COLOR Latina: My perspective

The Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights, COLOR for short, is committed to their vision of spreading “knowledge, freedom and power to access a full range of opportunities for the health of their body, mind, and spirit.”  COLOR’s mission is to form a bond by establishing sisterhood throughout the Latina community by education and support for their reproductive rights and receiving quality healthcare. 

Education:
COLOR’s education program is set out to educate and provide information to Latinas on their reproductive rights and how to protect those rights.

Advocacy:
One of COLOR’s main focuses is to provide Latinas with a right to be heard and existence around reproductive health and freedom at the legislative stage.

COLOR beliefs are deeply tied into creating sisterhood among the Latina community, and to organize themselves to create change by the laws that are currently affecting women and Latina women alike. 

I personally think that COLOR is doing a great job in regards to reaching out the Latina community, and other minorities as well.  They collaborate with various ethnic groups and organizations to help meld many issues that are tied into racial/ethnic discrimination, biased laws towards minorities, health related issues, such as HIV/AIDS and high teen pregnancy; all of which are expressed through forms of culture, via art, music, and food. 

I really admire the hard work that goes into create community awareness in COLOR.  They’re located in the heart of an underserved population in Denver, and they have their family’s support as well.  The only downside to the organization is that they might be a bit unorganized in the process to get tasks done.  I’m assuming that they inquire much feedback, or can’t reach a consensus before the final decision is made.  I’m very excited to be helping out with the HIV/AIDS event that is to come on March 11^th.  I will be documenting the event by observing/recording/taking photos of the details of the event, jotting down people’s experiences of the event, and I may even participate by having myself be HIV tested.

My Expectations..

I was, and still am, very excited to be working with COLOR (Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights) at the beginning of the semester.  First off, I was expecting to jump right in and help with whatever help they needed; whether it was assistance with setting up for events, or help with the coordination with a given event.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to reach my organization in time as I expected initially.  However, I was happily informed by the Program Coordinator, Mimi that the volunteers are to meet this Saturday for our orientation, be briefed on the events roles, and training for the HIV awareness event “RISE UP!” coming up in early March. 

Second, I’m hoping to help educate and be educated with the current issues that the Hispanic community is facing today.  Also, I would like to “get in touch with my feminine side”, by getting an inside look on how the Latina community deals with the reproductive/healthcare injustices they face every day.  I’ve come to the realization that I am a profeminist, or male feminist, for lack of a better word.  For the longest time, I’ve always considered feminism to be strictly linked to women only, and that men had no part in feminist movements.  But, to my surprise, many men were involved in the support for women’s rights, and that’s very important to me because I, too, am for the equitable treatment for women as well! 

When reading the selected text from Gendered Lives, I was disappointed, and shocked to find out that Title IX still had its drawbacks; a female athlete discusses that even though Title IX offers them a chance for equality at their schools, they received the “leftovers” from the male athletes.  In other words, they still faced discrimination at their schools.  The only way to help overcome this is by raising more awareness to the male population; furthermore, a 2000 poll stated that 73% men supported Title IX, so it’s important to educate them that female discrimination is still prevalent on Title IX funded schools.  

Women's and men's movement in the U.S.

After reading chapters 3 and 4 in Gendered Lives, I didn't realize how much action has taken place in our country's history in regards to the feminist and antifeminist movements.  Growing up in a Mexican cultural background, the women almost always played the domestic roles or cooking, cleaning, caring for the children; the men, on the other hand, were the always the bread winners, and had very little to do with the raising of their children unless they had to discipline the kids for not obeying their mothers. Furthermore, my parents came from small towns that were distant from large cities; it’s possible to assume that even if feminist movements were active in the nearest large cities in Mexico, the likelihood of it reaching those small towns was nearly impossible.

Three Waves of Women's Movements:

The author made a very valid point on the presumptions that many people believed that the feminine movement had started in the 1960s; I was one of those people.  Given that I was born in this generation, I didn't really take into consideration the struggles that women had faced with women's suffrage, the second wave in the 60s in regards to women’s equal rights, and lastly, the third wave, that has risen to address issues of domestic violence and equal rights. 

            I was a bit shocked to have read about the various feminist groups that have emerged throughout the three waves.  Growing up, I had always thought of feminism as being lumped into one category focused on a political spectrum.  It was interesting how some feminists, though fighting for the same cause, were still segregated by color and social class. The same could be said about the men’s movement as well, which I’ll discuss about later.

            I have much respect for the third wave feminist movement, because they embody women of various ethnicities, social classes, they’re appearances, and lastly, sexual orientation.  It’s a new movement, and the author states that they haven’t exactly found a “center”, meaning that they haven’t yet come to a consensus on who they are and where they are going.

Men’s Movements:

What I found to be interesting in this reading was that Frederick Douglas was not only an abolitionist, but also an active supporter of women’s basic rights.  Furthermore, I was very unaware of the array of men’s profeminist and masculinist men’s movements.  What I admired the most about the profeminists was that they openly addressed sexism in the workplace, called traitorous identity.  This clever rhetoric was put into practice when females in the workplace would criticize their negative attitudes about sexist jokes and males would refer to them as being overly sensitive; however, when their male co-worker(s) would criticize the men telling the sexist jokes, they would be overcome with shame.  I thought that was brilliant!

            Although the author was able to mention various profeminist and masculinist men’s movements, I was a bit disappointed that the struggles of the Chicano/a Movement were not mentioned.  Chicano/as faced the same struggles with labor, racism, and equal rights just like the other minorities in the U.S.; furthermore, the Chicana Movement struggled even more for acceptance/tolerance in amongst their male counterparts, mainly due to machismo attitude views. I realize that this is a different course of study, but I highly believe that this movement at deserved some recognition for their cause.

COLOR Latina

I’m very happy to announce that I finally managed to touch base with my organization, COLOR Latina.  I was contacted via email by the Program Coordinator, Mimi Madrid; I will be working with her and the Community Organizer, Jenny Santos.  I haven’t had the chance to meet with Mimi or Jenny in person, yet, but I’m looking forward to doing it very soon. 

As Mimi mentioned in her email, me and my fellow students are to help out with the Crushing HIV event and Spreading La Voz: Women, Girls and Native HIV/AIDS Awareness Month; furthermore, this event is in collaboration with other community organizations including Cafe Cultura.  I’m very excited to be a part of this organization, and looking forward to the experience of collaborating with such great Latina organizations in the Denver area. 

Gender Reflection: past & present

1) There was a time when I was around the age of nine or ten.  I was playing touch football outside with the neighborhood boys.  During the game one of the boys that lived across the street, decided to get rough with me.  He pushed me down to the ground and scraped my knee.  I immediately began to cry and ran home.  My mom and dad came to see what had happened; my mother assessed my scrape as my dad began to ask me what had happened.  I told my parents about what had happened and my dad had gotten angry because I had done nothing about it; fighting the boy to redeem myself.  As I cried my dad would tell me to shut up, that boys didn’t cry, as I was being pushed back outside to go fight the boy from across the street as a way to regain my “manhood.”

My parents are both immigrants from Mexico, and their upbringing was very strict and old-fashioned.  My grandfather (my dad’s dad) was very strict on his children; the men were expected to be hard working, and unemotional.  They were the bread winners, and as a form of showing their love and affection were in the form of providing food, clothing, and shelter.  The women were the ones who stayed home, cared for the children, cooked, and cleaned.  It would be easy to say that my grandfather and father are your typical macho men.  My dad has a very hard time showing his emotions, especially crying.  As a young boy, it was considered unmanly to cry and I had to “suck it up” every time I had the urge to vent out frustration or sadness. 

2) One of the most recent stories about some of the expectations of my gender is currently with my two year old nephew.  My nephew is considered to be, by my father’s terms, a crybaby.  My nephew will quickly cry whenever he’s in a bad mood, or doesn’t get his way.  Whenever I would hear my nephew cry, I would also hear my dad tell him that “boys don’t cry… only girls cry.”  There has even been a time when my dad was frustrated with my nephew and blurted out “you want to cry? I’ll give you something to cry about.”  It’s taken my sister and me to explain to my dad that sometimes babies will cry for other reasons; not because their showing signs of being more feminine. 

I have noticed now that my dad is much more patient with my niece and nephew than when he was raising my sister and me.  I suppose it’s the whole grandfathering thing where he’s trying to instill in his grandchildren what he couldn’t instill in me and my sister.  Another possibility, and something that I like to joke about often, is that he’s just grown too old to get angry because he’s trying to watch his blood pressure.  =)

Captain's Log..

Ok, ok, that was a horrible way to start off my blog!

However, I’m very excited to be able to share my thoughts with you all (whoever decides to read this anyway).   I’m mainly doing this blog for my Gender and Communication class at Metro State (the best college in Denver, in my opinion!).  This blog is to go in conjunction with the service learning aspect for my class.  Basically, applying what I will learn in the class and tie it in with an organization (non-profit), where I’ll be working for the duration of the spring semester. 

Stay tuned.