The Voyeur

“Look at him! Look at the eyes of Mowgli! Does he not look straight into your eyes without fear?”

Rudyard Kipling, the Jungle book

I feel the voyeur. The voyeur follows me. He starts from the men on the street who watch me as if my body is public property and it follows me as I lock the gate of my apartment complex, walk up the dark stairs, and turn on the hallway lights. It follows me as I undress and wash my face and after I turn off the lights and lie awake. They are eyes that watch me with cold and exacting distance. There is always more I should do, I should always belong more, but it is never enough.

The thing about the voyeur is that you should never talk about the voyeur. That is a social taboo. The voyeur wants to see without being seen. Never talk about how self conscious you feel that your friend is judging you while talking to your friend. 

There are unspoken yet aggressive rules of behavior that I feel in Latin America. Even as an outsider it still applies to me. If I want to make friends and join in social circles, then I have to abide by their laws. If I act by my own rules then I’m simply a gringa. 

The irony is that through their exclusion I am included. The men I date hold back their affection and connection if I don’t behave like a marianista. But through the loneliness of exclusion and lack of affection and safety I feel what Latina women feel universally.

It is impossible to truly exclude me because Machismo and Marianismo are systems of oppression, exclusion, and marginalization. Coming from a less marginalized community I stay in the ‘center’ only because I have the emotional skills to stay centered in myself and to maintain stasis of mental well-being. The simple freedom and willpower to identify the voyeur and the system of exclusion, words like ‘marianismo’ are the reasons why I am excluded and approached with caution. And yet, the same tools that allow me to survive with a better quality of life than others who are too shy to claim them. Afraid to see the voyeur and break his spell. Afraid to look your oppressor in the eye.

Exclusion is how they keep me out, but also how I get in. I belong by not belonging.

It’s like, all the food is fried. There was no street food to eat so I starved. What difference is there to the obese people who eat the fried food? Are they not starving for nutrition, for something more than food?

They chase some illusory ideal of belonging when actually what you want is economic independence and you’re never going to get it by proving how much of a man you are to your friends. Your friends have no money either. Why are you trying so hard to identify with a group that has no options?

The compulsion for Latinos to belong is so strong that they never stop to ask what it is they are trying to belong to. The hierarchy goes something like: “I want to belong to the group that belongs the most.” They try to belong because it makes them feel like they know who they are. Because it defines them. But no one in the group knows who they are, so all you have is a never-ending search of a blind organism that reaches out for anything hard and lasting. An organism with no vertebrae.

Do you know that Spanish conquistadors weaponized the indigenous collectivist culture to turn communities into factories of mutual surveillance? Why do you think you grow up with your friends constantly telling you how to be or not be a man?

That is a truth. That is a bone. That is a vertebrae, a beginning of a spine.

How many times have I apologized for my privilege without anyone asking me to. If you want to define my privilege then let me spell out what your oppression truly is.

The men that have tried and failed to enforce a role on me have been the ambitious ones. Ones that reached for a woman beyond their means. What may start off well, often quickly turns into an idealized and romanticized sense of dominance. When all is said and done–and when it is truly done–they realize their ideals were the roots of their own mutilation. They reached for the sky only to find themselves the architects of their own exclusion. Exclusion from me and the quality of life I represent. A dream of a better life.