Race and sexuality

Reflecting our conversation on Friday, it is necessary to recognize that many outside factors impact the “gay experience”. On Friday, we were specifically talking about chicanas, who are both impacted by their race, culture, and gender. Up until this point in our class, we have often just lumped all groups together, only distinguishing gays from lesbians. In this form, we were probably reflecting the common experience of the dominant race, white Americans—which is ironic in many ways given the emphasis that the LGBT community put on being distinguished from the dominant sexuality.

The discussion of race and culture gave a very different perspective on the adversities that some people face in their effort to “come out”. In particular, chicanas are almost always identified by their relationships with men and the men in their lives, whether it is their father, husband, or son. Lesbians in this relationship find that they must carve their own identity in the community, attached to no other man, which is an almost completely uncharted path for women in this community. Following through with this effort to create an autonomous identity is often seen as a rejection of the culture and a betrayal to the race.

Unlike white women, women of other races in the United States, have to fight for both equal recognition of their race and their gender, they are fighting a battle on two fronts. They have not had as much time to fight for their rights as women within their race because they have been too busy working for their race as a whole. This is true of all minorities who also identify as LGBT as well. Being queer is often seen as embracing white culture, likely because it is the white queers who have had time to pave a path for themselves in society. Not to say that the LGBT movements of the past haven’t been fighting for the rights of all of those who identify as queer and not to say that the white members of the LGBT community have been fully accepted in dominant society, but the main target of the LGBT movement was dominant society—white, heterosexual society—and it did not put the same effort into getting recognized and accepted by minority groups, leaving that to the LGBT members of racial and cultural groups. As a result, these LGBT minorities face obstacles that the white LGBT community could never imagine