Middlebury I’m definitely not. Having a roommate who’s also queer yet strongly identifying as Latino also did a number on me. We like the same food and music and we speak the same language. I am Mexican just like he is. And just like he is, I’m gay. I let societal pressures and conventions make me feel unwanted in Latino space to now find myself sticking out in a white space. For the first time, I’m starting to feel like a queer person of color, while others have different identity-crises. If there is anything I learned, it’s that rather than telling people who they can be, it’s better to listen to who they are.