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Jose Valdivia

Ms. Manchester

English 3 AP 2°

26 March 2018

Call me ​Jotita

Suffering from many forms of oppression, disadvantaged individuals are left defenseless

against covert systematic oppression, often disguised as ‘advocacy.’ “Chicana, tejana,

working-class, dyke-feminist poet, writer theorist” Gloria Anzaldúa benefits from the use of

intersectionality—a framework which works to unify ‘overlapping social injustices’ (class, race,

gender and sexuality oppression) in order to promote equality. Oftentimes isolated by individual

movements—Women’s Rights, LGBTQ+ Rights, and Civil Rights in general—all of which are

theorized by middle-class, white scholars, minorities like Anzaldúa must fend for themselves,

creating counter-cultures which undermine ‘minority hegemonies.’ In Anzaldúa’s “To(o) Queer

a Writer,” her aggressive tone argues against Anglo-Saxon use of the term “lesbian” (and other

‘demeaning terms’), claiming it deprives queer people of color of identity and linguistic

autonomy; furthermore, drawing connections to her dissonant identities, Anzaldúa uses a ‘queer

umbrella metaphor,’ Spanish derogatories and repetitive diction in order to express her

frustrations with the Lesbian dominant culture.

As most words in any language, the word ‘queer’(s) definition has remained fluid. Once a

word meaning ‘weird or different,’ it has shifted from a derogatory term to an umbrella term to a

complex identity in ​Queer​ theory. Anzaldúa believes that, as an umbrella term, it fails to

accurately represent the diversity of the LGBT community, ‘oversexualizing’ identity and
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reducing experience to same-sex relations and/or gender variance. She claims that the “false

unifying umbrella… [sucks] [individuals] into the vortex of homogenization,” driving other

people of color to avoid “the shelter of the queer umbrella.” Anzaldúa asserts that by

perpetuating the narrative of ‘sexual uniformity’ under the queer umbrella, white lesbians

oppress and isolate those who are impacted by multiple injustices (i.e. a Deaf, Black, transgender

woman—ableism, racism, transphobia and sexism). The ‘all-encompassing’ term abstracts the

lives of queer people of color, erasing crucial layers of identity. For many, the multifarious

self-imposed​ labels work to engender identity autonomy. According to Anzaldúa, those who

“[name] [her]... lesbian, [attempt to] subsume [her] under [their] category,” oftentimes leaving

“[her] color erased [and] [her] class ignored.” She argues against the homogenization because

disregard for her multiple identities creates ostensible equality—one established through

‘universal normalcy’ rather than the acceptance of diversity. As opposed to reducing injustice,

the queer umbrella serves only in favor of those who theorize it—white, middle-class

lesbians—ignoring women of color. The intrinsically exclusive term forcibly assimilates

individuals, committing a sort of identity, cultural genocide, for one cannot understand the

complexity of a minority’s life from a ​monofocal​ perspective. Anzaldúa criticizes the assumed

uniformity of identity by white lesbians—one which ignores class; race; gender and ability,

believing that ‘sameness’ promotes systematic injustice.

As a part of her many identities, Anzaldúa makes connections to Euro-Aztec roots,

writing her essay in ‘Spanglish’—a combination of English and Spanish—and reclaiming her

identity through language. The dichotomy she establishes between the two languages separates

her from the “English-only dominant culture,” distinguishing between the terms of her homeland
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and those of the ‘oppressors.’ Anzaldúa makes a statement against the name “lesbian,”

excoriating its implicit Anglo-Saxon connotation. She explains that “lesbian” is not of her

culture; she uses the terms “jotita [dyke],” “marimacha [tomboy/dyke],” and “una de las otras

[literally ‘one of the others’].” She claims that, just as many others, the word lesbian does not

resonate with her, failing to conjure pride or any emotion, at all. The term is one created by

white, middle-class women for white, middle-class women. Theoretically, a lesbian, white

woman faces less oppression than a ‘lesbian,’ Black woman; therefore, the term represents a

limited experience: privilege. “Lesbian” not only inaccurately describes Anzaldúa’s cultural

identity, but it commits a parallel genocide to European Conquest of American indigenous tribes.

She claims that her favorite of the ‘homosexual terms’ is “the Náhuatl term patlache”; cleverly

tracing back to her indigenous roots, Anzaldúa suggests a connection between the European term

‘lesbian’(s) censure of identity to the linguistic and cultural genocide of Náhuatl and the Aztec or

indigenous tribes of ​LatinoAmérica​. Attempting to equalize the LGBT community, white

lesbians’ naming of ​others​ as such further-perpetuates white superiority, reëdifying white

supremacy and the lesbian dominant culture. In using Spanglish as a form of dissent against

traditional ‘lesbiansim,’ Anzaldúa obscures the stability of lesbian universal teleology.

Driven by a sense of ‘queerness,’ Anzaldúa uses repetition to emphasize oppression from

white lesbians, underlining her assertion of the importance of difference. Among the words (with

variation) repeated, the most significant are: ‘identity’ (7 times), ‘name’ (4 times) and ‘different’

(6 times). She explains that identity, especially self-identification, determines power struggles of

superiority and inferiority, saying “most writers from the dominant culture never specify their

identity.” By identifying herself as such—or failing to identify herself—the white, middle-class

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writer posits her identity as the ‘norm’—an assertion of superiority—assuming that, unlike

inferior writers (lesbian, Chicana), she need not identify herself. The terms which the dominant

culture imposes on minorities imply their inferiority, a flaw in identity. Terminology as such

suggests a constraint of minority identity, erasing the importance of diversity (pluralization) over

homogeneity (assimilation). Similarly, ‘names’—or the act of ‘naming’—distinguishes between

dominance and submissiveness. Anzaldúa writes that “naming is how [she] makes [her] presence

known”; “naming [herself] is a survival tactic.” She depicts her struggle as one of survival, a

fight to preserve her origins. She gives herself the names others are not allowed because, in that

way, she dissents from the dominant culture, using their confining adjectives to attack the

hegemony, itself. Being able to name oneself is related to autonomy: rather than relying on the

constraints of white lesbians, queer women of color can identify themselves in order to prevent

the vanishing of their character complexity. In order to elude the sexual uniformity of

‘lesbiansim,’ Anzaldúa finds herself “constantly asserting [her] differentness”; she must

“stress… the difference [in] [her] relationship to [her] culture.” An underlying idea in

Anzaldúa’s work is the importance of difference over sameness. Rather than extrapolating on the

few semblances from individual-individual, she emphasizes the urgency of diversity, for

individuals—coming from different cultures, classes, ethnicities, races, religions and

genders—experience oppression differently. A single term such as ‘lesbian’ cannot describe the

spectrum of ‘same-sex-loving women’ because it implies identity solely based on sexuality,

ignoring the complexities and differences amongst individuals in the LGBT community.

Anzaldúa’s repetition reveals the ways in which the lesbian dominant culture has used the

language of identity to oppress queer people/women of color.

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In her passionately written essay, Gloria Anzaldúa manipulates the politics of language in

relation to power and identity. Her linguistic ingenuity works to defeat the dominant culture’s

naming of minorities as a tactic of oppression. Used as an agent of unification, lesbian identity

denies LGBT minorities of autonomy, ignoring ‘polarizing’ differences in class, race and gender.

Rather than approaching equality from an ideological, pseudo-utopic point of view, Anzaldúa

realizes that, in order to move toward justice, the idea of homogeneity must be abandoned;

instead, there ought to be a hyper-focus on empowering those who are systematically oppressed

through pluralization over assimilation.