1- I wish people would realize how unoriginal this speech is. I wish they would realize that just because they think they are a Latin Lover, I am not entertained by the standard speech. I am bored and pained by it at this point, having heard it to0 many times, from so many over the past forty years.
I also wish men would not complain about their wives to me, especially when it is the wife who is really my colleague. Finally, I do not understand why men without wives think I will spend time with them or serve them.
2- Actually, I do understand, darkly: they imagine that I am an American student trying to Hispanize myself, and that I will put up with a great deal just because it means hanging out with a native speaker who is also a professor. As though I did not have actual friends and more longstanding colleagues who are native speakers and professors.
They are also incapable of comprehending that I am not desperate to learn yet more Spanish from them and pretend to be genuinely Argentine or Chilean with them. They do not understand that I really know I really am from the United States and I am not trying to hide it. They do not understand why I am not spending more time with them and perhaps sleeping with them.
3- When I turn them down they always say, I see, you are just an American Puritan after all! They appear to believe this accusation will get to me and I will feel coerced into giving them certain things, just so that they will reward me (they feel) by saying I don’t seem American.
They always think it is the first time I have heard that and they expect it to be a great compliment. I really, really do not like coercion and manipulation, and I consider all of these sallies to be some form of harassment.
4- There is another version of this: the gay version. The 40ish straight white Spanish or Argentine man believes I believe I am 17 standing next to him in a bar, but the gay one realizes I am near 50. He believes I am a watcher of Oprah and wants to engage me on topics such as Botox and tranquilizers. He does not understand why I get bored.
5- Yes, of course I realize I am stereotyping. After 40 or more years of tolerating this gender stereotyping I feel I am justified in being intolerant some days. Yes, I realize not everyone is this way. Yes, I realize I come from a more privileged country than they do, and that my country does terrible things. No, it is not true that I am more privileged than they are and should therefore put up with poor behavior from them.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
“and pretend to be genuinely Argentine or Chilean with them.”
If you don’t mind my asking, do people really do that? What is their impetus?
The objective is to get me to spend time with them, entertain them, and drive them around.
The thought appears to be that I owe them that, but that I may need to be seduced into doing that.
The method of seduction appears to be to offer a sort of study abroad experience. I don’t know that they actually want to to offer me a chance to “pretend to be genuinely Argentine or Chilean with them” but they do appear to mistake me for a certain type of college senior who has just returned from study abroad and wants to hold onto the experience.
“Let’s go off and be South American together,” they say. “But I am giving you a chance to practice Spanish,” they say in response to my having other things to do (and also older friends I’m too busy to see, but would make time for before I did for these guys), or in response to having objections to poor behavior.
I think one of the wives actually does pride herself on being taken for another nationality, and that it is assumed that I, too, will give a lot in exchange for that.
*
I am talking in particular about two recently arrived colleagues. One is having trouble with the fact that selling himself as Latin Lover is not convincing me to get groceries for him and so on. It did work on two colleagues who find him pleasantly exotic.
One is a faculty spouse and appears to feel that I am so South American that I must be the right person for him to vent with, as I must be in the same stage of adjustment as he is.
I really don’t know, am just guessing, don’t know how these peoples’ thought patterns are really working. I think they love me in some way and I feel guilty that I don’t recognize that for what it is – instead I experience them as people who have needs they want to coerce me into meeting; they appear to be using certain kinds of macho techniques to maneuver me into playing some sort of maternal role.
I’m old enough to have been raised very traditionally and I still feel guilty about not wanting to be the woman who plays that kind of supporting role, guilty about being so independent, guilty about not being the caretaking type.
Oh, I actually meant the people who would want “to pretend to be genuinely Argentine or Chilean,” or to be the ” American student trying to Hispanize” themselves. Those are the people I am confused about.
The whole “Latin Lover” thing is quite comic though. I could see him as a random character in a farce or a comedy sketch, making (unsuccessful) eyes at women in the grocery store, on the beach, at work…
Hmm, I responded before you changed your comment. Oh well, my response mostly still makes sense.
🙂 I thought I was just fixing grammar. Now I can’t remember the change.
American students trying to Hispanize, that’s totally common, it’s a language immersion thing. Also rejection of American suburbia, etc. etc. It’s a whole phase a lot of people go through.
American professors trying to Hispanize that way, less common.
My question is what are the ingredients that go into the making of this kind of white Hispanic male with these kinds of presuppositions. There has got to be some other class element that makes it, or some provinciality element.
Or maybe not – maybe everyone is that machista but some are better at not acting it out.
Just how the gay one was more tranquilo, and a few lines on the exploits of Latin Lover.
“that’s totally common, it’s a language immersion thing. Also rejection of American suburbia, etc. etc. It’s a whole phase a lot of people go through.”
Thanks, that makes sense.
This is the only part that I have any idea about:
” They do not understand why I am not spending more time with them and perhaps sleeping with them.”
I don’t mean to be overly stereotyping, and this might be completely wrong, but a possible explanation is television/film/and maybe pornography? There is lots of talk about American Puritanism, but from my experience the *real* international stereotype of US women is that we are “easy.”
Oh yes, now I remember the change. I’m not entirely anonymous any more – outed by mistake by 3 people I know of – so even though I hadn’t given quite the real countries of origin I realized I was talking about people who could possibly be identified.
That we are “easy,” oh yes, that’s true. Maybe it’s it. So if you disappoint that stereotype, then you’re “Puritan” – because it couldn’t be that you’re just not interested?
I’m now flashing on a colleague ages ago. He was separated but not divorced, and had an American girlfriend. She was OK with him not being formally divorced yet (divorce being hard to get in his country, involved) but not with him having additional girlfriends. He had a memorable reaction:
“I thought she was a liberated American, but she turns out to be a moralistic Puritan, as demanding as a Latina.”