Chicana/o-Latina/o Gender & Sexuality

I know this is a (very) delayed blog entry considering we read this a while ago, but something happened at work recently made me think about this. I work at a restaurant and have friends from Ecuador and Mexico that work in the kitchen. There was a recent situation where the men cooks were making the women cooks do some jobs that they were supposed to do. They were things like washing dishes and cleaning (the two jobs that the cooks hate to do the most because it is dirty, uncomfortable and miserably hot). Understandably the girls resented this and were upset with the men. I asked them why the men felt that the women should be responsible for it and my friend said it was a "womans job" and that they weren't women so they didn't have to do "that shit". I was really angry with him for saying that because I can't understand why women should have to do the jobs that are undesirable to men, just because they feel like they shouldn't have to do it. When I told him this, he said that he feels sorry for my boyfriend. Ha. When asking a few other men at work who are not cooks I got mixed responses. A few of them agreed that it was more of a "womans job" to do the dishes and to clean. This whole experience made me think about how life at home is for them and what is expected of the women. Lets just say I took it out on my boyfriend and made him do the dishes that night. He still doesn't know why I came home so angry, but it felt kinda good to do that.

Posted by mccr0146 at 2:52 PM | Permalink

We have spent a considerable amount of time in this class discussing the roles of religion (specifically the organized institution of the Catholic Church) in relation to Chicanas' expression of their gender and sexuality. How does Hurtado make similar claims about Chicanas' roles as workers in relation to gender and/or sexuality? Why do you think Hurtado wants us to think about this along side religious beliefs and her chapter on lovers? Ultimately, I want to know how do our identities as workers influence our identities that we construct around gender and sexuality?

Feel free to explore the chapter and then add your own experiences as a way of relating back to the general concepts of how our status as "workers" become gendered processes. (It is always about connections though, do not simply write your experience without any analysis and/or as a way to re-center whiteness.)

Posted by Kandace Creel Falcon at 10:30 AM | Permalink