Some of it is about group membership – family/clan/tribe, ethnicity/race, religion, culture, profession, and other forms of alliance/affinity. Some of it is about how we feel about ourselves – male/female, preference for same or opposite sex partners or both or neither. I’m thinking about identity today because I encountered several FB posts about it.
One of these was a picture of a woman dressed as a cat. She apparently presented herself to an Arizona schoolboard meeting to ridicule transgender people. I suppose this absurdity is in line with the idiotic and apocryphal trope that schools are now installing litter boxes for students who identify as cats. Of course, this isn’t a logical or coherent argument against people’s sense of self/identity; it is merely a crass form of ridicule. Nobody actually identifies as a cat – except me when I am interacting with our cats or the occasional flerkin. I do sleep with them, after all.
The next came from one of my educator friends who posted an item regarding the creation and enforcement of school dress codes. Codes that are designed to marginalize certain groups or suppress the expression of individual identity are illegal. Codes meant to impose gender or sexual stereotypes or prejudices are also forbidden. If boys can wear slacks – so can girls. If girls can wear nail polish – so can boys. It’s all very logical – every individual has the right to present themselves as they see themselves.
Today, I heard that Sarah Huckabee Sanders, in her first official act banned the use of the term Latinx in official state documents from Arkansas. She may as well ban the use of the terms Catholic, Jewish, or Estonian. It is sheer cultural insensitivity at best and gross intellectual dishonesty at worst. For the record, I’m not a big fan of Latinx.
At dinner, Susan asked me how I identified – Latino? Hispanic? Actually, when I was a high school and college student, I identified as Chicano. Latino means from Latin America. Hispanic means speaking Spanish (European, Latin American, Carribean, etc.) Chicano means being American by birthright but descended from Mexicans.
Of course, here is where things get sticky. Chicano is a word that has a masculine ending -o. Among my peers, we would most often refer to a female of Chicano ancestry as Chicana using the feminine ending -a. So, now that we have academics and activists of various stripes referring to Latinos of either gender as Latinx, should Chicanos and Chincanas be called Chicanx in the aggregate? Sigh, language can be a bitch.
If someone or some group identifies as Latinx and wants to be referred to that way, I’m completely indifferent to it. Go for it I say. Call me Chicano, Latino, Hispanic, Texan, American – the descendant of Meso-Americans and Europeans from the Iberian Peninsula. There is also a sprinkling of genes from the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean.
Nothing spreads as vigorously and successfully as genes, food, and music.