Dear Mexican: I’ve been attracted to transgendered women since I was about 13. I’ve noticed, however, that most trannies are Hispanic. I’ve also noticed that more than half of all Hispanic transsexuals are Mexican. What’s up with that? Is it a cultural thing? Is it something in your genes? —Self-Hating Hispanic
Like any good male of the species, I was surfing porn on the Internet last week when I happened on an escort Web site. The site had several categories, depending on your sexual proclivities, I suppose. While clicking through them, I got to the she-male escort section and noticed a curious thing: The percentage of transgendered escorts that were Latinos (by their admission) was 57 percent, whereas Latinos only comprise 37 percent of the population in general. Given the legendary Latino male machismo, how do you account for these statistics? —Gabacho of the Straight Persuasion
Dear Wab and Gabacho:
To the gabacho:
You, straight? When you’re looking through the transgendered section of a prostitute Web site? And were able to calculate to the exact percentile the number of Latin@ escorts on said site (don’t know which orifice you pulled out the 37 percent stat for Mexis, though, as the Pew Hispanic Center’s 2008 survey of Latino demography in los Estados Unidos puts the population of wabs and their descendants at about 10 percent of the total American population). To the wab: No reliable statistics exist on the number of Mexican transgendered people, whether in the motherland or el Norte, but what is known about this population is that they’re inordinately represented in HIV cases, as sexual-assault victims, and face rampant harassment. To the gabacho: Instead of ogling them, maybe you should spend your perverted dollars on donating to nonprofits that help LGBT Mexis— and maybe they’ll be kind enough to help you with your own sexual hang-ups.
Dear Mexican: I met a wonderful man from Mexico City and became romantically involved with him. However, after just one month of dating, he dropped the te amo bomb on me, which I thought was a bit sudden. Coincidentally, shortly after this happened, a good friend of mine also started dating a chilango. He said te amo to her after only one week! Now, while my gabacho friends saw these situations as red flags, my Latino friends blamed this on pasión, and said that these guys were “just being Latino men.” The latter reaction leads me to ask if it’s a cultural norm, in Mexico, for a man to tell a woman he is dating that he loves her so soon? —The Confused Hawaiana
Dear Wahine: Chula, Mexican men get straight to the punto. Your chilango obviously told you he loves you so soon because he thinks your hips are childbearing, your bosom bountiful and your health good. No time for courtship—bring on the babies! I’ll allow that mexicanos, brought up on decades of expert wooers like Jose Alfredo Jimenez, Juan Gabriel, Agustin Lara, and other songsmiths, might be more florid and expressive in matters of the corazón than their gabacho counterparts. Let love reign, and its verbal couplets rain upon you, I say.
Ask the Mexican at themexican@askamexican.net, myspace.com/ocwab, facebook.com/garellano, youtube.com/askamexicano, find him on, Twitter, or write via snail mail at: Gustavo Arellano, P.O. Box 1433, Anaheim, CA 92815-1433!
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