doxiemama-blog1

[doxiemama-blog1]

Intersectionality Being a mixed child I feel like I have had many advantages as well as disadvantages. Being brought up with primarily two different cultures allowed me to explore both, however, it also created a sense of confusion when trying to see how I fit into everything because I'm not completely of one culture. With my mother being Mexican and my father being African-American not only did I look different from my cousin's but I also spoke English and a lot of my cousins on my mom side would make fun of me because I didn't speak Spanish. Even my peers at school would explain to me that I'm not Mexican because I did not speak the language. One advantage that I have experienced while growing up was the blending of my family and having everyone go through the blending of cultures along with me. My grandparents on both sides have become the best of friends and I owe it all to food. I feel that eating the food from another culture gives people a sense of understanding and appreciation for one another and in in my family, brought everyone together. The blending of families was crucial to me becoming who I am because it taught me that even though the cultures are different all of us can love each other just the same, the cultures don't have to be separate they can also be together. Representation As a light skinned minority woman I was able to see some representation as far as celebrities that look like me. However, as far as being mixed, it was more common that I would see someone who is a white and black mix, which i feel didnt completely encompass me. So on my poster I chose to place Michelle Obama in front of all of the Trashy reality shows that I love to watch because although my grandmother ( who is African-American) has taught me how to be a strong, educated, black woman, I also identify with the afro Latina women that I see on the reality television. Unfortunately, they don't represent too much good in the culture as far as their behavior, but for me they represent girls that are not enough of black or hispanic. So it was comforting to see other black women on television that were of Latin descent, in fact, It is inspiring. Politics of Passing This brings me to my last photo which is an afro.Growing up it was hard for me to pass as being one ethnicity so i figured I must choose a culture and look a certain way to blend in. So during High School I would wear an afro. It made me feel more in tune with black culture. I realized later that my Afro was not helping me present what I wanted to be seen as so I shaved my head and I went through a series of different hairstyles including: long blonde hair, red hair, a blonde afro which all ultimately led me to what I have today, my natural hair. All of these definitions that we learned help me understand that although I am different, I am just like everyone else in my own unique way and I am proud of who I am. People are always going to try to tell me who I should be according to what they have learned is correct, but I'd rather be a unique person who has something different about me than being someone who doesn't have any unique qualities at all.

[doxiemama-blog1]

Queer Tropes

The term I will discuss is media representation with a focus on tropes. In the article “Queer as Tropes,” we learned that there are very common tropes given to people who are in the LGBTQ+ community that are very limiting in ways of showing how diversity thrives just as prevalent as it does in the cisgender community. Despite recognizing that these are tropes, or stereotypes, that are pushed on gay characters it is still a form of representation which leads to many people following what they see on television as “the way” to be. Unfortunately, this doesn’t allow for the outliers in the community who don’t fit these narrow boxes created by these tropes such as the gay best friend who knows about fashion, makeup and is always ready to perform a makeover miracle but never seems to have their own love life shown. Instead gay people who do not fit these stereotypes are looked down upon as not being gay enough. These representations on television are very important because people around the world are watching and using these subtle characteristics that they see and they are applying them to people they know in the real world. This is why media representation matters and it’s extremely important. One prevalent representation that I notice a lot on television is feminine person with a more masculine person, which to me is still conforming to the cisgender gender community. Since in a heterosexual relationship there is always a man and woman, this representation makes it seem normal, or more comprehensible because traditionally there is always one submissive and one dominant person in the relationship. This allows for cisgender people to be able to identify characters as one being the woman or the man, when in fact they’re both the same gender. When representation of different types of LGBTQ+ relationships are not shown on the media it allows for inappropriate questions to be asked by people who in their mind, are trying to understand, when actually they are just being plain rude. One question I have heard being asked over and over again in efforts to decipher who is the “man” and who is the “woman” is: Who is on top and who is bottom? This question is not only invasive but comes from an uneducated individual who thinks that this answer will help them gain understanding. But in order to truly understand, they must get over what happens in private and participate change because ultimately our lives are not dependent on what parts we have and what we do with them, it’s about what mark we leave on the world.

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This poem embodies the emotions of a confused teenager who throughout their life had to learn everything we discussed this week in class through years of self torment and self discovery. The poem takes us into the mind of a teenager who wants to conform to the gender that they felt they are more aligned with. However they, as they see themself, have no role model to show them how to behave and how to present their gender expression. They also are lacking clarity as to who they are since there is no term (or binary) that they fit into completely. As we follow the author, we can see how they progress once they are in college because they have learned ways to present themself. One of the ways included deepening the voice paired with restricting attributes that may not allow for passing such as binding their breasts. Throughout this college experience though, and most likely when they became more comfortable with who they were as a person, we notice that they begin to allow themself to be fluid between the two binaries. It was interesting to see how they wanted to present as male when they were younger but when they became older it seemed that an important part of their getting to know themself was to break the binaries and this seemed to make more sense in allowing them to come together inside and out as one person. Once they were able go through the process of disidentification by not feeling the need to bind themself (externally and internally) to one way that a gender performs they were able to achieve a clear understanding of who they were. Here is the poem: Nonbinary? Is That A Thing? When I was a senior in high school I thought I was a boy because the Only thing I saw in my future was A man with a smile and my broad shoulders. I spent a summer underneath a name That met my requirements to be a man And yet people were still confused Because my voice was high and I had boobs. Freshmen year of college and I’ve learned How to pitch my voice lower and bind My chest tighter so that no one questions Whether or not my claim to man is real. Winter break tears it apart again, the Same pain from high school burning My chest where a bra is instead of A homemade binder that broke. I changed my pronouns twice and Felt like I was wrong for being different Until someone showed me just how beautiful The word non-binary could be. Non-binary, neither girl nor boy, The best of both or none of either Mixed together in one single person To create the self image that they need To see themselves with beauty and Face the binary reality before them. It has been seven years since I cried Because I wasn’t enough of a man. I’m still not enough of the man My mental image made so real. And I am more than okay with that. Work Cited Shinyrobots (2014, June 28). Nonbinary? Is That A Thing? Retrieved February 26, 2017, from http://www.powerpoetry.org/poems/nonbinary-thing

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If you haven’t started watching This Is Us, you definitely should start now. It is rapidly becoming one of the best shows on television. The show follows the lives of the Pearson family and goes back and forth through time revealing different situations in each of their lives that have led them to where they are now as 36 year olds. Not only does the show follow the family but it also follows other individuals who have played an integral part in their lives. With that said, I want to focus on a specific character named William. William has had quite the spotlight on the show, being showcased as an artist, an addict, dying of cancer and most importantly, being Randall’s biological father. Now it seemed that the show could not make William any more of a complex character than he already is until we met his partner, which happens to be a man. As the episode began to progress William explains to his son that he is sexually fluid and this is reiterated later by his granddaughters to their still confused father as they explained, “ grandpa is gay, or at least bi.” At the end of the episode I couldn’t help but to applaud the writers of the show because there was no stereotypical indication that the grandfather was sexually fluid. Even when his partner came up to him and began to talk with him there was no changes in his behavior that would make the audience assume that these two men were dating. The characters were completely normalized and not hindered with the typical oversimplified depiction of how a gay man “should” behave. In fact, these characters did not even fit into the archetypes that people in heterosexual relationships try to use to understand who is more dominant, or who wears the pants. William and his partner were both very intelligent men of the same stature and seem to have a very balanced relationship not allowing the audience to place one as more dominant than the other. This form of queer visibility is so important because it normalizes these men as behaving equal to straight men. The show creatively uses the audiences learned stereotypes against them so once they form a solid understanding of a character, they’re able to show the outliers, or that not everyone fits the mold that we put them in.