Gender Dichotomy Exposed In Anzaldúa's Poem

In her intent to escape pain, the speaker uses aposiopesis: an abrupt silent. Throughout the entire poem, we are not told what was the conversation between the victim and the rapists about. Further, the speaker is reluctant to address the subject. Thus, deviating to narrative time. Purposely, the silence effaces the gruesome details for us to imagine it. Leaving a gap between the narration that ignites the reader’s imagination to the utmost level.

By comparing herself with a child, the speaker alludes to an archetypal emotion of pity. For example, “aullando por la noche como huérfano” “crying like an orphan (24) is a simile. The speaker creates a fragile figure of an individual victimized by his own people, who speak her dialect and make fun of her gender orientation using slurs “lambiscón, culero, pinche puto” intend to showcase the victim’s weakness. As homosexual, especially, feminine homosexual guys are compare to women as the weak sex. For the perpetrators, the speaker lacks of masculinity and therefore is an anomaly.

Gender Hybrid

Deliberately, Anzaldúa chooses to create a dichotomy between the victim and the rapists. The speaker introduces himself as homosexual and as a whore, but she introduces the men as aggressive and homophobic. Therefore, she dissociates from the men. In fact, this
To use the pronoun “they” would be to exalt the perpetrators. In short, this selective mutism exemplifies how deteriorating the trauma of living through a rape can be and foremost, the recalling of it. Because, the speaker has chosen to avoid altogether the memory of her perpetrators, the speaker only details the scene and events except for “the badass, the young dudes” (5). Very little is told about the physical appearance of the men, while much effort is invested in describing their