Week 6

The thing that stood out to me the most in this week's readings was Alicia Arrizon's discussion of the "a/o" split, and how "the grammar of most Spanish - and of most Romance languages - has subjected women to masculine constructions." This echoed Anzaldua's discussion in last week's reading of the discovery of the first person plural pronoun "nosotras" as an alternative to the masculine "nosotros," which made me think about the ways language can subtly reinforce a certain hierarchy. In turn, this reminded me of something Lah Tere said when I went to her talk as my cultural event for class. She talked about the colonized mentality of immigrants, an inferiority complex that becomes ingrained in their minds after years of being treated as second-class citizens. Clearly, the patriarchal society and the masculinized nature of the Chicano movement have created a similar state of mind for Chicanas, who have to empower themselves as women before they can fully gain rights as Chicanas. I wonder, then, what roles men and women should play in this effort. How much of the work must be done by the Chicanas, and how much and what kind of contribution should Chicano men have in bringing women into the movement?