One Gender Equity Word Too Far

The girls and women of Bogotá have lots of concerns: crime, sexual harassment, employment

The new official Bogotá uniform?

discrimination, and others. But I've never heard a Bogotana say she suffered from oppression by grammatical discrimination.

But this is what Bogotá's legal system, in all of its wisdom and blindness, is now charging ahead with.

A judge just ordered Mayor Peñalosa to modify his city slogan from 'Bogotá Mejor Para Todos' to 'Bogotá Mejor Para Todos y Todas.' In other words, he's to add the words 'y todas' so that nobody gets the idea that the city's goal is to make life better only for its male residents.

Aventureros hostal: Only male adventurers allowed here?

Sensibly, Peñalosa is appealing the decision, which would require the modification of innumerable city signs, uniforms, websites and literature, not to mention making the city's slogan sound wordy and awkward. The slogan was changed when Peñalosa became mayor a year ago, and will be changed again if the current recall effort against Peñalosa succeeds.

In protesting the ruling, Peñalosa pointed out that 'every high school teacher knows that in Spanish the masculine words include both male and female individuals'. That's why when schools refer to their 'alumnos' nobody thinks they mean boys but not girls. And when presidents refer to 'ciudadanos' they mean both male and female citizens. 'Abogados' includes lawyers of both genders. And so on.

Welcome to La Candelaria: But only for males,
unless your an Engish-speaker.

Specify the female gender in everything and you not only state the obvious and treat your audience ciudadanos y ciudadanas' and 'candidatos y candidatas' and 'senadoras y senadores.' I'll never forget a mind-numbing talk I suffered thru one evening in Bolivia as the speaker went on about 'campesinos y campesinas,' 'maestros y maestras' and 'profesoras y profesores.' Perhaps he also specified that the people owned both 'perros y perras.'
like idiots, but you generate documents like Venezuela's Constitution or Colombia's peace agreement with the FARC, which drone on repetitively about '

If not for the time and effort wasted by this habit isn't enough to ban it, the trees needlessly killed and the gigabytes of computer memory needlessly filled should do it.

'A better Bogotá for all' - but only if you're a male?

But if always specifying the female gender really is required, then Bogotá is in big trouble:

The Down Town converntion center says its closer to male Bogotanos.

The Procudaria warns males not to be corrupt.

Unquestionably, Spanish is sexist - as are most languages. But Bogotá won't change it, and will make a fool of itself. A more practical solution would be to convince the ultra-conservative Real Academia de la Lengua in Madrid to accept use of the @ symbol to include both genders, as in 'Hola chic@s'.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Big Change

A legal change this week placed Colombia in the vanguard of nations which permit their citizens to legally change their gender.

That's right - no psychiatrist or surgeon required. Just sign this notarial form and in five days the government will see you as the other gender.

The facility in switching gender is a victory for transgender people - previously, a gender change required a judge's order and months of waiting - but I wonder whether officials have thot thru the possible consequences.

The easy, no-questions-asked gender switch seems, first of all, out of step with the rest of Colombian culture and laws. After all, Colombia still does not allow same-sex marriage. As a result, two men or two women aren't allowed to marry each other here; but once one of them switched his or her gender, they could marry, creating an even less conventional (and even less Catholic) relationship. Both members of a heterosexual couple could even change gender identities and still remain a heterosexual couple.

And how about criminal consequences? Will Juan Gomez carry the same guilt once he's Juana Gomez? And in which prison will he (or she) do the time?

Thirdly, will gender switching add another cover for people fleeing from the law? How difficult will it be to nab a criminal who's changed not only his (or her) appearance, but also legal name and gender?

Perhaps fortunately, the confusion will be limited by the limit on switching gender only two times in one lifetime, and only once in a ten-year period.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

How to be a Real Man

Real men and women!

Do Colombian men need to retool their concept of masculinity? That's what a group calling itself 'The Red Couch' or 'The Collective for the Erotic Revolution, Sun and Moon' is calling for. 

'To be a male, all you have to do is be born
with a penis and testicles...'

They rallied today by the Parque Nacional handing out cards which read: 'Defining your manhood according to the size of your penis is thinking that all that you are can be measured in centimeters.'

"The idea of this campaign is to question the traditional and hegemonic idea of masculinity, in which men are taught to repress themselves, to be strong, not to cry," said psychologist Alejandra Quintero.  "The idea is to question this and let them be who they are."

Certainly, ideas of masculinity in Colombia and much of the world depend too much on violence, physical strength and sexual performance. But I don't find Colombian maleness to be quite as simplistic as that in Chile and Bolivia, where the supreme expression of male friendship was getting drunk together and falling down.

 Simplistic ideas of masculinity, of course, often lead to violence, particularly gender violence, and unwanted pregnancies.

Do you know how to be a real man?

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Mating Game

True Love?

Someone left this advertisement in Bogotá Bike Tours' shop the other day.

But marketing sex or romance with colombianas to foreigners is nothing new. 

Google 'women Colombia' and you get stories like 'How to pick up women in Medellin' and websites like Calibrides, ColombianCupid and InternationalIntroductions - all on just the first page of results.

In contrast, Google 'men Colombia' and the results are topped by the National Education Ministry (whose initials are MEN), a story about Colombia's tallest man and news reports about the U.S. Secret Service's prostitution scandal in Cartagena.

Apparently, this virtual fascination with Colombian women does translate into real world results. I've met many couples consisting of a foreign man from a wealthy country and a Colombian woman, and very few of the reverse.

Theories I've heard for this situation include:

* 'Colombian women are more attractive than are Colombian men'. I wonder whether this is even biologically possible.

* Cultural norms: Foreign men are attracted to Colombian women because of Latin women's reputation for being loyal and unassertive. On the other hand, relative few foreign women would seek a Colombian man, with their  reputation for machismo and skirt-chasing.

Height: Latin women, including colombianas, are relatively short. Men generally seek shorter women, and women taller men.

Wealth: Altho this is changing, Colombia is still much poorer than are most developed nations. Many women still look for wealth in a partner, while many men seek women with less money so that the men feel they are in control, or feel like the sugar daddy.

Age: While the populations of developed nations are aging, Colombia and the rest of Latin America have many young people. Men generally look for younger - sometimes much younger - partners, while most women seem to want a partner who is older than they are.

But even with all of these factors, I'm still surprised that the proportion is so overwhelmingly one-sided. By my observation, there must be ten times as many couples consisting of a foreign man with a Colombian woman than the reverse.

This phenomenon isn't limited to Colombia, of course. In Texas, I knew a middle-aged, thrice-divorced man who traveled regularly to Mexico for his sales job. In some lonely restaurant, a young waitress caught his eye. He smiled at her and invited her to dinner. At dinner, he talked to her non-stop. She didn't understand a single word, but just smiled when he smiled, laughed when he laughed.

When I met them, they were living together in Beaumont, Texas, just a few blocks from the homes of his previous wives. They seemed happy enough: He had landed a young, attractive wife who was unlikely to assert her independence. She had found a good-natured husband with lots of material goods she could never have dreamed of back in Mexico - but they hadn't bothered to learn each other's languages.

Unfortunately, of course, these relationships can turn exploitative. There are many cases of young women being lured overseas with promises of love and marriage only to find a nightmare of abuse, captivity and exploitation. And I've also heard of cases of women who manipulated wealthy men into giving them their property and then abandonded or even murdered them.

But, like my Texas friends, I've seen many of these relationships that appear to be happy enough - which may say something about the shallowness of human nature.


By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours