Sakura of DOOM

I just saw What's So Bad about a Boy Who Wants to Wear a Dress?, a long article in the NYT Magazine on boys who enjoy presenting femininely, along with a rant by umbo. I'm glad there's more on parenting outside the usual binary gender lines, though I wish there had been more from the kids' points of view, as opposed to multiple parents talking about how much they feared for their son when he first started to femme up. It feels like it is scaremongering even as the piece is trying to explore without bias, or at least that the reader will by default identify with the (presumably binary gendered) parent instead of with the genderqueer kid. Also, "genderqueer" as a term only appears halfway through the piece.

What do you guys think?

So, Maker Faire... much more fun the day before it officially opens, when a) there is free food, b) you don't have to tend to your exhibit, and c) fewer people!

A few short observations: Maker Faire is incredibly White. There have been a scattering visibly identifiable Asian people, but not much of other POC, with the caveat that I am probably misidentifying people. This year, there's a steampunk section. I haven't seen it live yet, but it looks like much of the white-ified steampunk when I checked it over before the fair opened. There are also way too many geek fallacy people who try to explain your own project to you under the guise of asking questions. I am sure there would be a lot of mansplaining going on as well, but I am antisocial and therefore sit in the back and run the computer or fix things with (a lot of) tape. I have definitely noticed more men doing geek fallacy and explaining the project even to my male project partners than women doing so. It's also been sad to see the young boys who want to try out our project go up and basically push their way into line while the young girls hang back and don't answer our questions and only talk to their parents. The kids only look 6 or 7 or so, and yet, gendered socialization has already set in.

Also, I probably could have worn my new corsets, courtesy of daedala, here, but that would be detrimental to the avoidance of mansplaining, the ability to crawl beneath things to slap on more duct tape, and in general trying not to call attention to myself.

Yay IBARW for making me post, despite it being months late?

Although I had a very positive Wiscon experience this year, it was amidst a lot of fail. I heard and saw Black and South Asian women being mistaken for other Black and South Asian women, fish bowl ogling, and a lot of reports of people asking POC to be their special POC friends ("I have had no prior interaction with you before, but let me waylay you for half an hour to pepper you with questions about proper ally behavior or ask for your permission to do X!"). I personally managed to avoid a lot of fail, I think because a) I limit my panel appearances, b) I only go to panels in which I know and like the panelists, and c) I am antisocial, do not really go to parties, and only talk to people I know and like. Given the shenanigans, I do not think I will be changing my interaction habits in the future.

This works fine for me since I am, as mentioned, antisocial, but seriously. POC should not have to limit all their social interactions at a con just so they can be treated like a normal human being.

With all those caveats in mind, I was so happy to see so many brown faces this year, to make connections with people I've only seen online, to get the chance to talk in person instead of via comments.

One of the highlights of the con for me was being on a panel about Andrea Smith's Conquest with Andrea Hairston and Diantha Day Sprouse and talking with them afterward. First, I'm thankful I got the chance to apologize to Diantha for calling her too angry years ago; I read that now and think "She is so right! Make people with their horrible grabby hands GO AWAY!" But mostly, I cannot emphasize how good it was to talk to women of color from different generations than me about their journeys and their experiences.

The women I grew up with—my mother, my grandmothers, my aunties—gave me many things, but they did not give me the tools to deal with issues of social justice. And although I love them dearly, the models they have to offer aren't very radical. I think it's pretty sad that it took me going to Wiscon, which is mostly white, to find other women of color whom I looked up to as role models, but that's what happened. And I'm grateful that even though the initial connections I made with people were online or at Wiscon, they have been moving offline and outside the con. I'm glad I've been able to talk with more people locally, to have discussions in email and on the phone and in person so I can work through things without having random white passerbys ogling at my mental processes.

I can't even say how much it means for me to finally find these communities of women of color who are committed to social justice, especially in SF/F, which is what I grew up on. So thank you to the women I've gotten to know, the women I sometimes disagree with, the women I don't know, the women who have passed on, to all of you out there creating and critiquing and blogging and talking and being fannish and just being yourselves.

Having your multitude of voices means so much to me, especially as I continue to work on who I want to be and what I want to do.

The city of Merafi has traditionally been impervious to magic, but lately, the ghost of six-years-dead Valdarrien has been haunting his brother-in-law and best friend Thiercelin. Thiercelin seeks out failed priest-assassin-turned-courtesan Gracielis for help, and soon, they're enmeshed in intrigue and a plot to tear down the city.

This is a terrible summary of the book, which is less plot and more atmosphere and tangled character relationships. The city seems perpetually shrouded with fog and ghosts that people cannot see. Character-wise, Thiercelin is married to Yvelliane, workaholic advisor to the dying queen and sister of the dead Valdarrien; Gracielis is the unwilling tool of Tarnaroqi sorceress Quenfrida; dead Valdarrien is still seeking out his lost love, the Lunedithin Iareth Yscoithi who is currently in Merafi serving the Lunedithin prince Kenan; Iareth is protected by Merafien soldier Joyain.

I loved the prose and the characters and the overall atmosphere of the book. I loved the men who are driven by love and the women who are driven by duty; I loved the tangled politics and intrigue; I loved the feeling of the age of Merafi, of cobblestones and mist off the river and flickering lights; I loved Gracielis and his foppish veneer over his vulnerable core; I loved the ghosts and the weight of the dead and the way history, personal and institutional, oppresses and limits and constrains.

I loathed the ending so much that I chucked the book across the room.

( Book-destroying spoilers )

In conclusion: gorgeous prose and atmosphere, characters I adored, and I cannot recommend it because I am still so mad at it.

ETA: please read this before reading the carnival

---

I'm sorry this is so late. I wrote up a giant post, and my computer crashed and I lost it.



These are the posts I didn't write: golden lotuses and size 9 feet; mismatched eyelids and tape; broken palms and murdered husbands; lucky nose and skimpy ears.

These are the words I can't say; not because I don't have them, but because I have too many, because they overflow and I choke on them, unable to get them out.

But, oh, my sisters and friends write—not for me, but for themselves—and sometimes I find myself in their words, and sometimes I find who I need to be in them.

I've tried and tried to write entries for this carnival and for the first one, but there is too much, and I cannot. But I can respond somewhat to what others have written.

As noted in the call for submissions, the optional theme for this issue is "hyphenates and sourcelanders and diasporas and being a minority Asian in a majority Asian country and majority Asian countries and minority Asian countries and third culture kids and thoughts about being refugees, immigrants, expats, nth generation, FOBs*, about generational gaps and cultural expectations and growing up in one place and then another and speaking one language at home and one outside and and and..."

* I think of myself as a FOB in many ways and dislike any mockery of fobbishness. Also, if you aren't one, don't use it.

Also, white people, when you're reading, don't co-opt. Don't take these pieces and use them against us. We know about intra-POC and intra-Asian racism and bigotry; we know how frequently our words stripped from us to be used against each other. Forming identities among inter/intra/transnationalities is hard; it is harder still when it is never a purely personal process, when every move we make for ourselves is taken from us and used to tar and feather all of us.

( Nationality, ethnicity, and identity )

( Language )

( Gender and sex )

( Story and remyth )

Many thanks to everyone for posting and submitting, and especially to ciderpress for starting the Asian Women Blog Carnival. Please contact her if you would like to host a future issue!

I found this to be very eye opening, but I also don't know much about global agriculture or environmental justice, so YMMV. I admit that I've been a bit skeptical of various environmental movements before, not because they're wrong, but because there are way too many examples of privileged white people espousing environmentalism while culturally appropriating and especially not thinking about how their movement fits in with other social justice movements. Patel specifically addresses these issues, especially in terms of class, colonization, and global agriculture.

Patel touches on a huge number of topics, from the rise of soy in everything we eat to high-fructose corn syrup to how big agricultural companies use genetically modified crops to control small farmers. But the central threads through the book are Patel's critique of the system that rewards big agricultural companies and the middlemen between farmers and consumers, how they are privileged over farmers and consumers, and his understanding of how this works globally. I find the last bit most helpful; Patel doesn't just look at the UK and the US, but focuses a lot on the Global South*. He also makes an effort to focus not just on the "big" players, but also on grassroots organizations and farmers themselves.

I had a problem with Sonia Shah's The Body Hunters, which is on big pharma, because I felt the focus was so much on those organizations that the people they were testing medicine on became a faceless crowd of victims. Patel does do this more in some chapters than others, but the sense I got from his writing was that he's worked very closely with the farmers he's writing about. As such, they come across as people, not victims. It also helps that he continually returns to solutions that small farmers and consumers have come up with; he focuses on how they help themselves, not on how the same international organizations that contributed to the poverty of the Global South are "saving" them.

One thing I took away from this book and others I've been reading (ex. Conquest, Dragon Ladies) is the power of bottom-up movements, how important it is for movements to focus on the people who are the most oppressed and have the least power in the system, because it generally seems easier to start there and end up with solutions that benefit everyone, whereas going from top-down tends to generate solutions that help those on top, but overlooks those on the bottom, particularly people who suffer more than one oppression. For example, feminism's focus on middle-class white women, the male focus in a lot of anti-racism and LGBTQ movements, etc. Of course, this is not saying that those of us who are more privileged should just not do anything, but just that we cannot center movements on the more privileged. I am still trying to figure out how to apply all this to my own attempts at social change and to IBARW, but right now, I have more questions than answers.

Anyway, highly recommended and very eye opening for me.

Links:
- furyofvissarion's review
- sanguinity's review


Note: Patel uses the term "people of colour" to describe non-white people (he is from the UK). I can't tell if this is only in the US edition, because it preserves the British spelling of "colour." I also can't remember if Patel footnoted or explained this usage or not; I, uh, already returned it to the library.

* He notes that he prefers this term over "developing countries" or "third-world countries." I have the same problems he does with the prior two terms, and I like that "Global South" does not sound like it is passing judgment, but I think it may overlook countries in the Northern hemisphere that also suffer the effects of colonization.

Like Cunningham's Crowns (same photographer, different interviewer), this is a a gorgeous book of photography coupled with personal interviews, only this time, it is on... hair! Yes, Actual Black Women (tm) talking about their Actual Hair (tm)! Hopefully those tormented by curiosity about the subject will at least read this instead of springing unwelcome questions on random Black women.

You can see many of the portraits on his webiste, and they really are gorgeous. But as with Crowns, I love the interviews the most. This book has a larger age and geographical range than Crowns, probably because I got the sense in Crowns that church hats were not being picked up as much by the younger generation (is this true?). I also love that he has several Ghanan women from a hair-braiding school included. There are pictures of women in their every-day hair, pictures of women in showcase hair, pictures of women in ceremonial hair. And there are also pictures of the hairdressers themselves, along with interviews.

There's discussion of natural hair and good hair and "nappy" hair and "bad" hair, of jheri curls and afros and straight perms and locs and braids and cornrows and ringlets (and one mohawk, yay), dyeing and cutting and shaving, and the importance of the local hairdresser and barbershop. There are stories from women of all ages, all of whom have decided to do different things to their hair for different reasons.

It's just a lovely collection; go read. Or if you can't find it, definitely visit his site and check out the pictures.

For coffeeandink

Roberts writes about reproductive freedom for poor black women and how that reproductive freedom often differs from the standard definition used by most white feminists, particularly the mainstream feminist movement for the right to abortion and birth control versus the right to not be coerced or deceived into sterilization or into taking birth control drugs you did not agree to. From there, she examines the meaning of liberty in the United States and what to do when the idea of negative liberty butts up against the idea of social justice.

I suspect I would have found this book much more mind-blowing had I not read Andrea Smith's Conquest first (read it! READ IT!); as such, I still think it's a very necessary read, although it's a bit more dated and Roberts doesn't synthesize her argument quite as well. The book goes through the history of black reproductive freedom, particularly black female reproductive freedom, from the days of slavery, when a black woman's reproductive system was, along with the rest of her, property of white men, when masters could and would whip their pregnant slaves even as they dug holes in the dirt to protect the property in their wombs. And while slavery is over, Roberts shows again and again that the same attitude about black women's bodies and reproductive systems are perpetuated.

She goes on to show that if black women's babies cannot be the property of white people, they are instead portrayed as a burden ("crack babies" and "welfare mothers"). While I completely agree with her argument, I felt she could have drawn more parallels with how race and sex and class intersect; frequently she would point to classist language ("welfare mothers") and note that they were racially coded, even if not explicitly so in the language. It's not to say that she ignores class; class is a constant throughout the book, as it is always the poorest black women who have the worst choices forced upon them. I think I just wanted a more detailed connection.

I had the same issue with ablism. Roberts cites several cases in which black mothers are classified as "mentally disabled" as a convenient way to convince others of the need to sterilize them. In some of the cases, the mother was not differently abled, but in some of the others, she may have been, and I think the book would have been stronger had Roberts incorporated a critique of the ablism inherent in many of the arguments for sterilization. This goes doubly when she discusses the eugenics movement, which she mainly writes about as being a barely coded means for white people to talk about black genocide. Again, I completely agree with her here and in no way want to lessen the strength of her argument. But I think synthesizing classism and ablism further into her analysis of racism and sexism would only make it stronger, a la Andrea Smith drawing parallels among sexual violence against Native women, Native American genocide, and environmental violence.

Many of the chapters on medical experimentation on black women, forced sterilization, uninformed drug trials, and coerced birth control are familiar from Smith, and though I don't have the book with me anymore, I'm fairly certain Roberts is talking about present-day happenings. Norplant and Depo-Provera again, and who knows what big Pharma is doing in Africa (thank you, Sonia Shah). She also links the present with the past, from owning black bodies to the Tuskegee Syphilis Studies.

Still, the most painful part of the book is when she shows how the interests of poor black women and middle-class white women have collided, particularly when it comes to a waiting period for sterilization and informed consent for birth control. This is where I think Roberts does her best work; this is where she takes the idea of negative liberty and contrasts it with social justice:

This notion of liberty rests on the assumption that privileging individual autonomy over social justice is essential to human freedom. [...] The primacy of liberty over equality, then, accepts the possibility that inequality may be inevitable in a liberal society. Although the pursuit of equality, once liberty is assured, is commendable, liberalism cannot guarantee its realization.

She manages to critique the mainstream feminist movement and how it has historically ignored issues central to the well-being of poor black women while still arguing for a need of both increased access to abortion and birth control along with protecting those who have historically been the most abused. I'm still thinking over many of her points about liberty and justice and especially wondering how it works in places that promote positive liberty instead of negative.