"Me" and Consciousness

Who am I? To you, I mean. Who am I, to you? I sit here writing, assuming a sort of authority to write, spewing my words into the depths of the internet for anyone to find. I know who I am, but how does that come across in the internet?

I recently received an email attacking my "about me" section on my personal blogger profile. Weird, because it is senseless, I can't really understand it. But in spite of this, I was struck by the email because it seems to be less an attack upon the issues I discuss and more of an attack on me. It is about me.

Subject: Your opinion "about me"

I sort of do not understand the premise of your comments. How are you a citizen of the United States of America yet feel foreign and then state that you are for those who voices are silent. In America opportunity is greater than anything. For those who are supposedly “silent” with opportunity they speak. Cubans are silent because no matter how much they scream and cry and disapprove the have no opportunity to go nowhere. Its sad to hear that So, if someone bombed the united states of America whose side would you be on since you feel foreign? And you really do teach rhetoric. Seems like you would have more regard for the country that gave you the ability to speak as crazy as you’d like without repercussions. Regardless of our problems here the opportunities that are afforded to us give us the voice in and of itself so there is no silence.

Why do I have to explain myself to you? An honest question, not a biting one. On the one hand, I could say, "you don't know me." Thus forcing dialogue to a close. On the other hand, I could say, "here is my life story," and spend hours trying to explain myself in vain.

Here's the beautiful thing: the reason I shouldn't have to explain myself is because I'm not writing to prove myself (how could I when my idea of myself is constantly changing?). I am writing to explore my own consciousness as a Latina, but more importantly, to reach out to others with the hope that what I say might affect them in any way. So if my "opinion" about myself seems unpatriotic or something, then that's only because you have a very different idea of what is patriotic than me.

What's the point of blogging here, then? I write because consciousness (and double consciousness) is idealistically about infinite awareness. It is about never cementing oneself in ideas about the world and its people because the dynamics of such are always changing. Consciousness is to me a contradictory state--you acquire it by never accomplishing it.

You are conscious by always realizing that you do not know everything--that your consciousness must always be expanding because there is always something you are not conscious of. I don't know who I am to you, or who you are to me. I just love the fact that we don't have to know each other to rework our respective consciousnesses here on this blog.

Straight People Are Not Gay? It's Less Obvious Than It Sounds

We define "gay" as "not straight," but never the other way around. It seems silly to say this, but by admitting that straight people are not gay, one can easily embrace a form of double consciousness.

Double consciousness is about understanding that anyone who is "different" is different from something that has been accepted as normal. What is accepted as normal in Western society is the white, male heterosexual. I say "accepted as normal" because it is only an idea that has been accepted as true in our society--but it is not a truth. It is not normal.

This is a picture worth a hard look:


The story behind this image hit me as a great way to illuminate the burden of double consciousness. This is the car of a homosexual white female, Erin Davies, whose car was originally silver. One day she found that someone had vandalized it by spraying the homophobic slur in red paint, and rather than have it removed, she left it on. Now you can follow her on her website fagbug.com.

Her decision to sport the hate crime was met with strong opposition and strong support as she journeyed across the country to document reactions to her car. She had even re-painted the hateful words after several people have anonymously attempted to remove the bright red message. Recently, she had the entire car professionally painted with the rainbow colors and the name given to her by the original vandals.

This car makes obvious the identity of difference. You would never find someone's car vandalized with the word "straight" because the straight identity is widely accepted as natural...which leads to the logical conclusion that gay is unnatural; false even.

What is normal? There is no normal, because when you say someone is different, it goes both ways. The "gay" is different from the "straight," yes. But the "straight" is different from the "gay" too.

I cannot end without emphasizing the importance of recognizing that double consciousness involves many differences all at once. In this case, we're only looking at a homosexual, white female--who is different from the straight white male and the homosexual white male. But it gets even messier when you look at a homosexual, black female for example.

We can't get stuck on singular terms. We've gotta see that everyone is made up of endless differences--we are all intersected by differences in class, race, gender, and more.