"Movimientos de Redeldia Y Las Culturas Que Traicionan" from Borderlands/La Frontera: the New Mestiza by Gloria Anzaldua
Prior to colonialism, there was no race. Colonialism was a racialized, gendered and sexualized classification of people based on race. Gender was socially constructed. This dichotomy of people was made up of the light side, the liminal side and the dark side. The light side consisted of white men, white bourgeois, colonials and white women. The light side was considered dichotomously binary where heterosexuality was institutionalized. This dichotomy was not complementary. Men were portrayed with reason, public and mind and woman as emotion, private, non promiscuous, passive, pure and weak in mind and body. The liminal/in between side included servants, prostitutes and criminals. Those in the dark side were seen as animals that did not have a gender, were genetically differentiated and were differentiated as property. The dark side dealt with modernity, capitalism and colonialism. It pertained to issues of gender. With modernity, individuals were subjects/agents who made decisions, were responsible and had rights. Every act of oppressing was found by some act of resisting. By in large, people were denied gender. Women's bodies were regarded as property to be used to satisfy the erotic pleasures of men, who usually raped them. Gloria Anzaldua was oppressed by the white side of the gender system and by her own culture. Colonialism, capitalism and race cannot be separated when looking at the gender system. Chapter two "Movimientos de redeldia y las culturas que traicionan" from Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria Anzaldua contributed to a queering of race, meaning that the man/woman dichotomy was challenged. The whole gender system was racialized. It showed the relationship between intersectionality. Intersectionality alleged that the classical models of oppression within a society, such as those involving race, gender and sexuality were interrelated based on which indicators were relevant to an individual. Although gender was
Cited: Anzaldua, Gloria. "Movimientos de redeldia y las culturas que traicionan" in Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1999. Smith, Andrea. Conquest. Cambridge: South End Press, 2005.