¡Hola a todxs!

I am sharing a “radio” news story/podcast from the Internet, that can also serve as a resource for practicing reading Spanish as well as listening to podcasts in Spanish! It’s called Radio Ambulante, and is kind of like a Latin American version of This American Life (if you know what that is, if not here is the website, you should totally check it out), and I hope that it is something you find interesting/resourceful during your developing relationship with the Spanish language, the different cultures and people, as well as current events within the Hispanic world and Latinx in the United States.

Specifically, this story addresses how gendered the Spanish language is, and how someone who does not specifically identify with gender navigates through their life as a native speaker of Spanish. This person’s name is Micah, and their story starts with Micah saying:

Micah: When you look at a person, how many seconds, or milliseconds, does it take for you to make a mental picture of that person, right? Immediately, the first thing that you notice: it’s man or a woman.

Micah: Pues es que tú cuando ves a una persona, cuántos segundos tienes, o milisegundos, para tú hacer como modelo mental de esa persona.. ¿no? inmediatamente, lo primero que te fijas: ¿es hombre o es mujer?

This is something that interests me a lot and that I have struggled with during my growing understanding of the Spanish language. It’s also something embedded in our society and culture, like Micah said, to want to know without having to ask, whether or not someone is a man or a woman, and nothing in between is considered as a possibility by most of the general public. I hope that as a part of the Spanish-language community you will engage in this website and radio station as well as think about the language and how not only Spanish but also English and other languages that you might use to open doors in your life and interact with other individuals to further your understanding of the way that gender expression and expectations are ingrained in our society and others all throughout the world and different societies.

I have shared this with you with the hopes that it might serve as an additional perspective and source of information throughout your time at UMass and your time with the Spanish major where you will be able to discover lots of different opportunities to use your knowledge of the language and other aspects of the major to make a difference in the lives of individuals, societies, policies, popular opinions, and so on.

(Transcript in Spanish)

(Transcript in English)