Since High School, I’ve enjoyed looking at artwork and trying to guess the gender of the artist by only looking at their piece. I am usually pretty good at it. In fact at Artomatic this year, I correctly guessed the gender of the artist on all the pieces I saw except for one. The one I couldn’t decide on was a transgender piece. I’ve learned though that my ability to guess gender on blogs is not so good.
For example until recently I thought Tortilla Sandwich was written by a male and Prentisis Riddle by a female. I’ve also been wrong about ethnicity. At first (long ago) I thought El Oso was Xicano and I hate admitting it but I questioned the intentions of his writing once I found out he wasn’t.
I find myself unintentionally assigning gender, ethnicity, relationship status and sometimes location to bloggers. And while sometimes I base these assumptions on little to nothing I still find myself surprised when I find out a blogger is not what I expected. The sad truth is I read their blogs differently once I find out.
Seyd, told me that when he first started reading my blog, he thought that “I was white girl trying to hard”. I felt really hurt by that.
When I was in DC a few weeks ago I was driving around with Alexi and one of his friends. Alexi made some comment about me being noticeable different in some neighborhood because I am white, I agreed with Alexi. His friend interrupted and said “Elenamary, you consider yourself White?” “Yeah, I do.” he looked out the back seat of the window and said “But you don’t look white. You look Hispanic. I guess I can just tell because I’ve been to Latin America.” On the other end of the spectrum Seyd was shocked to learn my mother is morenita / cafecita (dark skinned). It is odd to me. White people see me as “brown” and “brown” people see me as white. My (white) boss at work says I look “ethnically-ambiguous”.
Truth is I think I do look white and find that people don’t know I am anything but white until I tell them. I think Latinos see the reality of me being white and I think white people once they know I am Latina want to see something different.
However, it makes me just as sad trying to prove to Latinos that I am not just “some white girl who is trying too hard”. I am both White and Latina. My Mexican Abuelita is just short of five feet, dark brown, with long braided gray hair. My Irish grandfather was the shortest of his siblings at 5’10 with pasty-white-skin and blue eyes. I am both of these people. And while I may look more like my Irish grandfather, I am culturally both. I don’t like white people telling me they can tell I am Mexican, and I don’t like Mexicans telling me that I don’t look Mexican. Woe is me.
My daughters and I have talked a lot from the time they were small about their being both Indian and “Texan” (their mom was born in India and I’m your average Texas white boy). I’ll admit that using “Texan” as an ethnic identity is pretty weird but I wanted to come up with terms for the two sides of their mixed heritage that they could be proud of, and “white” just doesn’t do it for me.
Funny thing is, a lot of people take them for latinas, and not just white people. Their mom and I used to laugh about how in Mexico everyone would address her in Spanish but I’m the one who speaks it. Now we find that strangers assume they must have a latina mom, even people who would recognize their mom as Indian if they met her. There’s something about the mix of European and Indian genes that reads as latina, at least in Texas (I’ll bet in Britain people would categorize them more accurately).
you are discouraging me from having mixed babies dammit!
I thought I was the only “weird” one who done stuff like that…
come si no hubiera gueros en mexico. but yes, i’ve made the same assumptions, even though my sister looks like a gringa. guilty.
Okay, Daily Texican, this item over at LatinoPundit has me wondering: how is it we can tell at a glance that fair-haired latino broadcasters are latinos? Or can we?
What are you?
Come’on. The fundamental problem is that you’re trying to fit a whole, infinitely (or nearly so) complex person into a very simple, tidy cubbyhole. No good can come of trying to do this. It serves no purpose, at all. If you think it does, analyze your reasons for thinking that, because they’re almost certainly suspect.
When I’m in PR or Mexico, I’m usually approached in english. In Isreal, I was approached in Hebrew. In Italy, in Italian. People make assumptions everywhere, about many things. They’re necessary, because as a matter of course, we don’t have enough information to avoid doing so. They’re a necessary evil. But don’t do it for the fun of it, for &diety’s sake. :)
Elenamary,
Isn’t that one of the wonders of the blogs–that we can construct ourselves through our words and not our physical characteristics (even if they still frame our consciousness)…
I wonder what people think of Thivai Abhor!
I like your art exercise, I do that with the campus museum–bringing students down to meditate on the artist’s identifications and then having them rsearch who they are, where they lived and when they were working.
Check this out.
Yes, there is nothing more annoying than Mexicans/Anglos telling you what you are or aren’t. Some moran asked me if I was Mexican and my response was why wouldn’t I be if I just told you I was? He told me my glasses didn’t make me look Mexican. I looked at him in pure disgust and walked away. Bottom line be yourself regardless of other folks assumptions.
Dios mio, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. Sorry about that. BOLILLA!!!!
I’ve had readers comment that they thought I was male as well, but a gay male…
Welcome to the hyphen. But in all seriousness, does it matter among your friends what your exact identity is? Or is this just an issue when dealing with people outside of your peer group?
Sunwoo, my identity is constantly developing I know that. It does matter how people view me if they will treat me differently, in a meeting with a bunch of middle-aged white people, I am not about to tell anyone I am Mexican, unless asked. In a room full of Latinos, I am going to tell them as soon as possible. Yes, a lot of this are my own issues but people do treat me differently once they find out “what I am”.
And sadly it is in issue with my friends sometimes, too. I wasn’t able to seem to get Alexi to understand that it bothered me when his friend would joke about covering me in bean paste.
I see. I guess I see it as more of a nuisance than a badge for identity solidification. I tend to get shunned by other koreans who find out that I don’t speak the language very well at all, so I’m not korean enough for them. On the other hand, I’m clearly asian looking, so for the mainstream american audience, I’m somewhat of a foreign social anomaly; I speak english well enough, and can get the jokes, but I still look different. When I’m dealing with someone outside of my peers who brings my race into the conversation, I tend to get fairly distant with them. Unless there’s a need to shell out my ethnic identity, I just leave it in my closet. It’s less frustrating, and I don’t have to answer questions about how good the food is, or if I have any keen swear words that I can teach them.