2nd Asian Women's Carnival: Apology

[oyceter]

In response to these posts¹, colorblue wrote:

And another thing that I find very strange is that I know more of what certain Singaporeans (I would say certain Indian-Singaporeans, but that will just reveal my own backwards thinking, giving such undue importance to race in such a progressive and strangely tolerant country) go through than someone who has lived there all her life, except a part of me doesn't find that strange at all, because this is another thing that racism does.

On my more tolerant days I consider people who mouthpiece diversity and equality while viewing the world in such a strange way foolish and useless. On my less tolerant days, and this is one, I think such ignorant, willful blindness is just as destructive as the more outright forms of racism, for those forms of racism are built on excuses and niceness and strange tolerances such as this.

She also said the following to me about including those posts in the carnival:

And you are hosting and commenting on an Asian Women's Carnival focused on intra/inter/transnationalities and either you did not realize or you did not think or you did not care enough that people like me would read the posts you were linking to and expressing thanks for and find their experiences or the experiences of those they respect and care about, the injustices they've faced and continue to face, ignored and trivialized.

And this makes me wonder just who the audience for this Carnival was intended to be or pictured as being, what was considered important and what wasn't, and that is why right now I do not care about whatever you might have found in Karanguni's post that resonated with you and that is why right now your comment doesn't have much meaning for me.

First and foremost, I apologize for not only hurting people, especially people who are being oppressed and treated unjustly in Singapore, but also for taking what should have been a safe space for them and making it unsafe, painful, and a replica of the same power structures they face at home. My intentions in this do not matter; the result remains the same.

Second, on intentions. In my excitement over the Carnival, I included everything submitted. This is an illustration of how focusing on one identity (Asian women) can act as a means of excluding identities within that one (non-Chinese Asian women in Singapore), and how those excluded are almost always the people who have less power, particularly when the person directing the focus—me—has a privileged place within that identity. This is why my intentions do not matter: they were intentions that made it easy for me to focus on people like me to the detriment of people with less power than me, and therefore, they are the antithesis of good intentions.

I do not think I was the right person to compile this Carnival. To create a space that is safe we must first and always focus on those who are most at risk, and instead, I focused first on those on top, those like me. As such, I also apologize for the overall lack of South and Central Asian women, for the lack of transwomen, lesbians, women with disabilities, older women, non-English-writing women, and lower class women, as well as the lack of ethnic minority women in Asian nations. Just like the unmarked state reads as white middle-class male, cisgendered and heterosexual, an unmarked Asian woman is also able-bodied and -minded, young, middle class, cisgendered, heterosexual. Going top down by necessity reinforces these unmarked states and furthermore divides us into "default" and "default" with added widgets of oppression, none of which interact, all of which we tack on after the fact when they should be first and foremost.

No one single post in the Carnival created that type of space; my framing and compilation and editorial choices did.

To go back to colorblue's words: "[T]his makes me wonder just who the audience for this Carnival was intended to be or pictured as being, what was considered important and what wasn't[.]" I believe for less privileged voices to be heard, the first thing is to find those voices and support them in what they are already doing, to prioritize them and to listen to them and to not speak over them, and most of all, to not subsume their identities into your own.

And that is what I failed to do and what I apologize for.

---

Please do not comment saying I should not apologize, didn't do anything wrong, etc., or that colorblue is using the wrong tone or whatever. It is not true.

Also, do not comment in thanks for this; it is not something to be thanked for. What matters to me is going forward and not doing the same thing.

However, critique, privilege checks, etc. are very welcome.

---

1. As problematic as karanguni's posts are, she did not submit them to the Carnival; that they are in the Carnival is my fault. back

Comments

[ciderpress]

May I link to this from the main blog?

Your failure and mistakes in representation are also my own in not doing enough outreach as maintainer of the carnival in general and I would like to address them on the main blog.

[oyceter]

Yes, thank you.

[hesychasm]

I'm sorry things went down that way. That second post from karanguni strikes me as a very young post -- stage 1 of a progressive arc, maybe. I've been there (I'm still there every time I go back home). And at the same time I can see how very easy it probably was to just grab the post without really examining the full context and all of the potential reactions, simply because it was A Relevant Post! It's great to have a multiplicity of voices and perspectives, which is what I think you were aiming for, but it's really, really difficult to keep a space both safe and inclusive.

I also apologize for the overall lack of South and Central Asian women, for the lack of transwomen, lesbians, women with disabilities, older women, non-English-writing women, and lower class women, as well as the lack of ethnic minority women in Asian nations.

I am not trying to say you didn't do anything wrong, but I don't want you to overreach for more wrongness, either. Maybe I don't get how blog carnivals should work, but to me it seems that you could only work with what you were given. The strength of the blog carnival is two-pronged: 1) what you compile and how you present it, and 2) what people submit to be compiled. Like most conversations across blogspace, blog carnivals strike me as a collaborative and hopefully communal exercise. I suppose you could have marketed it more to get more varied and diverse posts, but like, you also can't expect or hope to fill every potential minority-within-minority slot with some representative minority-within-minority -- we all know how those efforts can come across.

I hope this doesn't turn you off of future hosting -- I do value the efforts and intentions behind these carnivals (even if I never write or submit...which is mostly because of my own reticence to blog publicly these days, but um, this comment is not about me) and it would be a shame if such a strong voice and advocate as yourself were never involved again.

[oyceter]

Hrm.

I suppose you could have marketed it more to get more varied and diverse posts, but like, you also can't expect or hope to fill every potential minority-within-minority slot with some representative minority-within-minority -- we all know how those efforts can come across.

Yes, I worry about being too tokenizing. And I think you are right about the limitations of a carnival. But that's also why I think the focus should be on the most vulnerable people, because then when you run out of time/energy/sleep/whatever, the people who have been left out are the people with a larger likelihood of having their voices heard elsewhere. I also think that's hard when it comes to an identity like Asian women or women or people who are marginalized, because you do not want to police the identity of people whose identity is already being policed.

But again, that's why I think something like this should start not just with the most vulnerable people, but also start with them and by them (which is why I do not think I was the right host), so that they are at the lead. Like, that's how I think US mainstream feminism fails, and why mainstream anti-racism fails (the big talkers in the Asian-Am sphere still mostly men!), and why a lot of social justice movements fail, because they (we) create a space for the most mainstream identity and by doing so shut out others.

Caveat: I keep saying "they" because I do not want to take over identities I am not a part of.

I'm still thinking a lot of how to apply this, especially to IBARW, and still thinking of if I am the right person to do stuff and how to be a better ally and etc.

[kate_nepveu]

I haven't had time to read the carnival yet, but I will keep this in mind when I do.

[oyceter]

Thank you, please do.

[oyceter]

Thanks for commenting, deleting b/c I do not think props for me should be here.

[shewhohashope]

To create a space that is safe we must first and always focus on those who are most at risk

Yes, yes, yes.

The way things are going, I will probably have a proper response to this sometime next week.

[oyceter]

I look forward to it!

[troisroyaumes]

I think you did a great job with what you were given for the carnival, but I have to admit as a reader that I was a little disappointed that there wasn't a larger diversity of experiences represented, especially when it seemed that the overarching theme that everyone repeated was that the transnational experience is fragmented and not monolithic. I grew up with a lot of working-class/lower middle-class Korean-American immigrants, for example, and my experience was definitely different from the other Asian-American perspectives represented in the carnival. At the same time, I felt weird writing about it myself because I know that my family is considered fairly privileged within our community.

One of the problems though is that the particular subset of underrepresented voices I'm thinking of are not comfortable with writing in English or even all that familiar with the English-language Internet, despite living in an English-speaking country, which poses a conundrum. Maybe one of the outreach efforts that can be made in the future is to welcome translations of blog posts made in other languages?

In any case, I'm very glad that colorblue made her point and that the carnival is committed to incorporating a greater diversity of perspectives.

[thistleingrey]

At the same time, I felt weird writing about it myself

This resonates (hi, for my part I feel as though I'm not legit) and leads me to wonder: how can a carnival encourage many individuals to *speak up* without causing them (posters and even commenters) to feel overexposed, subject to the scrutiny of passing strangers who might not be sympathetic? Is it possible? I don't mean this as a rhetorical question.

On one level, if you're willing to post, you take your chances with unsympathetic responses; life is like that, and each of us needs a certain amount of challenging (assumptions, etc.). On another level, not wanting to be prodded in unexpected ways is most simply solved by maintaining one's silence, which is (obviously) something to respect yet also (obviously) antithetical to a carnival.

Also, I don't know how to balance "safe space" with "potential clique"--the answer isn't to lock the carnival, I don't think.

[telophase]

Is it possible? I don't mean this as a rhetorical question.

This might be something that takes time; time for people to learn about the carnival, and time for potential participants to decide it's a safe space and/or consider what to contribute (perhaps by reading past carnivals and seeing what aspects have been left out).

[oyceter]

I think it does take time, but I also think the onus should be on the organizers to try their best to create that space, to be trustworthy, to listen and interact with potential participants ahead of time as well, and to actively identify what should be changed and how to do it.

Yes, you can say people didn't participate or feel safe or whatever, but that takes the responsibility of shaping spaces off mods and organizers, which I don't think is right. So... time is a factor, but during that time, we should be actively working to meet people's needs.

[yiduiqie]

On one level, if you're willing to post, you take your chances with unsympathetic responses; life is like that, and each of us needs a certain amount of challenging (assumptions, etc.). On another level, not wanting to be prodded in unexpected ways is most simply solved by maintaining one's silence, which is (obviously) something to respect yet also (obviously) antithetical to a carnival.

This sort of idea is part of the reason why I feel so uncomfortable speaking against anything I've found in the Asian Women's Carnival - I had some issues particularly with some of the articles in the first one, but I felt very uncomfortable breaking that semi safe space thing we sort of had going (or that I perceived we sort of had going).

[oyceter]

*nods* Thank you for commenting now, and I would love further critique if you feel like it/want to.

[lady_ganesh]

As a person of pallor I was trying very hard to be quiet and listen, which I think is my place. But at the same time, that puts the onus on POC to do the challenging. So I feel a little weird about it.

(I also think that for me it's easy to be in a US-centric mindset, even when I try not to be, so that when someone of color speaks I don't always take into account that they might well be a person of racial privilege in their own country/culture.)

[oyceter]

how can a carnival encourage many individuals to *speak up* without causing them (posters and even commenters) to feel overexposed, subject to the scrutiny of passing strangers who might not be sympathetic? Is it possible? I don't mean this as a rhetorical question.

I... hope so. I have also seen it done, and it is a lot of work for the mods and compilers. Which is where I totally fell down on. So while I think the questions about an individual poster's comfort level are relevant, I think a lot of that falls on the organizers. I keep thinking of Wiscon and how it is not perfect, but also how I keep going because I can see the Concom changing things. And there is new fail every year, but there is a space for talking about that fail and trying to fix it.

Also, thanks for the note on safe space. I keep forgetting to note how it was historically used in feminist and glbt spaces (that I know of) to not mean a space safe from anger, but a space safe for anger. Which I feel is different from RaceFail and etc., because those spaces actually aren't safe for anger. They are safe for white people pain and anger, but not for POC anger, as you can tell by the tone argument. And... something about how you cannot have a space safe for anger unless you have people there committed to doing real work and processing.

[thistleingrey]

but a space safe for anger

*nods* to all of this.

[oyceter]

Yes, I think you are extremely right about the lack of diversity in experiences. Which is not to invalidate any poster's experience but to point out my mistakes in compilation. And also, I very much agree about the class bias in the carnival, thank you.

[deepad]

I take full responsibility for being the person who submitted the links to the posts in question to oyceter, without obtaining permission from karanguni. I agree with the critiques of the posts, but I still feel they had value for the carnival.
I will not forward links to people's posts without their permission in the future, and I have always respected the judgment of any carnival editor in choosing whether or not to include any link or post of mine.
I wish future carnivals and the participating authors and editors the very best in their goals of creating safe spaces for discussions, and am grateful for all their hard work.

[oyceter]

Thank you, although I want to note again that including it in the compilation was me.

[zvi]

I think there is a big tension between "this is a safe space" and "including all voices", but two of the most important parts you have to do are (a) defining for whom the space is safe [and I am increasingly convinced that the answer cannot be everyone] and (b) being transparent about your editorial process, including the solicitation, inclusion, and annotation.

Including everything submitted is not necessarily an illegitimate choice, but it's certainly not the choice I thought you made before I read this.

[oyceter]

Very agreed about the importance of definitions and being transparent, and yeah, I was definitely not transparent in my choices prior to this.

[colorblue]

I have been thinking a lot about this lately, and I don't have any answers yet, and I don't even know if I'm asking all the right questions. But I think, I also owe you an apology. Because I was there in the beginning when this Carnival was being set up, and you and Anna had always been open to suggestions, and yet it did not occur to me to ask these questions or raise these concerns until now, and isn't that a sign of my own privilege and ignorance, especially considering that circumstances might have made me more aware of certain things? And yet I still didn't think of this until it hit close personally, and when I posted my reply to you I was angry at you and did not consider or acknowledge my own responsibility in what I was holding you fully responsible for, and for that I am very sorry.

[oyceter]

Thank you, although I also don't have any answers and do not really think an apology from you is necessary. I, hrm. I do not know enough to comment on your own circumstances, but mostly I think having room for anger and critique, especially when something hits close personally, is important, so I am actually very... not glad that I hurt people, but appreciative that you brought it up.

[colorblue]

hmm, I might've been overreaching, since I don't know the particulars of your circumstances either. I just feel like there are certain questions that I took too long to voice, certain concerns that I should have felt much earlier, and that I didn't is an indication of my own privilege too, and this must be acknowledged (publicly, even, since most other things about this are public).

I am actually very... not glad that I hurt people, but appreciative that you brought it up.

I'm glad that's the case, because I feel the same, especially considering that other concerns are being raised. (Which is not to say that I'm entirely unconflicted. I agree with you that what is most important is to focus on those who are most at risk, and that it is necessary to have a safe space for anger against social injustice. But I'm not sure whether it is possible to create such a public safe space when considering the possibility for things to be taken out of context in other places, which limits both the posts and the critiques that can be made. So, yes, I don't know! But I am cautiously, err, not unhopeful.)

[oyceter]

Yeah, I definitely think a ton of this is a work in progress... mostly I am trying to get stuff together that I've been thinking about a while for IBARW and after reading Andrea Smith and about other grassroots organizations. And I wish I had a lot more answers than I currently do.

[karanguni]

Hi! This is K - I would have been here sooner, but I honestly did not get wind of this until I was surfing around earlier tonight.

Firstly, I'm really sorry for the hurt, offence and damage caused by my very problematic posts that were added to the Carnival. Regardless of whether they were intended for the Carnival or not - deepad felt she was contributing by submitting my posts and I do not in any way feel that she should be apologising for doing that! - the fact of the matter is that my posts - however conceptual, however part of a process that I was and am going through as I try to understand both my country, my nationality, my ability to perceive and call myself out on racism and my fellow countrymen as well as every member of every race and ethnicity - were badly written, untimely posted and were, in retrospect after reading the discussions here and in colorblue's posts, detrimental to the wellbeing of others even as they gave me a badly-brought about sense of closure.

For my part, I just want to say that bromatheon is my personal thinky-thoughts journal, and that both posts were written as knee-jerk reactions after discussions that affected me on a deep level personally. Especially for the post in question: it was an attempt at rationalising why my brother took the stance of allowing "everyday" racism/discrimination to go unchecked as a part of "social fabric" -- I wanted very badly to know my brother and his mindset better, and I'm very sorry that in trying to do that I accepted and wrote according to a logic that is discriminatory and disgraceful.

I can only hope that I will be given a chance to better execute myself in the future, and and very glad at being part of a community that has helped me to see these things in myself. I never wanted to give the impression of whitewashing being a good thing in my - or anyone's - society, and am sorry that my own working through my issues on identity/nationality and race have become so jumbled up and come to affect so many others. I look forward to learning to better phrase and put myself forward!

Also, I would like very much to thank you, oyceter, for hosting this post and the discussions here, and am very sorry once more for causing so much grief.

[karanguni]

Also, um, not to butt in again and try to say too much, but I've put up a follow up post and do claim responsibility for what I've written and in hopes of learning from you guys and growing on from there. Thanks!

[oyceter]

Hey, thanks for commenting. I don't want to comment on your following post simply because I think my own privileges in these respect would leave me unperceptive of issues and because I don't want to take over other people's voices with my own, but I am definitely reading and thinking.

Also, no thanks necessary re: hosting; it is really the least I could do!