I'm deeply stunned and saddened at the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, one of my Asian feminist heroes, and am rendered speechless. Except to say it's George Bush's and his various puppet governments' fault.
Filipina poet Barbara Jane Reyes muses on a theme I've written about lately. That APIA women are their own worst enemy.
Reappropriate: Helen Zia: Be The Change. Zia, a Baby Boomer, was affected by Asian/Confucian sexism (father), I'm a Gen Xer affected by Asian/Confucian sexism (mother), the commenter who I'm assuming is a Gen Yer was affected by both Asian/Confucian and Western sexism (father) and Jenn is a Gen Yer affected by Asian/Confucian sexism (father) and so Zia was right when she said at last year's NAPAWF conference APIAs should get rid of their Confucian thinking.
Asian American Action Fund: Why APAs Should Vote Clinton. AAA does not endorse any candidate but it was interesting to see Clinton is the first choice in California and first choice among the elderly, poor/middle class (<$40,000), APIAs, Latinos and women in California.
Reappropriate: Podcast on Asian American feminism
Reappropriate: A Question of APIA Feminism: Introduction. Jenn is starting a series on Asian American feminism. Huzzah!
Happy New Year.
**Cross-posted at my place.**
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13 comments:
I don't know that Benazir would have been less of a 'puppet government' - needless to say that the news is very sad and demotivating. It was afterall the whitehouse that whitewashed her image and the $1.5 BILLION that her and her husband amassed during her reign as PM. I don't know how much of a 'feminist accomplishment' it is when you are oxford educated, come from a zamindar family, your dad was PM (yes, he was radical - she was not) and you have loads of connexions to washington.
It was in fact the encouragement of the US that she decided to go back to political life in pakistan. Don't forget that. As a south asian, I'm really tired of everyone telling me how she was such a grande symbol of democracy - if democracy is only for the rich, than fine - I buy it.
cheers
it's like this - anytime a brown woman succeeds and most feminists laud the 'accomplishment' (and you aren't the first btw) I really question how much of that pride isn't just because we assume that being brown=being oppressed. I.e. is Thatcher a feminist shero? She isn't in my books. Likewise, neither is Hillary.
I think feminist sheroes are women who work towards the betterment of WOMEN as a whole, not just for themselves and other elites. You might as well be a dude for all I care.
"That APIA women are their own worst enemy."
No offence to you Donna, and maybe you don't mean what you say here - or meant it as a figurative slip (I'm a bit more serious about this stuff as you already know) but I don't think WOMEN ANY WOMEN are their own WORST ENEMY. I think that white capitalist patriarchy is.
Barbara Jane Reyes:
That women/wives must accept the domestic and public map of the world as having absolute and non-negotiable borders.
That women/wives who transgress this map's borders suffer social consequences.
And that more often than not, it's other women/wives who dole out these consequences.
How's that for irony?
But that is not the way my mother raised me.
Structurally, yes, but women often enable structural inequality by not speaking out against it, or, in these excerpts, are sexist against each other.
In the three excerpts, Barbara Jane is not talking about white capitalist patriarchy but sexism within the APIA community, and specifically, other Filipina women. So white capitalist patriarchy does not apply in these excerpts as much as APIA internalized sexism.
yes, dumb women of color must be saved from themselves.... whatever. I don't think it's appropriate for you or anyone else to use loaded terms like "their own Worst enemy". Society tells women enough that they are incompetent and that they can't take care of themselves or anyone else.
It's brilliantly ironic that you admire women with power and then you fall into the same trap of blaming women for their own 'persecution'.
You're being sexist Donna! Oh no, maybe you like the rest of us WOC have internalized sexism issues.
They're not "dumb." I'm just pointing out a fact.
Pointing out the sexism of men of color and the failure of women of color to do the same is the opposite of sexism. Enabling sexism is sexist. It's constructive criticism.
Enabling is not "dumb." The 25 or so centrist, enabling Democratic Senators who keep funding the War and supporting terrible Republican legislation are afraid of change.
Saying people are 'their own worst enemies' is derogative and not the same as saying "enabling". You are deflecting from what you are saying, my problem is with your use of cliched language (a very right-wing tactic) in this case "their own worst enemy". That's not contextualized and rather diminutive.
Anyways, I'm going to abstain from commenting further in this discussion, please feel free to obfuscate away...
Structurally speaking, they're not our worst enemies, but strategically speaking, the Joe Liebermans, Nancy Pelosis, Harry Reids and the APIA women in these threads are America's and the APIA community's worst enemies right now.
Hi there, interesting conversation you are having here. I wanted to thank you for linking to my posts. I certainly don't mean to reopen a closed discussion, though I thought I'd add that I hope it's clear that I am not trying to accuse APIA/Filipina women of "being our own worst enemies," but rather, I am interested in how we tend not to be critical of our own behaviors toward one another, and what we do to "please the patriarchy," for lack of a better term. This is why I talk about policing ourselves, and punishing the more "transgressive" members of our communities. I can only say that experientially, as an apparently transgressive Pinay (and Pinay-centric) poet, I know this occurs, and I simply want to understand why.
Hi Barbara Jane! Thanks for your posts about feminism.
"APIA women are their own worst enemy" are my words and take on a situation I've noticed for twenty years. They certainly aren't your words by my interpretation of the phenomenon you just spoke of in your comment.
Of course, I can say "women are their own worst enemy" especially conservative women who enable the patriarchy or "women of color are their own worst enemy" because they are often the only ones getting in the way of change like Democrats especially conservative Democrats.
BFP and Jenn just wrote posts about radicalness or feminism putting them at the margins of their communities.
There's always been TONS of talk about traitors in POC communities a.k.a. internalized racism and ZERO talk about traitors to WOC in POC communities a.k.a. internalized sexism.
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