Chalk it Up to the Small-Town Life

This post is a little disjointed, I'm going to warn you in advance.

Growing up where I did, feminism was a pretty silent subject. In reality, racism is still pretty rampant out here, and we're about twelve steps behind the metropolitan level of social equity (which should say something). My mom was a little bit of a free thinker, but it was made pretty obvious that this was not a way I could "be" outside of home.

I remember the first time I saw 10 Things I Hate About You, and how amazed I was that Kat could be that way around other people, and be so collected even when other people thought she was ridiculous. I wanted that power. Even through the trope that she just needed to be loved (it's a Taming of the Shrew remake, after all), I came away from that movie feeling stronger.

I haven't watched the new ABC Family show simply because so much of the movie for me was the cast in the roles they fit so well, but I found this little bit:

I was shocked (ok, maybe not shocked, but it really stuck out to me) while watching this weeks episode. For an assignment that involved writing a paper on a moment that changed your life, Kat wrote about the day that she first started reading Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex and became a feminist. I think that's a great paper topic. But her teacher told her it was unoriginal and that people in the space station could see she was a feminist so Kat should write about something else. Wow. Yes, people can see that she's a feminist, but being a feminist is a large part of her life, so it would make sense that she wrote about becoming a feminist as a moment that changed her life. To call that unoriginal is insulting, especially considering that a lot of the other people in the class did not write about such insightful things and are not feminists. Kat rewrote the paper about the first day that her dad bought her tampons. Her teacher was pleased and said it was good as long as it didn't end with "and then I became a feminist."

Via: Adventures of a Young Feminist: Silencing in Schools from 10 Things

I relate to that very much. In middle school I started coming into myself, and I began to develop the attitude I take so much pride in now. I'm not callous, I care about people and how they feel, but I do not care what they think of me. I will stick up for someone and I will stick up for myself. It took me a painfully long time to be able to do that.

I hit high school in 2001. We all know what happened that September. It ended up being the single defining moment of my high school social interactions. In my conservative, white, predominantly Christian, working class community, I was the only person I knew with liberal leanings. In the weeks after 9/11, I collected images from newspapers and websites of the mourning gatherings across the globe, and hung them in my locker. I still have a scrapbook of those images; those indicators of humanity. The recognition that everybody was feeling pain for us, for our indoctrination into the world of Big Terrorism.

People made nasty comments about those images, like I was unAmerican for it. When I was a sophomore, I realized I had a remarkable proficiency in languages, and I expressed an interest in diplomatic affairs. Again, this was a small school--about 500 people K-12 at the time--so there was no debate team, or Model UN group, or any of that. I was the only person I knew, apart from my civics teacher, who read the newspapers every day (unless it was the sports page). I read Mother Jones. I read the Economist. I read the New York Times instead of the local papers.

Every year, we were supposed to write essays for the American Legion's contest. I always wrote something thoughtful, generally indicating that the Founders did not create this country so we could follow our leaders without question. Without fail, my English teacher would give it back to me, ask me to revise it to be more appropriate for the contest. I would change a little, submit it, and for four years, I won that contest. I was given the American Legion scholarship when I graduated.

Yet I was the girl who was seen by my peers as unAmerican. I didn't like Bush. I drew a definite distinction between my friends and family who were serving--over 30 of them and counting, now--and the Military Industry.

I was political, I was feminist, and I did not fit in.

I went to college, and that changed. I finally had peers who I could talk to about things, and even if they didn't agree, there was discussion. It was liberating.

Now I'm back here, about to go work back in that school system, and I am nervous.

talking racism

Every morning (and evening, most days) I open my 30-tab blogroll and read NPR, Salon, NYTimes, Jezebel, and then all of my favorite blogs. Chrome gets mad at me every time, popping up an "are you sure you want to open 30 tabs?!?" warning.

Of course I do, Chrome. Because I often find gems like this. Click through; it's an "interview" posted by the folks at We Are Respectable Negroes, and it talks about white racism and privilege from a slightly different perspective than usual.

I've heard it come up more often recently, just how much of the anger over healthcare and everything is based on race. Most of the punditry is quick to dismiss the idea, reflecting on the failure of healthcare reform during the Clinton administration, when there were White People in the office. Clearly there can't be a race issue at hand if the same idea failed when white people had it (not that the comparison as justification idea has ANY racist tendencies, of course).

Frankly, though, I don't remember this kind of rage happening when Hillarycare was on the table. And that's also not the only issue where it's coming up, just the loudest. The Birthers (intent on othering), the Tea Baggers (worst name for a dissent group I've ever heard), and the people toting guns to town hall meetings--all of that reeks of white privilege.

As I've said before: go take a bath.

Via stuff white people do: think that racism is dead, and from Respectable Negroes:

WARNNN: ...what exactly do you mean when you say that you’ve been “flattened” and “dumbed down?”

Racism: I really just mean that the criteria for what qualifies as racism has been changed to benefit white people: the bar has been raised impossibly high for whites, lowered for everyone else.

WARNNN: In what way? Can you elaborate?

Racism: Nowadays, only biological white supremacy, racial slurs (especially the “N’ word”), and explicit racial violence will get a white person labeled a racist. Therefore, many whites respond to charges of racism by saying things like, “I’m not a racist…Some of my best friends are black…I’ve never enslaved any black people or terrorized them with dogs and firehoses…I’ve never burned a cross on a black family’s lawn or called anyone ‘Nigger.’” You see? Nazis and Klansmen are the only racist whites from this perspective. This isn’t the only view, but it’s been the default for decades.

On the other hand, look at how conservatives have co-opted Civil Rights language to depict members of the black left as “racists.” I mean, in just the last week, these people have charged Obama, Sotomayor, and Skip Gates with racism. In some formulations, merely mentioning race and racial injustice gets you slapped with the racist label. Think about how, in the eyes of most whites, the Panthers, Malcolm, Reverend Wright—indeed, all blacks who offer savage critiques of white supremacy—are racists on par with David Duke.

Khuda Ke Liye

So S sent me this clip the other day. I've been trying to write about it since then, but I can't even decide which topic to pull from it.

Check the tags, I guess, to see what the options were. It's about half of the tags I even have.

Also, the wikipedia and imdb pages about the movie. I'd like to see the whole thing, to be honest, because this little section hit me so hard.

MSG Speaks Truth

SpontaneousLove:

"hate.
growing up in mississippi in the 1980/90’s racism was a way of life. in my experience it wasn’t something that was discussed because there was nothing to talk about. it just was. i never once had a classmate of a different race. i never had a teammate of a different race. i never had a neighbor of a different race. the only time i can remember this not being the case was when an asian family joined our church. at the time i didn’t know anything was different or if this wasn’t the case everywhere because that was all i knew. while i never heard anything hateful in my home, i heard it every where else. teachers at school would make it a point to say something degrading about black students and failing grades. at stores, i distinctly remember grown men making awful comments and at one point even pushing ladies down because they weren’t moving fast enough. i saw a lot, nothing like the 20 years before but enough to make you sick.

when you are a child you are taught to do one of two things when these things happen in front of you. either join in or keep your head down and walk away. never to stand up for what is right. because if you stood up for anyone outside the white race you were grouped with the people being beat down and you yourself were then pushed to the ground. i was never one to join in. i was the kid that kept her head down and walked away. and for that i am full of regret. i should have done something, i should have said something. but at the time i didn’t know that was an option.

i do believe that there is a part of you that is controled and formed by your environment. but only a part. i had every opportunity to be that person who joined in and believed the hate and abuse was what ‘they had coming.’ but there is a choice people have to make to understand right and wrong, to understand human suffering and to see that we are all actually just the same. luckily for me, i was taken out of that environment and i was able to see the difference. i was able to understand that this wasn’t just how it was. but i honestly believe that if i stayed in mississippi through high school i would still be that girl that kept her head down and walked away. because i had no one to show me how to stand up and fight against it. i had no one to show me that was an option.

although mississippi has come a long way since then it is still, in my opinion, not anywhere near being where it should be. and while there are no excuses for any type of hate, people have to be shown how to stand up to it. it is not mississippi’s fault or problem. it is every ones problem. it is up to everyone to say it is not ok and to stand up to it. every single time. no matter how slight or seemingly harmless. because until it is completely gone we are all at fault and we are all responsible for changing it."

Apparently, it's a trend.

8-Year-Old Victim Blamed for Her Own Rape | Womanist Musings

As Renee said,

The family is from Liberia and much has been made of the foreignness of their cultural beliefs. Let me make it clear from the outset, that it is never acceptable to blame the victim, however; painting this family as a bunch of ignorant foreigners who are not as civilized as Americans is extremely problematic.

Twice in ten minutes. Awesome.

Because of course, Americans never blame the victim in sexual assault cases.

Let's join the scapegoat party, shall we?

On June 30, four Canadians were found in their car in the water near the Kingston Mill locks in Ontario. Originally deemed an accident, the parents and brother of the three girls (19, 17, and 13) and the ex-husband of the older woman (50) were later accused of murder.

These things happen, right? It's terrible, but women get killed by their families all the time.

But then, the girls were Zainab, Sahar, and Geeti Shafia, and the older woman was Rona Amir Mohammed.

Suddenly the story looks a little different, doesn't it? These women were (purportedly) killed by their father/ex husband and brother/stepson.

So suddenly, it's an honor killing. Did your mind make that leap?

In the article on Jezebel, I found this comment, which says what I'm feeling pretty well:

"I'm confused. Are honor killings acceptable according to Islam? I didn't think they were.

Assuming the first wife's sister is correct about the motivation for the murder, I think people like to call it something else so that it seems removed from our own culture, when in reality violence against women (including words) because they refuse to be what the men around them believe they should be happens everywhere. But if we call it something else and say it's motivated by their culture/religion, it's not our problem too."

(emphasis mine)

I am seething.

Don't Bother Making Accessibility a Priority

Translators Scoff at LinkedIn’s Offer of $0 an Hour - NYTimes.com: "Translators Wanted at LinkedIn. The Pay? $0 an Hour."

In a phone interview, Mr. Irwin said he was surprised that LinkedIn “would have the effrontery to ask for a professional service for free.”

As someone who started on the path as a translator (I later changed my mind, but that's a story for another day), I'm affronted by the sheer wackiness of this. LinkedIn is a supposedly respectable networking site for professional people, and has a user base that extends far beyond English-speaking shores. Yet, in what seems like a half-hearted attempt to make their site more accessible to those who are already paying for the use, they opted for a "wiki-style" translation process, going so far as to contact people who listed their occupation as translators and asking them to "volunteer" for the initiative, which such incentives as "upgraded accounts, and none ('because it's fun')."

Translation is a field that has trouble enough gaining notoriety, but good translators have an acceptable number of well-paying professional opportunities (though too many of them are freelance). Asking a freelancing translator to do what would essentially be a major linguistic overhaul of a professional, well-funded website (if their ad-base and account upgrade fees are any indicator) is a sham.

An aid agency, a shelter, or an otherwise underfunded, understaffed entity could justify it, and would probably be able to find plenty of people willing to help. It just disgusts me that, as Mr Irwin is quoted above, "LinkedIn would have the effrontery to ask for a proffessional service for free."

Ten Things Wrong with Sarkozy's Burqa Ban

Via the Czech

1. Mandating how women should dress is mandating how women should dress, whether it is a mandate to wear a burqa, or a mandate not to wear one. When a man tells a woman how to dress, it’s paternalism and subjugation one way or the other.

2. Plus, as Dori points out, a man telling a woman that too much of her body is covered, and that she needs to expose more of it to his view, is pretty weird. How much modesty is too much? How much exposed flesh is enough to satisfy Sarkozy?

3. A Christian man imposing rules of dress upon Muslim women does little to actually foster the kind of gender equality he claims to be advancing.

4. Sarkozy talks as though there is no “subjugation of women” among the non-Muslim denizens of France. As though France is a wonderland of gender equality. According to WikiGender: “Compared to other countries, France has always been rather late in adopting gender equality as a goal and designing policies to achieve it.” So why suddenly all this concern for a certain subset of French women, who just randomly happen to come from a community hated and feared by many in France?

5. What other items of clothing does Mr. Sarkozy disapprove of? Do they also happen to correspond to certain disfavored, marginalized communities?

6. Any attempt to “eliminate” burqas in France will only serve to further marginalize the women who wear them. Burqas, for some women, represent a compromise. Some individuals believe women are not supposed to be seen in public, or be looked at by men outside of the family. In this extreme view, women would be entirely confined to the house and removed from outside society unless they can put on a burqa and go out. Eliminating the burqa for these women would mean eliminating their access to the world. Better conditions for such women require a little more work than outlawing a piece of clothing.

7. Eliminating burqas in France would not mean that women’s oppression in Muslim communities would end. It would simply be a cosmetic change that would do nothing to actually work with communities and empower French Muslim women to achieve equality. It is a measure that ignores all nuance and avoids all honest work to actually tackle the heart of the problem.

8. All this “eliminate the burqa” talk fits just a little too snugly with the popular “Islam oppresses women” meme that Christian Westerners like to toss around, particularly when they are trying to frame a “War of Civilizations”.

9. Also, doesn’t this just come off as a cheap attempt at burnishing his Women’s Issues credentials while effectively only harassing a marginalized, already-persecuted minority? And doing little to nothing to further true societal equality for all women in France?

10. What real issues do French women, and French Muslim women in particular, actually face that Sarkozy is completely avoiding by diverting attention with this stunt? Why randomly target French Muslims now?

Unveiling the revolution | Salon Life

Unveiling the revolution | Salon Life: "The women of Iran have jolted me awake from my cable news coma. So many of the protesters are young and female like me but display a courage I have never known -- clasping rocks in their fists, kicking at baton-wielding policemen and, in the case of Neda Agha-Soltani, dying on the streets of Tehran. Judging from the flood of 'I am Neda' T-shirts and tweets, I'm hardly the only one feeling not just powerful admiration but identification with Iranian women."

The situations surrounding Muslim women right now are so hot-button for me. Iran, France, and the overall treatment of Muslims throughout the West are issues I feel strongly about. On one hand, there is the group of activists including Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who claim that Islam is almost always oppressive to women, regardless of its past or the more liberalized versions in the world. This group of people are those who support Sarkozy's forced unveiling of women in France.
And, to an extent, I think the burqa is oppressive. Anyone who is essentially covered in a blanket anytime they leave the house is probably not extremely comfortable.

On the other hand, of course, sit my personal experiences with Muslim women who, for reasons of their own and despite their being entirely free from forced religious or male influence, and in groups where the veil is even discouraged, choose to veil themselves as a testament to their own modesty, as it is a part of their faith. To deprive these women of the ability to express their faith is as oppressive as forcing them to express it. Furthermore, plenty of religions require us to do things that are uncomfortable, oppressive, etc, and which we do willingly and without scorn. Consider Jehovah's Witnesses, who do not accept blood transfusions; male circumcision (both at birth and in adulthood) in many religions; piercings; and even pilgrimages, which generally ask for sacrifice of food, water, or other major sacrifices during the trek. Fasting for Lent, Ramadan, Yom Kippur, or any number of other religions is also a dangerous and certainly uncomfortable religious ritual that millions of people gladly undertake for their faith. I do not find it impossible to believe that a woman would voluntarily choose to cover herself. Unless we wish to eradicate Islam from the world entirely, we should not, in free countries, force people to sin against their gods.

Personally, I think that when a government begins to legislate attire, they have crossed their boundaries. Whether forcing people to wear something, or denying them the right to wear it, such interventions are inappropriate.

And back to Iran, that whole mess is simply beyond my comprehension. Iranian politics are inherently complex and perhaps intentionally difficult to navigate. They are open to corruption, but also open to guidance at all levels. That someone could be elected without the support of the rest of the governmental bodies is highly unlikely, but election without popular support is an inherent possibility. Which is probably why the guy with such low approval ratings among the people seems to be holding his own in the election. Incumbency is the single greatest indicator even in liberal democracies; Ahmadinejad clearly had the support of his political peers or he would have been ousted long ago. The man pushing for change is inherently going to have a much more difficult time gaining a place in that sort of system.

Put simply though, that's how their system works. It's open to corruption, yes, but really, what system isn't? I dare you to suggest Western Democracy; I can come up with a dozen examples to the contrary.

I don't know what the correct solution would be.