Via delux_vivens.

So law doesn't protect queer POC from having their experiences appropriated by white straight privileged people, but IT CAN protect said white privileged people from... POC people who talk about the assholes "intellectual property" that came from appropriation and lies.

The Amina Hoaxer threatened to sue Minal Hajratwala for sharing his "copyrighted material" about "Amina."

Via delux_vivens. As always, when you said "women" in mainstream feminist circles, you mean, "white, cis women."

Otherwise, I don't get what Yonmei even tried to compare here.

Shakesville brings their White Women Being Superior's asses to the yard. Because Melissa wanted to complain about a white man being sexist. But she missed he was being sexist AND racist. So she took the opportunity to be a little racist by herself.

the northeastern region of Thailand which has become a destination for Western men who are "drawn by the low cost of living, slow pace of life and the exotic reputation of Thai women."

Which has nothing to do with colonization, imperialism, and capitalism.

But this is the jewel I want to share:

Endemic extreme poverty, an economy in which even a small US pension makes you a rich man, and a vulnerable and easily exploitable population of women whose education, if there was any to speak of, didn't exactly introduce them to feminist concepts. Just your basic MRA paradise.

See me throw up. White women. Always paternalistic, knowing nothing about the situation of "those poor women" (and their countries) who, of course, are a monolith. And don't know better.


It SO reminded me to this wonderful essay: Ouch! Western feminists' 'wounded attachment' to the 'third world prostitute'

I now turn to the second of Liddle and Rai's contentions about the workings of orientalist power in feminist discourse: that orientalist power is invoked discursively when male oppression and female resistance are characterized in such as way to reinforce a 'hierarchy of civilization'. Barry's work, and the campaign rhetoric of CATW, clearly locate trafficking within 'backward', traditional societies (see Kempadoo 1998). As in Victorian feminists' Indian campaign, 'traditional and religious practices' are seen as the root of the problem of trafficking:

[...]

This attitude-that third world women, and prostitutes in particular — are victims of their (backward, barbaric) cultures is pervasive in the rhetoric of CATW and in those western feminist organizations that have joined their CATW's campaign around the Vienna Protocol against trafficking. According to Planned Parenthood President Gloria Feldt,

In the U.S., we tend to see the issue of trafficking and forced prostitution through the lens of our affluent democratic society. In many cultures, women and girls have no power and very limited rights so that their vulnerability to sex trafficking is high (quoted in Soriano 2000: 3).

The co-director of CATW stated recently

In the global South and East, victims of the sex trade are often young women and girls who are desperately poor in cultures where females are expected to sacrifice themselves for the well being of their families and communities (Leidhold 1999: 4).

In CATW inspired feminist discourses, the 'third world' sex worker is presented as backward, innocent, and above all helpless — in need of rescue (Murray 1998, Doezema 1998, 2000). Through her, the superiority of the saving western body is marked and maintained.

Also, people, you know I ban if you annoy me. Just reminding you. I have no energy right now.

ephemere wrote an amazing post: Patalim. (Triggering.)

There are stories. Of the past. Some have been lost.

Others, erased.

Let me tell you what "death march" means to me. It is part of the invasion of the Philippines by Japan, against which Filipinos, including my grandfather, and Americans fought. It is a path trod by prisoners of war and littered with corpses; it is heat and thirst and hunger and dust and disease and death. It is yet another blot upon a history blackened by the ink of war and colonization, and like other such marks, it is one to which so many of us shut our eyes in hopes that not seeing will mean erasure and that erasure will lead to recovery.

[...]

Freedom is not forgetting. And forgetting is not freedom. Look at what the loss of our memory has done to us. Look at it, and ask me whether we are better off acting as if the atrocities of the wars and colonizations never happened, as if we have no need for vigilance because the exertion of political and economic will of a foreign power over us cannot happen again, as if we have learned the lessons of the past so thoroughly we will be sure to fight for our rights and the rights of our people to speak and live free, as if we have so fully realized all the evils and all the complexities of power differentials and the abuse of wealth and the exploitation of resources and knowledge and people that we can now equip ourselves to fight against it, as if we recognize the importance of having and claiming our identities and our dignity and the burden and glory that is our history, as if we no longer stumble through the debris and ruin of so many broken institutions and fault ourselves for our own weakness and our own brokenness and the fact that we are not as good and wise and wonderful and wealthy as our former colonial masters. Look at it. Look at how well we have erased the graves, how so many of us go about our daily lives as if there are not more of us being killed every day, how we continue blithely on, the struggles our parents and grandparents and ancestors suffered through mere footnotes in the pages of our books, certainly things that no longer matter in this progressive story of the Philippines in 2010. Look at it, and go on. Ask me.

I don't want to erase this blood staining my legacy. I don't want to forget, as if it never happened. I don't want to keep coming across, "I didn't know the Philippines was a U.S. colony!" as if I do not bear the damage of American occupation written in my nerves and across my tongue. I don't want to see "deathmarching" used as a verb, the same way I deplore how "imeldific" is used as an adjective -- as if history were an erasable thing and words slipping into common parlance an apology or a healing of all these wounds. I don't want people to go on using this in a misguided attempt to remove the blood in it, because forgetting is what gives the evil behind this more power, by allowing the word to go unchallenged and slip under the veneer of acceptability, lightness, cheapening, banality. I don't want the atrocities of war to become equated with mundane things.

I don't want common use. I don't want a sanitized history. I want my stories, past and present, these stories of my people that we have lost and that we're on the verge of losing, held close to my heart and remembered. I want these stories told over and over again, because the need for them will never lift, not the necessity for memory and not the blatant spitting on the dignity of it. I want to claim them though I may choke on tears and tongue in doing so, though I surrender on so many other things daily and remain one frail and weak person still grappling with the fractures in her present and in her past. Because this, too, is part of who I am. Because every story told and every careless use challenged is defiance, is struggle, is me raising my head and saying, this happened, this matters -- is yet another blow against erasure, silence, the unmarking of graves.

I blame ontd_feminism.

Man says he would never vote "guilty" if he were a jury in a rape case despite the evidence because menz are oprezzed by US's law. All the comments agree and consider him heroic because we live in a misandrist world. The whole site is a jewel. (Triggering for rape apologism, victim blaming and lot more shit I can't name.)

Also, there was this post featured about a white US senator saying white privileged was a myth because white people were impoverished.

Hmm. Some days.

When white feminists talk stupid shit about things they know nothing about and make stupid conclusions.

Via aqrima, white lady talks shit because she read an article about India in NY Times.:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/10/world/asia/10honor.html?src=me&ref=general

I, personally, do not feel that culture is an excuse for violence. In fact, I feel that there is no excuse for violence. Using religion and culture to excuse murder is an act of cowardice. Yet, still they continue…in the name of religion and tradition, etc.

What I find disgusting about this story—beyond the whole pointless death and human intolerance—is that the family changed their story multiple times. Changing your story in such a fashion over and over again is rather indicative of guilt. And an autopsy showing that the young woman suffocated…that, too, seems more like murder than suicide. Were there marks on the neck indicating that she had been hung? Was there rope? Did the rope have any of her DNA embedded in the threads from, you know, hair and skin that would have certainly been torn and irritated? Is there even any evidence that she hung herself, aside from the family’s changing stories?

And isn’t it suspicious that her “suicide” note suddenly appeared after they changed the story?

No, you cannot change society in one day. Ms. Pathak’s brother was right in that. But that doesn’t mean that culture cannot change at all. It can, and it will. Hopefully, one day, the outdated, ignorant, and conservative notion of honor killings will be gone and women will be one step closer to being safe and equal in the cultures that once advocated such archaic systems.

Ah, the condescending attitude and superiority of white people. Imagine if they actually bothered to educate themselves!

Aqrima has a wonderful response here:

you’re saying that this is done in the name of (outdated, archaic, conservative, ignorant) culture, and that is wrong. and some people say that this is what the culture says, and it is outdated, archaic, conservative and ignorant.

you’re working on the assumption that 1) there is some primal indian culture that we (indians, south asians) come from, and 2) that you know what it is.

and you don’t. you really, really don’t. i get the sense you (and the person you reblogged) are just another white feminist who thinks it’s okay to make blatantly racist and imperialist statements about our cultures, while you’re completely ignorant about the ways in which, for one, imperialism has shaped our cultures. made it so that we are in this bind where it’s either fundamentalism or modernity, and nothing. fucking. makes. sense.

ETA: White lady responds to Aqrima, after a bunch of nonsense about how she (White Lady) has right to talk: "excusing horrible violence on an innocent victim (a whole line of “but, but, but,” really?) makes you an evil person.."

Because she is so concerned about the killing happening in India. *throws up*

I would say that making fun of an Indian woman's culture while you stamp over a woman's death like that makes you an evil person. No one is fooled.

White lady, an Indian woman calling you on your racism while you pretend concern about a woman's death isn't "excusing a murder," far from it. And you making this straw man and slippery slope towards her and her culture is really awful and privileged.

You, white lady, aren't the one being killed there and won't ever be. You have no idea about these women lives beyond what you read in a NY Times article. So shut up.

And it starts with the upcoming liveaction movie of Bleach by WB. (See link for comments of white people saying they don't care about Asian actors because Bleach is not that Japanese anyway.)

Seriously, white people. Seriously. The day you understand that race relations aren't something relative... it will be... for fucks sake, it will never come.

ETA: Okay, I will word it better. White people? Go fuck yourself. Hard. This show doesn't need Asian actors? What. Nothing distinctive? I mean, what about the fact that IT'S A JAPANESE SHOW AND WHITE PEOPLE HAVE BEEN APPROPRIATING EVERYTHING NOT WHITE SINCE THEY STARTED COLONIZING COUNTRIES CENTURIES AGO, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES.

Daughter of ETA 1: Also, notice how white westerns are there to define what is or isn't Japanese/Asian/POC. Most of them who only have been exposed to those cultures by media. Ah, white privilege.

That's all. I'm also working for the winner of my help_chile's bid. So will be kinda busy.

Spoilers for Reborn 283:

( Ranting, as always and coloring )

Okay, since it's not on my journal I won't respond to this person, I really don't know how the OP feels about this, but seriously? Why don't you tell us more about your white European history and how fascinating you find the racism towards a Vietnamese descendant in her post?

If I didn't feel so uncomfortable about this, I would talk about white privilege, and First World privilege and how they interact in a global level. Because some things coming from both sides just make me so tired.

But white Europeans? Who colonized my country and the reason racism in incredible and tremendously prevalent here is definitely not USA (but I'm not saying their culture doesn't influence ours a lot, that's not what I'm saying).

ETA: I forgot to say it, but what really, really bothered was the dismissal of wistfuljane's experience. As if being German-American, Italian-American was the same as Vietnamese-American or Asian-American. Which clearly is not the case. (But the OP may not feel it that way, as a dismissal I mean, and I respect that.)