Jot@, The Latino Version Of “Queer” To Promote Tolerance

An interesting movement in Los Angeles is trying to neutralize the derogatory word for homosexuals in Spanish by promoting the idea of jot@, or as writer Adolfo Guzman-Lopez puts it:

JOT@, bi-gender version of the word joto. It’s a typographical effort by U.S. Chicanos/Latinos to hermaphrodite the Spanish word away from its single gender specificity. You see, in Spanish every noun is assigned either a male or female gender, e.g. el joto, la jota (which, by the way, is how you say “j” as in “letter j.”) Tangentially, one of the rules in Spanish is that if you have one male element in an otherwise female group the entire group takes on the masculine gender. So, a group of one hundred teachers with one male teacher is referred to as “los maestros.” So, maestr@s is both maestras and maestros, Chican@ means both Chicano and Chicana. No one’s left out. The Spanish Royal Language Academy will likely appoint Edward James Olmos its president before it accepts this grammatical change.

Basically, the women who organized a recent Joteando Por Vida, Queering For Life conference at Cal State Long Beach are working towards addressing sexism and homophobia through art and the conference, which included some interesting workshops:

• Cucci-L.A. – Sexuality and Pleasure Physiology
• Revisions to the Chicana/o Codex: Active Subjects in Chicana/o Political Poster Art
• Las Dietas: Decolonizing the Diet Mind

Finally, the story turned to a very Latino-ized version of a feminist play, “The Vagina Monologues.” Guzman-Lopez writes that the conference organizers talked about “The Panza Monologues,” which looks at “non-perfect” bodies that include rolls (I hear you!) and big bellies and embraces those body types.

Overall, it seemed like a neat conference, check out the whole story here.

Follow Sara Inés Calderón on Twitter @SaraChicaD