On the plane, reading about feminist methodology and reflexivity, I am pushed to reframe the past five days. The SSSS conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico needs contextualized; pulling out one photograph of an entire experience, without any indication of the life history of a person critiquing it for a larger audience rather unfamiliar with said person, is limiting in its relevance and unfair to the object of the critique.

     I had joked, before leaving, that the conference would be indelibly marked by the results of the Presidential election. It was indeed marked, not only by the results for President, but also several state issues that would, at a glance, appear to be of high interest to a sexuality researcher. In particular, Proposition 8’s passage in CA, AZ, and one other state, as well as the defeat of controversial personhood amendments in South Dakota and CO. As an African American feminist researcher learning the rules of sociological inquiry, the election was a mixed bag of elation and crushing disappointment. And on reflection, for me, that was the lens with which I entered the airspace of San Juan, a land which I consider in the United States, but not of it.

     First, in not speaking Spanish, I was uncomfortable with just being there. I remarked in a phone call to my mother soon after arriving that I felt...

It is raining now in San Juan, and yet…it is still San Juan. It will stop eventually, I’m sure, and I will be able to go lay out in the Caribbean breeze…but I digress.

Yesterday, I attempted to blog, but lost my post in Puerto Rican cyberspace. I took it as a sign to go on the rum factory tour and relax. I should stop paying attention to my signs. From a sociological perspective, this was a very bad tour.

We had heard that this tour delivered non-stop alcohol, so we wanted food to coat our stomachs. After trying very hard to find a place that served faster than molasses, we got to gobble down half a plate of cheese fries and rushed to board a bus that…broke down. After a delay to get another bus delivered, we got on the road and…stuck in traffic. When we arrived at the rum factory, they were above capacity, so we had to wait to deboard and enter the facility. This is when things got bad.

Our tour guide may have had translation troubles, or may have intended to explicitly say that Columbus discovered America, and brought sugar cane to the New World. Although several brown people in the crowd gasped or looked askance, our tour guide continued with a narrative of how Puerto Ricans, as a fusion of Indians, enslaved Africans and Spaniards, were like a cuba libre, the famous drink made with rum, coke, and a little lime. One big, happy family....