Dearest Family,

I am aware that you are concerned about me and only want the best for me, in your limited sense of what “best” means. (Hint: what you accept as “best” is nothing that makes me happy, and, in fact, tends to be exactly that which makes my life most unbearable. See: trying to convince me to waste my time at a vocational school or community college rather than pursuing a degree at an excellent, if expensive, school, in an area which excites me. See: trying to break me up with my boyfriend, who is in fact the reason I am going back to school and who is demonstratively good for me by most objective measures…just not the ones you think are important, apparently.) I appreciate that you genuinely care about me even if you do not understand me and generally give poor, unsolicited advice. I love you anyway, even when I sometimes probably shouldn’t. (See: trying to break me up with my boyfriend. Assholes.)

However, I cannot help but notice the irony of the girl with the terrifying facial piercings and tattoo in a dead-end job with no professional or intellectual aspirations in life lecturing the clean-cut aspiring art and creative writing student about her unprofessional appearance due to her short hair. I cannot also help but notice that the coincidence when this conversation coincides with a recent transphobic diatribe about the aforementioned sister’s distaste for people who defy conventional gender norms and preference for “girls who are feminine” and “men who are masculine”. This, combined with the failure of Congress to recognize that, once again, trans issues are everyone else’s issues, and that gender-nonconformity is in fact a very real area of concern re: discrimination in employment for the cisgendered, results in lectures about my appearance being far more personally hurtful and infuriating than you can possibly realize.

Furthermore, suggested solutions to this issue — “buy a cheap wig” — are laughable.
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Please stop being racist.

Just stop.

I know you think my skin’s just dark enough to look like I tan well, but I’m not white, and I don’t think it’s hard to figure that out. My name, for one, should be a fucking clue. Do you people honestly think that just because my skin’s not too brown for you that means I’ll happily eat up your racist bullshit? Because that’s how it seems to be. Hell knows I have no real idea what’s going on in your heads, because ya’ll seem to be stupid, even those of you who should know better.

I’m not from Mexico. I was born in Utah. I don’t speak Spanish. My grandfather was from Guatemala, that country in Central America that apparently doesn’t exist, because everything south of Texas is fucking Mexico to you.

But my name is a Spanish one. My hair and skin are brown. I have the short stature and figure of a Latin American mestizo, because that’s what I am and where I come from. I’m not tall and thin like an anglo girl; I have the short, thick bones and wide hips of the Mayan women my grandfather came from on one side, the other being the European, yes, European despite their language, conquistadores who gave me my name.

And, despite being raised in the white Mormon cultural vacuum that is Utah, I’m aware of it. You want to know why?

You are the people who can’t remember my last name, unable to spell it correctly even when I tell you how to your damn face, substituting my surname for whatever generic Spanish name comes to mind at the time.

You are the people who put me in the lowest academic classes when I transferred to school in Colorado, apparently assuming from my name that I was one of the many ESL students without even bothering to look at my fucking transcript, because if you had you would have seen that I was supposed to be in the advanced classes. And then you did it to my little sister when she went to middle school, too — making the same mistake two years in a row, which took a total of months of everyone’s life to resolve, again and again and again.

You are the people who assume I don’t speak English, or that I’m uneducated or incapable of being educated, that I’m less than human and unworthy of respect because my last name didn’t come from English or German or whatever other European languages seem more acceptable to you. And if I’m not subhuman I’m a demographic, oh, glee.

And you know what?

You may think that you’re only talking about undocumented Mexican workers when you say racist shit to my face, but you’re the same people who think that we’re all one homogenous group. Hell, you could at least pretend to be concerned about illegal immigration in general, since Mexico isn’t the only place that people come from — so when you only talk about “those people” with brown skin from further South than makes you comfortable, it’s pretty obvious you don’t actually care about the immigration issue. It’s just an excuse, because you’re fucking racist.

When you talk about those “Hispanics” taking all the jobs, it’s pretty fucking obvious this isn’t about immigration — it’s about language and culture and surnames and that which allows you to identify them without knowing anything more, skin. It’s about skin. Because you assume that an entire continent and a half is all Mexico, all immigrants, all illegal. Even those of us who are born here, even those who have lived here for generations longer than your families.

So when you say all these things, it seems pretty clear to me…that you’re talking about me, and forgive me if I find that pretty fucking offensive. Forgive me if that makes me defensive.

When you say that Mexicans are subhuman (and, literally, some of you have actually said this to my fucking face), you’re hurting me. When you talk about how “those people” are taking over and “ruining” “your” country, you’re hurting me. When you say that illegal immigrants deserve no legal rights or protections whatsoever, by extension, you include anyone Latino, you include anyone with a Spanish last name, even those of us here legally, even those of us born here, even those of us with skin pale enough to please you — because you don’t know us. You don’t know who we are, or how or why we’re here, and you all use rudimentary and, frankly, stupid measures to identify us.

So what reaction do you think you’re going to get from me? Why does it surprise you when my feelings are hurt and when it makes me angry? I’m not from Mexico and I’m a US citizen and I don’t speak Spanish — but I’m still going to be fucking personally offended when you say that shit, because people see my name and they automatically lump me into those categories. All. The. Damn. Time. I don’t care if you don’t realize it. I don’t care if you don’t think that about me, personally. I don’t care if I’m white enough that it doesn’t register in your egocentric anglo mind that my feelings as a mutt are going to be hurt. I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care.

This is still who I am, and I’m acutely aware of it. It’s your privilege not to have to think. It’s your privilege to plead ignorance, or to claim that’s not what you meant, or that you’re not including me because I’m somehow special and worthy of being elevated to “human” status.

America is a nation of mutts and immigrants and their children. You white people don’t get off talking about how those immigrants are ruining “your” country, because it wasn’t “yours” until you took it, and I think the ruining thing was pretty much all your fault to begin with. (And I’ve got colonial invaders from all over the world in my past, Spanish America, British India and Africa, and who knows where else — but I kind of accept that my ancestors were responsible for that and that I benefit from it.) Your families all came here from somewhere else, and apparently that’s all fine and dandy for you because your names aren’t Spanish and you don’t have indigenous Latin American blood to darken your skin. Why is it different for us? Why don’t we get the benefit of the doubt in the land of opportunity?

I’m not a good little queer, who shuts up and doesn’t trouble you with my existence. I’m not a complacent little bitch who puts up and puts out and takes being treated as anything less than a man would be. I’m not a baby-making machine or a sex object, and I’m not a heterosexual man’s pornographic bisexual fantasy. Given that, I’m not going to be a nice little mestizo, a quiet little mutt, a properly hidden and assimilated Latina to make myself palatable to you, either.

Love, Julie

PS: And you know what else?

My grandmother on the other side was a Mexican immigrant who never became a US citizen. And. She was Anglo. She was from Utah Mormons, from English nobility and German ancestry, totally, completely, thoroughly white. You see, in order for Utah to become a state they had to outlaw polygamy, so my great-great-grandfather and his three or four wives packed up and moved to a Mormon colony in Chihuahua where it was still against the law but no one cared, and they stayed there for generations until they ran out of nice anglo boys to marry their daughters off to.

I’ll bet that blows your narrow little mind. This is what happens when you define a whole country, a whole continent, a plethora of cultures and languages and racial backgrounds, as one homogenous being.

This is what happens: things don’t fit. Reality doesn’t conform to expectation.

Do you like irony as much as I do?

I “love” (meaning: hate) how people keep taking my open letter completely out of context, or simply, completely misreading it, or insisting there are ideas or malice in it that just aren’t there. Do you people honestly think this is how I feel about all men, ever? Or that I don’t realize that not all men are like that? (But far too many are, and far too many men like this think they’re being sympathetic to the cause when they’re really perpetuating the same sexist heirarchy yet again–which is the POINT.) Maybe, you know, certain “liberal” men do some of those things and not others, or they don’t do any of them but can’t see it when other men do, or that maybe sometimes they’re just huge sexist pigs who think that by hiding behind a shroud of “liberalism” they can get away with it? Saying you’re one thing and then acting like the exact opposite doesn’t work. Or that I don’t think that, fundamentally, people are people regardless of context? (I got a comment to this effect, actually. “PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE!” Yeah…that’s what the whole damn blog is about if you bothered to find out what I’m about, but I suppose you somehow missed that or something.) Did you bother to actually, like, read anything I’ve written before feeling the need to spew self-righteous defensiveness everywhere?

(This said, I’ve gotten a few thoughtful comments from people who didn’t quite understand what I meant or thought my statements were problematic, worded in a respectful way. Fine. Great! Constructive discourse ensues! Careful, we might accidentally make this a trend.)

Read my other, more serious posts, before assuming you have any idea what I think or what you are talking about when you criticize me. Especially since I specifically wrote some of them to pre-empt this kind of criticism. This blog is less than two weeks old, there’s not too much you have to wade through. Thank you.

EDIT: Apparently, the issue is that my tone is “hostile”. Any time a woman confidently expresses her displeasure with something, she’s being “too angry” or “overemotional” or “hostile”. I’m sorry my not being all nice and full of rainbows has somehow single-handedly brought down the entire feminist movement by alienating men who aren’t very good “allies” to begin with. (I’ve also been told I “hurt the feminist movement” and “give feminists a bad name”. I have only two things to say: feminists had a GOOD name? Dear lord, when? And, of course, well-behaved women rarely make history. I think I’m off to a good start so far if this is any indication. Soon, the WORLD!) I’m hostile against hypocritical people, yeah. If you want to see hostility: FUCK YOU. I HAVE OPINIONS. DEAL WITH IT. Have a nice day.

Dear antifeminist men who like to try leaving comments on my blog,

It’s cute that you actually think anyone cares. Really, I find your idealism quite endearing, but this is the real world, sweetie. Maybe if you tried to be nicer. Then you wouldn’t scare people off with your “radical” message. You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, after all.

I also think, from your comments, that you are all really overgeneralizing. You all tried to post comments on the same blog entry, most of you obviously without reading any of the content on this site, so accusing all feminists of acting a certain way and believing certain things, especially when you have clearly made no effort to understand what I believe and why, is a tiny bit unfair of you. Conversely, if you don’t take me seriously enough to understand me and form a decent, well-reasoned argument, then I certainly don’t need to waste any time taking you seriously either.

I’d like to thank you all for enlightening me with your abusive comments. For instance, I would never have known that a woman cannot be both intelligent and attractive, because intelligence is only developed as a compensatory mechanism in order to attract a male mate. Little did I know that all the gorgeous, intelligent women I know, myself included (it’s my site, I can actually like how I look, thank you), are actually just faking it all for attention or exist only in my imagination. Also, thank you for making me aware of the nonexistence of lesbians and gay men, and especially people who do not fit into the traditional binary concept of sex and gender. We queers weren’t marginalized enough already. Really.

And, as a matter of fact, I, too, sometimes find it troubling that some of you were ever given the right to vote. After all, how can it not be troubling that those who believe not everyone deserves basic human rights are helping make important political decisions? However, the difference between you and me is that even if I don’t like you, I still think everyone has the right to vote. Yes, novel, I know, because I realize that we feminists are all hypocrites who want able-bodied white heterosexual rich men to be stripped naked and kept in cages all day while we engage in satanic lesbian orgies at the UN. (And before you protest that you didn’t say that, I recall seeing the vast lesbian feminist new world order conspiracy being leveled on the internet a couple of years ago, and I assume it’s reasonable to believe all antifeminists subscribe the same set of ideas and values, since it’s certainly true about us!)

Finally: why do you hate women? Your comments, to me, really seem to genuinely be expressing a hate for women. You may not think your comments are misogynistic, but I really sense a lot of resentment. Have you been hurt or rejected by strong, gorgeous, intelligent, somewhat intimidating women in the past? While I love people of all sexes and genders, and genuinely respect all men, inasmuch as they are human beings worthy of respect, even when they say unbelievably stupid things, you seem treat women as if they are a lower form of life. If you hate us so much, why do you want to have sex with us and marry us? No, really, I realize now that we’re all disgusting and nasty and stupid and gross, so I will henceforth stop being attracted to anything that looks remotely female, but I’m worried. Where the women I’ve known often treat me with a certain level of acceptance and support, how will I ever land a man if you all hate us so much? Why would you want us, if we’re so awful? Even if I weren’t a feminist and conformed to all your contradictory expectations, apparently, you still wouldn’t want me.

But anyway, I don’t have a lot of time and I want to keep this short. Just one final, heartfelt, sincere “THANK YOU” for showing me the error of my ways through the use of profanity, attempted intimidation, and a complete ignorance of the concept of satire (you thought the SCUM Manifesto was serious? REALLY? and where did I mention it anywhere on my site except now, since you brought it up?). Now that I know how evil feminists and our suffrage and everything is, I’ll immediately take down my site and stop being attracted to girls and shave my legs and wear a bra and quit my job as a psychic and get a good, godly career at McDonald’s or something until I land myself a man and can pop out five or six babies like my mom did in Utah!

After all, I can only assume that’s what you want me to do. Otherwise, why would you spend so much time and effort attempting to convince me of the error of my ways when I’m obviously not going to listen to anything you have to say?

NEWSFLASH, world!

I do not care if you find me physically attractive or not.

Mind you, I know that many of you do. I think I’m hot, too. I’m not trying to sound conceited although there will always be someone who misinterprets this post this way. But I am truly, for the most part, happy about what I look like. I don’t see anything not to love, and the stuff I don’t quite accept unconditionally yet I’m working on. This is not something that has come easily to me, liking myself; it doesn’t come easily to any woman who’s been exposed to this world. It doesn’t matter where you are, even in the most primitive and isolated part of the globe; if you have magazines or television you’ve been bombarded with the message of the unobtainable ideal.

But fuck you all if you think that I somehow need your approval in order to allow myself this. Don’t think that by gracing me with your assessment of me I will be so overcome with gratitude that I will drop to my knees and blow you. Chances are, you’re probably staring at me and totally creeping me out. Not a good way to get me to like you back.

But if you think I’m intellectually sexy, I’ll take that as the highest compliment available.

… who just don’t understand why women could possibly be impatient or annoyed with them.

Dear Straight Guys,

I respectfully submit that perhaps, if you really want to be seen as an understanding or sensitive individual, that you need to start treating women as people. This goes clear down to your core: it’s not enough to pretend you understand this, it’s not enough to think that, so long as your sexism is benign and not overt and is carefully disguised as either concern or misguided admiration, that we will somehow ignore or appreciate the specialized sort of attention that you give. You need to change the way you think, the very way that you perceive your world.

1. So, first of all, it doesn’t all revolve around you. If I am discussing sexism or the unique difficulties women face, I can understand and appreciate the frustrations that men also grapple with in our society. Really, the problem isn’t so much men and women as the fact that all powerful institutions want to make everyone feel worthless, so that we will do whatever they tell us to. But, for now, I am talking about women and women’s unique position in the world, and it is not about the big picture. It is about us. About me. Your tangents derail the conversation and shift the focus so that the issues I want to raise are ignored. This is the problem.

This is symptomatic of a greater issue: the fact that men are trained to keep the focus on themselves. It’s not the conscious insecurity of the male ego which causes this to happen, but rather, the result in living in a culture which focuses on men the majority of the time. When attempting to give women equal time, and an equal voice, the fifty-fifty split (or, since this doesn’t exist yet in reality, even the attempt to approach it) seems unbalanced and skewed to the minds of many men. Women trying to have an equal voice seem to be silencing the men, simply because the men are not the ones currently talking about the current topic.

Resist the urge to assert yourself in defense of the male voice. We’ve already heard it, and doubtless we will hear it again. Save it until we’re finished. Do it somewhere else.

2. Second of all, it doesn’t all revolve around you. Whether or not you find someone attractive, whether or not anybody else might possibly find someone attractive, whether a woman is pretty or not: it’s not relevant to feminist discussion. EVER. We should not be valued based on our attractiveness to men. We should not be considered only in this context. When I am talking about women who behave in a traditionally unladylike manner, or who are unconventionally attractive, or are in any way otherwise outside the gender norm, their saving grace is not that they still happen to make your particular penis happy. So you like her. Big fucking deal. It’s not about what you like. Women will be who they are regardless if you, you in particular, happen to approve of them or not.

It’s rude and condescending to act this way. This, again, detracts from the focus of the discussion. This devalues women as unique individuals with opinions and ideas and lives. Our worth should never be dependent on other people’s opinions in this way, and least of all in feminist discussion, of all places.

So stop it, already.

3. We are all human beings. We are all similar lumps of fleshy matter that moves and grunts and goes around its daily business. Until you can look at any random woman on the street and see the human being before you start placing significance on the gender presentation, until being human, of any variety, any color, any sexual orientation, any genitalia, any anything, is the nebulous vague default in your mind, you still need to try harder. If you automatically assume a person of unspecified gender or sex is “he”, or white, able-bodied, and heterosexual, that is your problem. And this is why so many of us have no time or patience to try to explain things to you.

4. Speaking of which, I am not required to explain myself. I don’t need to justify myself to anyone but myself, and I sleep well enough at night, thank you. If you don’t understand a concept, certainly, ask. If the answer upsets you, makes you defensive, or confuses you, don’t insist on continuing the conversation. Actually THINK about the answer, and what it was that upset or confused you, and after you have carefully considered what we say, and actually listened, then we can talk some more. But you are not necessarily entitled to have everything placed in a pretty little box for you.

5. I hate that I even have to disclaim that, sure, okay, “not all men are actually like this”. I’m sure in some hypothetical world my sweeping generalizations are grossly inaccurate. But, realistically? In the world I live in and with the men that I know and love and interact with on a daily basis?

You pretty much all do this shit at least some of the time.

If you are one of the handful of men I have met who actually treat women like people, though, this disclaimer won’t mean anything to you. If you aren’t guilty of the offenses I’ve outlined, you aren’t defensive about it. You’re one of those guys who reads the whole list and nods along and then genuinely apologizes for your gender (while not feeling the need to defend yourself by insisting you do not represent these men). You don’t need the disclaimer because my stinging man-hating feminist barbs don’t really hurt.

The rest of you, though, might have a few things to think about.