Final Assignment: Critical Theory and Latino GLBT Adults

Silence…is less the absolute limit of discourse than an element that functions alongside the things said, with them and in relation to them…we must try to determine the different ways of saying…how those who can and cannot speak…are distributed, which type of discourse is authorized, or which form of discretion is required…There is not one but many silences, and they are an integral part of the strategies that underlie and permeate discourse(Foucault, 1972, p. 27)

It is impossible to discuss the experience of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities (referred to hereafter as ‘GLBT’) when so much of that lived experience has been silenced. This is especially true of Latino GLBT, among other people of color. For one thing sexuality is rarely completely static – people may come to realize their sexuality late in life as a result of homophobia, while others may discover that they are actually bisexual from a starting point of being lesbian or gay. Recognition of one’s ‘real’ gender can be a tortuous process, fighting against the pressures of society’s norms and the fear of the extensive consequences of accepting the reality.

In this last posting of an educational module on critical theory and social work. The purpose has been to offer an introduction to critical theory by covering psychoanalytic, Marxist, feminist, queer, postcolonial and other criticism. These summaries have been based on Tyson’s book Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide, which is highly recommended for more in-depth converge of each area of theoretical criticism covered in this weblog. This final submission is intended to synthesize many of the ideas and concepts that have been explored in previous summaries by applying them to my research interest in Latino GLBT life.

As we look back over our lives, we construct them as stories. While New Criticism has replaced biographical historical criticism, I would like to offer some biographical information to help you as the reader better understand what experiences influences my writing. While this is my experience, it can not be generalized to that of all Latino GLBT because the one thing that you as a reader should take away, this is all very complicated and can not be captured in one persons experience.

I self-identify as a Chicano, a term used to indicate my identity of Mexican descent living in the United States. As a fourth generation Mexican American who was born in Denver, Colorado in 1963, I have a family connection to Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales who was considered one of three influential activist during the Chicano movement known as the Crusade for Justice. Supposedly, he helped my paternal grandmother out of legal situation when she was charged with the brutal stabbing of her abusive boyfriend, a muscular marine named Leo Santoya. Despite the connection, as a family we were not politically aware or involved in the Chicano movement, our focus was on surviving poverty and intergenerational trauma.

As the first born son to a machismo father, the fact that I was a gender nonconforming child was always a point of deep enmity between us. While I now have a loving relationship with my dad, in my formative years I experienced sever physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual trauma because I did not meet his expectations. After my father was nearly beaten to death by a couple of Denver Police officers in 1975, for having a Mexican flag decal on the back window of his 1966 Ford Galaxy, we converted from Catholicism to Pentecostalism. This was the same time that I began to accept that I am homosexual. In this new conversion I struggled to suppress my sexual orientation believing that I was possessed with demons and that my soul was predestined to experience eternity in a lake of fire and brimstone. I grew up trying to earn the approval of both my father and God, both of who considered me an abomination.

At 21, I volunteered for service in the U.S. Marine Corp from 1984 to 1988. This was during the Regan military buildup. I was fortunate that I never had to experience combat. While serving in Okinawa, Japan, I met my partner, another Marine who was a Tejano from the Corpus Christi area. I experienced three different Naval Investigations, some of which lead to dishonorable discharges of friends and the suicide of another. I think it says a great deal about my character that despite this harassment, I completed my tour with an honorable discharge and earned a good conduct medal.

It was also a time when many of my friends were infected with HIV, many of whom died from the disease. This led to my involvement with ACT UP as a member of Hogar Latino in Orange County California. Eventually, I made my way back to Colorado where I worked with La Gente Unida in raising public awareness of Amendment 2. Over the years, I have been the direct target of homophobic attacks and death threats. I know first hand the experience of oppression and discrimination for being both gay and a person of color.

In my educational career I have always been interested in the nexus of gender, class, race and sexuality, believing the more I understood, the better chance I would have to survive. It was synchronicity that my first research project involved the study of resilience among Latino GLBT individuals. Resilience is defined as the quality that enables some individuals to develop normally and to achieve satisfactory outcomes despite a disadvantage background, to recover from traumatic experiences, and to continue to function competently under stress. While many Latino gay, lesbian bisexual and transgender people surrender to the oppression of racism, poverty, heterosexism and sexism, which reveals itself in high rates of suicide ideation, substance abuse, high risk sex and other forms of social alienation, many find there place in the world and not only survive but thrive.

We as Social Workers are in a unique professional position to offer transformational service that facilities positive change in the lives of Latino GLBT. Yet, Social Workers are exposed throughout their lives to the same myths, misconceptions, and stereotypes of GLBT individuals as are their clients. Many well-intentioned social workers are unaware of their own heterosexism. While it is comforting to assume that absence of overt homophobia automatically ensures a proactive and affirming attitude, such an assumption may bring harm to the very clients social workers hope to serve well. Failing to recognize a happy event, such as successfully coming out at work or assuming opposite gender when referring to romantic relationships are examples of subtle ways of negating the lived experience of LGB persons. Examples of more overt ways include comparing LGB persons with adulterers, alcoholics, and pedophiles, inadvertent heterosexist bias, at best, and blatant "homonegative" attitudes, at worst.

Sexual customs have varied greatly over time and from one region to another. There has been some form of same sex love expressed through out every culture of the world. For example, in Africa, women in Lesotho have engaged in socially sanctioned "long term, erotic relationships" named motsoalle and male Azande warriors (in the northern Congo) routinely married male youths who functioned as temporary wives (although the practice has died out in the 20^th century). In North America, many but not all tribes celebrated two-spirit, which involved nontraditional gender roles and held status over that of other shamans. As well, there is record of other expressions in China, Japan, India, Europe and other parts of the world. Ignorance and puritan sensibility is what has exalts heterosexual sex as the absolute human norm.

It also appears that homosexuality is not exclusive to homo sapiens, some same-sex birds do it. So do beetles, sheep, fruit bats, dolphins, and orangutans. Zoologists are discovering that homosexual and bisexual activity is not unknown within the animal kingdom. Its not just males that engage in the behavior, some female Japanese macaques, often prefer to be with females, even when males are present in their group. It appears there is no “natural” human sexuality.

So much of what we feel has been repressed, which always manages to become expressed in unforeseen ways. Much of this energy was released when Freud opened the bedroom door, consequently, we have seen a number of significant shifts in social attitudes, behaviors and institutional regulations surrounding sexuality. In 1905 Sigmund Freud invented the idea of sexuality in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, which he described as a process independent of an individual's biological sex. Thinkers before Freud believed that most men are born "normal" (i.e. heterosexual) but that male inverts inherit some female mental characteristic that makes them sexually attracted to members of their own sex. Freud rejected the idea and argued that the direction the sexual drive takes has no necessary relationship to inherited sexual characteristics.

Where sex refers to the biological division into man and woman, gender is the parallel and socially constructed division into femininity and masculinity. Men are expected to be physically virile, athletic, strong, stoic, brave and sexually aggressive. Women are expected to be nurturing, dependent and submissive who succumb to the sexual prowess of men. Transgender is the state of one's gender identity not matching one's assigned physical sex. In Mexican cultures, the between space of power-laden gender identities of the virile male and dutiful woman, are the effeminate males who only play the passive role in anal intercourse, demarcated as a particular category of being – jotos or putos. Unlike their sexual partners, jotos are stigmatized for the “unmanly effeminate behavior” and are the target of social ridicule expressed through jokes and verbal play. Neither wholly male nor wholly female, jotos are interstitial begins who transgress and confound the power-laden categories of gender. Jotos are anomalous in numerous ways. On the one hand, they are begins with male bodies who are penetrated like women. On the other hand, they are symbolic women who have the sexual license of men and for whom sex is a source of pleasure and not reproductive activity. Indeed, this is why jotos are also called putos, putas being women whose sexuality has escaped the bounds of the patriarchal family and is "misused" for pleasure and profit rather than for "legitimate" reproductive function. Though putas are women, their deviation from the norms of "respectable" female sexuality paradoxically masculinizes them. Thus, the stigma borne by the joto (like his/her identity) is multiple and contradictory: he/she is stigmatized as a man for being feminine and as a woman for being masculine.

Despite intense hostility that white gay men faced during the early part of the century, they were in the best position to risk the social processes of coming out. They were relatively better situated than other homosexuals to endure the hazards unleashed by their transgression of gender conventions and traditional heterosexual norm. The diminished importance of ethnic identity among these individuals, due principally by the homogenizing and integrating impact of the dominant racial categories which define them foremost as white, undoubtedly also facilitated the emergence of gay identity among them. As members of the privileged racial group, these middle-class men no longer depend solely on their respective cultural groups and families as defense against the dominant group.

Chicanos, on the other hand have never occupied the social space where their gay or lesbian identity could becomes a primary basis of self-identity. This is due, in part, to the structural position as a subordinate, both the class and racial hierarchies, as their ethnicity remains a primary base for group identity and survival. Moreover, Chicano family life requires allegiance to patriarchal gender relations and to a system of sexual meaning that directly militates against the emergence of their alternative basis-identity. Furthermore, factors such as gender, geographical settlement, age, Nativity, language usage, and degree of cultural assimilation further prevent, or at least complicated, the acceptance of the gay or lesbian identity by Chicanos, which accounts respectively. They are not as free as individual situated elsewhere in the social structure to redefine the sexual identity in ways that are congruent with minority family life and additional gender expectations.

As has been discussed in the previous critical summaries, critical theory offers an understanding from dialectical materialism, class analysis and structuralism. This approach is traced to Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, and was elaborated on by Theordor Adorno, Eric Fromm, and Herbert Marcuse among outers. Critical theory often associated with conflict theory, feminist analysis and the radical psychotherapy. In the attempt to approach social reality “out there” to be discovered, this methodology takes a realist position and assumes that social reality always changes and the change is rooted in the tensions, conflicts or contradictions of social relations or institutions. It focuses on changes and conflict, especially paradoxes or conflicts that are inherent in the vary way social relations are organized. Such as paradoxes or inner conflicts, reveal much about the true nature of social reality.

Social constructionist is a theory built on the foundation that people do not discover reality but rather use language to construct a conception of reality through social interaction. An integral part of any culture is its language. Language not only develops in conjunction with a society’s historical, economic and political evolution; it also reflects that society’s attitudes and thinking. Language not only expresses ideas and concepts but actual shapes though”.

Foucault offers us a way of seeing belief systems defined by the connection between knowledge, language, and action, which he calls the discourse of power. There has always been a tension between religious and scientific belief systems. Each attempting to legitimizes knowledge and thus shapes our world-view. I recognize society as an intricate matrix, which influences individual development. At the same time, the individual is not a passive recipient of nurture; rather people actively respond in varied ways to their milieu. I am also aware we are moving from knowledge as abstract, objective and universal to ecologically valid, socially useful and local. More practical forms of knowing are advocated in elevating the embodied knowledge of everyday life over theoretical knowledge. A person’s conception of reality consists of the meanings we give to our interpretation of the world. Through conversations with numerous people over a lifetime, one’s reality continually evolves. One major aspect of this socially constructed reality is our sense of self – self-concept. Integral to the social construction of the self are experiences in the family of origin. I believe family is paramount to the transmission of reality of the self in one’s ethnic and cultural heritage. Different ethnic groups have different values, beliefs, rituals, and tradition that form the context of the family of origin. Just as the family is the context for one’s construction of self, one’s ethic and cultural heritage provides the larger context for the family’s construction of its reality continually shaped by shared memories. Having a sense of and construct with one’s ethic and cultural heritage is important to positive self-esteem and mental health.

Experience shows, however, the unique attributes of groups in the minority tend to be devalued by those it the majority as a way of coping with perceived threats from the minority. Consequently, a person from an ethnic group in the minority may construct a sense of self that is influenced by this devaluation, lack of power, and discrimination in the social context. At this level, constructionist theory offers an orientation toward knowledge making in the psychological science, a standpoint at considerable variance with the empiricist tradition. At the same time, social construcionsim contains the ingredients of a theory of human functioning, which offers an alternative to traditional views of individual and psychological process and opens new departures in such fields as therapy, organizational management, and education.

In sociology the term acculturation is synonymous with assimilation, used to describe the process by which an outsider, immigrant, or subordinate group becomes indistinguishably integrated into the dominant host society. Assimilation implies that the subordinate group actually comes to accept and internalizes the values and culture of the dominant group. So the process whereby immigrants change their behavior and attitudes toward those of the host society, is a fundamental part of migration-induced adaptations to new sociocultural environments.

Writing this paper has been an attempt to understand my own experience and why as I look around the profession I do not see myself reflected back. There are very few Latinos, even fewer Mexicans, and an even fewer number that self-identify as Chicano. Those who do, very few are openly gay and willing to share their experience. It would have been easier to focus on a different population, but this writer dose not have the luxury to look at racism and oppression as an objective academic exercise. On the contrary, I am one of the few of my gente (people) to achieve this level of success (at least success defined by dominant Anglo culture) and I am attempting to raise awareness of how we have and continue to be impacted by Americanization. As a fourth generation Chicano, nothing is more important than family, which suggest that direct service interventions that make use of family strengths and build on those strengths are most likely to be effective. Thus, a comprehensive understanding of Chicano clients must include both cultural considerations and the residual impact of such minorities’ status.

Many Chicanos are gradually acculturating to middle class mainstream society, but the vast majority is still struggling to meet their basic survival needs. Poor Chicanos experience discrimination, have poor physical and mental health and live in substandard housing; in addition, their proficiency in English is limited, and their level of education is low. Thus, they need more than feeling good about themselves and their loved ones; they need the back necessities to survive. Hence, in working with Chicano families, social workers must extend their role beyond that of the psychologically oriented healers to include other essential and functional roles – cultural broker, mediator, educator, and advocate.

Social workers who practice with Chicanos should develop generic skills to enable them to intervene with social systems at all levels. In addition to being therapist-advocates, they must be adept at helping families to cope with cultural change and adaptation. In addition, they need group wok skills to organize peer-support groups or small groups to help parents become more effective in their parental roles. Finally, they must acquire community organization skills to help impoverished community residents organize to effect the desired changes that will result in a higher quality of life of their communities.

The profession must shift to a systemic and holistic epistemology that blends scientific with other belief systems. In the role of activist and social critic I hope to influence the shift from exclusively intraspychic to social ecological models of problems; and an exploration of new models of service deliver with an emphasis on prevention, collaboration, use of indigenous resources, cultural diversity and empowerment. As a social interventionist my goal will be to limit deviance; to resolve social conflict; to facilitate knowledge and enhance skills; to ameliorate psychological problems; to prevent and treat illness; and to promote cultural, spiritual and intellectual life.

References

Foucault, M. (1972). The Archaeology of Knowledge & The Discourse on Language. New York: Pantheon