I wanted to write about Middle Class values and feminism. Mostly, about how much we have internalized Middle Class aspirations as a desired feminist goal (i.e. Career women, equality in a capitalist framework, etc.). I swear, this was going to be the subject of this week’s post. But instead, I got seriously sidetracked while trying to frame the construction of Middle Class ideas in the Global South, more specifically (because, yes, the Global South is an enormous socio-geographical demarcation), South American constructions of Middle Class, which do have quite a lot in common with Western definitions of Middle Class, particularly with the advent of global capitalism and transnational corporate structures.
Instead, I got trapped by “the monstrous clitoris”! Unlike its sister, the Vagina Dentata, the “monstrous clitoris” will not swallow you and eat you alive. Oh no, this mythical beast will stand erect, defiant of your heterocissexism and related normative ideas, staring at your Patriarchy and threatening your colonial hegemony. These “monstrous clitoris”, and the people who possessed them, were so frightening that they required extensive analysis, medical expertise and even the intervention of Courts. So, instead of discussing contemporary Middle Class values, I’ll tell you the stories of two people who defied convention in colonial Latin America: Juana Aguilar, at the time referred to by media as “Long Juana” and Martina Parra. Aguilar, in particular, presents a unique challenge: we have never heard zir voice. All we know about ze are court transcripts and media depictions of zir life, in what can very well be compared to contemporary tabloid press (imagine telling someone’s story, 200+ years after the fact, based solely on material taken from The Daily Mail or The New York Post). Still, I think these stories, as distorted as they might have come to us, are worth telling because they are foundational and each of them are a point of inflection in the history of Latin America’s sexualities and, to an extent, the history of racialized ideas of sex and gender. We know nothing about these people’s races, ethnicities or, in the case of Aguilar, preferred pronouns*, but we do know a lot about the scandals that ensued during their lifetimes.
