“We want to end gender inequality and to do this, we need everyone involved. […] feminism has become an unpopular word. Women are choosing not to identify as feminists. […] (Their) expressions are seen as too strong, ‘too aggressive,’ isolating and anti-men, unattractive, even. Why has the word become such an uncomfortable one? […] inadvertent feminists […] are changing the world today. We need more of those and if you still hate the word, it is not the word that is important. It’s the idea and the ambition behind it. […] Men […] Gender equality is your issue too […] It is time that we all see gender as a spectrum instead of two sets of opposing ideals. We should stop defining each other by what we are not and start defining ourselves by who we are, we can all be freer, and this is what HeForShe is about. It’s about freedom.”

Emma Watson’s United Nations Speech on Gender, Women’s Rights. 21 Sept 2014.

Emma Watson’s speech is the most recent, powerful, current and innovative proposal addressing feminist issues and calling for gender equality. It has inevitably come to mind during my reading of Borderlands / La frontera, and made me think to compare it with Anzaldúa’s proposal which was equally important and innovative in the social context of almost 30 years ago, when gender studies began to be relevant and when the struggle for social equality and race started. Anzaldúa created her proposal regarding the feminine; she proposed a transformation of the miscegenation discourse into a new mestizo subject of the woman. She raises awareness for the new mestiza fight against sexism and she suggests the breakdown of sexual binaries, racial differences and exclusionary definitions that restrict women, their identities and their sexualities. She calls for a collective consciousness in which the Chicano culture and border subjectivities can be identified. She emphasizes that the Chicano woman was subjected to man’s superiority. In this sense, she thinks of men as an enemy figure and she calls for a new masculinity. Anzaldúa considers herself to be the voice and the way of progress and in writing her own autobiography and testimony, wanted to achieve recognition of equality. These ideas have been developed by other women writers in the last decades but Anzaldúa was also a case of intersectionality: a female writer oppressed not only by her race and gender but also by her sexual orientation. Even now, Emma Watson reminds us that equality is still not achieved, and proposes a step further: a total involvement that avoids gender binary divisions and transmits the message that equality is something that concerns all of us, both women and men, claiming a collective social consciousness.
On the other hand, Borderlands / La Frontera is not only a feminist proposal, it is also the basis on which Anzaldúa talks about the concept of borders. She proposed the border as geographical space and as a place of identity resistance and political positioning; the border as a place of negotiation and congregation of marginal and alternative subjectivities and sexualities, a geographic boundary that limits and excludes.  This raises the moral of the “new mestiza” which comes from feminism to reflect on categories that define and constrain their culture. Anzaldúa refers to the spaces silenced by history featuring Chicana women and emphasizes difference, questions of belonging and identity and she creates a different way of thinking about history and identity of the border.
Regarding the border as margin, limited space and land transition, Anzaldúa clasifies it as a “third” space that separates Mexico from the US, where Chicana race is also suppressed by the racially white subject. One alternative is crossing the border. Border crossing creates a culture shock separated from identity and history. This produces a case of transnationalism which inevitably leads me to a comparison with Bhabha’s theory… is it therefore, a place in between? In my opinion, it is a space that brings the subject to belong to a place that it does not feel part of which supposes a questioning and a redefinition of its identity. This subject is a product of its origins; and as an immigrant or foreigner in another space, there is a necessity to search for and claim her own place as well as adapting herself to the new reality, culture and language.
Despite the issues of identity, race, gender, transnationalism and movement, a collective consciousness becomes indispensable. Anzaldúa, in her claim to recognition and acceptance of her proposal based on Chicano race gender equality, concludes that it would be accepted “when we accept ourselves as we are and where we are going and why.” To conclude this post, I find it is particularly interesting that we are still calling for a collective consciousness for every social movement to be effective. Issues of race or gender equality need to take a step further: fight the binaries and achieve a collective consciousness involving men and women. As Emma Watson said a few days ago, “We are struggling for a word uniting but the good news is we have a uniting movement. […] I am inviting you to step forward to be seen and to ask yourself, ‘If not me, who? If not now, when? “