How Does The Other Side Welcome Relate To Feminism

Not Only A White Woman Discussion Feminism is not just a white women discussion, it’s a discussion for all women of all colors and all backgrounds. In my words, feminism is the fight for the power and voice of women all across the world. Ruby Ibarra defines feminism in her own way in her song “The Other Side (Welcome).” In her song, she expresses issues like immigration, oppression, & assimilation. Ultimately, “The Other Side (Welcome)” by Ruby Ibarra is about feminism because it describes issues that are explored by feminists like Patricia Valoy, the collective of Black feminists who wrote the Combahee River Collective Statement, and Gloria Anzaldúa.

Ruby Ibarra’s song “The Other Side, Welcome” focuses on issues like how women of color

A lyric from the first verse that highlights this issue is “They see you as a DOB or better yet a DOD.” This is related to feminism because when WOC are missing or killed in an act of hate, the government that is meant to protect us just forgets about the incident until it is one of their own. Thousands of Indigenous women have gone missing in the past years, along with immigrant women being “misplaced” in detention centers, yet nobody with official power takes action to find out where these women have gone. It’s almost as if they want the women to be gone. Issues like this are brought to light in the text “Why Immigration Is A Feminist Issue” by Patricia Valoy. She states “Not only are immigrant women more likely to face domestic violence than American women, they are also less likely to report it for fear of deportation.” This is similar to the quote because immigrant women feel like they have no choice in speaking out about violence & oppression. To make matters worse, nobody is quite concerned for these women, other than themselves. Nobody is advocating to stop the mistreatment of these women other than the women,

This is delivered in the song during the second verse when Ibarra says “Put on a white mask, hating this brown skin”. The connection this makes with feminism is one all about identity. Being a feminist is not unshaved armpits, hating all men, or dressing masculine, but it is learning to love yourself, your original you. Loving your skin color as a WOC and embracing it is feminism, but due to western influences, we are taught to hate it. Gloria Anzaldúa voices similarities to this in her text “How To Tame A Wild Tongue”. In this text, Anzaldúa shares her experience with oppression, language, immigration, and gender roles. One specific experience she talks about is with her mother. Her mother says “Qué vale toda tu educación si todavía hablas inglés con un 'accent”, & this is followed with the mention of Anzaldúa talking about how she had to take two speech classes to get rid of that ‘accent’. Like Ibarra, Anzaldúa was also shown to hate a piece of her originality, her accent, her ‘wild tongue’. She wasn’t taught to love it, she was taught to assimilate into eurocentric