Even food shows have to be woke. On the April 9 episode of CNN's Eva Longoria: Searching for Mexico, the Desperate Housewives star promoted "two-spirited" trans women in the province of Oaxaca.
You could consider this the P.C. antithesis of the Great British Baking Show doing a brief cheesy comedy routine in sombreros to kick off "Mexican Week," which was greeted on the Left like a hate crime.
LONGORIA: These days, the proud guardians of Zapotecan cuisine are the extraordinary Muxes. And I'm lucky enough to be invited to lunch....From a young age, Muxes identify as a third gender, often displaying feminine attributes and wearing feminine clothes.... If the food is as fabulous as the outfits, the eating is going to be good....
FELINA SANTIAGO: We are people of two spirits. We are the duality, neither man nor woman. You are neither less nor more.
LONGORIA: Historically, Muxes adopted traditionally female roles within the family, becoming caregivers, needle workers, and, most importantly, cooks.
After some prep cooking, Longoria, speaking in Spanish with subtitles, asked "And what's your love life like? Can you go out with someone?"
One of the muxes replied "Yes, our custom, our culture is different. We have partners, but in secret. We go out with heterosexuals because they're more manly."
They're "heterosexuals"? Another man in a dress added "If he doesn't want to, then he's a coward and I don't want him." Longoria laughed heartily. What a silly heterosexual!
Longoria then proclaimed, like the down-with-it Democrat that she is: "Muxan culture has given a sense of freedom to Zapotecs who don't conform to gender stereotypes. And today they are celebrated in the Isthmus and beyond."
CNN.com's Travel section posted a whole article pushing the Mexican Muxes. It had to have a Catholic twist, even if there's no story of St. Vincent Ferrer traveling to Mexico:
San Vicente Ferrer, the patron saint of Juchitán, was carrying three bags of seeds meant to be distributed around the world. The first contained male seeds, the second contained female seeds and a third bag contained a mixture of the two. But as San Vicente was passing through Juchitán, the third bag ruptured – and from it sprang the town’s famed community of muxes.
Muxes, a group long recognized within the indigenous Zapotec people of Mexico, are often referred to as a third gender. Embodying characteristics of both men and women, their existence challenges the gender binary that is so deeply entrenched in Western society....
“Their way of life represents a form of resistance against the Western colonizing forces that have historically imposed their beliefs and behaviors on indigenous peoples,” Jacobo Ramírez, whose research with Ana María Munar has explored muxes and gender in indigenous communities, wrote in an email to CNN.
LGBT advocacy is obviously a crucial part of CNN.
