"We Don't Sleep Around Like the White Girls Do"

Just finished reading this chapter in Homebound.  It brought up a lot of interesting thoughts as I re-read this chapter as well as clarified a lot of things.  

Things that stick out right now:

Policing of sexuality and morality is a part of the colonial project and was used to racialize and oppress communities of color.  

When examining the immigrant and second generation Filipin@ American experience, the community has re-defined its morality and sexuality in contrast to the perception of the promiscuous, liberal White woman.  As a form of cultural resistance, the community upholds its cultural integrity by asserting the virtuousity and virginity of Filipina Americans.  

As I read this, different questions came up.  Can you be sexually liberated in a Philippine nationalistic, national democratic movement?  How is a person's sexual behavior monitored and policed by the movement/organizers in order to uphold this virtuous patriarchal image of a Maria Clara Filipina American?  What if she was queer, in terms of sexual behavior and consenting, no strings attached sex?  

Okay, so I'm going to go through page by page and write my responses to particular points in the reading. 

p. 157 Espiritu argues that "gender is a key to immigrant identity and a vehicle for racialized immigrants to assert cultural superiority over the dominant group." She continues to argue that culture not only serves as a lifeline to the home county and a basis for identity, it is also a "base from which immigrants stake their political and sociocultural claims on their new country."   

What I understand:  Gender is the tool to assert superiority over the dominant group and to preserve a cultural identity.  This new, adapting, and defining cultural identity is also a place where immigrants stake political and sociocultural claims on the new country.  I don't quite understand the "stake political and sociocultural claims on the new country," does this mean justifying the reasons why they are in the United States and the right to live in the US? 

p. 158 Filipin@ Americans are still an " ' invisible and silent minority' " in the United States despite its increasing population.  In order to assert and reclaim power which is denied to them through racism, they uplift the community through gender and the morality of Filipinas. The virtuous, moral Filipina identity is constructed in contrast to the the "conceptualization of white women as sexually immoral." It is also important to understand that the construction of feminity is created in relation to racial and cultural identities.  It is not uncommon for communities of color to assert a moral superiority as a strategy of resistance.  What is important to understand about this tactic is the impact it has on the women of these communities.   Although the face of moral superiority of Filipinas are being elevated, how does this contrast from the virtuous white woman of purity and power?  It is interesting how gender becomes the tool to oppress regardless of gender.  There is always this need to protect the women from "savages" or in the Filipinas' case, liberal American ways.  

"The elevation of Filipina chastity (particularly that of young women) has the effect of reinforcing masculinist and patriarchal power in the name of a greater ideal of national and ethnic self-respect." 

Because gender is the strategy of resistance, Filipinas "face numerous restrictions on their autonomy, mobility, and personal decision making." 

p. 159 Prior to moving to the United States, Filipina/os were already racialized due to the colonial project in the Philippines and the continued US imperial relationship to the Philippines.  

American means white.  It's synonymous.