Battered and Traumatized: Gay Bashing in Chicano Communities

The Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (L.G.B.T.) community faces many issues of their own added on to the struggles of every day life. As younger generations begin to become sexually active at a younger age, the question of “am I queer” also comes in to play with such activity. On April 6, 2009, an eleven-year-old boy hung himself after enduring bullying at school, including daily taunts of being gay. Verbal and physical “Gay bashing” have been an issue in the L.G.B.T. community for ages, leaving hundreds of homosexual, bisexual, and transgender males and females battered, traumatized and even dead. In most cases, harassment and assaults go unreported, out of fear or out of belief that solutions are few and ineffective.


“As a person, I, as a people, we, Chicanos, blame ourselves, hate ourselves, terrorize ourselves (“The Coatlicue State” Anzaldua).” The traditions and closed mindedness of Chicano communities are causing controversy among each other between homophobic Chicanos and homosexuals Chicanos. I as a bisexual Chicana have felt the pressure of being abnormal, and have heard the homophobic hateful slurs against queers. Gay bashing is something that has not gone away, and will not just disappear on its own. Homosexuals have become frightened and are oppressed to the gender roles that we are taught to fill in order to fit in and relate to our communities. Suppressing ourselves makes it difficult to fully mature as a person, and in a domino effect makes it difficult to progress in life. Society has built up the image that homosexuality is immorally wrong, so homosexuals deny, insulate their own sexuality to be accepted.


“My resistance, my refusal to know some truth about myself brings on that paralysis, depression-brings on the Coatlicue state. At first I feel exposed and opened to the depth of my dissatisfaction. Then I feel myself closing, hiding, holding myself together rather than allowing myself to fall apart (“The Coatlicue State” Anzaldua).” Refusing to acknowledge ones self as a homosexual is immobilizing ones self to move forward with who they are and where they want to be in the future, moving them in to the Coatlicue state. “I have split from and disowned those parts of myself that others rejected.” (“The Coatlicue State” Anzaldua) In a Chicano community, the males feel pressured to uphold ideal characteristics of patriarchy, as it is for females with ideal characteristics of femininity. They reject whom they are in order to portray the roles their communities believe they are born to fill, and dividing themselves as a person into who they are and who they pretend to be.


“The border is a historical and metaphorical site, un sitio ocupado, an occupied borderland where single artists and collaborating groups transform space, and the two home territories, Mexico and the United States, become one (“Border Arte: Nepantla, El Lugar de la Frontera” Anzaldua).” As a community, we need to come to together and recognize the issues, and our faults. Communities need to bring more awareness to the L.G.B.T. issues, gay bashing, gay marriage, and open up the communities to what we can do to resolve them. We cannot fear change or the unfamiliar, because change is growth, and without growth we are not truly living, we become stuck in a Coatlicue state.