[Apr 24] Encuentro Xican@ 2

U.C. Berkeley's Xican@ Culture Working Group is proud to announce

encuentro xican@ 2,

or, xican@ love and the new familia: gender, sexuality, and alliance

University of California, Berkeley

April 24, 2009

"Tenderness, a sign of vulnerability, is so feared that it is showered on women with verbal abuse and blows. Men, even more than women, are fettered to gender roles. Women at least have had the guts to break out of bondage. Only gay men have had the courage to expose themselves to the woman inside them and to challenge the current masculinity. I've encountered a few scattered and isolated gentle straight men, the beginnings of a new breed, but they are confused, and entangled with sexist behaviors that they have not been able to eradicate. We need a new masculinity and the new man needs a movement." Gloria Anzaldúa

The California electorate recently voted to uphold traditional gender roles by passing Proposition 8. The controversy over the role played by voters of color in passing this anti-gay measure has raised some questions full with the possibility for both tension and alliance. At the heart of this inquiry is love as responsibility, the ability to respond to one another. Does the Chican@ community have love for its gays, lesbians, queers and transgenders, and do gay, lesbian, queer, and transgender Chican@s have love for their community? Familia has always been an important value for Chicana/os, and familia seems to be the central value or the advocates of gay marriage. How can familia be redefined without the fetters of gender roles?

For our second encuentro xican@, we wish to explore tensions and alliances among queer, straight, male, female, transgender, ChicanO, and ChicanA. What does it mean to be a ChicanO/A feminist? What does it mean to be a Chican@ feminist? In this 21st century, do we see Anzaldúa's new breed of “gentle straight men”? What is at stake with this critical dialogue is the possibility of re-articulating thoughts and practices, decolonizing the present as well as articulating a future where gender and sexuality are re-inscribed into the dynamics of power, society at large, and the Chican@ community in particular. We are fully aware that alliances are subject to betrayal, even self-betrayal. An alliance must be both mutual learning and referenced positionality, which means recognizing one's own privilege. True meaningful alliances between Chicanas and Chicanos--across genders, sexual orientations, generations, classes, and political ideologies--is an ethical demand we must forge together and must not be taken lightly. How can alliance be redefined as familia, with all its tensions and all its loves?

We invite presentations (in English, Spanish) that explore and interrogate various conflicts/alliances among gay, queer, straight, male, female, transgender, ChicanO, and ChicanA, and their relations to labor history, youth culture, indigeneity, migration, spirituality, performance studies, visual and popular culture, policy, and violence against people of color. Cultural arts centers, community workers, students and faculty from all levels are all invited to participate in our encuentro. We are open to receive individual or panel proposals that might work differently than a ‘traditional’ conference paper and encourage academic-artist-activists to integrate different aspects of your work and talents that may take the form of exhibit, performance, workshop, roundtable discussion, academic criticism, or any rasquache combination of these.

Submit 300 word abstracts via email as word documents or PDF files by March 27th, 2009. Submissions and inquiries should be sent to encuentroXWG@gmail.com