54th Down Under Feminist's Carnival

Okay, wow, the last time I hosted the Down Under Feminist's Carnival was the eighth edition, and now we're up to the 54th! Nobody point out to me what a terrible number that is.

The next edition of the Down Under Feminists Carnival is planned for 5 November, 2012 and submissions can be made up until November 2, though it would be excellent for me if you would submit before that. Submissions can be sent to yiduiqie [at] gmail [dot] com for those who can’t access the blogcarnival submissions form.

Submissions must be of posts of feminist interest by writers from Australia and New Zealand that were published in October. So submit early and often, please, and tell your friends!

There is no official theme for this edition of the carnival, though the unofficial theme of this blog is always race and ethnicity representation, so please definitely feel free to use that for guidance! (Do you sense a post brewing on exoticism and feminism and my experiences in China? oh yes indeed)

The 53rd edition of the carnival is available now at Opinions @ bluebec.com and is filled with all sorts of awesome and interesting posts.

tuesday afternoon why can't i log in to the network links

I'll totally post some words up soon! But for now, have some links whilst I continue hoping IT will sort out all my issues.

Race/ethnicity stuff

Some comments on New Age Appropriation, particularly about Yoga.

Also a bit on appropriation and yoga, and also about copyright, this is not a post about yoga!, by colorblue.

Awesome article by Lia Incognita at Peril, Fissures and friendships: how I became a woman of colour, on identity and identification.

In the Age, Absent faces, on the lack of representation of Asian women in Australian modelling.

Religion

A book review and a look at stereotypes up at Dove Grey Matter, Between worlds: the jilbab and being transgender in Indonesia (the book review is for Jangan lepas jilbabku! (Please do not remove my jilbab!)).

Nationalism and identity in a disaster, an interesting piece at the Drum, about how the use of nationalism erases a spirit of shared humanity.

A bit related to the yoga stuff, and a bit not: On White Women and Buddhism at Angry Asian Buddhist.

Brought together to discuss these questions are the brilliant minds of Grace Schireson, Christina Feldman, Lama Palden Drolma, Rita Gross, Lama Tsultrim Allione, and Joan Sutherland. These authors delve into the history of women bringing balance to the Buddhist community, current forward-moving trends and the outlines of a more equitable future for us all. But apart from these great women and their compelling discussion, I found something missing.

Namely, Asians.

Sexuality stuff

Ardhra has a post filled with links about resources for LGBTQ people from non-white/non-Western cultures. It is a fantastic reference list and I recommend checking it out.

An analysis of Scar (from the Lion King) as queer, first by charlie danger and then more by srawr.

Class

At Flat 7, Ana Australian comments on Gender and Urban Inequality, specifically on older single women as 'the new face of homelessness' in Australia.

not a definitive definition

At yesterday's rally to end the mandatory detention of refugees, I encountered a chant which goes 'refugees are welcome, racists are not.' This chant, and many others like it, are predicated on the belief that racists are easy to spot, and that their racism is obvious. And it's incredibly unhelpful.

"I'm not a racist," thinks an hypothetical bystander (or someone saying the chant). "I think we should end mandatory detention." Woo, we're all okay then! OR ARE WE. Statements like this deny the insidious nature of racism, the institutional nature of racism. Just wandering through the crowd, listening to the comments of people chatting before the rally, I can tell you for a fact that there were people who certainly fit my definition of holding racist beliefs. Being racist isn't always about turning people back from our shores, it's about a whole lot of other stuff that everyone reading this probably already knows, because that's 101.

That's not to deny, of course, the incredibly poor turnout of the rally, and how much of that is due to racism, unconcious or not.

In other news of things that are racist when people think it's not: unchill azn bro. My non-azn friends, even if it is a joke being made by an Asian person, it's still playing on racist, offensive stereotypes! So don't go around saying how obsessed you are with it.

misogyny and racism in one super handy app

Spendthrift Studios have developed a 'design your dream Asian girl' iPhone app. John at 8Asians purchased the app before commenting on it, but I've got no such claims to being unbiased (and also no iPhone): I'm happy to make my comments without checking it out.

With this app, you can cater to your Asian fetish! Your Asian lady fetish! Because those exotic Asian ladies are just waiting for your callsuper sexually available! As Asian ladies should be!

This is so gross, the only thing that surprises me is that there are actual choices of ethnicity. No wait, two things, because Japanese isn't an option (you can have a Chinese, Taiwanese or Korean lady), and that surprises me, too. But I'm surprised that it's not just generic Asian, because that's all we are, right? Ladies to be looked at, women to be constructed, a mish-mash of cultures that, in our Western zeitgeist, are there to service people, sexually or not.

From the app page:

Make your dream girl look like someone you know, like your secret lover or ex-girlfriend. This app produces beautiful faces that will blow your mind away.

And then you can share 'your girl' with your friends! Never mind the problem of Asian women being forcibly trafficked in order to be subject to someone else, never mind the history and reality of Asian women having to conform to unrealistic and/or Western beauty standards, oh no, create your own available young Asian lady just for you!

I would say that this is indicative of how misogynist a lot of tech culture is, but it's not that at all; because I'm pretty sure this is going to sell well to non-geeks, and it's indicative of how misogynist culture is. It's yuck.

cross post: isms in our vegan

I'm talking about racism and classism in veganism over in the other blog.

Also just a reminder that I have a tumblr; I've not abandoned this blog! Just having trouble writing big posts at the moment.

reading the internets

I'll write an actual post again one day, honest.

Genderbitch has an awesome post up: Feminist Disavowal of Cissexism, taking down three common arguments that are used when Genderbitch tries to talk about Feminism's problems. This post is totally awesome, but it's also relevant across the board - it's not just a problem when talking about cissexism in Feminism, but also racism and ableism (to my experience). Go read it!

Following on from that, CL Minou writes at TigerBeatdown an ALSO very excellent post, Left Behind: About the Failures of Feminism. Highly recommended!

NY: 17-month-old baby killed by man 'trying to make him act like a boy instead of a girl'. What it says. :o(

Cara writes about Emergency Room Allegedly Denied Treatment to Woman Because She is Trans. Ugghhh people suck. Filled with good links for reading.

Israel to expel 400 children ISRAEL will expel 400 native-born children of non-Jewish foreign workers to help safeguard the country's Jewish identity.

Tom Cho writes I’m Chinese-Australian but...

What I want to ask is: why is it really so astonishing that a young Vietnamese-Australian can write convincingly and intensely about this Colombian scenario? Which is to really ask: Is it me or is there something faintly patronising about this compliment, as well-intentioned as it is?

Population debate hides an ugly racism

The day after the election announcement, several newspapers featured front-page photos of the Prime Minister, garbed all in white, and her (male) deputy - each bearing an exceptionally robust looking, if slightly bemused, white infant in their arms. If the central issue of the election is population, these images of the - reconstructed and thoroughly contemporary - white heterosexual family underscore that the lowering of the birth rate is off the agenda.

Totally romanticised but: The melting pot that is modern Australia

The final six MasterChef Australia contestants emerged this week, two of them gay, three of Asian heritage. Two were lawyers who would rather be cooks. And all were crowned national heroes by decree of the viewing public: about 2 million a night and perhaps twice as many for tomorrow's grand finale.

These wannabe chefs are a snapshot of modern Australia, an ark among nations. They also represent a shift in social trends that were evident before MasterChef but which have been ''crystallised by the show and perhaps accelerated by it'', says Rebecca Huntley, director of the market research firm Ipsos Australia, which has tracked the impact of the program.

Islanders plead for help as homes sink

on more than one language

Hey so, I speak some languages! And I am very interested in the structure of languages, and how they work, and how languages contribute to our thinking! I am one of those people who enjoys learning many languages. (I speak three, from time to time, four if 'a sort of Manglish-Malay patois' counts as a language. And I enjoyed learning German for a year and a half! But then I moved and didn't find a new class. Anyway.) I like being able to communicate with lots of people! I like reading about languages! As if I was some sort of language nerd! Also, I lament that I didn't do linguistics at university (sometimes I wish I did chemistry, too).

So hey: this is a post about languages (as opposed to language, which will be another post later).

A few blogs have been linking to and/or discussing this New York Times article: As English Spreads, Indonesians Fear for Their Language. The article itself talks about Indonesians who cannot speak Bahasa Indonesian, or speak it badly; speaking English instead. But as Michel S at Ruminations on a Distant Homeland* points out, there are reasons why this is a little less dramatic than the article articulates. Bahasa Indonesian was adopted as the national language only in 1928, so for huge chunks of Indonesia, the official language is not actually their first language anyway.

Similar issue in Malaysia. I have friends (or family of friends) who, despite growing up in Malaysia, never learnt Bahasa Malaysian (BM) very well. When you grow up in a house speaking (for example) Cantonese, and go to an English speaking school, and all your friends speak Mandarin, well, BM becomes just another subject you have to do, and some people are good at it, and some people aren't.

That's not me passing comment on whether one should have to learn the national language. That's just, you know. An anecdote.

Speaking of national languages, in the USA there's some concerns the opposite way, that sometimes people don't speak English in public, and therefore English is at risk (?!) and maybe it should be the national language. My word, what a fucking outrage. So What if Nobody Speaks English Anymore at change.org is a look at that, and asks the question: does it matter?

THIS MAY SHOCK YOU (note: if it does, I am very concerned), but maybe speaking more than one language is kind of cool, and possibly even useful! The WSJ has an article up that doesn't say anything new, but is a nice summary of research that demonstrates that language shapes the way we think: Lost in Translation. Here is a large excerpt:

Do the languages we speak shape the way we think? Do they merely express thoughts, or do the structures in languages (without our knowledge or consent) shape the very thoughts we wish to express?

Take "Humpty Dumpty sat on a..." Even this snippet of a nursery rhyme reveals how much languages can differ from one another. In English, we have to mark the verb for tense; in this case, we say "sat" rather than "sit." In Indonesian you need not (in fact, you can't) change the verb to mark tense.

In Russian, you would have to mark tense and also gender, changing the verb if Mrs. Dumpty did the sitting. You would also have to decide if the sitting event was completed or not. If our ovoid hero sat on the wall for the entire time he was meant to, it would be a different form of the verb than if, say, he had a great fall.

In Turkish, you would have to include in the verb how you acquired this information. For example, if you saw the chubby fellow on the wall with your own eyes, you'd use one form of the verb, but if you had simply read or heard about it, you'd use a different form.

Do English, Indonesian, Russian and Turkish speakers end up attending to, understanding, and remembering their experiences differently simply because they speak different languages?

In fact, here is a 2009 essay on exactly this research! How does our language shape the way we think? I highly recommend this piece, it is a good essay and I refer to it often.

I think it's really cool and interesting, the way that language shapes thought. And I mean, I think about this all the time in another way (removing ableist, transphobic, homophobic, racist, etc, words from casual use), but talking about the impact that grammar patterns have on thought construction is really cool too. What influence does language have on our personalities? On our cultures and traditions?

Anyway, given how cool it is, it's funny, then, that there's a rumour getting around that the Chinese government is looking to limit the amount of Cantonese on Chinese TV. Almost as if there's an attempt to impose a national language that was only made a national language in the last hundred years. It's been kind of a concerted effort. And here's an oldie but still relevant: Language is Power; Let us Have Ours:

Much of the evidence the world over suggests that bilingual and multilingual language processes accelerate one's capacity to acquire English. So why are Aboriginal children being treated as if this were not so? Why is the role that parents and grandparents play in teaching their children being diminished?

Aboriginal languages, for the most part, are not officially recognised and, therefore, sit outside the nation's formal structures.

So here's the thing about Mandarin, and also Bahasa Indonesian and Bahasa Malay, and in fact English, too: they're kind of dialecty. Sometimes they're not what you're expecting. Mandarin in Beijing is different from Mandarin in Xi'an. The Cantonese my family speaks (being from Malaysia) is totally different from the Cantonese spoken in China. The English I speak in Australia is quite different from the English I use in Malaysia (sometimes referred to as 'Manglish').

Which is why I like this article: Standard English and the Literate Argument.

Is literacy so important to credibility here? Or, let me rephrase: Is Standard English literacy so important to credibility here? Or, let me rephrase again: Is white, upper-or-middle class English literacy so important to credibility here?

When we discount people and their arguments because of their command (or lack thereof) of grammar, what we are really saying is: Your thoughts are useless because you don’t use the kind of grammar I’ve come to expect from literate people on the internet. What we are also saying is far worse: You don’t have the privilege to have learned the “correct” way of writing or speaking, and, therefore, your ideas are worthless.

OH SO MAYBE, just maybe, a push to a national language is some sort of defensive bullshit thing? Maybe there's some racism and/or classism involved? What an unexpected and surprising conclusion to my post!

I don't want to hear anything from anyone about how learning a second language is a privilege or any crap like that. Because I think it's pretty clear that learning a second language is, in many cases, something so built in to a society that you don't even notice - many people know more than one language before they go to school (if they get to go to school). And for many people, learning the 'national language' (official or not) is already learning a second language. Or a third language. My mum was speaking five languages before she started attending school, and she was from a really poor family. So you know, the argument is at the least very erasing. I'll accept 'in a poor urban white monolingual family in the middle of Perth it's hard to attend language classes,' or something. And I'm certainly not accepting 'it's hard to learn another language so therefore we need a national language and no-one can speak anything else in public or have tv in any other language' or anything. That's crap. Also 'omg we all need to communicaaatteeee.' Often, that argument is used against people who already went out of their way (or, to be honest, could hardly avoid) to learn someone else's language.



Some further reading and anecdotes on the things I have discussed above:

• A Soliloquy on Language and Race in Seven Parts by Ciderpress; on why English is the Lingua Franca (hint: it's not because it's easy) and, on how someone speaking a language you (someone not involved in the conversation) can't understand isn't a dis. It's just a thing. I ♥ ciderpress and this post.
• My Pidgin Does Not Signify Lack Of Intellect by Jha, specifically talking about Singlish and the Miss World Singapore thing.
• Some discussion on no respect for non-European first languages (discussion in comments is mostly relevant to what I've been rambling over): Australia (and elsewhere): So being bilingual is bad now?
• Weird article at Wired: How English Is Evolving Into a Language We May Not Even Understand. Weird because it's very othering ('we' may not even understand, because 'we' are not the people using patois!), and also completely ignores the big reason for English being a lingua franca (mentions World War II and some other stuff; doesn't mention colonisation). But worth a mention for some linkages of ideas.
• The Power of Language, where Jo Tamar talks about language and privilege, and then I ramble for one million years in the comments.

*please note, the blog I have linked to has only one blog post on it! And no introductory! So I don't know anything about it, other than that I liked the solitary post.

awesome ladies and not-white dudes in science fiction and fantasy

So I was making a flippant tumblr post (yes! I have a tumblr! It is fun!) about SFF My Little Pony Mods. And I love the mods! My Little Han Solo is great! Love the My Little Cthulu! Am totally all there for the My Little Aragorn! But I noticed that, of the fifty My Little SF Pony Mods, only nine of them are lady ponies (and two of them are Princess Leia - ANH white flowy dress and slave outfit). Nine fierce SFF presenting as women ponies, and forty-one not. Also, coincidentally, no humanoid-and-not-white ponies (Cthulu and the My Little Predator Pony don't count), except perhaps for a Klingon pony in blackface (And don't talk to me about how ponies are purple and blue and shit, you know what I mean).

That sucks, SFF. That sucks, and so does the fact that I was compiling a list of ponies I would like to see, and started to struggle a little bit. This is why I've been trying to expand my SFF, give preference to SFF where the characters are women and/or not white; mostly, I have been trying to find SFF featuring some awesome not-white-dudes. And it may not surprise you to learn that it is hard!

What I have so far read this year that fits into this category:
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, NK Jemisin
The Gaslight Dogs, Karin Lowachee
The Circle of Magic Series (four books), Tamora Pierce
Code Noir, Marianne De Pierres
The Ladies of Grace Adieu, Suzanne Clarke (this sort of fits into this category)

What I am hoping to read this year:
Dragoneye Reborn, Alison Goodman
Herogiri, Mainak Dhar
A Banquet for Hungry Ghosts, Ying Chang Compestine
The Dragon and the Stars (eds Derwin Mak and Eric Choi)

And I'd like to get my hands on a copy of the Apex Book of World SF, and So Long Been Dreaming: postcolonial Science Fiction + Fantasy, but I don't know if I'm going to be able to do so.

I read a lot of books in a year, and that I'm hopeful to hit such a small number by the end of the year says a lot, I think. It says, I don't know that many not-white-dude protagonists in SFF. It says, there are not that many not-white-dude protagonists in SFF.

I don't really have an answer to this. It's just something that bugs me.

Some reading:
The White Male Nerd & his Cult of Awesome.

Sirayn asked me to comment on John C. Wright's latest fail (warning for all kinds of gender/trans/feminist fail), and when i asked who he was, she told me he was "a multi-published Nebula finalist SF author with Tor." And I thought, gee, what a surprise, another random asshole on the internet turns out to be a highly decorated white male SFF author. It's not the genre's fault that when the general standard of male behavior often defaults to "asshole," it's going to attract a lot of red-headed stepchildren.

When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like "Avatar"?

Critics have called alien epic Avatar a version of Dances With Wolves because it's about a white guy going native and becoming a great leader. But Avatar is just the latest scifi rehash of an old white guilt fantasy. Spoilers...

Whether Avatar is racist is a matter for debate. Regardless of where you come down on that question, it's undeniable that the film - like alien apartheid flick District 9, released earlier this year - is emphatically a fantasy about race. Specifically, it's a fantasy about race told from the point of view of white people. Avatar and scifi films like it give us the opportunity to answer the question: What do white people fantasize about when they fantasize about racial identity?

Space: One More Imaginary Frontier

Not because, as she implies, SF has a long and noble tradition of AUs, which the SF tradition has taught her not to take personally, ("Men get killed all the time in comics, how is it sexist if a woman is?") but because SF has carefully cultivated a space for a myth that is steeped in racism: the frontier. Terra Nullius, the new world, the edge of the map, the discovery of new lands, all of these have been a lie for all of human history.

Shame is an essay by Pam Noles on whitewashing in SFF stories.

Dad had his own names for the movies.

What's this? 'Escape to a White Planet?
It's called 'When Worlds Collide.' I'm sure I sounded indignant.

'Mars Kills the White People.' I love this one.
Daaaaad. It says it right there. 'War of the Worlds'. I know I sighed heavily, but was careful to turn back to the tv before rolling my eyes.

And the followup; The Shame of Earthsea: A Public Response To What Some Folks Are Saying About That Essay

My identity as a black person is challenged every day in genre. But what my parents took the time to do (once they realized they couldn't do anything to cleave me from genre), was help me question why me and my kind weren't in those fantasy worlds. That question, once recognized, evolved into my finding ways to take action and claim my right to exist and participate in those worlds."

white not whatever

When I was younger, I used to laugh at all the skin-lightening ads I saw. I still remember them, the close up of a Malay or Chinese woman, her hair shiny, and her skin light, and the green bottle, or the white bottle. I remember them in magazines and on bus shelters and sometimes on tv.

I used to laugh because this was another segmented aspect of my life - yet another thing that was part of my Malaysian life and not part of my Australian life, because I'd only see them in magazines in Malaysia, on bus shelters in Penang.

As a light-skinned Chinese woman living in Australia, I feel the pressure to be light-skinned at exactly the same time as I feel the pressure to be tanned. As a woman I'm more beautiful if I'm tanned! (also perhaps more attractive and fit? beachy-sporty-Australian-culture and all that) But my word, those dirty Asians, migrating here and blah blah blah. Like Carmen says in Ethnics, Ethnics, EVERYWHERE:

We really can’t win, can we? When we try and integrate by having the same interests and hobbies, maybe marrying or having kids with white people, we’re “taking over”, but when we try and stay out of it, set up schools to not tread on the toes of state school education or put adverts on dating sites for Asians only, we’re “not integrating”. Make your bloody minds up FFS or fuck off back to your imaginary white island.

Never be white enough to not be a horrible foreigner or an exotic Asian woman; never be tanned enough to be beautiful; there are so many intersections here sometimes I don't know where to start to explain. How can I explain why it is this way? It doesn't mean I want to lighten my skin or darken my skin, but these messages, they're just always there and always make me want to roll my eyes until they fall out of my face.

Or something.

So there's a facebook app to lighten your skin in profile pics:

Vaseline launches skin-whitening Facebook tool for India

In 2009, a poll of nearly 12,000 people by online dating site Shaadi.com, revealed that skin tone was considered the most important criteria when choosing a partner in three northern Indian states.

AND WHY DO YOU THINK THAT IS, EXACTLY? I don't know where to start. I don't know where to START.

WELL, I DO. COLONIALISM AND MISOGYNY, THAT'S WHERE. And then maybe we'll talk about appropriation again later.

wednesday linktastic

Things I am apparently currently bad at: link posts.

I don't like to group these link posts, because their inherent intersectionality makes grouping hard, but I'll never post if I don't.


things to do with gender (including gender norms, and trans* issues)

Love It/Shove It?: Dan Savage Can Shove It at the Jaded Hippy:

This constant conflation of sexual organs with sex identity and gender identity is one of the major obstacles, in my experience, with acceptance of and real respect towards trans people's identities. The idea that penis=man and vagina=woman is so entrenched that (cis) people just do NOT question it, even when contradictions of that assumption are staring them in the face. Oh, you look like a woman, talk like a woman, etc. but if I find out you have a penis under that skirt you are clearly "really" a man, or, at the most generous, "were a man once." That you could have been a woman ALL ALONG is not even up for consideration.

And that dynamic is being reinforced here.

This is old, but I think is a good summary of things, Tracing this Body: Transsexuality, pharmaceuticals & capitalism.

A Series of Questions, a photography series.

Many documentary photographic projects that deal with trans issues exploit the genders of their subjects, pointing to an "otherness" or inappropriately exoticizing their bodies. A Series of Questions seeks instead to make visible the transphobia and gender-baiting that can become part of everyday interactions and lives, forming a fuller picture of the various lived experiences. In so doing, this work contrasts with the dehumanizing approaches that predominate the images made of transgender, transsexual, genderqueer, gender non-conforming, and gender-variant people, which often focus solely on their gender or trans status, or use them to further a specific point about social construction and gender.

People I know are in it! ♥

At 8Asians, No More Girly Boys: Chinese Elementary School Teaches its Boys to be More Masculine.

I love this article: Consuming pop culture while trans: Disney's The Little Mermaid



stuff to do with ethnicity, race and culture

At Native Appropriations, Nudie Neon Indians and the Sexualization of Native Women.

What Kind of Card is Race? by Tim Wise is an old but good article.

Glass Icarus writes inscrutable, about yet another form of exotification and frustration and stereotyping.

At Overland, White Australia has a blackface history, by Maxine Clarke. What it says on the tin; something many Australians deny.

On Reverse Cultural Appropriation at the Merch Girl Tumblr.

ablesim

this is not gonna be coherent by unusualmusic:

Well, wasn't he fucked? Black teen male with Asperger's and mild autism who wanted to GO READ A FUCKING BOOK ends up ABUSED BY THE MOTHERFUCKING POLICE AND IN JAIL WITHOUT LAWYER OR MOTHER FOR 11 DAYS because some white asshole feels UNSAFE with him SITTING DOWN UNDER A TREE OUTSIDE OF A MOTHERFUCKING LIBRARY. I can't even. I cannot... He paid. He PAID for making some suburbanite racist human incarnation of vomit feel unsafe and so he/she made he PAY. Unleashed the power of the state to make him UNSAFE by MAGNITUDES of proportions that... goddamn. And at Wiscon, all these brown people who come to squeal with joy over media...we come to indulge in joy and you (letter writers and their brethren) claim that our very fucking existence makes you unsafe.

other stuff

Cyborg rights 'need debating now' OH YEAH.

An interesting discussion at Remade on The Politics of Fashion: Can you be smart, informed about world issues, and still think your personal style is pretty damn important?

Cadbury shies away from Aussie cynics , suggesting that Australians don't understand ethical branding.

tomorrow, when the war began and the myth of the imminent invasion

So, the remake of Red Dawn, where USAmericans beat up Chinese Communists, has been delayed indefinitely. I'm totally cool with that.

A movie project that has not been delayed is the Tomorrow, When the War Began movie. It comes out later this year in Australia. I had thought that maybe I would have to explain for ages and ages my issues with this movie, but then I found an article to explain it for me:

“If I named a country, it wouldn’t be that book; it would be something else entirely. What the book and the movie are about is these eight teenagers and what happens to them when their country is invaded, not who’s doing it or why. The ethnicity just makes common sense. If anyone is going to invade Australia, it’s not going to be Europe, and it’s not going to be Africa. It won’t be Antarctica or New Zealand. It’s going to be someone in Asia. It’s the logical thing. It’s common sense enough for an audience to say ‘ok, that’s who it would be’” he explained.

Okay, wait, here is my explanation: as much as I loved this series for giving me a young Asian-Australian who wasn't 'exotic,' who was just struggling with stuff and living his life and having romantic teenage entanglements with people who weren't Asian, I hated this series for giving me an agressor who fed into the Australian zeitgeist of imminent invasion by the yellow hordes to the North.

This idea that permeates this country, imminent invasion by the hordes to the North, is not new and it's not yet gone; Prolonged Symptoms of Cultural Anxiety: The Persistence of Narratives of Asian Invasion within Multicultural Australia is a paper that looks at just this idea. It's a good read, and highlights basically everything I dislike about the genre (including his use of racial stereotypes, and his erasing of Indigenous Australians with White (settler) Australians), and this series in particular;

The popular reception of Marsden’s invasion narrative signifies the historical continuity of Australian invasion anxiety within changing cultural contexts.

Shouldn't we be past this by now? Can't we be past this? I've had to deal with this for so long, and this idea is a key element of the undertones of xenophobia so many of us have to put up with (regularly or irregularly), and it's so frustrating that it's the basis of this Australian classic that doesn't even have the excuse of being written during Federation or whatever. It was the big text when I was a teenager, when I was trying to figure out what it meant to be Australian and Chinese and all the rest of it.

If you think this is an over-reaction, that people don't seriously believe this stuff - well, check out the comments on any online Australian paper when there's an article on immigration, any country in Asia, or border crossings. Or sometimes crime involving people of Asian descent. It's awesome reading.

At least we always had the ambiguity, in the book, teeny tiny though it was.

And now we get the whole freaking movie.

no english = no babies

I don't want to be accused of leaping to wild conclusions here, especially because I already have such huge issues with adoption, but I'm actually too busy keyboardmashing with rage over this article to do the usual linking/research to prove my point.

Adoption approved, despite wrongful removal at birth

THE NSW government's welfare agency seized a baby girl from her Chinese immigrant parents and, against their wishes, adopted her out to an Australian-born couple, prompting a judge to observe that the infant may have been "wrongly taken away".

BECAUSE THE MOTHER DIDN'T SPEAK ENGLISH. The article also goes into the fact that the mother was distrustful of government processes. So when the baby was finally discharged from hospital four months later, that's a great reason for DOCS to foster her out.

MAYBE PROVING HER DISTRUST IN GOVERNMENT PROCESSES?

The article doesn't really mention the father, except for this: Her father, who is also Chinese but speaks better English, has not seen her either. So would this outcome have been the same had it been the mother who spoke 'better English'?

Mothers who can't speak English are bad? OR SOMETHING, I don't know.

And if you think the comments don't contain things like, 'sounds like the kid is better off where she is' then YOU ARE VERY WRONG. And if you want to say, 'maybe it wasn't racially-motivated' you are also very wrong.

VERY WRONG INDEED.

on this blog; or, what is this penguin doing here

So, it occurs to me that this blog looks like it is brand new! In fact, it is something I should have done a long time ago. For several years, I have been social justice blogging in my private blog! But that time is past, and now I am blogging here, where you don't have to see me talking about tea, or the books I'm reading, or whatever.

If you want to catch up on some of the other stuff I've written, you can find it here: in particular you might be interested in previous mid week linky posts; isms; racism; or my favourite, on being chinese.

beginning of the week linkies

This is a bit of a haphazard linkery, since it's been a little while (three weeks!) and I know if I don't post them I never will.

Some Apple things: I promise not to kill myself: Apple factory workers 'asked to sign pledge.' I am sceptical that signing a pledge not to commit suicide is really solving the issues that lead to this being a problem for Foxconn (but interestingly, an update as I write this post: foxconn are raising pay for workers). And Cleaning iPhone screens, 62 Chinese workers poisoned.

At Skip the Makeup, Marriage in Malawi a Gay Issue?, about the transphobic reporting of the case of Tiwonge Chimbalanga and Steven Monjeza, who were engaged to be married. Also update: Malawi: Breaking news - Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga pardoned.

Educating Rosie.

However this is not the picture of the vast new contingent of female factory workers that was being presented through the media at the time. First of all, the women on the posters and in the newsreels – and who became collectively known as Rosie the Riveter from one of the songs that celebrated them – were unfailingly white. Secondly, and no less importantly, they hailed from the middle class.

I love Muslimah Media Watch so much: How Western journalists reported the ban on burqa

These women are visible and have an opinion worth considering. Yet they are virtually ignored by the media. These women simply don’t exist when lawmakers consider punitive laws affecting them and the cultural traditions they hold close to their heart.
The nature of journalism is to tell a story of conflict. No better example can be served than the burqa ban. Yet journalists can serve the international community better if it employed just a few of the goals of Search for Common Ground by seeking collaborative solutions to issues, and at the same time hold lawmakers and the Taliban accountable for the oppressive measures they force on Muslim women.

Also on this topic, at the Cast Iron Balcony: We must arrest this woman in order to save her.

Nation's first handicapped drivers licensed in Chengdul parking spots stir debate

Cosplay, race, ability and gender; or, who gets to dress up as whom?

some indigenous australian stuff:

Stereotypes ignore lot of hard work, on stereotypes of Indigenous Australians as naturals on the footy field.

5 young white men "of good character" beat Aboriginal man to death; and An example of systemic racism is Jo Tamar's take on it.

Just a quick summary: "Reject the Names Invaders Gave Us": Second New Way Aboriginal Summit

some language stuff:

A Quick Guide to Referring to People Who Aren't White, by Chally

A concern on appropriate language vs ESL speakers

Offensive Identities: immigrant, migrant, refugee

[links] adventures in australian racism

oh i know you love it.

Veiled Censorship, at Media Watch, about banning the burqa.

I linked this yesterday, but again: Indigenous Trans Woman’s Death in Custody in Australia Last Year; and also at the Curvature: Demand for Open Investigation Into Death of Aboriginal Trans Woman in Custody

Release of Innocent Man Shows Huge Flaws in Sexual Assault Prosecutions. If you read this article, it's pretty clear how much racism played into this prosecution.

Police media played gatekeeper over brazen attack on Indian man Narendrakumar Patel | Courier Mail, about the police cover up/non-publicisation of an attack on an Indian man.

I think I've linked these last two before, but in case I haven't: Police racially abusing African youths: report; and Pricking the culture, on gentrification, and a chat with the guys from Fear of a Brown Planet.

I <3 Fear of a Brown Planet. I can't wait to be the brown majority. It'll be awesome.

may 13

So many people are posting about May 13, this being the 41st anniversary, and with the exception of Jha and Tariq it's all very 'why can't we come together now?' sort of things. It's really odd language for me, particularly because I don't know what my mum was doing at the time, I don't know if any of my family were caught up in it. I do know how they feel, sort of, (penang was going to secede, you know, mostly sums up how they talk about any of this stuff) but I don't really know. Not really.

I'm not going to post about this, because today I just don't feel like I can. But Jha has organised a May 13 Blogswarm. You should head over and read - there's some good stuff there.

And also, this is a link I got from E a long time ago: Creating identity at the fringe

One particular sentence from the movie struck me to the core of my very being: a young Chinese man living in Malaysia tells a young Malay woman living in Malaysia "I wonder if sometimes people like you understand how hard it is for the rest of us. It's like loving someone who doesn't love you back." The irony was that after all these years of my ambivalent feelings about being Malaysian - it took a Malay woman filmmaker to articulate succinctly exactly how many of us feel about being Malaysian.

This is sometimes how I feel, and this is always what I think on this day, anniversary of this thing that happened years before I was born.

mid week link town

The May Down Under Feminists Blog Carnival is up! Lots of great Antipodean feminist bloggers blogging!

Unusual Music has a great post up with a range of women's voices in rock, inspired by some great posts that were (as it was) centred on white women rockers. So she's centred this post on non-white women rockers.

Disclaimers, at Fugitivus.

But if you read my adoption post and thought, “Well, that’s not true, because my experience was good,” I don’t give a shit and I don’t want to hear it. That is you coming in here and demanding that the conversation be made about you. I’m not going to argue your life experience with you; that’s a losing goddamn battle from the start, which is why it’s called a derailment tactic. But the fact that your experience was good has no relevance to a discussion about bad experiences, unless you have a deep and abiding need to make everybody agree with and focus on your experience. That’s some privileged shit.

At Overthinking it, Is Doctor Who Bad for Women? (spoilers through to ep1 of season five of New Who)

Robbo at Biting the Dust blogs Australia Post and the Supply of Medications, looking at posting meds out bush and some issues in the system.

Really liked this post at The Double Standard: 2010’s TOP 10 EXCUSES FOR RACISM: How to Decode the New Sophisticated Lingo

La Vie Noire blogs:

I just want to show that this is what happens when marginalized people dare to talk against oppression. You see how vulnerable trans women are and how their bodies and identities are ridiculed by cis, white, straight men when they denounce privilege and problematic behavior.

The Problems with Multi-Culturalism at Fuzzy Theory.

Multiculturalism assumes stable, static, cultural boundaries. In its attempt to say different cultures are part and parcel of Canada, it also solidifies these into unwavering essenses.

At Racism Review, “Christian Racism”: These Wounds I Suffer in the House of My Friends

The study [pdf here], published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, found that people subliminally “primed” with Christian words reported more negative attitudes about African-Americans than those primed with neutral words. “What’s interesting about this study is that it shows some component of religion does lead to some negative evaluations of people based on race,” said Wade Rowatt , associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor, who led the study.

On the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day, Let’s ... Go Shopping! at Newsweek, on how green shopping won't save the planet.

the critical fashion lover's guide to (basic) cultural appropriation is a really excellent 101 sort of post on cultural appropriation in fashion, and why it matters.

Demand for Open Investigation Into Death of Aboriginal Trans Woman in Custody