|
a penguin of very little brain
|
|
|
| expectations based on your bits |
[Jun. 30th, 2009|07:23 pm] |
I am completely horrified but absolutely unsurprised to the reactions regarding Pop, the Swedish toddler whose parents have elected, for a few years at least, to not tell people the sex of their child.
Overwhelmingly the comments in general media have been along the lines of 'it's like child abuse' or 'i can't believe they're not telling their child what sex the child is!' I'm pretty confident the kid knows (or will know) what bits they have, and what that means.
I love that the parents are doing this. I think it's awesome that, for whatever value they can give, they are trying to give their child the grounding to not be attacked from before birth by our ridiculously gendered society. And before you assume I'm over-speaking, as is my hippy way, let me tell you an anecdote: a colleague's wife was due to give birth. Almost every person in our office was surprised and flabbergasted that they weren't finding out the gender of the child before birth. "How will you know what clothes to buy?" was the question asked. What, like, you think girls from birth are attracted to ponies, boys from birth are attracted to trucks?
Why do people think it's so necessary to commit these gender rules from birth? How does that make us better people?
Anyway. I wish I was surprised at the outrage. But I'm not.
More commentary at Unapologetically Female and by Holly at Feministe.
And I have been delighted, via many posts and comments mentioning it, to have read Lois Gould's awesome 1972 short fiction about parents who raise their child without naming its gender so it can grow up without internalising all of these gender stereotypes: X: A Fabulous Child's Story. There were "Boy's' Pyjamas" and "Girls' Underwear" and "Boys' Fire Engines" and "Girl's Housekeeping Sets". Mr. Jones went home without buying anything for X. That night he and Ms. Jones consulted page 2326 of the Official Instruction Manual. "Buy plenty of everything", it said firmly. <3333
(and omg: Once more, the Joneses reached for their Instruction Manual. Under "Other Children", they found the following message: "What did you Xpect? Other Children have to obey all the silly boy-girl rules, because their parents taught them to. Lucky X - you don't have to stick to the rules at all! All you have to do is be yourself. We're not saying if it be easy." <333333) |
|
|
| born everywhere, raised in britain |
[Jun. 7th, 2009|09:18 am] |
The guardian.co.uk has this interactive article online, Born everywhere, raised in Britain. It's from last year. The guardian interviewed one child from every country in the world, living in the UK (except the Central African Republic and North Korea, as they couldn't find anyone from those countries living in the UK), it features a photo and some text and the spot on the map.
I'm very interested to know the methodology behind it, did they pick each kid at random, then move on to the next one only if they said no? Or did they get several kids from each country then pick the answer they liked? Knowing the methodology would really help work out what the article is trying to say, given the answers the kids gave.
I think the most interesting thing to note is how many of the kids talk about how people are very worried in the UK, and are less worried in their previous country.
Some of the answers that really stood out for me:
Zifan, from the PRC
If I'm fat, everyone will say I'm panda. People say that to me because we're seeing a new movie, [Kung Fu] Panda. And when they see [it], they say I'm panda. If I was in China, I wouldn't mind -because it's, like, best animal of China, of the world. If they say you're panda, that means you're very good.
Nadine, from Egypt
I look stupid because I'm black - I'm -disgusting, you know? I look like a snail. I don't like myself. And my tongue is red.
Ybarak, from Eritrea
I need to be in a great country, because my country is not. They haven't got, like, astronauts.
Elsabet from Ethopia
Even if we don't speak we all know that we're Ethiopian just by looking at each other. You all say hi the same way, you'd greet people like they're your next door neighbours. We almost know that we're family because we're from the same country.
Johanna, from Germany
It's more rainy in England
Munira from Kazakhstan
When I tell people where I come from, they think of Borat, and they laugh. But I don't.
Dajane, from Latvia
People in Latvia are more kind to each other.
Khulan from Mongolia
I came here coz of racism in my country. We're Tuvas, and there's racism between Tuvan and Mongolian people. They used to beat my dad, and when we reported it, the police were Mongolian as well. I love this country because nothing like that's happening.
Mina, from Serbia
In Serbia, almost all the class was friends. Here, what I experienced was certain groups were friends, and girls and boys are separated. If you play with a girl, they will think you fancy her or something. In Serbia, everyone was playing with each other. It wasn't, 'I fancy you, you fancy her.'
Sarah from Tunisia
Wearing the veil, I do get quite a lot of discrimination. I went on this ferry to the Isle of Wight. And when they say Isle of Wight, they don't lie - all white people. I was wearing my scarf, and I asked the man on the ferry could I have a tissue and he said, ÔWhy can't you use your scarf?' We got the captain involved. I saw the man shaking and I goes to him, ÔYou're shaking because you know you're lying' and he goes, ÔNo, it's not me, it's the boat, I promise you I'm not shaking.' I really hate it when people lie. When I am older, I want to be a lawyer and work in discrimination with Muslim people. Not just Muslim people, people from different religions who feel their religion's getting discriminated. Some people commit suicide because of that. Especially bullying. I know some people, they bully this person because they're from Pakistan and they're Muslim. And they say, ÔOh, you wash in curry instead of shampoo.' When they're born, I bet every parent wants their child to grow up polite, clever, nice and kind to everyone else. Racism isn't nice. Discrimination isn't nice. I don't think anyone likes it. But some people do it for fun. Some people hurt other people because they've been hurt. So maybe that's why they do it. |
|
|
| international day against homophobia and transphobia |
[May. 17th, 2009|10:53 pm] |
Even though there is no 'T' in 'IDAHO,' today is the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (or IDAHO...). IDAHO has put together a petition for submission to the UN, WHO and various states, regarding the rejection of transphobia and the respect of gender identity. You can read the petition at their website. On the one hand, yeah, glad to see the inclusion of transphobia in this day of action. On the other hand, this is a silent T event, and if, as they state on their petition, it is an "often neglected but important issue," then why is it still silent?
(I would totally support IDAHOT) |
|
|
| it's not that we don't exist, it's that you can't be bothered noticing us |
[May. 13th, 2009|10:33 am] |
There's a roll call for PoC SF fans. "How odd," you might be thinking. "Why would you need a roll call for SF fans who aren't Caucasian? That's like taking a roll call for SF fans who are women, or SF fans who have An Opinion on Star Wars, or something."
And yet, the reason for the roll call is that Lois Bujold declared that before the internet, SF fans who aren't Caucasian didn't exist. Isn't that amazing? Maybe we couldn't read before the internet, or something.
I'm pretty sure everyone who reads my lj who might want to holler in the roll call has already hollered. But just in case, think about heading over there. I have yet to holler, mostly because I'm a little bit resentful that I have to! I am already here! I read SF! I am not white!
Just because you aren't aware of something, or someone, doesn't mean it didn't exist before you heard about it. And just because there aren't people turning up to your cons, it doesn't mean they're not there. It just means you're off in your bubble (and maybe it means we're scared of your cons). |
|
|
| eugenics on the under educated |
[May. 6th, 2009|08:50 pm] |
Someone I know is doing an assignment on Singapore's economic progress since it seceded from the Malaysian federation, so I wondered aloud what impact the eugenics program would have had on it. Then I had to explain it, because he'd never heard of it before, and he said, they should do that here.
And it turns out he thinks that the problem of children from certain backgrounds not having the support network at home to allow them to do great at school (parents who think school is important, for example, and who therefore force them to go to school and do homework) is to encourage these people to stop breeding, rather than, say, removing the barriers to education. These people include: Indigenous Australians, people who are junkies.
I feel gross.
In the end I gave up arguing. What can I argue against an individual like that? (NO OMG EUGENICS NO OMG) |
|
|
| screw your courage to the sticking place (the privilege of my silence) |
[Apr. 30th, 2009|08:32 pm] |
I was practically falling asleep as we spent half an hour discussing referencing, and the differences between footnotes and footnote referencing, and this is what happens when you're about to finish your Masters units and everyone else in the class is starting their postgrad studies for the first time, so I was comatose and just cruising along.
In discussion, I named the indicators of diversity as policy and actual numbers. I was asked to clarify and I was all, "well, it's one thing to have a diversity policy, but if your fifty employees are all middle-aged white guys, then you're probably not sticking to it," and I was in a room that was 40% (future middle-aged) white guys, so I was pleased with myself for getting that out. Then everyone digressed into making fun of surveys that have "male female other" on them, and I snapped out about that, why they exist and stuff.
I was trying to calm down, when we moved on to Indigenous issues and my lecturer spoke about how disappointed she was that she'd never made any Indigenous Australian friends when she came to Australia (she's Kenyan), and she spoke about some of the reasons, starting with the demonising that took place before she arrived, and she spoke about how the Aboriginal Studies building is all the way down the other end of campus, and how few Aboriginal people there are at university, and there was some conversation and someone else was all "but how do you know they have the education for uni" and it was all they they they.
And I was shaking, and I was screwing my courage back to the sticking place and we moved on to the next topic, and so nobody said, "but the Asian Studies building is down the other end of campus, but I bet you have Asian friends," and nobody said, "the reason you don't meet Aboriginal people is due to the institutional issues and racism in this country," and I count as one of those nobodies.
I am so proud of myself for speaking up the first two times, and so ashamed that I failed the third time. And this is my position of privilege, being a non-Indigenous Australian in a country that privileges non-Indigenous voices, or in my case, non-Indigenous silence. |
|
|
| mahathir: crazy pants (+ media coverage) |
[Feb. 27th, 2009|07:43 pm] |
以前我再忘, mahathir gave a speech last week at cambridge, former malay leader in cambridge, where he spoke about all sorts of things, including the current malaysian government: "This government is less racist but that has led to instability and lack of growth." don't worry, it's still your legacy, you horrible old crazy pants.
the article is odd, i realise it's an university press or something but in the article they call him both 'dr bin mohammed' and 'dr mohammed,' which, ah, way to fail at malay nomenclature, seriously. and further in failing at malay nomenclature, calling him the 'former malay leader' really doesn't give the meaning they might hope, what with that title stripping him of his ethnicity. malay and malaysian are not interchangeable. |
|
|
| elizabeth wong, photographed without her consent and still punished |
[Feb. 18th, 2009|08:51 pm] |
There has been a bit of a thing this week, as photos of a naked, sleeping Elizabeth Wong, Bukit Lanjan assemblyman and human rights activist, were circulated via mobile phone, and then picked up by some newspapers. Even as she insists that she is proud of her lifestyle as a single person, and is not ashamed, and these photos are naught but a political attack, she is offering to quit from her position in the party. The resignation has not been accepted and she has gone on leave instead, but it's popularly assumed she'll resign for real after returning from leave.
There is lots of 'she is single, how could she let someone into her room?' going on, particularly from the direction of UMNO. Someone has even congratulated her on quitting. This Star article compares this to bigamy, and quotes UMNO VP as saying that Malaysians are unable to accept someone being photographed nude. She was SLEEPING. I think the more important question is, who is this arsehole who takes photos of someone sleeping and then releases those photos into the world? And, in what way is this her fault?
BBC; comment at the Star; Guan Eng reported by the Star |
|
|
| the inauthenticy of experience (and the food of the diaspora) |
[Jan. 7th, 2009|08:25 pm] |
Restructure, in White American culture is General Tso's Chicken and Chop Suey, discusses Jennifer 8.Lee's summary of the myths that non-Chinese Americans have about Chinese food. I wrote this blog post prior to having seen the footage, which actually contains a lot of stuff I already knew (the creation of chop suey, the hostilities, etc) but which might be new to people who don't know a lot about the history of food in the Chinese Diaspora. Other people who have also discussed this today are sanguinity here, Johanna at Vegans of Colour here, Dr S here and restructure reposts at racialicious here (linked so you can read the comments).
The ingress of Chinese people through significant immigration (THE DIASPORA) into another country has often been followed by hostilities and aggression. The evolution of Chinese food over the years has been a sort of extension of this, at first remaining strict but then gradually altering to the foreign environments.The development of regionally acclimatised cuisines was at first a response to these hostilities, an attempt to make people feel more at ease with Chinese food and therefore more at ease with Chinese people. As Lee mentions, chop suey, a quintessential dish in Chinese restaurants across the USA, was created for the purposes of softening up the Caucasians, as it were, to be more amenable to Chinese people.
Restructure notes that Caucasian-Americans think that eating Chinese food is evidence of being all worldy and so on. These attitudes extend to Australia, so don't get complacent! "Multicultural cuisine" is seen as evidence of/a benefit of multiculturalism in Australia, and so are "cultural events," and complaints have been made that often these multicultural activities are being restricted to private events/within the home (ref). Those selfish not-white people! etc. So everybody want to go watch the lions dance in the new year so they can show off how accepting they are, and to eat lots of Thai food, but at the same time consider a mosque to be impinging on residents, demonstrating the superficial understanding and acceptance of not-white going on.
Dr S briefly suggests that some people might argue that we should try to only eat representative or "authentic" food, but such an argument is inherantly problematic. The food upon which I was brought up is by this definition inauthentic, being a centuries old fusion of Chinese, Indian and Malay cooking, called Nonya. Yet I would not suggest that the Chinese-Malaysian style is any more or less valid than Sicilian, and I am certainly not about to stop eating it due to its inauthenticity.
Extending on the idea of inauthenticity, does that make something like a vegan laksa inauthentic? It's traditionally made with a whole lot of seafood, so its lack surely makes it as inauthentic as making it without coconut milk. On the other hand, that's why mock meat was created in the first place, so you can't really call any Chinese dish made with mock meat inauthentic - it was done for religious reasons centuries ago.
The idea of defining "authentic" food is further problematised by the idea of authenticity. I was recently accused of not being Chinese, due to my birthplace not being located in the PRC. Although I am not a food, nor a style of cooking, I feel this example highlights how problematic it is to arbitrarily draw lines, and the ways in which some people look to impose an authority on a situation (or perhaps define themselves) by their knowledge of authentic versus inauthentic. |
|
|
| things that are outrageous (but sadly unsurprising) |
[Oct. 24th, 2008|09:52 pm] |
things that are outrageous (but sadly unsurprising):
Don’t be stupid, Chong tells women:
If women want to be sexually indulgent with their lovers, they must also beware that the acts captured on videos and cameras may one day end up on the Internet. MCA Public Services and Complaints Department head Datuk Michael Chong said there had been six reports of such cases in the past 10 months. He said none of the women who complained to him was drugged or forced into sexual acts; they were all willing partners.
Block the Vote
These days, the old west rail hub of Las Vegas, New Mexico, is little more than a dusty economic dead zone amid a boneyard of bare mesas. In national elections, the town overwhelmingly votes Democratic: More than 80 percent of all residents are Hispanic, and one in four lives below the poverty line. On February 5th, the day of the Super Tuesday caucus, a school-bus driver named Paul Maez arrived at his local polling station to cast his ballot. To his surprise, Maez found that his name had vanished from the list of registered voters, thanks to a statewide effort to deter fraudulent voting. For Maez, the shock was especially acute: He is the supervisor of elections in Las Vegas.
Born with a midwife’s help? Government says, ‘Sorry, no passport’
The U.S. State Department is supposed to issue passports to people who can provide documents showing they were born in the United States. But it has begun rejecting birth certificates, mostly belonging to Latin@s born in the Southwest, that were signed by midwives—in other words, if the applicants were born at home.
Australians wary of China's rise: poll
A new poll has found Australians' attitudes towards the United States are improving, but they are becoming more concerned about China's growing influence.
Pepsi For A Rape Opportunity
Well there it is, Pepsi's latest ad campaign. What exec looked at this and thought gee what a great idea, trading a Pepsi for the opportunity to rape an unconscious woman.
Cultural stereotypes often harm women most
It was a shocking incident. In 2006, three top administrators at a Toronto high school who learned that a 14-year-old Muslim student had been sexually assaulted in a school washroom did not report it to police. Although media reported that administrators thought there was “no evidence” of the crime, it was later revealed that the principal and two vice-principals feared that reporting the crime to police might trigger further punishment of the victim – a practice followed in some fundamentalist Muslim cultures. But a symposium held in Calgary on Oct. 4 by the Sheldon Chumir Foundation for Ethics in Leadership heard from experts who characterized that decision as either “racist”, “malpractice” or simple incompetence – a tragic illustration of the cultural ignorance of some school administrators.
40% of whites are prejudiced
Deep-seated racial misgivings could cost Barack Obama the White House if the election is close, according to an AP-Yahoo News poll that found one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks--many calling them "lazy," "violent" or responsible for their own troubles.
Does Your Subconscious Think Obama Is Foreign? (this was a poll done with US-Americans, obviously)
The psychologists found that the participants, who were asked to answer quickly, were dramatically quicker to associate the American symbols with the British actors, and the foreign symbols with the Asian Americans. The results suggest that on a subconscious level people were using ethnicity as a proxy for American identity and equating whites -- even white foreigners -- with things American.
The Ku-ring-gai Sustainability Report, specifically this:
The majority appeared to accept most cultural differences however some felt that if an Islamic mosque were to be built in Ku-ringgai, the `call to prayer’ would impinge on residents.
PAKISTAN: The darker side of glittering bangles
Eid al-Fitr, the holiday marking the end of the Muslim month of fasting, provides an annual boost for the glass bangles' industry, but behind the glittering bangles lies another story - one of child labour, poverty, deprivation and hardship.
Police: No evidence of hate crime at local mosque
A 10-year-old girl sprayed in the face with a chemical Friday, Sept. 26, while at a local Islamic mosque was not the victim of a hate crime, police Chief Richard Biehl said...One of the men then sprayed something through the open window and into the girl's face from a white can with a red top, according to a police report. The girl said she immediately felt burning on her face and felt "sick to her stomach," the report stated. |
|
|
| more than just temporary |
[Sep. 6th, 2008|10:14 pm] |
In other election news, you will remember that Anwar Ibrahim won the Permatang Pauh by-election on August 26th. Before the by-election, Datuk Ahmad Ismail wanted to let everybody know how he felt about Malaysia's multiethnic breakdown. There's always this thing going on, this emphasis on Malaysia's multicultural harmony, but the newspapers are often full of stories about racism, this teacher said that and this person was attacked, and it is no surprise that Ismail thinks this.
Local Chinese leaders say sorry not enough: Ahmad had allegedly called the Chinese pendatang (immigrants) and was also reported to have said that “as the Chinese were only immigrants it was impossible to achieve equal rights amongst races” during a ceramah in Permatang Pauh on Aug 25.
More here: PM to instruct Bkt Bendera chief not to repeat remark |
|
|
| not for the sake of fighting |
[Jul. 21st, 2008|06:20 pm] |
This post was crossposted here.
"But that's the good thing about you," K said recently. "You can choose your Chinese side or your Australian side."
And I didn't say, "are you using 'Australian' to mean 'Anglo'?" I can't remember what I said, but I didn't say that, and things that I hate include but are not limited to: that I have become so complicit in this game of privilege and institutionalisation.
Since the debacle of last week (leading to the bannination of someone for being a dickhead and a racist apologist), I have been so fired up and angry, but also more aware than usual of my own privilege and the privilege of others. I am almost always aware of white privilege and, as someone who has been known to pass (as many things that I am not), sometimes it's painfully clear to me how I play that to my own advantage.
I tend not to talk about this stuff because I find it really difficult to articulate, for all that I like talking and I enjoy writing. But not talking means silence, and silence is often a tool of acceptance, and I can't let myself be like that anymore, that's not really who I am. And I'm not just talking about racism, either.
So if I get angry at you, I'm not sorry. I don't want to be complicit in playground equipment that you can't get to if you're on wheels, preventing parents in wheelchairs from reaching their kids. I don't want to just accept when people tell stories that start, this Asian girl or that Aboriginal boy, but begin a boy when they're talking about someone who is Anglo, singling out the difference and othering us through language. I don't want to sit silently by as people talk in stereotypes because they're funny, gay people are promiscuous and fat people are lazy and when you say these things somebody believes you, and when you say these things you draw a line between you and the people you're picking out, and we have different backgrounds and histories but we're people and it's terrible, regardless of your intentions.
My anger is real. And so is the bigotry and discrimination in this country, overt or not, and talking about it doesn't create it, talking about it makes the problem visible, and we do not have to give the benefit of the doubt that everyone is actually totally nice. It's easy to point at someone who thinks all Chinese are stealing the jobs or whatever and say, "that person is racist!" but it's harder to point to someone who is being nice, because it's often the nicest people who are so well meaning and don't notice that their own prejudices are totally messing us up.
A STORY:
Friday, on the bus:
*man visually of African descent stands and gives his seat to a middle-aged lady*
Anglo lady next to me: Oh, isn't that lovely. (in an approving tone)
Anglo lady opposite her: Well, he's not Australian.
Anglo lady next to me: Give him twelve months.
This is a well-meaning conversation: isn't he lovely? He's giving up his seat!
But it IS STILL RACIST, this assumption that different ethnicity = different nationality, and it does us all a disservice, and it still makes me angry. And I bet they thought they were being nice, too. And how did that guy feel, hearing that? All he did was stand up whilst black, and to those women that means he's not Australian.
Further reading:
|
|
|
| things that are racist |
[Jul. 9th, 2008|06:44 pm] |
the Western Suburbs Weekly, July 7, page 8
I don't care how trashy a local rag is, this sort of racist, offensive shit masquerading as 'hilarious social commentary' is completely unacceptable.
Worse is that of the four people I was with, only one of them understood why I got so angry.
(I wrote my very first angry letter to the paper) |
|
|
| a survey of terms |
[Mar. 2nd, 2008|08:34 am] |
Please only answer this survey if you are Australian/live in Australia. It is for the purposes of defining my panel, and as such does need to be locally specific. Though suggestions could still be taken for question three, hmmm.
1. Have you previously heard the term 'POC' or 'Person of Colour'?
2. If no, do you understand what it means?
3. What would you suggest to be a more accurate/widely understood term to use in an Australian context? ETA: and was more inclusive of all non-White people, ie Indigenous, African, Asian etc.
4. Please also comment on anything you might think relevant.
The point of this survey is that I want to finish titling and summarising my panel for Swancon (working title: Characters of Colour in Speculative Fiction, about the presence or lack there of of non-White characters in speculative fiction texts), so I can email it to Dave and actually end up on the programme for this year. It is the one thing I officially want to do this year - all the rest of Swancon is going to be spent loitering, heckling, and folding origami (more on that last later). |
|
|
| 长大后世界就没有花 |
[Oct. 26th, 2007|07:27 pm] |
Last week, Angry Asian Man blogged about how you too can be Asian for Halloween.
A few days later, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) naissa blogged about cosplaying/dressing up cross-ethnic groups here and here, and whilst she raises some very thought-provoking and interesting things, the thing I most want to highlight is something that bossymarmalade said in the comments to the former post:
The thing is, *especially* where costumes/acting is concerned, it's always been okay for white people to "play" a different ethnicity as well as white. Whereas if you're dark-skinned, you can play ... other dark-skinned people.
I have been thinking about this, and I'd love to elaborate but I'm not sure that I have anything further to say, mostly because I'm not sure how I feel about it.
Relatedly: People of Colour SF Carnival
I still find Halloween a bit confusing, but not as confusing as the fact that the Christmas decorations are already adorning the sky down King St in Perth. |
|
|
| all because you are |
[May. 14th, 2006|08:34 am] |
Today is the fourteenth of May. I am sure that there is something special about this date, although I do not know what it is. A minute or two with wikipedia would tell us, I have no doubt.
The special thing about yesterday's date is that it is the anniversary of the 1969 race riots in KL.
I completely forgot, until a post made by eeb_bee reminded me. She made a post filled with links, and I read them and read them and was sort of disbelieving that I had forgotten the date. But the more I thought about it, the more I realised it made sense, in its own way.
I very rarely talk about what I suppose would be called my Malaysian identity. This is mostly because I don't really have one. There are things that I do because my mother taught me to do them, and sometimes these things are a direct result of her having been born in Malaysia. They are little things, the tiny things that create your habits and your lifestyle. The compulsion I feel to boil the water, then let it cool before I drink it, would be an excellent example.
I speak Malay very poorly (my Chinese is much better), and more important than anything else is the fact that I am not Malaysian in any way that counts. I consider myself Australian above all, and most of the time I consider myself Chinese, and I rarely think about Malaysia. But who am I to deny my composite parts? I love the idea of Malaysia, this country that, much like the one in which I live, was supposed to be this ideal of multicultural identity that all went terribly, horribly wrong somewhere along the way. I love its tall hills and its dirty water and its tacky tourism. I love the way I can buy all my favourite Chinese musicians and all my favourite books translated hilariously into Chinese. I love its monsoon drains and its fruits and its killer monkeys, and the correct pronunciation of orang-utan.
My mother; my extended family; my mother's friends, they are all Chinese. In a country that is only thirty percent ethnic Chinese, every Malaysian national that my mother loves is ethnically Chinese. She is from Pulau Pinang, which is still made up predominantly of ethnic Chinese, so perhaps this is not a surprise. But when last I was there, an aunt told us of a mosque; the tsunami swept over and through it, destroying the Chinese kampung just beyond, but when the waters receeded the mosque was unharmed. The conspiracy theories, and the whispered warnings that I remember from my youth. And when I used to get in trouble as a child, it was sometimes with a glare and a, "don't do that, only Malays eat with their hands," or whatever, and these are the words that I cannot shake from my head, even as an adult. I don't eat with my hands, for whatever reason. And I am not Malaysian, I am Chinese, and that is the way that things are.
I think about those things, sometimes, and then I put them aside, and long briefly for a country that does not want me. But only briefly, because this is my life and I have chosen this life, and I am Australian above all else.
This link, I stole from the above-mentioned post by E, and I place it here because it made me stop, and sit, and I couldn't move on until I had put these words down. Creating identity at the fringe. E's post is locked - if it wasn't, I would just link you to that. Instead I leave you with this: if it were possible, I would take dual citizenship with Malaysia (remaining Australian, of course). Because I am ethnically Chinese, but I would chose Malaysia over China.
PS. Have a non-traumatic familial experience today.
ETA: The post by eeb_bee of which I spoke above is here: Today In History: Chinese-Malay Race Riots |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Apr. 19th, 2006|08:26 pm] |
Sometimes I worry that I am a failure as a feminist because I never became a scientist; instead I will spend my days reading and researching and (hopefully) talking to sex workers, and how is that anything but perpetuating the myth that women cannot work in the sciences? |
|
|
| book |
[Oct. 11th, 2002|09:25 pm] |
a book that i am currently reading: am i blue, an anthology of short stories about teenagers sort of...discovering (where discovering can mean realising, acknowledging, admitting, believing, coming out) they like their own gender. and it's...sometimes it's cliche, and sometimes it's beautiful, and it's like places i never thought i'd be, in that it's not anything, artistically, that is fabulous, but i'm glad that i read it.
and reading it made me sad, sometimes, that people can be so prejudiced, and so horrible, and sometimes, so blind and unwilling. it was like...there is this episode of angel from last season, and gunn's old posse or whatever were killing all these monsters, and one was taking joy in it, and they targetted lorne's karaoke bar as a demon nest, and refused to listen and made gunn out to be some evil treason-y bitch, and i cried when i watched that. i knew, of course, that it was just a show, but everything has this kernel of truth, and the kernel of truth was this: people can be bigoted and blinkered and sometimes, they can be mean. |
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
| |
|
|