Ok, pissed off now

[oyceter]

Yup, this is public; I am that pissed off.

I wasn't going to get involved, I swear I wasn't.

And then...

http://liviapenn.livejournal.com/473180.html?thread=6512732#t6512732

Because what the fucking fuck? Don't fucking throw the RAPE OF NANKING in my face when I am talking about white privilege. I just. I cannot type because WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK?! My grandfather was in the Chinese Navy then, fighting against the Japanese. I have friends with relatives who grew up not speaking Taiwanese because of the occupation. My family left the fucking country and moved to Taiwan because of that war. Don't throw that in my face as a counter to white privilege and just fucking assume I haven't heard of it for some reason; you have no fucking idea.

Comments by people not on my flist are screened; everyone else feel free to comment, but please note I am REALLY FUCKING PISSED OFF about this. Don't be stupid. I will repost asshattery under a filter and mock, and I don't fucking care if you somehow think that's unfair.

Comments

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. It was the same for me in India. And even when I was a very little kid, and despite the fact that my life completely sucked and a large part of the reason for that was the local kids' xenophobia... I was, at the time, also very aware of the priveleges that being American brought you. Such as the option to pack up and leave. (Unfortunately only available to adults, but still.) It was an ironic kind of privelege in that it didn't actually improve my situation as long as I was there, but it did exist and I was aware of it, though mostly in a "Oh, the irony!" sense.

Also, as I am pretty sure I mentioned in Fishes, the teachers at Holy Wounds were actually less abusive to me than they were to the other kids, solely because I was an American and there was the sense that if they did any serious physical damage to me, they might catch the Wrath of America.

That sort of privelege is something I always have in mind when traveling in India now, and it gives me a sense of exactly how risky any given situation actually is: odds of getting your pocket picked are high, as it's a minor crime and the consequences to the thief will be low. Odds of getting raped, murdered, or assaulted are lower than if I was an Indian woman, as far as I can tell, because a serious crime directed at an American tourist might cause an international incident, and the perpetrator would be way more likely to be caught and punished-- and I am pretty sure they would know that.

This reminds me of Maggie Helwig's excellent Where She Was Standing, in which the murder of a Canadian tourist in East Timor provides an unexpected opportunity for the human rights workers to call attention to the situation there in general-- an opportunity that the deaths of hundreds of East Timorese people could not provide.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Speaking of crime, I suspect that's probably why our burglary* was never brought to trial when we lived there. Dad would trek up to the town where the court was held every six weeks or so when the circuit judge was holding session, to cool his heels all day while not being called to trial, and then come home. We suspect that the case was quietly dropped after we left the country. It was the sort of crime where nobody could really prove any real sort of damage, and we were rightly not going to get much sympathy from the locals, and it wasn't going to cause any sort of international incident like murder would.


* For anyone reading this who doesn't read my LJ, when we lived in the Serengeti, our house was burglarized when we were in Arusha buying supplies. The thief/thieves took everything we didn't need: they left the stuff Dad needed for his research alone, they took the dirty towels and sheets and left one set of sheets for each bed and one towel for each person, they took some of the clothes we had, and they took the beer but left a bottle each for Mom and Dad. You can't really feel too badly about that sort of thoughtful thief, and it's been long enough now that the sense of being invaded is gone and it's completely hilarious to us. The police arrested the guy who brought wood for the water heater, because they found a note to him from Dad, telling him not to bring wood since we were gone, on the bathroom floor, but he was never brought to trial.

[oyceter]

Wow. They took the dirty laundry!

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Yes! You can't ask for better service than that!

[oyceter]

I really need to get my hands on the Helwig. And thanks for the comments on your experiences in India.