Un joto femenista!

In México, joto is a masculine word that denotes a homosexual male, and pejoratively connotes an effeminate gay man who is a pasivo—sexually receptive rather than insertive. Moreover, the word’s breadth and potency as a pejorative is colored by regional influences: joto in metropolitan Guadalajara—Mexico’s Castro—connotes something different than it does in rural Michoacán. I have yet to find an English term that aptly captures the meaning of joto, so nuances are bound to get lost in translation. The same can be said of “queer,” which translates to raro in Spanish, which, in turn, translates to “rare” in English.  

I tell my English-speaking friends that I’m queer only if they are familiar with the term. Otherwise, I simply say that I’m gay. But with my Spanish-speaking friends, I vacillate between joto and gay. And sometimes I queer joto by upending the gender and calling myself a jota, even if it’s grammatical nonsense. Jotas don’t exist, but lesbianas (lesbians) do!

To add to my already complicated identity, I am also a femenista, and I have been one since before I knew what the term meant. Life steered me in its direction.

Due to my father’s trek to el Norte, my abuelita, tías, and mom raised me. They taught me early on that despite seemingly fixed gender roles, mujeres (women) deserved the same respect and treatment afforded to men. I also witnessed how poverty and an indifferent labor market gave these mujeres the impetus to practice feminism. Indeed, when my mother and I reunited with my dad, she let him know that she, too, would have to work because a single service-sector paycheck was not going cut it.

My father too agrees that men and women deserve to be treated equally even if he doesn’t grasp what femenismo (feminism) is. In fact, his trek to el Norte was also a journey into feminism, because it forced him to grapple with the fact that there isn’t, as former President Obama notes, a “right way and a wrong way to be a man.” When my father arrived in this country he had to cook, clean, and take on service sector jobs despite his traditional upbringing. Immigration forced him to confront domesticity and the untenabilty of strict gender roles. And he learned that, just like women are expected do, men of color in this country have to compromise in order to survive. In short, although my father didn’t seek out feminism, feminism found him.

Personally, as my lexicon grew, I learned to articulate what I had grown up observing, and I began calling myself a feminist. In fact, I became a hyphenated feminist. Throughout several semesters of undergraduate study, I identified as a queer-intersectional-feminista. This was not because it was trendy do so, but because I felt compelled to ask mainstream feminism to make room for an immigrant joto like me.

I wholeheartedly believe that “the personal is political,” and that feminism must continue to hear, incorporate, and reflect upon others’ her/hi-stories, including those of men. Indeed, Adichie’s comment that masculinity is a “small hard cage, [where] we put boys inside,” highlights the fact that gender norms also bedevil men. Thus, feminism should actively strive to fold more men into its ranks. 

In spite of the challenges confronting feminism, I admire feminism’s bent toward reflexivity and its willingness to critique itself. I take comfort in knowing that feminism is capacious enough to embrace jotos, individuals who identify as queer, and others whose identities may be morphed or partly lost in translation.