Women’s History Month is here! As a feminist, I take this month as an opportunity to reflect on my past and the activists who came before me. People like Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and Luisa Capetillo have always been my idols. Women who fought, until their dying breath, for people like me. But, as I ponder the past, I can’t help but think about the moment that we’re living in right now. Minds are changing all over the world. Over 180 universities in the US offer Women and Gender Studies, and I am overjoyed to say the least. If there’s something I know, it’s that gender studies can be life changing, whether you’re taking the courses or not.
During the first waves of feminism, women were fighting just to be heard, to be considered human and worthy one way or another. Women were starting to understand their true strength and power and were standing up for themselves with that power as a backbone, always holding them up. Of course, it’s important to recognize that the first feminist waves were also very problematic because of their lack of racial diversity and blatant disregard for the black and brown female voices. In the 1970s and the coming years, that would change with different all-encompassing feminist movements that developed all around the world. Feminism is still very far away from perfection and we all have some soul-searching to do, but I think that if we continue educating ourselves, the future of feminism will keep getting brighter.
When I first entered the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), I wanted to be a journalist. I wanted to follow in my mom’s footsteps and go to law school after graduation to live my life just like her. Soon after taking my first classes in the UPR Communications Faculty, I realized that the type of journalism we were being taught wasn’t for me, and I changed majors in my sophomore year to Public Relations and Advertising. When I was filling out the form to make the change, I saw the application for the Minors Programs and I remember thinking, “If I get into the Women and Gender Studies program, what’s the worst that could happen? That I become a raging feminist? I think that’s already happening.” So I took the leap. A few months later, I got the letter that I had been accepted into the program. Needless to say, I was over-the-moon because this meant that I was about to discover a part of me that I hadn’t known existed. I was on the verge of my own personal revolution.
I started reading and writing, slowly discovering myself through the words other women wrote on a page. I thought I was gaining the most important pieces of information I was ever going to learn, and it shocked (and delighted) me that I didn’t have to leave Puerto Rico to do it. For example, I remember the first time I read Gloria Anzaldua’s book Borderlands, and the feeling I had all over my body. It was like tingles, I literally felt like I could float. It was the first time I read an academic piece that I could actually relate to. “I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish, white. I will have my serpent’s tongue- my women’s voice, my sexual voice, my poet’s voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence.” (Borderlands, 1987)
To this day, those words bring me to tears. Existence as a latina woman is so complicated, and we have to juggle the weight of everybody’s expectations to essentially keep our dignity. So after reading those words, the feeling of freedom became addicting. I knew that my voice had purpose and meaning and somehow I would find a way to use it. For the year that followed, I launched myself into the Gender Studies program and did all I could to keep learning. I learned about sexuality, gender, expression, abortion legislation, unwanted sterilization history, the questioning of the patriarchy, sexual liberation, and everything in between. My life had become consumed by this need to explore myself via education.
It was absolutely wonderful to witness my classmates and I become aware of everything that was happening at the time and I finally saw myself start to change. I was morphing into the person I had always wanted to be, becoming socially conscious, speaking up for myself and being honest; all this as a direct effect of the amazing Women and Gender Studies program at my school. They didn’t only teach us about the first feminist theorists and the foundations of feminism, but also acknowledged our ever changing social climate, with readings by people like Sayak Valencia, Paco Vidarte, and bell hooks
To me, education has the power to uplift all of our voices. As young girls, we were taught to make ourselves smaller, small enough to fit in a box, whichever one society had picked out for us. The Women and Gender Studies program at the University of Puerto Rico destroyed that box for me. And I’m still not done, because for as long as I live, I will never get tired of fighting for what I know is right. So, W&G Studies did change my life, and now I proudly carry the knowledge of thousands of women that came before me so I can pass it on to the next generation of girls who have yet to discover their voices. (But they will.)
I leave you with a quote from one of my favorite poems by Peggy Robles Alvarado titled “To The Women Don Pedro Albizu Campos Said Feel It In Their Bones”
“Maestras teaching by candlelight women
iluminando el pensamiento women
greeting students with a smile despite a missing paycheck women.
Suicide prevention hotline
pulling her people
Off the edge
off the bottle
off the noose
off the delusion of flying
off that building.
Holding all of them in the arms of her voice…”
This whole poem is a statement of our strength, a testament of the tears we’ve cried, and a promise of freedom and light in our futures.