Idealize This | Feminism

Written for Hyphen on November 24, 2009.

For most of my life, I’ve acted the part of the fiery feminist activist. At age 10 (before I even knew “feminist” as a word) my surprisingly cogent defense of biblical Eve moved my evangelical father into surrendering his argument that women are the root of all evil. At age 16 (when I only knew “feminist” as a term of derision) I scandalized my Filipino teachers by conducting an (albeit amateurish) study charting gender discrimination within Republic Central high schools. And by age 19 (when I proudly donned my first signature “this is what a feminist looks like” t-shirt) my transformation seemed complete. In those enlightened times, I was fond of telling people, “You’re probably a feminist — you just don’t know it yet.”

So thrilled was I to have found a word — an ideology, a movement! — which embodied my long-standing belief system that I didn’t realize until much later the foolishness of such a proclamation; feminism isn’t, after all, defined by one’s inherent, unarticulated views on gender (however progressive those may be), but is rather a conscious, political choice one makes after considering and asserting those views.

These days, a much more educated, experienced, and cynical Me teeters on the fence. Some days, I hear feminism derided by an ignoramus with a beer and the beast inside rears its rosy head in indignation. Other days, my oft-broken heart smarts at the memory of old friends and activists whose feminist ideals didn’t stand in the way of their marginalizing a person of color, or objectifying another woman, or even downplaying the sexual assault of a friend. Most of the time, my commitment to social justice advocacy doesn’t feel as though it requires a label so I have the room to vacillate.

However, my indecision piques about every six months.

Idealize This | Solidarity Tipsheet

Written for Hyphen on September 11, 2009, and cross-posted at Racialicious.

My last column, about the ethical differences between charity and solidarity, was a heavy-handed critique of NYT Magazine’s “Saving the World’s Women” issue. Good criticism, however, ought always be tempered by practical suggestions for improvement. So, for this week, I’ve distilled the opinions of other critics, suggestions of notable theorists, and my own rich reserve of activist foibles into 3 simple (albeit wordy) tips for doing solidarity work the right way.

Tip #1: Realize that, no matter how much you know, you actually don’t know shit.

When Americans set out to work transnationally, we have a tendency to assume that our education, or experience, or even underprivileged upbringing makes us both “insiders” into other people’s struggles as well as qualified to tell them how to address it. Please don’t make the mistake of thinking that a poli sci major, a backpacking trip through Southeast Asia, and/or a stint as the president (and incidentally only member) of your local Amnesty International Chapter makes you qualified to be anything more than an asshole just shy of completing an undergraduate degree.

Third World activists, as well as scholars studying transnational activism, have long decried the Western tendency to speak for, over, and about people of the Third World under the seemingly benign mantle of “global sisterhood” or “global citizenship” or some other similar ideal that blurs the ethnocentrism of their efforts. The first UN Women’s Conference in 1975 is a well-known example of this conflict: many Third World participants took issue with the feminist manifesto drawn up by white American feminist Gloria Steinem, which had been touted as a common framework for action, but was crafted without input from Third World activists.

Eminent postcolonial and transnational feminist theorist Chandra Talpade Mohanty similarly made waves a decade later, when her 1988 essay, “Under Western Eyes,” deconstructed the ethnocentric and ironically paternalistic analyses of Third World women that was (and is) prevalent in Western feminist scholarship. Delia Aguilar, another feminist theorist hailing from the Philippines, similarly argues that there is no such thing as “international sisterhood” and talks at length in many of her books about her problematic interactions with well-intentioned but misguided scholars and activists who wrongly presume that their experiences in the west qualify them to speak on women’s issues elsewhere.

If you really want to be effective (as opposed to annoying, useless, and embarrassed), get over yourself. Listen before speaking, and pause before acting. To paraphrase Aguilar, you have to illuminate these power relations in order to make unity possible.

Debunking the White Man Fetish

[Originally posted in Hyphen on February 16, 2009.]

Since writing my last entry on the Asian Fetish Myth, I’ve received some interesting responses. Most of them have implied that, while Asian women are fetishized by white men, Asian women perpetuate the fetish by favoring white men in the dating game (I believe Neela commented on this as well).

One person even asked if I was, while writing the post, reminded of my own parents (an older white man with a much younger Filipina wife) — as though the circumstances of their relationship somehow undermine my initial claims about the ways in which the Asian Fetish plays out in the media.

To that, in particular, I respond: Certainly, I had that in mind. But my mother’s marriage to my father (like other interracial relationships) doesn’t undermine my assertion that the Asian Fetish is one perpetuated onto, rather than by, Asian women. In other words, it is characterized by the sexual objectification of Asian women by non-Asian men due to the latter’s (mis)perceptions about the former’s nature and culture (not the other way around).

My father was an excellent example of this as he was, admittedly, attracted to Asian women because he believed that they are submissive and gentle (fyi: my mother’s a firecracker so… don’t think he really knew what he was getting into there…).

My mother did marry my father willingly and so, I suppose, one might be tempted to make the case that she is living proof that the Asian Fetish is perpetuated by Asian women who like Caucasian men. Thing is, she didn’t marry a white American because of of some misguided, dominance-driven infatuation with older white men (unlike my father, whose attraction to Asian women was really a sexual objectification of Asian women; in other words, she’s no Misaki Nakajima). Rather, my mother’s desire to marry a white American was predicated on the belief that doing so would grant her a level of personal and  financial security that otherwise might not have been possible, given the level of inequality and inopportunity prevalant in her home country. Was she simply a gold digger, looking for a sugardaddy? Or is her reverence of Western society the result of centuries of colonialism and foreign occupation which “benevolently assimilated” its citizens into a belief system that debased the local cultures while exalting those of the West?

Obviously it takes two to tango — but, if you’ve ever taken ballroom-dancing lessons, you know that the dance depends on a very rigidly-defined power relationship between dancers. The notion of the Asian fetish is similarly built upon a unequal balance of power, in which one party has license to define the other, while simultaneously being regarded as a benevolent benefactor for having done so.

Yes, Asian women participate in the sytem. But Asian women didn’t create the system.

[I feel the need, at this point, to make a distinction between Asian women (as in: from Asia), and Asian American women, as my commenters seemed to be confused about the difference. Everything I have thus far described pertains the former.]

Now, as for why Asian-Americans date white guys: I wish I could say that it’s simple, that — duh — there are a lot of them. Caucasians do outnumber Asian Americans by over 200 million. But it really isn’t so simple…. And that really isn’t the right question. Instead of asking why so many AsAm women date white men, we should be asking why so few AsAm women date AsAm guys. I know a lot of Asian American women who, admittedly, prefer not to date Asian men because they think that
they are “effeminate” or “too short” (never mind that we are, on average, even shorter). And I just want to say that this preference (or lack thereof) is not based on the  objective or substantive observations about the masculinity or physique of Asian men, but rather is based on the way in which American (i.e. white) society has stereotyped Asian men
since the mid-1800s (read: relegating them to jobs traditionally held by women and then condemning them for holding jobs meant for women, etc.). Taking this into consideration, the apparent AsAm preference for white guys doesn’t seem to be grounded in a sexual objectification of white guys, but actually seems to be underpinned by a socially conditioned aversion to Asian men. Funny how we get all bent out of shape about being objectified based on western perceptions of our race but have no problem discriminating against our male counterparts on the same basis.That’s right ladies: If you say you don’t date Asian guys because they’re less than (or date white guys because they are, by comparison, more than)…well, you’ve just bought into over a century of racism and anti-Asian sentiment, and are perpetuating it in your own life on a daily basis.

Obviously the Asian Fetish exists, and obviously it isn’t singularly perpetuated by old white guys. Asian/AsAm women definitely play a part — but our part doesn’t have anything to do with a white man fetish, as some of my commenters have suggested. Rather, our part in perpetuating the Asian Fetish is grounded in our desexualization of Asian/AsAm men, as doing so 1) reinforces white men’s position of sexual power, and 2) bolsters the asymetrical power dynamic between white men and women of color.

Asian Girls and the Guys Who Fetishize Them

[Originally posted at Hyphen on February 11, 2009]

That Asian Fetish Myth thing is making news again…though this time no one’s debunking it.

Jaemin Kim has a piece up examining the dangerous implications of the “Asian Fetish,” in which she shrewdly links media representations of interracial dating with sexual violence against Asian women.  It’s a must-read if you hate seeing Asian women portrayed as the exclusive purview of middle-aged, balding white men and/or hentai-watching computer geeks.

The Onion also recently published a piece on this topic, albeit with a much simpler objective: a lampoon of the fetishizers themselves. In an article titled “Asian Teen Has Sweaty Middle-Aged Man Fetish,” the Onion attempts to put a satirical spin on the Asian Fetish Myth. But, while the premise has potential (even if the target is an easy one), the execution is less than consummate.

Here’s an excerpt:

At first glance, 17-year-old Misaki Nakajima seems like any other shy and submissive Japanese schoolgirl. She loves shopping, text messaging, and the color pink. But beneath her wholesome exterior lies a wicked secret: Misaki Nakajima is consumed by sexual fantasies involving sweaty, middle-aged American men.

“I can’t explain it,” said Nakajima, dressed in a pleated miniskirt and pure white knee socks. “There’s just something about American men who are at least twice my age and nearly three times my body weight that totally drives me wild.”

Sure, we get the punchline — how clever to point out the absurdity of “balding Midwesterners who carry most of their weight in their stomach” entertaining some strange sense of entitlement over women so obviously out of their league.

But for a parody of pervy old white men, we sure don’t get much of the pervy old white men… Instead, we get a pretty intense collection of hyper-sexual descriptions of 17-year-old Misaki’s miniskirt and “alabaster” skin. In fact, after a few paragraphs expounding on the bizarre sexual fantasies of this “virgin nymph,” the article starts to read less like a parody and more like the beginning of Asian-fetish erotica written specifically for “balding Midwesterners who carry most of their weight in their stomach.”

Maybe the Onion writers just can’t keep track of their own punchlines anymore…or maybe this fetishized image of the submissive Asian woman is so pervasive that even satire intended to criticize it becomes, itself, a source of the objectification.

I can just imagine what Jaemin would say about this, given the way her article takes other journalists to task for their borderline racist (and undeniably reductive) representations of Asian women and the men who date them.

Thoughts?

Good Friday

The Democrats are making my week (and I can’t help but feel a little smug about it, given how many people I know who refused to vote for him because “what difference does it make who’s in the white house?”).

Not only has Obama signed executive orders banning torture, and closing Guantanomo and CIA detention centers abroad  [read Amnesty Intl's Perspective on this], he’s also moved to increase government transparency and ethics.

He is also expected to repeal the Global Gag Rule (a policy that has long crippled health providers across the world, by denying U.S. governemnt funding to NGOs that provide abortion services or counseling) TODAY!! [Take a look at the UN's perspective on my the Global Gag Rule must be repealed].

The Senate hasn’t failed us either, passing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act by a landslide yesterday, 61-36. The bill restores women’s ability to challenge unequal pay. It’s worth noting that every single Republican woman on the Senate voted FOR the bill; just more proof that, regardless of political party, women usually do what’s best for men – and men, regardless of political party, shouldn’t be making decisions about women’s issues.

But my joy over the nation’s new leadership is, unfortunately, tempered by my disgust at Arizona’s [Oh AZ, when will you cease to disappoint?!]:

• Kyl and McCain, of course, voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.
• Now that our beloved Janet Napolitano has left us for the Department of Homeland Security, Republican lawmakers are trying to roll back university funding provided by her while she was governor – meaning that, after the huge budget hit that ASU took a couple of months ago, we are looking at even larger one [read President Crow's statement] that will likely lay off thousands more employees (undoubtedly including myself), raise tuition and fees dramatically, and maybe even close one of our campuses. [More handiwork of Russell Pearce, mastermind behind last year's attempt to cripple public education in Arizona, Senate Bill 1108].

Two steps forward, one step back, huh?

Fair Trade and Hunger Strikes: My Day in Manila

Mabuhay! I’m in the Phils for a couple of weeks visiting my family for the holidays- and frantically trying to collect some interviews for a paper I’m writing on alternatives to current Philippine trade policy. Because I’m only gonna be here for a short time, I only had one day to spend in Manila for visiting relevant organizations. Fortunately I had a contact from Advocate for Philippine Fair Trade, Inc (APFTI), who freed up his whole day to take me around the city to meet with different groups.

The APFTI staff was wonderfully welcoming. Besides taking the morning to tell me about their programs and projects, they ordered in lunch for us, and spent the afternoon visiting fair trade businesses in Manila with me.
APFTI shares a space with another similar organization called Filipinas Fair Trade Ventures (FFTV). While APFTI provides small-scale producers and businesses with empowerment trainings, product development, market facilitation and coaching, FFTV works on constructing a network of fair trade businesses and organizations in the Philippines.

We met up with the Community Relations Officer from Rags to Riches, an org that is really similar to LOH in many ways – not only was it started with a grant from a social entrepreneurship competition, it’s managing committee consists completely of people under 25 and are less than a year old too! They have partnered with a group of nanays (mothers) from a slum in Quezon City who weave rugs from scrap cloth, and are working to form the women into a cooperative, develop more marketable products using the same recycled materials and weaving technique, and they market and sell the products so the nanays end up getting about a 100 % increase in income. Most of the nanays work from home, but the group we visited works together in an alleys between their houses. Upon some encouragement, I attempted to weave a rug but my work didn’t meet their strict quality control standards )

The two youngest nanays from Rags to Riches cut scrap cloth and weave a rug.

One of the nanays teaches Joy (from APFTI) how to weave.

Next we visited a group of women living in the same area who make beads from old newspapers and magazines. Thanks to APFTI, they are now connected to buyers from all over the world and fill orders for fair trade retailers like 10,000 villages. When we visited them, the 25 women were filling an order for 30,000 decorative bottles wrapped in their paper beads — meaning that each woman has to make 40 bottles per day to meet their deadline. They work out of their homes, as well, with their children nearby.

This woman is from Daet, the same town my mom is from. Here, she's gluing strings of beads she made to a glass bottle that will be shipped to a retailer in the Netherlands.

As we drove around the city, we passed by the House of Representatives where farmers and activist groups were protesting the end of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program, which has redistributed farm lands from the government and land-holding elite to small farmers in an effort to alleviate poverty and ensure food security in the country. The protesters were hunger striking at the time I was there (many hadn’t eaten anything for as long as 18 days) because the program was ending before all tenable lands had been redistributed. In addition, a joint resolution that had been introduced into Congress with the intention of “extending” CARP actually privileges wealthy land owners by giving them the option of redistributing their land or not.

Protestors in front of the house of representatives

Two days after I left Manila, the House had passed the unjust Joint Resolution 19 despite the hunger strike and pressure from progressive lawmakers who promptly issued a statement saying:

We have decided not to be a party to the landlord-dominated House of Representatives’ pretension and deception of the Filipino peasantry and the people in extending the bogus Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP). [...] This sham joint resolution further strengthens the landlords’ monopoly and control over vast tracts of agricultural lands in the country and will surely lead to the massive eviction of peasants and land-grabbing in the countryside.

It will also open the floodgates to the proliferation of various non-land distribution schemes like the Stock Distribution Option in Hacienda Luisita and the corporative scheme in the Cojuangco-controlled lands in Negros.

We call on the Filipino peasantry to intensify the struggle for genuine land reform in the countryside, in the parliament of the streets, and in Congress.

Junk the pro-landlord and bogus CARP!

Expose and oppose the anti-peasant Joint Resolution extending CARP for six months!

Struggle for genuine agrarian reform! Enact House Bill 3059!

Read more about this at Manila Indymedia.

I have a few more groups to try and visit when I’m back in Manila on Dec. 29 – hopefully some people will be there despite the holidays!

What we have at stake: Why you MUST vote!

In the weeks leading up to this day, I’ve heard a lot of people proudly announce that they will abstain from voting because both candidates are rich/Christian/out of touch — or because So-and-So’s campaign manager is affiliated with some corporate villain or because neither candidate is taking a progressive enough stance on a single issue, or just because people think that – regardless of who’s in office – their lives won’t be affected.

And every time I hear it, I’m newly saddened and offended. Because while *I* have a problem with the fact that both candidates are rich/Christian/out of touch/affiliated with so-and-so/and not progressive enough on a lot of issues I care about — *I* also have a lot at stake personally and politically, depending on who’s in office.

Knowing that, it seems to me that those who say they have nothing at stake are not so much making a statement about their politics, as much as a statement about their privilege.

As a woman, an ethnic minority, a student, a low-income citizen, here are just a few of the things I have at stake:

•    As a woman, I need and use more health care than men do, but lack insurance that covers my needs – ALL of my needs, including birth control and other reproductive health coverage. Even on ASU’s discount health program, my (unpaid) student health fees are at about $900 right now as a result of birth control, HPV vaccinations, women wellness exams, colposcopies and testing – all standard, frequent procedures for women.

•    As a woman, I make up part of the U.S. Labor Bureau’s statistic states that women earn only 77 cents for every dollar paid to men…and yet I see laws protecting against pay discrimination being weakened and my ability to challenge sexual harassment and other job discrimination being threatened.

•    I also see men of color earning significantly less than white men for comparable work – that’s fact: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.t02.htm
•    As a student and low-income citizen, I have seen millionaires get a whopping tax cut of over $130,000 this year while funds were cut for student loans and Medicaid. I’ve seen my financial aid, in the way of federal grants, decrease.

•    As a woman, I have seen my right to determine whether/when/how I should have a child be chipped away slowly.

•    I see women – and specifically women of color – disproportionately underrepresented in Congress, in local governments, in the legal system…this is troubling because time has shown us that women –regardless of political party – are more likely to be progressive on women’s issues than even very liberal men.

I’m sure if everyone took a minute to think about it, they could generate a list very similar to this one, specific to what they personally have at stake here.

ALL of these issues can be addressed within the current system we have, however corrupt or unjust (or lamentably unsocialist) it is. These are all things that have a huge impact on my life and the lives of those around me, and they are all things that our elected officials have the power to change — and have changed in decades past. This isn’t about anarchy, or romanticized revolution or even exalted idealism. It’s about what we deserve, what our fellows deserve, in all of our everyday lives. Revolution can come later. Right now, let’s just try to make sure that people who are here now – those who were born here and those who came here seeking new opportunities are taken care of.

And to those privileged few who still maintain that they are unaffected by politics: The moment when you see your own rights comprised is a really bad time to figure out you had something at stake all along. Own your privilege. Vote for the candidate who is more likely to ensure that everyone else has the same rights you already enjoy!!!

Vote Obama!