Regions Blog

Because of the importance of the issues and my respect for the people and organizations involved, I want to put up full follow-up post to my earlier request for answers and support around the New Orleans Women’s Health Clinic and whether or not trans women can access health care there. Thanks to several readers — especially tghi, who has been a champion the important complexities in this situation — for calling the updates to our attention.

So it turns out that nobody can get health care at the New Orleans Women’s Health Clinic, because they are currently lacking a medical director and have been forced to suspend their programs. I’m sure this represents a terrible drop in services for a lot of women in the area, not just trans women. Queen Emily has posted NOWHC’s response to her questions about getting health care there. The key answer seems to be that the clinic has had difficulty finding medical staff who will serve trans women (among many other oppressed and marginalized populations of women) without stigma, without pathologizing. They haven’t been able to find a medical director (and possibly other medical personnel?) who can accept NOWHC’s priorities without acting like treating all women’s bodies, regardless of age and ability and body type and trans status and a dozen other factors, creates an untenable “risk” or “liability.”

This is really unfortunate and unfortunately common — treating trans women, for instance, is often treated as “too dangerous” by health care providers, or labeled as something “they don’t have the necessary expertise in” even though the vast majority of trans women’s health care is identical to any other woman’s. This happens to many other women as well, and is a very common and often insurmountable barrier to finding health care. It’s happened to me, and probably to most trans women at some point or other. It’s happened to other trans people as well, which is part of why I still wonder why “trans people who were assigned male at birth” were a particular problem for NOWHC, but not trans men or other trans & gender non-conforming people who were female-assigned.

This can be a horribly thorny issue for any social-justice-motivated health care provider. I know that there are community clinics in many areas that keep trying to provide health care even though their staff is not as well-trained in trans-affirmative health care as they should ideally be. Heck, where I live a whole lot of trans people get health care at clinics where they are still occasionally mispronouned or where they encounter transphobia. It’s better than nothing, but it’s not necessarily the right way; it also hurts and creates barriers.

NOWHC faces tremendous challenges and overwhelming odds in trying to be fully responsible, in an economically devastated area where so many people are left without health care, and probably with resources that I can’t imagine are anywhere near sufficient. So I really admire their statement of devotion to doing it right, and providing health care for all the kinds of bodies, and women of different experiences, that they list. I also am glad that NOWHC has made it clear that the policy as worded on their website (currently down, for understandable reasons) did not accurately represent their real policy and goals, or fully explain the struggles going on.

Like I said in my earlier post, I hope that there is some way that online communities that have become aware of these dilemmas can actually help provide support and assistance to NOWHC. That’s in part because of how clear it is to me that their services are badly needed, and partly because I am personally incredibly grateful to their parent organization, INCITE! for years of hard work, analysis, and tools that have Support from the online world might be impossible at this point because of the way this issue blew up across many blogs. Given the volatile, reactive, semi-informed nature of the blogosphere, I respect NOWHC’s right not to get involved or take support from these online spaces.

After all, like I originally said, the people most affected by this particular issue are women trying to find health care “on the ground” in New Orleans, especially women who are marginalized and stigmatized to a degree where it’s hard to find respectful, affirming, sufficient health care. That includes trans women, of course, especially trans women of color and low-income trans women. And all of those people have a right to speak out, make their voices and needs heard. But the bottom line is, NOBODY is getting health care at this clinic right now. I really hope that NOWHC gets what it needs to get back up and running, and I’m willing to put out more calls for support if they do ask, or if there is a way that makes sense. It’s worth a conversation. If you want to start right now, I know that one way might be to donate to INCITE! — which in my experience is certainly a worthy cause.

Several of the bloggers involved in publicizing this story have given more thoughts or apologies:
Emily: http://questioningtransphobia.wordpress.com/2009/06/30/clarificatio/
bfp: http://flipfloppingjoy.com/2009/06/30/1412/ (and follow-up open letters 1 2 3)
belledame: http://fetchmemyaxe.blogspot.com/2009/06/i-also-want-to-apologize.html

I also want to apologize for further fanning the flames by calling more attention onto this issue — which ideally, by Emily’s account, could have been handled more productively through waiting longer for a response. I tried, in my original post, to express my hope and admiration for INCITE! and their local chapters and organizing projects at the same time as I joined the general (and ongoing, neverending) frustration and anger at the exclusion of trans women from vital services. But bringing another spotlight to shine on a complex, problematic situation doesn’t necessarily help.

I also wanted to say a few words about anger. It’s nothing new for the blogosphere — anger erupts, there are reactions to it, more anger flies back and forth. There have been regrets and apologies about how all of these feelings played out, while on the ground in New Orleans a whole lot of women are getting no health care at all. Online spaces, all mad up of ideas and words and feelings, can easily feel out of control when those mental energies swirl around — rapid, reactive, bursting up and dying down. And it’s probably true that blogs are better at dealing with and putting a stop to something like Tranny-Alert.com than with trying to improve the way a WOC organizing project provides health care to local women in a hard-hit region of the country. A lot of that has to do with anger, and how anger is and isn’t productive.

Here’s what I really want to say: all oppressed peoples have a right to anger. A right to express anger, and be heard. Sisters, your anger over oppression is justified — as women, as people of color, as trans women, as the disenfranchised, as immigrants — when you see yet another door slamming in your face as it has so many times before. I don’t ever want to label that anger as wrong. It’s important to me that this blog continue struggling to be a place where that anger can be expressed and heard. We’re not just trying to be Nice Feminists, after all, even though there’s a time and a place for niceness. Not everyone can hear it and really listen to anger, not all the time. But hearing, listening, and understanding the anger of marginalized and stomped-upon peoples can sometimes be a critically important teaching about privilege, for privileged people. Including me — I certainly enjoy plenty of privileges.

I was talking about anger last night with my girlfriend. We both have a lot of anger, about many different things — unaccountable, white, privileged faux-feminist dudes, Zionists, transphobic comedians, people who insist on “taking care of” the poor faux-feminist dudes — and we’ve both dealt with temper problems. She pointed out that whether anger is “right” or “wrong” is a very different question from the tactical question of whether anger worked well in any given situation. This may sound obvious to some of you, but it’s a very important point to me.

Anger — especially the anger that arises from having privilege denied to you, of being othered and discriminated against and excluded from basic needs — does not deserve to be invalidated. It’s often hard to recognize that when we encounter anger and have a whole host of our own feelings in response — not feeling trusted, guilt, responsibility, shock, confusion. So it can be hard to separate these things out, but it’s important. Sometimes even the most valid anger can end up being a bad idea purely for the reason that it doesn’t help us get to a better place and build real, transformative change. That doesn’t make it wrong, and that makes it all the more important that we have places to express it, hear it, share it, channel it into the next good idea.

I hate it, every single time.  Name, sorted.  Then…  clunk.  Sex – M or F.  Sod.

It seems like an easy question, right?  For most people it is.  For me, it should be an easy question.  I live and identify unequivocally as female.   I’m not a genderqueer person for whom the very either/or question is wrong.  So why the rising sense of panic?

The problem is this, my birth certificate says I am male, my gender presentation is female.  They do not match.  Until I can afford expensive genital surgery, I cannot change the marker on my birth certificate.  No matter what I put, in a cissexist world, I am situated as a liar.

 

A small example:  Imagine you went to the hospital, with stroke-like symptoms (it was later found to be “complicated migraines”).  Because you want to actually be treated, you do not out yourself as transsexual.  When the triage nurse filled in the forms, he puts female, and you leave it there.  All is fine, the doctor for once treats you seriously, possibly because of the presence of your mum, aunt and cousin (quick lesson you learn when dealing with doctors while trans: there’s safety in cis scrutiny.  Bring your mum or your partner with you into the examination room). 

Fast forward to a week later, and I’m (sorry, you) at a neurology department to see a specialist to organize an MRI, when one of the reception people comes out to see you and starts screaming that you’re a GODDAMN LIAR because your forms say I’m female but some quirk of the computer system has found your birthdate and surname and pinged up an old treatment from when you were six.  Because of this, they decide that your name isn’t real either, and it takes three trips to different departments with your changed birth certificate (changed in name but not in sex).  In the end, they put a post-it on your file, with your name, your legal bloody name, in quotation marks like it’s a fucking nickname.  And these are the people who are supposed to help you. 

Now imagine what happens in an emergency situation.

Imagine you’re me, six months before this, and you’re young and naïve and full of stupid, figuring that putting M will help them you treat you better (ha!), checking yourself in to see a doctor because you’re struggling to breathe.   And the dude takes one look at your forms and your barely passing self, and refuses to enter the room.  He just stands there at the edge, asking you to holler symptoms at him, and you sit there knowing that if you collapse, this man will pause and debate whether to save you or not.  This is what happens when forms, bodies and cis prejudice collide.

Now imagine what you do in a Customs line when you enter a country.  Imagine you’ve heard from acquaintances who’ve been turned away by the US, or that worst-case-scenario lurking at the back of your head about Homeland Security issuing a memo about “cross-dressed terrorists.”  What do you put then?  What do you wear then?  How do you present?

Imagine how vulnerable you feel.  Driving (what if a cop pulls me over).  At the bank (what if they think I’m trying to scam my own money).  At the doctors.  At school.  At work.  At anywhere they want a piece of ID, anywhere they want you to tick a box that divides humanity into two.   Anywhere they want you to fill out a form.  Confess, little tranny girl, confess.  Tell them what in their minds what you “really” are.  Or else.  And they’ll get you anyway.

Because it’s not likely to be a problem for most of y’all, this is something that I’d wager the average cissexual person has rarely to never thought about.  That tiny little box is the epicenter of governmental interest, of laws, of bureaucratic guidelines.  Lawsuits are fought over the right to change the letter in that little box. 

This year, the State of Illinois refused to allow two trans women who’d had gender confirmation surgery in Thailand the right to change their documents, because it didn’t occur in the US.  Last year, in Australia, one state refused to let two trans men change theirs because they hadn’t been sterilized (no more Thomas Beatties for us please!).  This little box is a political battleground, one that we trans people are fighting on for the right to not be outed at every single crucial moment of our lives.  In essence, to have our identifications treated as real, as worthy of respect as yours. 

For those of you who “don’t believe in gender” (as I’ve heard some feminists say) – I’ve got news for you.  Sex and gender are always with us, on every form, every piece of ID.  And every confrontation where someone scrutinizes your ID is one where they measure your gender presentation against your legal sex, to check to see if they match.  So sure, you can not believe in gender, and maybe if you clap your hands real hard, it’ll disappear, but I fear it will be with us for some time. 

*note  It’s sad that I need to do this, but after my first thread..  This post is not an excuse to ask any random question related to transsexuality that’s currently bothering you.  Any such posts will be edited to say “I am a panda.”

What We Leave Behind by Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay
(Seven Stories Press)

Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis by Vandana Shiva
(South End Press)

Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay’s What We Leave Behind begins with a story about shit. It sounds snarky and unfair when I describe it that way, but that’s because shit occupies a rather maligned place in Western culture; the story itself is quite lovely. One of the authors (they intentionally avoid saying who writes which chapter, and although it’s often easy to tell, I’ll refrain from naming them individually), reluctant to “flush all those nutrients down the toilet,” goes outside of his house in the woods to contribute to the food chain by depositing his shit on the soil. If waste is something that’s no longer usable by anyone or anything, he explains, then the concept of “waste” doesn’t exist in nature, and sure enough, he soon sees slugs and bacteria breaking the piles down and plants growing in their places. However, he notices that when he’s prescribed antibiotics - which pass through a human’s system more or less intact - his poop starts to kill plants and soil life. “The soil in the two main spots where I relieved myself became bare,” he says. “[They] remained bare for the next two years.”

That casually terrifying observation sets the tone for the rest of the book. True to the title, What We Leave Behind is an exploration of what industrial civilization’s various endeavors - disposable products, plastics, mining, medicine, embalming and burial practices - leave behind, and the effects of capitalist priorities, “green” or otherwise, on the environment. Part I outlines each major form of pollution, from solid waste products to toxic gases, and for the most part, it’s as engrossing as it is important. The facts Jensen and McBay present should horrify you. The “Eastern Garbage Patch,” a floating island of garbage nearly the size of Africa, is only one of six six patches that cover 40% of the world’s oceans. The breast milk of women living across the Arctic, about as far from industrial civilization as one can get, contains levels of toxic chemicals that are “literally off the charts” because of wind and ocean currents. If facts like these don’t spur readers into action, then nothing will.

However.

Despite its many merits, this book is riddled with sexism and racism, empty and often bizarre rhetoric, and sheer White American Dude ego. The hijinks begin in “Garbage,” when one of the authors starts talking about what he gives his friends for Christmas. “A pasta factory bagged the noodles that fell on the floor and sold them for ten cents a pound,” he writes. “I bought them by the hundred-pound bag. Not only did this provide chicken food, but it allowed me to gorge on pasta, and one trip to the factory completed all my Christmas shopping.” I don’t know about you, but if someone gave me an unliftable bag of processed food that was collected off a factory floor, I would consider ending my relationship with that person. The author also mentions dumpster diving for ice cream and feeding it to his dogs, cats, and chickens, seemingly oblivious to the fact that most dogs and cats (and I’m assuming birds) are lactose intolerant.

The book kind of goes off the deep end, though, in Part II, which discusses metaphysical concerns like morality and magical thinking. Most of this section veers sharply away from capitalism’s tangible effects on the environment and deals almost exclusively with what the authors believe are the problems with the Western way of thinking. To be sure, there are lots of problems with the Western way of thinking, but the thrust of the authors’ discussion feels lazy at best. Some of the philosophy is fine, but obvious - in “Morality Revisited,” they explain the difference between internal and external morality - but at other times they enter the realm of stoner logic. In “The Real World,” for example, they assert that the reason we watch TV or have MySpace accounts is because we can’t admit that we should never have been born, and “cannot face the possibility of actually living.” Like many of the doped conversations about, like, God and stuff that some of us stagger through as college freshmen, “The Real World” gives you the sense that Jensen and McBay could have produced something noteworthy if they’d only turned a critical eye to their own ideas. What ice cream and external morality and MySpace are even doing in a book about environmental justice, aside from rehashing the already well-documented need to change the way we think and live, is beyond me.

Except, wait, looks like they’ve got my concerns covered. In “Compartmentalization and its Opposite,” one of the authors brushes off criticism of his writing style by claiming that “my writing is organized along different principles than those that normally guide discourse and thought in this culture. I write this way to undercut or even destroy the monopoly, the stranglehold, that linear thinking has over our discourse, our thinking, our lives.” All right… except the very fact that his writing is comprehensible means that he’s working well within the boundaries of Western discourse. His claim seems to function more as a way to stave off uncomfortable questions than as a genuine exploration of thought. Criticizing consumer culture could have really worked in this book, especially for readers unfamiliar with radicalism or environmental justice movements, but only with a drop or two of humility.

The authors also have a habit of tossing out the phrase “This culture is killing the planet,” often several times in one chapter. By the time I reached Part II it had really started to bug me, and at first, I thought my problem was just my own geekery. See, when I hear “killing the planet,” I think Death Star versus Alderaan. But the more times I read it - I, an activist committed to environmental justice - the more irritated I got. I finally realized that it takes a remarkable amount of sloppiness to claim that human beings will destroy every last bit of life on Earth, right down to the tiniest microbe, before we kill ourselves. Again, though, the authors have heard this before. They respond:

Just two days ago I was talking to a group of students, and at one point I said that this culture is killing the planet (Oh, okay, you got me: I said it at many points). An activist about my age said, “But this culture can’t kill the planet. Algae or something will be left, and then in millions of years evolution will move in another direction. The Earth won’t die. It will just change.”

I asked if any of the students there happened to have a knife, and if so, could I borrow it… I stood, opened it, walked to the activist, and asked, “Could I have your hand?”

He said no.

I said, “I’m not going to kill you. I’m just going to cut off your little finger…. Then I’ll cut off another. And another. I’ll move up your arms, and then I’ll start on your feet, and move up your legs. You’re not going to die. At least not for awhile. You’re just going to change.”

Note that his analogy isn’t actually parallel to the situation. Because resources are dwindling and environmental destruction is just as toxic to us as it is to animal, plant, and microbial life, a better analogy would have him chopping off his own limbs simultaneously, with a blunter and blunter blade. But by that point, the question of who will die first doesn’t even matter anymore, and the whole exercise becomes embarrassing. Indeed, that doesn’t even seem to be his point. Don’t listen to what I’m actually saying, he seems to cry throughout the rest of the passage. Listen to the sentiment behind it! I was reminded of Nadia Abou-Karr’s response, on SPEAK!, to the common claim that Israelis are just like Nazis: “I explained [to someone who made the comparison] that this is too important, and the Israelis have committed their own atrocities. What they have done is big enough to stand on its own without the Nazi comparison.”

Exactly. What capitalism and industry are doing to human cultures and the global ecosystem is big enough to stand on its own. With 40% of the world’s oceans covered in garbage and women secreting poison from our breasts, why do the authors feel the need to hyperbolize? It’s precisely this type of frothing that loses audiences. Just as people roll their eyes when someone calls Israelis Nazis and then feigns surprise when the Oppression Olympics begin (well but Israelis don’t have death camps and but well see pogroms etc.), people who aren’t already steeped in environmental justice issues will lose interest when someone makes arguable claims and then threatens to sever the limbs of those who argue with him.

Where the book really gets infuriating, though, is when the authors turn their attention to women and people of color. In “Compartmentalization and its Opposite,” one of the authors waxes eloquent about his desire to understand and communicate with forests, streams… and the ladies. “I want to be able to begin to recognize the organization of a forest, the organization of a stream, the organization of a woman,” he says. “No, I want to be able to understand what a forest, a stream, a woman may wish to communicate to me.”

Oh no you didn’t. You know, fellas, we women actually have quite a long history of being classified alongside nonverbal entities that don’t have brains. If you don’t get why a statement like that is offensive, then take a male privilege 101 class and shut up until you learn. And if you want to understand what I may wish to communicate to you, then ask me.

As if that weren’t enough, the authors go on to criticize the use of birth control, stating that “More than 100 million women around the world use some form of pharmaceutical contraception…. But as liberating and empowering as it may be, when the drugs in contraceptive pills find their way into water they can be very damaging to aquatic communities.” (Emphasis mine.)

This sentence could only be written by a person who has never experienced a pregnancy scare.

Aside from the fact that scapegoating oppressed groups for environmental damage is a pretty old tactic - notice how he pits women against fish? - by framing the use of birth control in the most frivolous and bourgeois terms possible, he manages to erase the most important, and common, reasons why women use birth control. Gone are the women who literally cannot afford children, or more children. Gone are the women who are raped within or outside of relationships; gone are the men who don’t like condoms but would never dream of supporting a child. Gone are the women who just want to have the type of sex life that Jensen and McBay probably enjoy. I doubt the authors bothered to educate themselves on any of these issues before pooh-poohing women’s frivolous coveting of second-wave buzzwords.

Finally, the entire book exoticizes and idealizes indigenous peoples. In “Technotopia: Industry,” the authors claim that

Some clever and persistent people have already developed a way (many ways, actually, literally thousands of ways) to replace big, industrial infrastructure with knowledge. They’re called indigenous people. Ultimately, hunter-gatherers, with their portable lifestyle, lack of industrial infrastructure, minimal physical goods, and extensive knowledge of the land and its nonhuman inhabitants, have been far more successful at [low-impact lifestyles] than industrial society will ever be. (Emphasis mine.)

If you’re equating “indigenous person” with “nomadic hunter-gatherer” - that is, if you honestly don’t know that indigenous peoples have developed agriculture and permanent settlements right alongside colonizers - then you don’t know much about indigenous peoples. But why should you? You’re probably still working to understand what indigenous people, with their mysterious ways, may wish to communicate to you. Hey, keep fighting the good fight.

All these problems demonstrate why it’s so crucial to integrate feminist and anti-racist work into environmentalism. This is exactly what Vandana Shiva does in Soil Not Oil, a book that, like What We Leave Behind, explores globalization’s disastrous effects on the environment. Shiva doesn’t feel the need to fill her argument with embellishments and defensive posturing, though; she lets the facts speak for themselves. Exploring the root causes of food insecurity, climate change, and peak oil, she explains in meticulous detail what exactly capitalism is doing to Global South peoples and the natural world, covering the bogus system of carbon credit trading, the banning of rickshaws (a healthy and sustainable form of transportation) in Indian cities to make room for cars, violent land-grabs that allow transnational corporations to produce nonrenewable biofuels, privatization of commons like the atmosphere, and the destructive effects of monocultures, among other issues. She explains why each solution to environmental destruction offered by capitalists is doomed to failure (biofuels, for example, require more energy to make than they themselves produce, but are pretty great for short-term profit), and argues that the only way to reverse these destructive trends is for wealthy nations to drastically reduce our consumption of energy. Not the wrong kinds of energy - all energy. Like Jensen and McBay, she even explores some philosophical concepts, but the difference is that when she discusses satvik, rajsik, and taamsik and their relationship to Shakti, she explicitly ties them into hands-on environmental justice work.

In short, activists like Jensen and McBay could learn a lot from activists like Vandana Shiva. When the privileged refuse to loosen their grip on the environmental movement, you get dippy passages about mystical women and wise brown people. When those living on the front lines speak, you get insightful analysis and firsthand knowledge of real movement-making.

Like I said, though, What We Leave Behind still has plenty of merits. One particularly arresting passage is the story of a developer who, after an author’s neighbors pave a road, demands access to the forest behind their homes. What follows is a heartbreaking series of legal battles between the people who live on the land and the people who want to make money off the land. The developers coerce the county into giving them an permit. A biologist is hired to deny that protected species are living there. The developers lie, trespass, threaten, twist words, find loopholes, and generally do all manner of illegal activities to gain access to the forest. The most telling moment in the story is when the judge turns to the residents and assures them that “You have an interest in what happens on this land,” and then turns to the developers and says, “And we can all see that you certainly have an interest in what happens on this land.” For those of you who identify as pro-capitalist feminists - this is an example of what happens when people without much capital do everything right. They worked within the system. They took it to court. They remained steadfastly nonviolent. But when profits are valued over people, people lose.

The penultimate chapter, “Fighting Back,” is also strong, although it’s too vague to be of much immediate practical use. Some examples of successful contemporary movements, or a list of organizations and resources, would have been helpful. Still, like many parts of the book, it does a great job of explaining the problems with industrial civilization and then presenting alternative relationships with nature.

So if you’re interested, by all means, give it a shot. You’ll have to wade through all the pomposity, but it’s comprehensive, and you’ll learn something. When you’re ready to take action, though, you’ll find books like Soil Not Oil to be much more useful.

The East, the West and Sex by Richard Bernstein.

The Slate review is actually pretty good. It points out Bernstein’s troubling view of women, and “Eastern” women in particular — with “East” apparently meaning Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Bernstein basically argues that, sure, colonialism was kinda bad and racist, but the sexual interactions between colonizers and the colonized weren’t always exploitative; additionally, when European men commented on the sexual depravity of th “East,” they weren’t totally wrong. From the review:

Bernstein deserves credit for raising a tortured subject from which it is easy to avert our gaze. And yet, and yet … there is something deeply uncomfortable about a book that seems at times so complicit in the very exploitation it aims to scrutinize. It’s not just the tone, though Bernstein’s oblique confession to having his first sexual experiences in an Asian brothel is creepy. It is the fetid attitude toward women.

Bernstein’s view of the role of women in his story of cultural and sexual collision is nuanced to the point of being myopic. He is describing men who went to foreign places, toppled their leaders, stole their resources, and then tossed their women a few pennies to spread their legs. Yet he writes: “From the standpoint of the currently fashionable political morality, [this behavior] appears very bad, an illustration of the unfairness of colonial rule. … But let’s try to see the erotic history of the West and the East as part of a great human pageant, one in which the women, the girls and the boys involved were not necessarily passive.”

Wait, why should we try? Bernstein’s own attempts to claim that the women were involved in choosing their fate are extraordinarily feeble. He tells a story about an Arab queen choosing to have sex with a Western traveler, but how typical was she? He concedes that “much of the sexual opportunity presented by the East has always been, and still is, based on exploitation and injustice.” But he goes on to defend the men who took part in that exploitation. Of Burton and Flaubert, he says, “They used no force; they abused no children; they did what they were invited to.”

…right. As the reviewer points out, Bernstein’s own book is loaded with information about the “harems” of young women who were actually slaves. Colonists certainly did abuse children and women. Were some sexual relationships entered into voluntarily? Of course they were. Were many entered into without explicit force but without consent? Probably. And did many more rely on force, coercion and extreme power imbalances? Yes. But I suppose when you’re writing a sweaty psuedo-academic justification for your “Asian babes” fetish, it’s easy to overlook that fact.

The reviewer compares Bernstein’s take on sex in the “East” with his own experiences as a reporter investigating brothels in Bangladesh. While the comparison is certainly powerful and a necessary counterpoint, especially in the context of challenging the “harem” mythology, it also obscures the complex realities that women live, and reduces “Eastern” women to the other side of a tired dichotomy: Whores or victims; tempting or exploited; Asian babes or broken chinadolls.

I’ve met and seen men like Richard Bernstein. I’ve seen them walking down the street in places like Cambodia and Thailand, sometimes alone and scoping, sometimes negotiating with another man on the age and price of a woman or girl or boy, sometimes with an Asian woman trailing a few feet behind him. I’ve read their views when perusing books in various airports on how to marry a Thai woman, or how to find the best sex workers in Singapore. I’ve seen them online, talking about how Asian women are superior to “Western” women, because Asian women know their place and are so submissive and feminine. I have a feeling we’ll see some of them on this thread. They’re almost always white, either European or American. They almost always justify their exoticization and dehumanization of Asian women, and their participation in sexual exploitation, with the argument that the women like it and want it. I’m sure they’ll write off this post as me being jealous. I find them repellent — not just because they exploit women and justify it by casting their racial fetishization as admiration, but because, as far as I can tell, the exploitation is part of the titillation. It’s just easier to mask exploitation when you can convince yourself that this “other culture” is so sexually liberated that it’s acceptable to pay a man $15 to have sex with a 14-year-old girl. It’s easier to mask exploitation –even to yourself — when you see the person you’re exploiting or fetishizing and a little less human than yourself. Again, I haven’t read the book and I don’t plan to, but I would bet that the author focuses primarily on the experiences of men. I’ll bet that his descriptions of the sexual culture of “the East” are based on male interpretations, reports and writings. I’ll bet that female voices factor in very, very little, if at all; I’ll bet that they’re usually filtered through male writers and speakers.

I haven’t spent enough time in “the East” to say much of anything about anyone else’s sexual culture. But a small period of time in South East Asia was enough to make some basic observations about the behavior of many white male tourists. It’s something I’ve been meaning to write about for the past year, but can never quite work up to doing. I’m not going to do it in full now, because it’s too depressing; the very little bit of sexual colonialism that I saw was enough to make me feel physically ill when I recall it (I don’t feel all that well writing about it now). It’s a few scenes: A white man, hands jammed in his pockets, walking quickly with an furrow-browed, frowning Asian woman following five feet behind him. Me stepping away from my male travel companion for a few minutes, and having a Cambodian man approach him to ask, “What do you want? How young? 15? 14? Girl or boy?” Spending the day in a genocide museum where the impact of colonialism and the West was illustrated in disturbing detail, then going out at night to see so many white men alone or in pairs, more than you usually see traveling, and feeling like — and this is not a description I use lightly — I was in this beautiful, sad little country that had been repeatedly raped. Walking through the killing fields, where there are still bones sticking out of the ground from the genocide, and watching as a little boy offered male tourists oral sex through a hole in the fence.

I didn’t go into brothels. I wasn’t able to speak to most of the local people or solo male travelers, and nor did I want to approach strangers to ask about sex. I’m nowhere near an expert on any of this. I won’t claim to have some sort of deeper — or even basic — understanding about anything. I only saw what I saw. There was also incredible beauty and human innovation and goodness. I was shown incredible kindess by the people I met. Like anywhere else, realities were complex and varied, and the sliver that I witnessed was colored by my own experiences, assumptions and background. But there are a few things, small things which I realize have a greater context, which I saw that made me despise other human beings. And at the risk of being quoted on an anti-feminist website or sounding like a caricature, they made me despise male human beings in particular. Not forever, and not all men, and of course the feeling faded, but for a few minutes there…

The idea that Asian women are just culturally or naturally more sexually tempting or submissive or open, or whatever happens to be the justification du jour, has real-life effects for the women fetishists claim to value so much (I use the word “value” intentionally). It’s not just about what kind of porn you like, or what your “type” of woman may be. The fact that this book was published — that there’s almost certainly an audience for it — makes me sick. I hope it’s roundly rejected. I have a feeling, though, that it will sell quite well.

Okay, here’s what you need to understand going in: my mother is mentally ill, most likely with borderline personality disorder (characterized by certain patterns in a person’s social interactions). She is extremely passive-aggressive, as well as manipulative and emotionally abusive. Around sixteen years old, when I was just beginning to realize how fucked-up my family relations were, I devised a rule for myself: information = ammunition. You see, anything my mother knows about my life will be twisted around and used against me. Today, tomorrow or ten years from now. And the end result, that ammunition, may bear no actual relation to reality. She takes these bits and pieces, turns them over in her mind, and makes what she wants of them. So my #1 rule of self-protection in this relationship is withholding. The other thing you need to understand, I will go into below the emails. So… A couple days ago,

Subject: [Mom's rheumatologist's name]

I had an appointment that got cancelled by him last week. I finally saw him yesterday and had to have a shot in my arm, because it is in bad shape, It is better today, But the reason I am writing this Is for two reasons [Dr]’s  Mother passed away from a brain tumor , he was grieving very badly, he said his mother told him that he aught to be happy she was dying that he was wanting to be rid of her anyway, he said can you believe that, those were her last words to me, I can only hope that was the brain tumor talking. We talked for 20 minutes or more, and he gave me a hug and told me thank you for talking to him. The other reason is, I have to lose more weight, so he gave me the name of an all natural supplement that you can take called [omitted], bottle hold’s 120 pills,. That’s two month supply.  You can get them at [omitted], $28.99 if you do not have one in your part of the world, you can purchase them online, he assures me they will cut my appetite and help me lose weight and they will not harm me., and you can take them with Lyrica [the one medication my mother knows I take].

And then today:

Belly-Flattening Pork Tacos Straight from our Flat Belly Diet, this recipe fires up your taste buds while melting off any unwanted flab.

So here’s the other thing you need to understand: Up until a couple years ago — after I moved across the country — I was super skinny. This was a huge point of contention in my family circle. All gather ’round Amanda to lament how unfortunately skinny she is and what must be wrong with her! I remember it when I was six, and twelve, and sixteen. I gained a small bit of weight when I was eighteen, after starting the Lyrica. That made me still-skinny, just not scary-skinny anymore. Then I shipped all my belongings to Pennsylvania. I’ve returned home only once since — two years ago, for our wedding. In that two years, after a serious hormone treatment for my endometriosis, I’ve gained around 30lbs. But my family doesn’t know that, because there was never any reason to tell them.

***

I remember having a bit of a pudge belly when I was little (partly because I’ve always had a slumpy posture due to my chronic pain), even when I was super skinny. And my brothers (a generation older than I, and also mentally ill) teased me endlessly for it. I had no idea what to think. I mean, I was skinny, right? But I was being teased for looking fat? I didn’t understand, though I still felt the shame and self-consciousness. I have very, very slim arms and legs (even now, slightly “overweight” — most bracelets/wristwatches dangle awkwardly off my wrist) with very wide hips. I remember when I was a young teenager, my mother, within a time span of about one month, criticized me for having “Holocaust legs” and then turned around and teased me for having my sister’s “thunder thighs.” My body had not changed an ounce in that time. And now my mother — last she knew, I was still slim, remember? — is sending me weight loss tips. And who knows what she means by it. I gave up trying to understand her thought process long ago. Again, it bears no relation to reality. Who would send their daughter passive-aggressive “tips” for weight loss (and oh, trust me, I have words for that doctor) knowing she struggled being underweight for most of her life? Perhaps she thinks that I have gained weight so now I need these tips. But there’s been no indication from me that I’m anything but the same skinny-minnie I was last she saw me — so if she thinks so, it was devised entirely within her own mind. This sort of thing I have been dealing with for years now. When I learned to withdraw, and when possible discuss nothing more personal than the weather with my mother, she had a prolonged fit. I went through six months of absolute hell living with her before moving out here, and I am one-hundred-percent serious when I say the only reason I didn’t commit suicide is because I had two sick cats to care for. It was a perfect storm of severe panic attacks, untreated anxiety disorder, and an emotionally abusive mother going through an adjustment period (to put it lightly) when her daughter suddenly stopped talking to her — started going places without prior notice and without filling her in on every detail, and reenacting every conversation so that she could “share” in her life with her — stopped engaging when she tried to pick fights. That was my life then. My life now is considerably calmer, and happier, because my only contact with my mother is by email. I ignore all her forwards, and occasionally I’ll email her to talk about the climate here in Pennsylvania, or what the cats are doing right that moment, and … well, that’s about it. In fact, she thinks I live in Philadelphia. Even though I have explained to her more times than I can count on both hands and feet that I live in the Pittsburgh area, which is across the state from Philly, in fact a 5-6 hour drive which is about as close as she is to San Francisco. Still, she sends me stories about things happening in Nowhere, Philly Exurbs and remarks how she never sees anything about us in the Philly papers. Maybe it’s better off that way.

***

Comments I will not tolerate: but don’t you realize fat is unhealthy; here’s a Helpful Suggestion on how to lose weight/manage your pain/make her mental illness all better; anything that demonizes the mentally ill or ascribes the abuse I, and others, suffered to the mental illness itself. Please use common sense and courtesy - thank you. (Cross-posted at Three Rivers Fog)