a. Using Nella Larsen’s Passing and Cherrie Moraga’s From a Long Line of Vendidas: Chicanas and Feminism to describe what race and being a lesbian have in common.
b. Argue that Irene is a lesbian as opposed to straight
II. Historical Background
a. Women’s right to vote with 19th Amendment in 1920
b. Gay rights 1920s-1930s
i. Kurt Hiller: Appeal… on Behalf of an Oppressed Human Variety (1928)
c. Brief touch on 1930s-present day gay rights
i. Frieda Smith: Frieda Smith Tells It Like It Is (1971)
ii. Michelle Parkerson: Jericho: A Call for Activism in the Black Gay Community (1983)
iii. Malcolm Lazin 20th Anniversary of the First National March on Washington for Gay and Lesbian Rights (1999)
III. Nella Larsen: Passing
a. Plot Summary
b. Race depends on other peoples perception of you
c. Irene
i. Cares about what people think (p. 21)
ii. Marriage to Brian is flawed
1. he wants to escape to Brazil
iii. Clare
1. p. 14- first description of Clare
2. p. 24 hints towards curiosity for Clare
3. p. 28- description of Clare through the eyes of Irene
4. p. 35 Irene describes Clare’s voice
5. “She was through with Clare Kendry” (31)
a. Getting over someone is not that easy
6. p. 44 suggests the threat of Irene being exposed as a “passing” lesbian
a. even more unacceptable to be a lesbian of color than to be a white one.
7. p. 51 suggests Irene misses Clare
8. p. 65 suggests the guilty conscience of Irene towards Clare
9. p. 65 talks about “love affair” which references the illicit love affair between the two women
10. p. 68 there is a talk with Clare
11. p. 73 description of Clare
iv. Idea
1. Kills Clare; if I can’t have her, no one can.
2. Threat of exposure to being a lesbian
a. Clare knew
3. Get rid of Clare, get rid of emotional attachment
d. Clare
i. Fake
ii. Tease (not gender specific)
1. p. 14 for Clare and man (John Bellew?) followed by Clare and the waiter
2. p. 30 for Irene and Clare
3. p. 46 “ache to see more of you” and “my love to you always”
a. whether it be typical female interaction, or intended as sexual
iii. Manipulative
1. She makes Irene feel the need to include her in activities
iv. More into “passing” as white than Irene
1. Hides her race altogether especially from her husband who is racist
2. p. 35, p. 36 Clare and Gertrude reference to being glad their children are white; or at least light enough to “pass”
3. p. 28 reference to money; “passing”
a. White people= “American dream”; house, picket fence, as well as rights to an education, equal opportunity
v. p. 47 reference to a Clare coming out
1. she knows about Irene being sexually attracted; her desire for a woman
vi. p. 52 reference to Clare acting
e. Passing for Irene could be her passing into lesbianism
i. p. 56 reference to Zulena comment on passing
1. can be taken multiple ways
f. In “passing” as white, they are “free” African Americans with limitations
i. They are “fake”
IV. Cherrie Moraga: From a Long Line of Vendidas: Chicanas and Feminism
a. Chicana women, daughters, etc., are to wait on their men
i. Male dominated culture
1. the need “to determine how, when, and with whom his women are sexual.”
ii. “You are a traitor to your race if you do not put the man first.”
iii. “I don’t mean to imply that women need to have men around to feel at home in our culture, but that the way one understands culture is influenced by men.”
iv. “It is the daughters who can be relied on”
b. Chicana’s stigmatized as “sexual persons”
i. Stems from the Malintzin myth
c. p. 36 reference to a Chicana mother example
i. “son gets her love for free”
d. p. 37 reference to mom and daughter conversation; mom in tears until the son calls and then she’s fine
i. “My brother has always come first”
e. “Seduction and betrayal. Since I’ve grown up, no woman cares for me for free. There is always a price. My love”
f. Chicana feminist can not reference white women theories whereas Chicano men can cite from a white (male) theorist
g. “To be critical of one’s culture is not to betray that culture.”
h. “In either case, the strategy for the elimination of racism and sexism cannot occur through the exclusion of one problem or the other… The only people who can afford not to recognize this are those who do not suffer this multiple oppression.”
i. Being a gay/lesbian of color, race
ii. Can also be used as a reference to Irene’s “passing”
i. “The one aspect of our identity which has been uniformly ignored by every existing political movement in this country is sexuality, both as a source of oppression and a means of liberation. Although other movements have dealt with this issue, sexual oppression and desire have never been considered specifically in relation to the lives of women of color. Sexuality, race, and sex have usually been presented in contradiction to each other, rather than as part and parcel of a complex web of personal and political identity and oppression.”
j. “We believe the more severely we protect the sex roles within the family, the stronger we will be as a unit in opposition to the Anglo threat.”
k. “Love severely undermines the potential radicalism of the ideology they [Chicana feminists] are trying to create.”
l. Chicana homosexuality
i. “Homosexuality does not pose a great threat to society. Male homosexuality has always been a “tolerated” aspect of Mexican/Chicano society, as long as it remains ‘fringe’… but lesbianism, in any form, and male homosexuality which openly avows both the sexual and emotional elements of the bond, challenges the very foundation of familia.”
ii. “At all costs, la familia must be preserved.”
iii. “An act of self-betrayal” because she is a woman “taking control of her own sexual identity and destiny.”
1. “taking control of her own sexual destiny is purported to be a ‘traitor to her race’ by contributing to the ‘genocide’ of her people.”
iv. Homosexuality a “white man’s disease”
1. Sonia Lopez “reinforces the idea that lesbianism is not only a white thing, but an insult to be avoided at all costs.”
2. “Homosexuality is his disease with which he sinisterly infects Third World people, men and women alike.”
3. “White lesbian is seen as the white man’s agent.”
v. “Maybe like me they now feel they have little to lose.”
vi. “Had I been born of a Chicano father [suggests he’s white?], I sometimes think I never would have been able to write a line or participate in a demonstration, having to repress all questioning in order that the ultimate question of my sexuality would never emerge… The Chicana lesbians I know whose fathers are very much a part of their lives are seldom “out” to their families [suggests being closeted].
vii. “Miserably attracted to women and fighting it.”
viii. “I am a Chicana lesbian. My own particular relationship to being a sexual person; and a radical stand in direct contradiction to, and in violation of, the woman I was raised to be.”
1. raised to be heterosexual
ix. “Lesbianism has become an ‘idea’—a political response to male sexual aggression, rather than a sexual response to a woman’s desire for another woman. In this way, many ostensibly heterosexual women who are not active sexually can call themselves lesbians. Lesbians ‘from the neck up’”
x. “As culture influences our sexuality, so too does heterosexism, marriage, and men as the primary agents of those institutions.”
xi. “A political to women does not equate with lesbianism [as radical lesbians suggest]. As a Chicana lesbian, I write of the connection my own feminism has had with my sexual desire for women.
1. you don’t need to be a lesbian to be a feminist—just remember the lesbians (citation?)
m. Sexual power struggles
i. “Somehow reaching sexual ecstasy with a woman lover would never involve any kind of power struggle. Women were different. We could simply magically ‘transcend’ these ‘old notions,’ just by seeking spiritual transcendence in bed. The fact of the matter was that all these power struggles of ‘having’ and ‘being had’ were being played out in my own bedroom.”
ii. “White feminists confine themselves to in describing sexuality are based in white-rooted interpretations of dominance, submission, power-exchange, etc. Although they are certainly part of the psychosexual lives of women of color, these boundaries would have to be expanded and translated to fit my people.”
iii. The idea that women like to be controlled; rape involves control
V. Other notes
a. Women oppression
i. “Half of the world’s workers are females who suffer discrimination not only in the workplace, but also at home and in all the areas of sex-related abuse” (Moraga 38).
b. This idea that behind every good man is a good woman
i. Never mentioned
c. Women as desirable
i. Seductive; flirtatious
d. Lesbians of color
i. Homosexuality is seen as a mental illness
e. Sexual intercourse with a man and emotional attachment to a woman
i. 2 relationships
f. Currently reading Marilyn Frye’s Lesbian Feminism and the Gay Rights Movement: Another View of Male Supremacy, Another Separatism
g. In process of Judith Butler and Bodies That Matter
i. ordering
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