#76: We Failed The Assignment, Now What?

[00:00] Paulette: Buen dia, mi gente, and welcome to La Vida Más Chévere de Childfree Latinas, the only Spanglish podcast for childfree Latinas y Latines, helping us liberate ourselves from the toxic cultural brainwashing we all grew up with so that we can design our best lives instead. I’m your host and resident childfree Latina, Paulette Erato.

[00:24] I know I said I’d be on hiatus for the rest of the year, and God knows that’s probably for the best, but I didn’t feel right about not saying something to this community of people who tune in to try to design your best lives. So here we go. But first, a trigger warning. I am going to use the next president’s real name and also name his various crimes in this episode.

[00:46] So if grapes and clowns aren’t for you, please skip this one. I have a great back catalog for you to enjoy instead. You could start with, say, episode 24 called Choosing Yourself is Sanity with Ana del Castillo. We recorded that one right after Roe v. Wade was overturned. Let me start with a story. Last Sunday night, I watched a football game between a blue team and a red team.

[01:13] In that game, the quarterback shattered his own personal record of interceptions. He threw five of them. If you don’t follow football, that means he threw the ball to the wrong team five times. And yet, somehow, miraculously, their team came back in the second half and won in the final seconds, all thanks to their rookie kicker.

[01:37] In the last four seconds of the game, the kicker made the play that saved the blue team from losing. The blue team beat the red team in the last possible seconds, because a kick went the right way. The other day, I made a post about a certain faction’s stupidity around basic supply and demand concepts, and that post was twisted, then held up as an example of the desire to keep exploiting migrant workers.

[02:05] If you don’t know me, then you might not know that my own mother came to this country to be a migrant worker. She’s told this story here. She’s told it on other podcasts. I’ll link them in the show notes. So while that could not have been further from my intention with the post, I can see how someone looking for confirmation of their own biases could come to that conclusion.

[02:33] I blocked them and then moved on because my energy, especially right now, is too goddamn precious. People are angry and they’re looking everywhere to point fingers and assign blame because that makes us feel better. It’s a natural human reaction. So if you’re feeling like you can’t trust the people around you, you’re not alone.

[02:58] Friday morning, I had to go out for my monthly biologic shot, and then I got the bad news that I’m going to have to start administering them to myself from now on. It’s a gel and it comes with a bigger needle, so it takes about, I don’t know, 45 seconds to push it all in. I don’t know how to do that without hurting myself, but apparently I’m gonna learn.

[03:20] So, there I was, in an active flareup, because of course, my hives came back Tuesday night, the gels leaking out of my arm, being told that I have to do this to myself from now on, which, yeah, sounds scary. And all the while as this was happening, I’m looking around the people who work at this office, these medical caregivers, the white front desk staff, the mostly Latina back of office staff, and wondering, did you betray us women too?

[03:51] So yeah, I get being suspicious of everyone around you. Even the people I know voted for Kamala Harris, who long time listeners know is not my bestie, but was still the better choice. Because, as you may have heard, voting isn’t marriage, it’s a ride to get us closer to our destination. Like my last guest, Angela Chavez, schooled us, this wasn’t about winning the election, although it absolutely does feel like we lost.

[04:16] It’s about moving the needle forward. Here’s the thing, though. The patriarchy is in full control right now. The voting populace proved all of our fears right again, that an overqualified but minority woman is less than a convicted rapist. She’s also significantly less popular than the white man she supported, Joe Biden, and the last white woman who ran for the same job, Hillary Clinton.

[04:47] The patriarchy wins when we’re divided and suspicious of each other, when the trust is eroded. So all I’m going to try to do today is reiterate the mission of this show, in case you’re not a longtime listener, and maybe earn your trust too. Donald Trump is a cancer to this country. He’s a representation of everything negative about us as a nation.

[05:10] It’s been proven repeatedly. He doesn’t pretend to be anything he isn’t, except suave. He does pretend to be that. And rich. Allegedly. He’s detestable. And I’ll never understand what people admire about him other than he says it like it is. Look, I met the man in the late 90s. Maybe you’ve heard me tell this story before.

[05:35] It was at a Wharton event. That’s his alma mater, where I went as a freshman. I was covering the event for the yearbook as a photographer, but I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, so the pictures came out like shit. Not on purpose. I just wasn’t very good at it. Anyway, long story short, that was my introduction to him.

[05:56] And he is exactly who you think he is. If not worse. I’ve referred to this whole election as a group project because everyone was talking about how they understand the assignment, we’re all going to turn the assignment in on November 5th, right? Right? And like all group projects, this one sucked. We failed.

[06:18] We could score this election, maybe, maybe, if we’re curving it really hard as a D+ Cause there were some shining spots, like AOC got re elected, that’s awesome, yay! Then she held an IG live to understand how people voted for her and Trump. Which is also wild to me, and believe it or not, actually gives me hope for the future, which is actually what I want to talk about.

[06:46] You might remember that I asked Angela in that last episode, the links in the show notes, how do we give people hope that we aren’t going to fuck this up for them? She advised us all to get involved at the grassroots level, in your own backyard, where the laws that affect you, on the daily, are formed. I don’t want to dismiss the utter horror that Project 2025 lays out.

[07:10] That plan is horrific. But I do want to help us all see through this miasma of grief that’s descended upon us, especially those who live in the progressive echo chambers, who had a glimmer of hope that we might actually vote for our best interests instead of against ourselves. When I talk about the toxic cultural norms that we all grew up with, this is what I mean.

[07:37] All the things that coalesce into electing a convicted rapist and serial deadbeat as president of this country. I mean, it makes me feel like the only way a woman’s ever going to be president is if she’s already VP and the president up in, I don’t know, retires or dies. I mean, think about it. People are claiming that Mexico elected a woman.

[07:59] So maybe all those issues have been magically solved in that country. I mean, no, but both sides ran a woman candidate. Do you think we’re capable of doing that? Because until both sides run a woman in this country as a primary candidate, I don’t see that changing. Do you? I mean, for reals? So how are we going to deal with the here and now?

[08:26] I don’t have a bunch of pretty words to make you feel better. We can’t sana sana colita de rana this one, because the people who betrayed us are our very own. 46 percent of self identified Latines voted for him. If we break that down by the binary gender, 55 percent of Latinos and 38 percent of Latinas chose this.

[08:50] Is it because we’re driven by our proximity to whiteness? Was Harris skin color just a bridge too far for our people, who we know suffer from colorism? This idea of mejorando la raza and all the other toxic cultural bullshit like that? Because if it was just misogyny, then wouldn’t Clinton’s numbers have been the same in 2016?

[09:15] In that election, 63 percent of Latinos voted for her, and 69 percent of Latinas showed up for the white lady. So yeah, it’s, it’s probably racism, folks. In 2016, we don’t know what Trump’s presidency would look like, but we do now. Know that they intend to throw away the Department of Education because an uneducated populace is far easier to control and manipulate.

[09:42] They want to get rid of the weather service because they don’t believe in climate change and they want us to stop talking about how hurricanes are getting worse. They want to replace federal workers with Trump loyalists to completely clog the system. And we’ve already seen how their fucked up abortion regulations are actively killing women.

[10:01] It just happened again last week. And still, Kamala Harris lost 30 percent of our vote. Us, Latinas y Latines. We have a lot of internal work to do, mis amigues. Yes, internal. We’re full of racism and colorism. And yes, misogyny. It doesn’t start with yelling at our family members for doing this, or the inevitable schadenfreude when it hurts them too.

[10:32] It starts with looking within and examining what we accept in our culture that seems innocuous, but is actually harmful. Maybe it didn’t seem that bad before, but we know now that it is. Like the colorism. Like the idea that assimilation for our people comes at the expense of our own well being. Like the belief that the proximity to whiteness makes us magically better.

[10:57] Not to mention the misogyny, the marianismo, the machismo. Like the attitude that boys will be boys. I have a story about that, too. Over the summer at a party, I heard three Latinos, who all have daughters between the ages of 18 and 25, making fun of the woman that Kobe Bryant assaulted. How she knew what she was getting into when she walked into that hotel room.

[11:23] You’ve heard it before, you know the kind of conversation these type of men have. And yet on Wednesday morning, the day after the election, those same three men were asking how the hell we voted for that guy. Totally and utterly baffled. I mean, they’re not stupid and somehow they’ll still never connect that their own casual misogyny is part of the problem.

[11:50] But we know, don’t we? I don’t begrudge the black women I’ve seen in my social feeds decrying the non Black women around them. 94 percent of Black women also showed up for Hillary Clinton. Racial groups are going to close ranks around this. They’re going to take care of their own. So we need to start taking care of ours.

[12:14] We have white Latinas among us, but we also have Black Latinas within us. And for too long, we have dismissed them as less than. We gotta stop it. We gotta stop it, examine it, and be better. Do better, because mi gente, our proximity to whiteness isn’t going to save any of us. This shit is systemic, but it isn’t immutable or indestructible.

[12:43] And right now, we still have rights! So, since the patriarchy is exerting its stranglehold on us, what are we going to do about it? How about we look at this a different way? Trump is the perfect example for you to realize how far you can make it in this world while being wholly unqualified and maybe even an active danger to the job.

[13:10] He’s a less than mediocre white man who still wins against all rationale. Yes, he’s rich. Maybe. Allegedly. Yes, he’s well-connected, even if dubiously so. Most of us look at him and see a damaged individual, a useful idiot to the greater powers that be. And yet, do you think that guy has imposter syndrome?

[13:37] No, no, he doesn’t. So why should you? They’ve effectively told us we mean nothing to them. As women, non binary people, all of us. So then we no longer have anything to lose by using our voice. Game on, mis amigues. So what’s the internal work I want you to do? I’ll leave you a playlist in the show notes of episodes I’ve made that cover these topics, but the summary is one.

[14:06] Recognize that imposter syndrome isn’t worth your time and is actively sabotaging you. Two, seize the power of your voice. Three, watch your diet and consumption of media. Four, educate yourself and become media literate so you’re not falling for the propaganda. Don’t be someone else’s useful idiot. And finally, five, if you’re religious, examine what messages your church is making about the role of women.

[14:37] And once you’ve gone through that, maybe achieved some mastery in these things, start teaching them to the people around you. Me over here, I’m going to keep trying to dismantle the toxic cultural bullshit we all grew up in so that we can design our best lives instead. And I’ve got a whole group of Latina podcasters whose mission is to connect, collaborate, and uplift our voices too.

[15:05] If you want to join us, the link is in the show notes. I’ll leave you with this last thing. If any person ever has the audacity to utter to you something that makes you uncomfortable, something like the grotesque Nicky Fuentes quote that got him doxxed this last week about, you know, bodies and choices, what’s to keep you from kicking him in the balls, just like the kicker who won the game for the blue team last weekend?[15:34] They fucked around. Actions have consequences. So now it’s time for them to find out. And that’s a burrito. Hey, mira, if this episode made you feel some kind of way, dígame, DM me on Instagram. Or, send me a text! You can do that right from your phone. If you want to be a guest on the show and put your story out there too, check out the guest form on my website at pauletterato.com slash guest. Yep, just my name, pauletterato. com slash guest. Y no se te olvide que hay más perks when you join the newsletter. Todos estos links están en los show notes. Muchísimas gracias for your support, y hasta la próxima vez, cuídate bien.