And I do find that to be a pretty common misconception…I mean, the Mexican guy I was cussing out (I know from his accent that he was Mexican) was just as shocked as the cops. There’s definitely still the perception that Hispanics can’t look “white” and I still find a lot of folks who don’t realize that there’s a huge section of the Hispanic population that looks “black.”

I completely agree. It’s not a cultural thing, it’s a patriarchy thing. Also, maybe I’m reading into this too much, but isn’t it a little judgmental for the officer to assume that you don’t speak Spanish because you don’t look like what society tells us Latinos should look like? You know Salma Hayek, Penelope Cruz, or Sofia Vergara. When I lived in Queens, I met people of all races who spoke fluent Spanish. I think people forget that Latino is an ethnicity, not a race. Then again, I could be overreacting to the “Oh, are you Spanish?” comment.

The street harassment wasn’t cute (our orientation on cultural differences told us to think it was endearing), especially when one man followed me halfway back to the house and another blocked me in a shop by standing in the doorway and asking me why I would not marry him.

When I told my professor how uncomfortable I was, my discomfort was chalked up to “cultural differences.” But it did not seem that Ghanaian women much liked being hissed (yes, hissed) at from men in passing cars either.

By the last day I was fed up with it. When one man pointed at me and yelled, “I like that! I like that! I like the boom booms! Boom booms!” I told him to go fuck himself and ducked inside a store. However, when I came back out, he yelled and pointed at me claiming, “That’s my wife! That’s my wife!” Fortunately, he did not follow me back to the house.

I can look back and laugh at the ridiculousness of being told someone likes my “boom booms,” but that does not excuse having my voiced discomfort dismissed so easily.

I have been told more than once that I shouldn’t care about being harassed by Latino men, since that’s just part of their culture and they don’t mean anything by it. To which I say that harassing/objectifying women is part of the universal culture of Patriarchy, not some unique Latino cultural institution that I, as a non-Latino, must treat respectfully.

Yes, I realize that’s not the main point of the post.