ABSTRACT
Gloria Anzaldua’s work on the new mestiza intersects two disparate discussions about lesbian identity. The first is the discussion, largely among white gay men, of sexuality as ethnicity. The second, more “lesbian” usage, refers less to “the facts” about sexuality and more to mestiza consciousness, a possibility of thought that might prove fruitful for all people. Ethnicity theory rewrites racial difference as equivalent to other cultural and historical group differences. The project of gay/lesbian liberation was conceived in the United States along the lines of ethnic or racial politics, largely because that seemed politically effective. The white feminist movement as well as the gay and lesbian movements appropriated not only the (often contradictory) arguments for civil rights and for group pride but also the descriptions and metaphors of position. Postmodernism works to deconstruct not only lesbian claims to ethnicity, but the general category of ethnicity itself.
