no award: social justice. media. fandom. drop bears.

Hey so all my apologies! I have a brand new blog that I'm super excited about. That makes blog number eleventy million for me of course, and I am in no way neglecting this one, or the vegan blog or the tumblr, but this new one makes all others PALE IN COMPARISON in terms of my passion and drive for it. At least right now.

Liz and I have combined to bring you No Award, a blog where we talk about social justice and media and intersectionality all specifically keeping in mind that we are Australians of varying backgrounds. So far in our first three weeks of posting I've spent a lot of time blogging about racial and infrastructure and political issues in Pacific Rim, and also about the exotic as shorthand in dystopic future fiction. Liz has looked at lots of things including the deconstruction of masculinity in Dance Academy, and an old school Melbunnie SF novel. It has been a lot of fun so far, and I look forward to continuing this project.

Come say hi! It is super fun.

queer australian teevee

I’m not watching much Australian television at the moment, because I’m in China and sadly ABC iview isn’t available outside of Australia, but I have been making an effort to watch two shows: Outland and The Newtown Girls. Coincidentally, these are both humourous shows about Australian Queers.

Outland is a six-part series that just finished on ABC1. It's a comedy about a gay science fiction club in Melbourne. I’ve been watching it via iTunes (AUD2.99 an episode; AUD16 for the lot).

The Newtown Girls is a ten-part webseries, a dramedy about the dating lols that accompany "returning to the scene." I didn't realise dressing up as Xena counted as a part of returning to the scene but it's all good. I’ve been watching it on the website (no cost).

Both of these shows are not only Australian and set in queer communities, but my favourite characters on both are queer ladies of colour. This makes me so happy.

Rae is an Indigenous sci-fi fan in a wheel chair. She wears awesome clothes and is a little insecure about her body but she’s not afraid of calling bullshit when it hits her. She’s played by Christine Anu, who is a super awesome TSI with a twitter.

Alex is a young Asian woman living it up in Newtown. She’s addicted to coffee (looks like an espresso) and she’s cheerful and forthright and she wears awesome clothes. She’s played by Renee Lim, who is an Asian actress from Perth who is a doctor in her spare time.

How could I not love them? I love them.

It took me a long time to become comfortable with being a queer Australian woman of an Asian background, and sometimes it’s still something I have to fight with other people about (more on that later), but it is my identity and I love it. And I’m so happy that there are two queer Australian women of a not-white ethnicity on my television (well, on my laptop), who speak like me and are portrayed by actresses I already liked and also one of whom is a science fiction fan like meeeee.

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.

reviews and commentary on tomorrow when the war began

The Tomorrow, When the War Began movie came out earlier in the month. I ranted about it a few months ago, in preparation, and have been reading some reviews and commentary and things, in lieu of actually subjecting myself to this. For your reading (dis)pleasure:

Opinion in the Age: Unsettling echoes of yesterday, when the yellow peril hysteria began:

As the Longford silent demonstrates, Australia has a long tradition of xenophobic fears of being swamped by Asia, whether by Indonesian armed forces or, in more recent years, by boatloads of refugees from Vietnam, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka.

Even though it could not have been predicted by the filmmakers, it's hard to ignore the fact Tomorrow has been released directly following an election campaign in which one of the parties' main slogans was Stop the Boats, aimed squarely at Asian refugees.

On LJ, butterscotch711 reviews it in more of a movie-style (less social justice style).

This SMH article had me keyboard mashing: The fight for Australia:

But the political and cultural landscape is now very different. Since the book was first published, we've had the Bali bombings, terrorist arrests and Australian troops have served in East Timor, Iraq and now Afghanistan, where 18 soldiers have died. Could Tomorrow, When the War Began escalate from a piece of entertainment to a political touchstone?

And this article was okay: Invasion of the Asians is fiction, not a fact:

When I complained about this to a journalist friend, he said, quite sensibly, that I should not get too anxious about the invader issue in the movie. The film is pure escapism and they needed a credible candidate for invasion. The alternative, he suggested ironically, was New Zealand.

But that's the point. Apparently, we think Asian invasion is credible.

dear sbs

Dear SBS,

Souvlaki to star power, the changing face of SBS

THEY have made sense of Inspector Rex and Ingmar Bergman, translated Mongolian yak herders and Zulu warriors. But it seems the show will soon be over for SBS's internationally acclaimed subtitling unit.

News that 10 members, or one-third of the unit, will soon be made redundant has been greeted with disbelief by staff and viewers, who see it as one more step in the Anglicising of Australia's once proud multicultural broadcaster.

SBS, you have always been my favourite. When I see that the translation on the thing I am about to watch was done by you, I have faith that it will be an accurate translation, both linguistically and of intent. I know that when I turn to you, I will get to see non-Anglo faces, hear non-Anglo words, regardless of whether I can understand them or not. I know that you will give me things that are difficult to find in our Anglo-monoculture.

When I was tiny, you gave me Akira, and the Ninja Scrolls, and all those Chinese Ghost Stories; as I grew older, you gave me news in languages I was learning, and Inspector Rex, and movies that allowed my mother to use languages she'd spoken well before she'd learnt English. Now that I am grown(ish), I don't watch you so much, but you're my first stop when I'm buying movies in languages I don't speak. I want to give you money for these things, to support you in these endeavours, because the things you give us back are so important; by which I mean, translating the world for Australia, ensuring that those of us from non-Anglo cultures can share ourselves with our friends, or ensuring that we can learn about and access cultures not of our own, and not of Anglo-ness.

If I wanted to watch that other stuff, I'd turn to some other station.

SBS, I am going to miss your awesomeness. Sorry it had to end this way.

All the best,
A Penguin

hua mulan; or, on passing the bechdel test with only two women

Hey, so, maybe you're familiar with The Ballad of Hua Mulan. There have been many movie versions (good chance you've seen the Disney movie), but there was one that came out last year, starring Wei Zhao, that was pretty awesome.



Mulan is so fierce, she is one of my favourite women ever, though there is a lot of debate over whether or not she ever existed which I don't really want to get in to. But she ran off to war in her father's place, and she became a general, and she was fierce and awesome and I love her.



In the 2009 movie, she was particularly fierce. The movie spends so little time fretting about her hiding her identity and debating whether she'll go to war - the movie opens, she does it, and she moves on. It's all about her, her journey and her awesomeness and I have always considered her one of the greatest role models for women to come out of Chinese history/literature.



Anyway, in a movie about a woman who lives her life as a man in order to go away to war and fight, where the movie emphasises that bringing a woman in to the camp is death (just to highlight that there aren't going to be any other female characters hanging around), and that is all actiony and stuff, it still passes the Bechdel test. Yes, that's right, in a movie where there are only two female characters at all, they still have a conversation that is not about a man.¹

And there's another version being considered (uh, in 3D). So maybe, I dunno, if a movie with only two women and lots of swords can pass the Bechdel test, maybe more movies could do so? OR SOMETHING.


¹SPOILER SPOILER there may be some debate about this, given the end point of the conversation is Hua Mulan promising the princess that she can marry Wentai, but the ACTUAL point of the conversation is what can these two women do in order to bring peace to their warring factions, so I will defend this as not a conversation about a guy, it's a conversation about politics and warfare. END SPOILER

checking out the media

I want to really quickly comment on this article, SBS warns of foreign media risks to social cohesion. At first I was like NO SBS NOT YOU TOO but thinking about it, it's a valid point that international media is not necessarily going to pick up on local details; but it's important to note that neither, necessarily, is the local media. All media outlets have their biases.

Just as an example, I read half a dozen social justice blogs that are in the PRC, and quite a few Malaysian politics blogs (as well as the Star Online, it's practically like reading the West), because I assume that the bajillion Australian and USA blogs I read aren't going to give me the information and the nuance I need in order to keep up on what's going on. Hell no if you think I'm trusting someone who isn't Malaysian to report on some of that stuff, they're not going to get it.

What country or area specific papers/political/social justice blogs do you read?



(how else would I get to read about a pontianak haunting a police station? nb pontianaks are female ghosts who were usually killed in very unpleasant ways, some of the description of which is in the link)

billy sing, chinese-australian and dude

So Yuey at Asians Down Under has a post up with the text of an article from news.com.au, over the new mini-series about one of the awesomest Chinese-Australians ever, Billy Sing.

A mini-series about a Chinese-Australian war hero! Amazing! Awesome stuff!

Davis said the problem in casting Sing as a Chinese-Australian arose when he couldn't find a 60-year-old Chinese actor to play his father.

"Asking Tony to play it as Chinese would not only have been racist and demeaning. It was also financially irrelevant -- we could not have afforded the make-up," he said. "Whatever his genetic background, his culture was Australian. To me, he's very representative of every Australian whose parents were not born here.

Do you know who is playing Billy? THE DIRECTOR'S WHITE SON. DO YOU SEE WHAT THE PROBLEM IS HERE? APPARENTLY THERE ARE NO OLDER CHINESE ACTORS.

NO OLDER CHINESE ACTORS.

OH GOOD.

From the article:

Former Nationals senator Bill O'Chee, who became an army reservist when he left parliament in 1999 and was born to a Chinese father and an Irish-Australian mother, was "deeply disappointed" by the production.

"We'll now have people growing up thinking Billy Sing was white. But we are jealous of his memory," he said. Federal Queensland Liberal MP Don Cameron, who found the site of the South Brisbane boarding house where Sing died in 1943 with five shillings on his bedside, said it was "tragically wrong" to have the sniper played by a white.

When conservative, old, white guys are telling you that you can't whitewash someone, MAYBE IT IS TIME TO REALISE YOU ARE DOING SOMETHING WRONG?!

But it's not like media representation is important or anything. I mean, it's not like people would come* out of watching this mini-series thinking Billy Sing was white or anything! We can just tell him that he was Chinese-Australian! BECAUSE THAT'S WORKED SO WELL BEFORE.

No Chinese actors to play his dad! It's not like they couldn't have GOT A CHINESE ACTOR FROM CHINA OR SOMETHING, IF THERE REALLY REALLY REALLY AREN'T ANY OLDER AUSTRALIAN ACTORS OF CHINESE DESCENT.**

Here is some more reading on representation on Australin tv:

how would we look from outer space? by Shiny New Coin

The lack of Asians on Australian TV, and why it matters at Eurasian Sensation.

And the wiki link for Billy Sing.

Dude was a dude, and he was a mixed-race Chinese-Australian dude, and everyone should know that, especially so we can combat that THIS COUNTRY WAS FOUNDED ON WHITE ARMY HEROES IN THE WAR myth.

OKAY GOOD


ETA: Yuey has posted a follow up post here.


*I say 'would' because this series has not yet been picked up for airing.

**I'm pretty skeptical of this, that there are no older Chinese Australian actors.

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