It ain’t no fun/if the homies can’t have none. – Snoop Dogg

You know, there are a lot of people weighing in on this Amber Cole thing. But most of the conversation is about her, as is par for the course in our culture. The boys involved are still anonymous in the eyes of the world. For me, I always wonder why there aren’t open letters to these kids? There are tons to Amber Cole – people saying they could be her father, people saying STFU with all that victim-blaming and feminist-scapegoating madness – but no one seems interested in writing letters to the boys involved.

But hey, maybe it’s just me. I guess when one of your friends – along with a person who sexually assaulted you – ends up in jail for gang rape, you start thinking about things a bit differently.

After I wrote the Not Rape Epidemic, right after I submitted the essay, but before it was actually published, I ran into an old friend at my local library. I hadn’t seen this friend in a decade – indeed, I didn’t remember her name until I left the library. Yet somehow, we both happened to be in the same library, at the same time, on the same day, after not seeing each other for ten years. We say hey, make small talk.

And then she asks me: “Did you know T got out?”

We both were silent for a second. We hadn’t talked since before the incident. She didn’t know that I had been to that trial. She didn’t know I had seen the girl. And I had forgotten she was far closer to him than I was. When T and the other kids were sentenced, we calculated they would get out when we were in our 30s or 40s. We didn’t realize how the system works, and how a lot of people end up released early. T had been incarcerated from age 14 to about age 24.

“His sister called me,” my friend continued. “She asked me if I wanted to come to his his welcome home party.” She looked at me, stared hard so I could feel the weight of her pain.

“How am I supposed to look at him after he did something like that?”

Folks have been largely silent on the role of boys and men in all this. Who, exactly, taught this young kid that the right way to treat a girl who likes him is to ask her to perform a sex act in public? (If the rumors are to be believed, she was attempting to win his affection.) Who taught the boy with the camera that they could video record sex acts and upload them to the internet without consent of the principals? Who the hell is the third kid who is just watching? Why is he hanging around while this is happening? Is anyone concerned that the things these boys learned, either explicitly from their peers or implicitly from society? That these actions got two of them arrested? Started them down the pipeline for incarceration? May have them branded as a sexual offenders for the rest of their days?

Oh, but that’s cool right?

When Jimi Izrael writes:

I am Amber Cole’s father and this should go with saying: I am angry with those boys. But I knew those boys. Those boys were my friends. I grew up with those boys, hung out with those boys.

He writes that he is the other guy. But there are no other guys. My friend didn’t have problems with gathering female attention. He didn’t seem like the type to do something like a brutal gang rape ending in sodomy. And, if what I knew about his personality wasn’t completely wrong, he probably did not participate. But he was there. He watched. He did not help this girl, being beaten bloody by one of his friends. He didn’t stop the act. Maybe he tried to intervene, maybe he didn’t – I don’t know, he had already been tried and sentenced. But he was there. And he left with the other perpetrators. That’s why they have accessory charges.

And that’s why I don’t want to think about him, and that’s why my friend didn’t want to look him in the face. Because he was there and said nothing.

Our culture teaches boys that this is okay. That it is okay to use people. That you are expected to disregard a woman’s feelings, to do what you want with her, to find women who are pliable who you can mold, who will seek your favor and happily trade a few moments on her knees for her affection. Our society teaches boys that this is ok, that this is what you do with women. The onus is on women not to be used. Men do not hear “don’t be an abuser” in the same way men don’t hear “don’t be a rapist.” The onus is always on women keeping themselves safe, on women not putting themselves in positions to be attacked or exploited. And when something does happen, when teenagers being teenagers suddenly becomes a nation newsstory, everyone wants to talk about what the girl should have done to prevent herself from being in the situation.

Once again, we aren’t talking to the boys.

So if the boys don’t know what is wrong, or why what they did was wrong, they will never know. Because we don’t talk to boys in that way. We want them to muddle through on their own, we allow them to consume messages that say the path to proving your masculinity lies in dominance, in the subjugation of women for sexual means. Because that’s all this really is. A boy, thinking he could be seen as cool, if he could get this girl to do this thing while his friends watched. A girl, thinking she could win this boy, by doing this thing, not realizing this wasn’t a game she could ever win.

We talk about the school to prison pipeline. We don’t talk about this.

We don’t tell boys what they learned is wrong. So we shouldn’t be surprised if they repeat the behavior, if that behavior becomes habit. We tell them, in our actions and words, that this was okay. Because there’s little outrage directed at these boys. So if they draw the conclusion that “she shouldn’t have let me do it” instead of “that whole situation that I orchestrated was wrong, and I hurt someone else very badly, and I hurt myself,” we shouldn’t be surprised.

And if these boys then repeat that behavior, then we shouldn’t be surprised.

Because we are too busy lecturing Amber Cole. We don’t know what’s going on with these boys. And so, it is only a matter of time before the women who know them cannot bear to look at them either.

A couple months ago, I read an article in Elle that impacted me so deeply, it took this long to be able to write about it.

Nina Collins, former book agent and literary scout, writes a horrifying, gut wrenching story about being a domestic abuser – and the process involved in understanding she had a problem:

In my thirty-seventh year, I divorced the father of my four kids after 16 years together, and I was arrested three times: once for assaulting him, once for assaulting his new girlfriend, and the last time for violating the order of protection he’d taken out after the first incident, when I upended a coffee table in his direction on Christmas Eve, two months after we’d separated. Aside from traffic violations, I’d never before been in legal trouble, never been in handcuffs, never seen the inside of a police station. [...]

The police promised me that this was a bullshit charge—“What kind of pussy husband has his wife arrested for cursing at him?”—even though I’d indeed broken the protection order’s stipulation against verbal harassment. The police spent hours working with the DA to follow Q.’s request: Despite having me arrested, he didn’t want the judge to go beyond the “limited” order the court previously had granted; he still wanted us to communicate with each other about the children only. This negotiation lasted for what seemed like forever; at around 8 p.m. I was taken handcuffed in a squad car to Brooklyn’s Central Booking, where I’d be in a holding cell until I could get in front of a judge. My lawyer was pulling every string possible so I wouldn’t have to spend the night in jail.

Orange cinder-block walls, sticky brown floor, fluorescent lights; the cell stank, partly because of the toilet and partly because of the bits of old food lying around—stale cartons of milk, remnants of bologna sandwiches. It was packed with women: a whip-smart 16-year-old lesbian named Paradise whom I initially took for a boy, in for assault; two enormous women, lovers, who’d engaged in a domestic brawl­—one bandaged above her left eye and dressed in a white nurse’s uniform, as if she’d been headed to work when the fight erupted. And then there was Melva, a teen who’d been living on the streets since she was 12; my heart ached for the girl. Strikingly beautiful with clear dark skin, classic features, and long, thick hair, she was so obviously alone in the world—and radiating fury. An older woman said she’d been arrested by animal welfare for neglecting her bone-cancer-afflicted dog (they do that?). DeMaris, a warm Puerto Rican/Polish/black 18-year-old, was in for shoplifting for her baby, she told me.

DeMaris was sharp, and over the course of the evening she started sharing her impressions of the assembled crowd.

“What about me?” I asked.

“You? You seem white.”

Meaning that while I have light brown skin and African-American features, I looked like someone with money. I was wearing a silk Calypso blouse, a black linen skirt, and some unobtrusive gold jewelry. I hadn’t given much thought to my outfit that morning; I’d put on something that seemed businesslike, I suppose. Would it have been better to wear sweats? I wondered.

DeMaris and I actually had a nice time of sorts, chatting and supporting each other. When I told the girls in my cell that I was going to be 38 the next day, a bunch of them remarked that I was way too old to be in jail for fighting with my ex. I ruefully agreed.

Her tale is gripping, but what jumped out me more than the narrative is the nuanced way Collins introduces to talk about domestic violence. She reports on changes in the conversation around domestic violence in the last forty years, complete with a reframing of the issue. Ever since domestic violence conversations entered the public space, there have been fights to control exactly how it is being discussed. Primarily, the conversation has revolved around heterosexual, cisgendered men attacking heterosexual cisgendered women. But things have started to shift, most notably in that hetero-cis dynamic.

Experts are now breaking domestic violence into two different categories: intimate terrorism and situational couple violence. Collins explains:

So-called “intimate terrorism,” overwhelmingly perpetrated by men, is embedded in a general pattern of power and control; typically, money is part of it. The woman often can’t buy anything without the man’s permission and is socially isolated, every second of her time tracked. When she’s hit, it’s “her fault” for failing to obey her husband. This is the classic battered-wife syndrome, in other words. What I engaged in, and what women and men engage in roughly equally, according to Penn State sociologist Michael Johnson, PhD, is called “situational couple violence.” The author of dozens of papers and a book on domestic violence, Johnson says the situational type doesn’t permeate a couple’s life but bursts out when specific tensions ramp up. “Sometimes this involves some back-and-forth, but it rarely becomes life-threatening,” he writes. “Motives vary. A physical reaction might feel like the only way one’s extreme anger or frustration can be expressed.… It may primarily be an attempt to get the attention of a partner who doesn’t seem to be listening.” (Bingo, for me.)

The upshot, Johnson says, is that while sociologists talk in averages, those who are trying to stop domestic violence have to drill down to the level of the individual. Based on survey data, he says that out of any 100 cases of situational violence, roughly half are mild, maybe even a once-in-a-marriage occurrence, in which the violent party feels true remorse. The vast majority of the other half are couples who chronically mix it up but no one is injured. In a small portion of cases, however—one in six, Johnson estimates—the situational violence gets more severe with time.

In general, conversations around domestic violence are complicated to discuss, because it calls to mine so much of our personal histories with intimate partners or what we saw within our families. As we saw with the conversations around Rihanna and Chris Brown (and the lack of non-hip-hop world conversation around Joe Budden and Esther Baxter/Tahiry) responses to domestic violence vary greatly. Women are still doubted far more often than they are believed, which makes every second of public conversation precious. We may be far away from the era when domestic violence was considered a private matter between husband and wife, but a lot of the same attitudes still persist. The recent controversies have brought the normal tenents of the conversation back into sharp focus. Rich, powerful men like Charlie Sheen can brush off domestic violence charges as a big misunderstanding, despite attacking a girlfriend in 1996 and allegations he “menaced” his wife with a knife in 2010 (he only admits to mutual arm slapping and breaking her sunglasses). People in the public eye find themselves whirled into the public opinion. Rihanna and Chris Brown sparked worried whispers when they renewed public contact with each other over twitter while both considering very practical matters like the restraining order’s impact on his career. Allegations of domestic violence can haunt major stars (Budden is suspected) as well as deceased rap icons Big Pun and Notorious B.I.G. (who both were also known abusers), but not significantly impact their careers and their public personas adds to the problem. Here, I refer to major stars of color, since they are they people I pay most attention to – but the problem crosses communities.

However, there are so many stories that go untold in our current conversations.

First, there never seems to be any space for conversations about domestic violence in queer relationships. Collins provided a glimpse in her article but the stats are frightening. According to the University of Missouri’s National Violence Against Women Prevention Research Center:

How common is lesbian partner violence?
About 17-45% of lesbians report having been the victim of a least one act of physical violence perpetrated by a lesbian partner (1,5,6,13). Types of physical abuse named by more than 10% of participants in one study included:

• Disrupting other’s eating or sleeping habits
• Pushing or shoving, driving recklessly to punish, and slapping, kicking, hitting, or biting.
• Sexual abuse by a woman partner has been reported by up to 50% of lesbians (12)
• Psychological abuse has been reported as occurring at least one time by 24% to 90% of lesbians

The research usually has been done with mostly white, middle-class lesbians who are sufficiently open about their sexual orientation to have met researchers seeking participants in the lesbian community. Subsequently, these findings may not apply to women who are less open, less educated, or of other ethnic backgrounds.

Why would a lesbian batter another woman?
Lesbians who abuse another women may do so for reasons similar to those that motivate heterosexual male batterers. Lesbians abuse their partners to gain and maintain control. Lesbian batterers are motivated to avoid feelings of loss and abandonment. Therefore, many violent incidents occur during threatened separations. Many lesbian batterers grew up in violent households and were physically, sexually, or verbally abused and/or witnessed their mothers being abused by fathers or stepfathers.

How is lesbian partner violence different from heterosexual partner violence?
There are several similarities between lesbian and heterosexual partner violence. Violence appears to be about as common among lesbian couples as among heterosexual couples. In addition, the cycle of violence occurs in both types of relationships. However, there also are several differences.

In lesbian relationships, the “butch” (physically stronger, more masculine or wage-earning) member of the couple may be as likely to be the victim as the batterer, whereas in heterosexual relationships, the male partner (usually the stronger, more masculine, and wage-earning member) is most often the batterer. Some lesbians in abusive relationships report fighting back in their relationship.

In addition, a unique element for lesbians is the homophobic environment that surrounds them. This enables the abusive partner to exert “heterosexist control” over the victim by threatening to “out” the victim to friends, family, or employer or threatening to make reports to authorities that would jeopardize child custody, immigration, or legal status. The homophobic environment also makes it difficult for the victim to seek help from the police, victim service agencies, and battered women’s shelters.

Gay men don’t have any easier – estimates again range from as low as 15% to as high as 45%. I had some difficulty finding the type of easily shared information as I found for lesbian violence, but in the resources at the bottom of the post is the Gay Men’s Domestic Violence Project, which is geared toward helping abused partners safely exit relationships.

Transgender people also have a rough time reporting domestic violence as it happens. One of the main problems, as explained by advocacy group FORGE, is lumping bisexuals and transgender people in with lesbians and gay men, who are often the only groups represented in studies and surveys. Unfortunately, statistics are even harder to come by for the trans community. However, some information is known:

As an already oppressed minority, trans+/SOFFAs are often hesitant to address issues that many fear will further “taint” the community. The LGBT community often wonders why they need to take on this issue as well as the others facing the community.

The “battered women’s” movement often avoids the fact that women batter, and men are victims. The pervasiveness of this myth has led police, hospital workers, and people in the criminal justice system to deny male victims or female perpetrators. (This is further “muddied” when people are not clearly “male” or “female”.)

Transgender and SOFFA individuals may be cautious in approaching medical providers, police, or the courts due to past experiences related to gender. These individuals may fear revictimization through transphobia, degradation, hostility or accusations from these service providers/public safety workers.

Shelters are typically “male-” or “female”-only. Transgender people and SOFFAs may not be allowed entrance into shelters or emergency housing facilities due to their gender/genital/legal status.

There have been many custody cases lately involving trans+ people. The risk of losing custody of a child might influence a trans+ or SOFFA individual from coming forward about abusive behavior.

FORGE’s handout sheet is full of links to other papers and explorations, well worth a careful read.

Racial differences also aren’t discussed in many conversations about domestic violence, but the specific community break down is chilling.

The American Bar Association has a commission on domestic violence, and they provide the following information complied from dozens of community specific studies (all emphasis is mine):

Native Americans are victims of rape or sexual assault at more than double the rate of other racial groups.

For Native American victims of violence, the offender was slightly more likely to be a stranger than an intimate partner, family member or acquaintance.

Black females experienced intimate partner violence at a rate 35% higher than that of white females, and about 22 times the rate of women of other races. Black males experienced intimate partner violence at a rate about 62% higher than that of white males and about 22 times the rate of men of other races.

Approximately 40% of Black women report coercive contact of a sexual nature by age 18.

The number one killer of African-American women ages 15 to 34 is homicide at the hands of a current or former intimate partner.

In a study of African-American sexual assault survivors, only 17% reported the assault to police.

Overall, the victimization rates of Hispanic women peaked at lower levels than non-Hispanic women in every age group, but spread over a wider range of ages.

77% of all Hispanic Texans indicate that either they, a family member and/or a friend have experienced some form of domestic violence, indicating that approximately 5.2 million Hispanic Texans are personally affected by the epidemic of domestic violence. If the current prevalence rates remain the same, by the year 2030, more than 12.2 million Hispanic Texans could be personally affected by domestic violence.

40% of Hispanic Texans who reported experiencing at least one form of domestic violence took no action.

83% of all Hispanic Texans agree that a husband who abuses his wife is more likely to also abuse his children; yet only 47% indicate a belief that domestic violence passes from generation to generation.

12.8% of Asian and Pacific Islander women reported experiencing physical assault by an intimate partner at least once during their lifetime; 3.8% reported having been raped. The rate of physical assault was lower than those reported by Whites (21.3%); African-Americans (26.3%); Hispanic, of any race, (21.2%); mixed race (27.0%); and American Indians and Alaskan Natives (30.7%). The low rate for Asian and Pacific Islander women may be attributed to underreporting.

Project AWARE (Asian Women Advocating Respect and Empowerment) in Washington, DC, conducted an anonymous survey in 2000-2001 to examine the experiences of abuse, service needs, and barriers to service among Asian women. Using a sample of 178 Asian women:

67% “occasionally” experienced some form of domination or controlling psychological abuse; 48% experienced it “frequently” in the past year.
32% experienced physical or sexual abuse at least “occasionally” during the past year.
28.5% of the survey participants knew of a woman who was being abused by her in-laws.

The AAPI community also has some specific break out groups and surveys done by various advocacy and research groups.

Cambodians In a study conducted by the Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence in Boston, using a self-administered questionnaire at ethnic fairs:

44-47% of Cambodians interviewed said they knew a woman who experienced domestic violence, by either physical abuse or injury.
37% of the respondents know a man who is being beaten by his partner.

Chinese In a random telephone survey of 262 Chinese men and women in Los Angeles:

18.1% of respondents reported experiencing “minor physical violence” by a spouse or intimate partner within their lifetime, and 8% of respondents reported “severe physical violence” experienced during their lifetime. ["Minor-severe" categories were based on the researcher's classification criteria.]

In a survey of 214 Korean women and 121 Korean men in the San Francisco Bay Area conducted in 2000:

42% of the respondents said they knew of a Korean woman who experienced physical violence from a husband or boyfriend.
About 50% of the respondents knew someone who suffered regular emotional abuse.
.

A study of 160 South Asian women (who were married or in a heterosexual relationship), recruited through community outreach methods such as flyers, snowball sampling, and referrals in Greater Boston, found that:

40.8% of the participants reported that they had been physically and/or sexually abused in some way by their current male partners in their lifetime; 36.9% reported having been victimized in the past year.
65% of the women reporting physical abuse also reported sexual abuse, and almost a third (30.4%) of those reporting sexual abuse reported injuries, some requiring medical attention.

Clearly, this is an everyone problem. All communities, all sexual orientations, all gender identifications, all racial and ethnic groups, everyone. Any sort of person has the potential to become an abuser; any sort of person has the potential to fall into an abusive relationship. It’s amazing how many things we don’t discuss.

So what will it take to start breaking the silence? How do we provide space for all of these conversations?

Resources:

The Gay Men’s Domestic Violence Project
FORGE
National Violence Against Women Prevention Center
National Coalition Against Domestic Violence

During our November 9th, 2009 show at Port Ghalib in Egypt, something happened that inspired some of my writing for my album 4 (arriving in a few weeks). I was in the middle of performing “Irreplaceable,” and as the audience started singing “to the left, to the left” there was a woman sitting on top of a man’s shoulders in her full, traditional burka. Only her eyes and hands were visible.

She was waving her hands to the left, to the left, and singing every word – which I could see because the veil around her mouth was moving. Although the venue was at capacity, I could see her clearly in the audience. I was shocked she was even there, that she’d even been allowed to go to a concert, because after it gets dark, you don’t see any women in burkas on the street. So her presence alone was so moving. Witnessing the power, beauty, and strength of women – especially those living in places where their liberty is limited – is what moved me the most. I felt she had her beliefs, and they were important to her, but music also had a place in her life and she made a choice to be there.

—Beyonce, “Eat, Play Love,” published in Essence, July 2011

Back when I used to read Uncanny X-Men, I would always wonder why writers had mutants face events that actual minority groups dealt with decades ago. Slavery. Segregation. Attempted genocide. After all, why not tap into some of the very real plights that minority groups currently have to deal with? Demonization in the media. Housing discrimination.

Sexual exploitation.

I wonder if the creative teams working on Marvel’s X-books are taking a step in that direction or if the preceding mock Utopia ad is one hell of a coincidence. Because the first thing I thought of when I saw the advertisement was how the green skin of the women had been held up as some kind of novelty or amusement for “normal” men to enjoy. And I can’t help but think of Black and Latina women in the Dominican Republic and Asian women in the Philippines who are considered that same kind of novelty act.

It’s not funny. It’s creepy. It’s disgusting. And it’s infuriating.

So seeing that ad got my hopes up. It made me wonder if Marvel was going to use the X-books to shine light on a problem that many either know nothing about or refuse to acknowledge. Marvel certainly isn’t afraid to tackle sensitive subjects. But that’s usually reserved for mature books such as those in the MAX line. To see something like this alluded to in an ad for a regular Marvel book is surprising. And impressive.

Unless the advertisement was intended to be humorous.

Which will pretty much cause me to wild the hell out.

ETA: David Brothers apparently has no regard for the safety of those at Wizard, because he’s telling me that this is a mock ad from Wizard that is intended to be funny.

I’m not laughing.

We are late on picking up the story of Nazia Quazi, a Canadian woman being held against her will in Saudi Arabia.

The Coast recently ran an interview with Quazi, explaining her situation:

A Canadian woman being held against her will in Saudi Arabia says the Canadian government is not taking her plight seriously.

Nazia Quazi was taken to Saudi Arabia by her father in November 2007. Because of that country’s archaic gender laws, women of any age are subject to male “guardianship.” In the 24-year-old Quazi’s case, her father has taken her passport, and refuses to sign an exit visa allowing her to leave the country…

Her family moved to Canada in 2001, although Quazi says her father has maintained a residence in Saudi Arabia, where he works for a bank, for 25 years. Quazi went to high school in Canada and became a citizen in 2005.

In 2007 she traveled on holiday to Dubai to visit her boyfriend. But when her parents learned of the trip, they flew to Dubai to intervene. Her father took her to India, and then to Saudi Arabia on a three-month visa. But, without her knowledge or consent, Quazi’s father changed the visa to a permanent visa.

Ever since, she says, she has been pleading with the Canadian embassy to intervene, but has gotten next to no response.

“When I try to contact them, I don’t get a positive response of any kind. They always say, ‘we’re still trying, we haven’t heard anything yet, but when we do we will let you know.’ There’s never a real straight-up answer to me, to my face. I’m just waiting for them to do something, waiting for something to happen.

…Citing privacy law, a spokesperson with the ministry of foreign affairs declined to comment specifically on Quazi’s case, but said the Canadian consulate in Saudi Arabia is aware of a Canadian citizen’s request for help and is “taking steps” to provide that help.

But a two-year-plus wait for resolution to Quazi’s case has raised accusations that the Harper government is not supportive of women generally.

Katha Pollitt at The Nation has written about Quazi quite a bit, providing this roundup of media coverage on her case earlier this month:

Little by little, the media is picking up on Nazia’s story. On March 8, International Women’s Day, CBC’s Connect with Mark Kelley featured a terrific interview with Shahla Khan Salter of Muslims for Progressive Values Ottawa. Watch it here and then leave a comment here.

As Shahla makes clear, Nazia’s story is not about Islam or “Muslim values” or multiculturalism or a clash of civilizations or any of those other buzz words floating around. There are plenty of Muslims who support women’s rights. Nazia’s story is about men’s control of women, an unbelievably oppressive government, and Canada’s shameful failure to help one of its own citizens.

I’m glad that Pollitt included that quote from Shahla Khan Salter, and it appears to me that this story is not about Islam at all, but rather about two different countries’ grotesque violation of women’s rights, one through direct oppression and the other through incompetence and indifference.

It is horrifying that Quazi has no rights in Saudi Arabia. It is depressing and frustrating that the Canadian government is not helping her.   Pollitt writes in a different article:

How far have women come if a democratic, secular country like Canada permits a father to imprison his adult daughter in the cage of Saudi laws?

While obviously I am very happy (very!) to live in countries where I have a much greater access to basic rights than I would in Saudi Arabia, I don’t believe that democracy or secularism  are necessarily guarantors of women’s rights.  Especially at this point in time, with the Stephen Harper’s conservative government in power in Canada – a government which has, since its inception,  “run roughshod” over women’s rights. (You should also check out Jessica’s older posts for more testimonial on the mess that is the Harper government.)  Quazi is a woman of colour and a first generation immigrant, and this is a Canadian government that has shown itself to care very little  about people like Quazi.

We need to advocate for Quazi.  Politt offers a number of ways that we can help:

What can you do? If you’re Canadian, get involved in this Human Rights Watch campaign. If you’re not, you can still write a polite note to the Foreign Secretary to express your concern and urge prompt action:

The Honourable Lawrence Cannon
Minister of Foreign Affairs
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A6
Email: Cannon.L@parl.gc.ca

Also, you can write the Saudi ambassador to the US:

Adel A. Al-Jubeir
Ambassador
Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia
601 New Hampshire Avenue
NW
Washington, DC 20037
press@saudiembassy.net

And to the Saudi Ambassador to Canada:

Mr. Asaad Al-Zuhair
Ambassador
Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia
99 Bank Street Suite 901, ,br/> Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1P 6B9

Join the ‘Help Nazia Quazi Come Back to Canada’ Facebook page to show your support and keep up with the latest developments.

And if you are a young woman or trans person who self-identifies as Muslim, I would seriously recommend that you check out AQSAZine run by a collective of young Muslim women and trans folks working to resist violence.   The following is from their website, and you can also find them on Twitter and Facebook:

AQSAZINE is a grassroots zine open to 16-35 year old women and trans people who self-identify as Muslim. It is a creative avenue for us to express ourselves, share our experiences, and connect with others. In Arabic, “aqsa” implies the furthermost, as in reaching out to the furthest possible point. AQSAZINE aims to motivate the utmost resistance to violence in all its forms. 16-year-old Aqsa Parvez, who was murdered on December 10th, 2007, also inspires this zine. It is to honour her and other Muslims who experience and resist violence. We strive to work from a feminist, anti-oppressive, pro-choice, queer and trans positive framework.

–

Photo from The Coast

For most of my life, I’ve acted the part of the fiery feminist activist. At age 10 (before I even knew “feminist” as a word) my surprisingly cogent defense of biblical Eve moved my evangelical father into surrendering his argument that women are the root of all evil. At age 16 (when I only knew “feminist” as a term of derision) I scandalized my Filipino teachers by conducting an (albeit amateurish) study charting gender discrimination within Republic Central high schools. And by age 19 (when I proudly donned my first signature “this is what a feminist looks like” t-shirt) my transformation seemed complete. In those enlightened times, I was fond of telling people, “You’re probably a feminist — you just don’t know it yet.”

So thrilled was I to have found a word — an ideology, a movement! — which embodied my long-standing belief system that I didn’t realize until much later the foolishness of such a proclamation; feminism isn’t, after all, defined by one’s inherent, unarticulated views on gender (however progressive those may be), but is rather a conscious, political choice one makes after considering and asserting those views.

These days, a much more educated, experienced, and cynical Me teeters on the fence. Some days, I hear feminism derided by an ignoramus with a beer and the beast inside rears its rosy head in indignation. Other days, my oft-broken heart smarts at the memory of old friends and activists whose feminist ideals didn’t stand in the way of their marginalizing a person of color, or objectifying another woman, or even downplaying the sexual assault of a friend. Most of the time, my commitment to social justice advocacy doesn’t feel as though it requires a label so I have the room to vacillate.

However, my indecision piques about every six months.

Every six months, you see — almost by the minute hand — a media storm about “the death of feminism” inexplicably erupts. Ten months out of the year, feminism is a dormant issue, old hat, a moot point, insignificant in both the grand scheme of world news and the narrow sights of newsmakers. But every six months, respectable news magazines and mainstream newspapers alike dedicate valuable column inches to 1) redundant and irrelevant assertions that feminism is, in fact, dead and 2) rebuttals that, in 2000 pretty words, re-tell the “forgotten” history of feminism while claiming that feminism is still thriving — if nowhere else than online. Sometimes the catalyst is a particularly well-timed article, while other times it’s a Hillary Clinton sound byte. This month, it’s a combination of Sarah Palin fever and the recent release of women-themed books by Gail Collins, and Leslie Sanchez.

The agitators are different each round, but the debate is always the same and so, accordingly, is my response: mild enthusiasm at a subject that interests me, with a zesty pinch of irritation at the tediousness of this cycle. But both sentiments are quickly overshadowed by disappointment, because, in almost every case, this tiresome debate about the death of feminism is a debate between white women (and the occasional white man) who are defining feminism according to their own experience. I suppose there isn’t anything fundamentally wrong with writing about one’s own experience (I do it all the time), but the problem is that when these circular debates roll around, that unacknowledged white feminist experience becomes the only visible feminist experience.

Among these dozens of mediocre articles, a few have stood out because of their beautiful composition and thoughtful arguments…but even those few leave me wanting something more, prolonging my indecision rather than resolving it. Last spring, my favorite “Is feminism dead?” piece was an American Prospect article called “The End of the Women’s Movement” which argued very eloquently that there will not, and ought not, be a singular women’s movement in this country today because such a movement could not adequately represent the growing diversity of communities, beliefs, and women in this country. Great point. Except that the point is built on the notion that a time actually existed when a singular women’s movement did adequately represent the diversity of women in this country — and that’s simply not true.

One of American feminism’s greatest failures is the exclusion of women of color, of poor women, of women without privilege. To paraphrase bell hooks, who do you think took care of the middle class white woman’s children when she became too empowered to just be a housewife? 2009 isn’t the first time our country has entertained a vast diversity of communities, beliefs, and women — there has always been diversity here, though the smiling white faces at the forefront of the last U.S. women’s movement might have us believe otherwise. Asserting the present need for diversity within feminism without recalling the marked exclusion of women of color from past feminist waves isn’t a step forward so much as a whitewashing of feminist history. And that makes me wonder where I fit within this paradigm.

Fast-forward to this month, and I’m both fawning over and wincing at the beautifully-composed New Yorker piece written by Ariel Levy (of whom I am a huge fan), which argues that identity politics gets in the way of real progress because it is primarily concerned with representation:

[Identity politics are] a version of the old spoils system: align yourself with other members of a group — Irish, Italian, women, or whatever — and try to get a bigger slice of the resources that are being allocated.

Such a narrow view of “identity politics” fails to consider the critical role they play in engaging people of color in feminist (or any other kind of) activism, and assumes that “representation” is a relatively straight-forward idea. For many second and third generation citizens, for example, representation isn’t as simple as sex and skin color, but entails the confrontation of colonial histories and racial and cultural hierarchies that have followed us across generations.

I know many second and third generation Filipina Americans who retain a colonial mentality with regard to our mother country that prevents them from undertaking Filipina-specific feminist work — despite the admittedly profound need for such work. Melinda L. De Jesus addresses this in the preface to her book, Pinay Power: Peminist Critical Theory, discussing the ways in which “a heritage of dual colonization…coupled with American cultural imperialism, has left an indelible mark on the Filipino American psyche,” causing them to regard their cultural heritage as inherently inferior to that of the United States. She reflects on some of the experiences that informed her own colonization experience as a second generation Filipina American:

The arrogant white feminist professor chiding me that I shouldn’t “ghettoize” myself and my academic training by “just doing Asian American Studies.” My parents telling me that “Filipinos had no culture before the Spanish came.” […] I learn to forget that my parents have accents, that they speak a language I don’t know — a language they did not teach me. I learn than it’s better to be “here” than “back home,” that bad stuff happened during “the war.” And because my parents have so many dreams for my American future, I learn to distance myself from my history. When asked, I say, “My parents are from the Philippines, but I was born here.” So this is the American dream — living in the perpetual present, moving through life without a past, swallowed whole, invisible, but unable to deny the lingering ache of absence…

De Jesus’s experience is not unique among second and third generation Filipina Americans in the Diaspora; many of the contributors to Pinay Power describe similar feelings of inferiority, alienation, and invisibility, which prevented them from connecting to, and activating around, their heritage. One contributor argues that the only antidote to the “alienation of the colonized self” is a reclamation of the ethnic self, while another asserts that “the project of decolonization hinges on identity politics.”

Diasporic Filipinas with their erased histories and dual alienation, ought to engage in identity politics to the extent that doing so can help them place themselves within a social, political, historical, and cultural context that reconnects them with their heritage while attuning them to the oppression they experience as a marginalized community in the United States.

….But where is that in the mainstream feminism represented in the media — or even in our women’s studies classes where we learn about women in popular culture and body image while remaining ignorant of the transnational issues that are shaping the whole wide world? Southeast Asia is chock full of feminist scholars and activists who are still agitating at the front lines even as the articles we read in our favorite publications tell us that contemporary feminist work=blogging.

And so I remain on the fence — heartened, definitely, by the work of those transnational activists who call themselves feminists even in the face of their under-representation — but daunted, nevertheless, by the feminism I read about here, in U.S. papers and see on the American screen.

I am working on a paper titled, “How Beyonce and Capitalism Undermined R&B’s Ability to Normalize Black Love.”

The title may change to Beyonce Incorporated, as that is more focused and more appropriate for academia.

My professor wants me to l shift my focus to the media’s investment in what I have called the Beyonce Beauty Aesthetic – light skinned, size 4/6, curvy, blond hair.

But I am not interested in just talking about the media, I am interested in how Beyonce is a tool for maintaining US hegemony and the ways in which she normalizes really fucked up, patriarchal, Black heterosexual relationships.

I am fascinated by a light skinned, middle class Black woman from the Houston suburbs who sings about needing a soldier, who she could upgrade, so that he can put a ring on it, and if he likes her he can put her in his video phone.

Conversely, why is a woman worth tens of millions of dollars singing about needing a baller?

I’m intrigued by this binary of success that allows one Black woman at a time to be a megastar, with the general prerequisite being that she is light skinned and talented, and while all the rest remain pretty marginalized.

Kelis. Amel. Tiombe. Georgia Ann Muldrow. Algebra. Aaries. Goapele, Solange.

Estelle, Chrisette, and Erykah may get some mainstream play, but for the most part they are regulated to the VH1 Soul channel and its requisite circuit.

Mary may get some pop play.

By and large Billboard-wise Alicia and Mariah are presented to us as (the) Black Pop R&B stars. (Did I miss anyone? I may have, and I sure you all will let me know in the comments.)

Both are light skinned. Both keep their sizes in a 4-6-8 range.

In trying to figure out how to frame this paper, I called Moya and asked for her advice. She suggested that I read Summer’s piece about how Beyonce is simply doing her job. Summer makes the argument that Beyonce is doing her job, singing, dancing, shimming and making work out music and that to expect her to expect her to do anything else is implicitly naive.

Her job is to be a diva, and she most certainly does it well.

While, I agree that she most certainly is doing a job, my job is to show how her efficiency is related to both the larger project of maintaining white supremacist patriarchal capitalism and how the songs normalize some really patriarchal, and implicitly violent Black heterosexual relationships.

How did I get to Beyonce from Sarah Palin?

I was talking with another professor about politics and Sarah Palin.

I mentioned that my issue with my generation is that they are far too focused on Sarah Palin and not on the people who are willing to vote for her in 2012. That calling those folks stupid will not discourage them, and that it may,
in fact, embolden them.

She responded saying that there needs to be both a focus on Palin and a focus on the people who support her. Her rationale was that some people, because of their platform, influence and power, need to be made to shut up, because the things that they say are harmful and can cause other groups of people to do harm. She used Rwandan genocide as an example. She made it clear that we need to see Palin as a willing participant in her career.

It was at that moment that I had a better idea of how to frame Beyonce.

My homie Jess said that I should lay out the facts and then make my argument, given the fact that multiple arguments can be made on the same facts.

I now understand that the argument section has to be simultaneously on the Beyonce and the culture that she influences and creates.

Culture is US hegemony’s goon.

Culture does hegemony’s day to day dirty work.

It was then that I realized that when I write this paper, that I will not write about Beyonce per se, but about the power that she has, and the harm that is done when Black women dating hustlers is normalized.

All people need love. Hustlers too.

Women of all races have dealt with people who operate in the underground economy. I get that.

However, this must be reconciled with the fact that the most popular Black pop singer in the world is continually singing about needing a baller, and perpetually valuing men for what they can give.

If Black men are only worth what they can give, then they must be worth very little, as they are woefully under or unemployed. There are nearly $1 million of them in prison mainly for non violent drug offense, largely selling small amounts of crack or other drugs.

In a country where 1 in 15 Black men is incarcerated this is a problem.

Black and white women are going to jail at unprecedented rates too.

Human beings deserve to be loved regardless of how much cake they have.

Peep game.

Folks want Jay Z to rap about being married.

Jay Z will not rap about being married to Beyonce because young White men, other non Black people and perhaps some Black folks, do not want to hear about it.

Jay can be married to the game, but he can’t be married to her.

The reason why I am writing this piece is for the women that I know of from East Oakland, California, who have gotten shot in the face, kidnapped, stuffed into trunks, have caught been caught hustling or dealing with hustlers and are now doing dumb ignorant time or they are dead.

This morning, I woke up and while I was making coffee I remember my patna from elementary school, Tange. In the early early nineties, Tange’s cousin got shot in Brookfield while sitting in the car with her boyfriend, who was a hustler. The killer murdered both of them. Peep game. When I saw Tange, she was spooked because she looked like her cousin. So when people saw her they would say her and say, “Girl, I thought you were dead.” They thought she was her cousin because they looked similar.

People may not care, because the lives of Black women are not important to them. Or they may think I am putting ten on two.

Their lives are important to me.

So I write.

by Guest Contributor Shani-O, originally published at PostBourgie

Much is being made of Michael Luo’s piece in yesterday’s New York Times which explains how simply being black often hurts job seekers:

Johnny R. Williams, 30, would appear to be an unlikely person to have to fret about the impact of race on his job search, with companies like JPMorgan Chase and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago on his résumé.

But after graduating from business school last year and not having much success garnering interviews, he decided to retool his résumé, scrubbing it of any details that might tip off his skin color. His membership, for instance, in the African-American business students association? Deleted.

“If they’re going to X me,” Mr. Williams said, “I’d like to at least get in the door first.”

Similarly, Barry Jabbar Sykes, 37, who has a degree in mathematics from Morehouse College, a historically black college in Atlanta, now uses Barry J. Sykes in his continuing search for an information technology position, even though he has gone by Jabbar his whole life.

“Barry sounds like I could be from Ireland,” he said.

Though Luo is working under the rather shaky premise that recent progress for blacks, like Barack Obama’s election, was supposed to improve prospects for black job seekers, he notes the opposite attitude in his interviewees:

Many interviewed, however, wrestled with “pulling the race card,” groping between their cynicism and desire to avoid the stigma that blacks are too quick to claim victimhood. After all, many had gone to good schools and had accomplished résumés. Some had grown up in well-to-do settings, with parents who had raised them never to doubt how high they could climb. Moreover, there is President Obama, perhaps the ultimate embodiment of that belief.

Certainly, they conceded, there are times when their race can be beneficial, particularly with companies that have diversity programs. But many said they sensed that such opportunities had been cut back over the years and even more during the downturn. Others speculated there was now more of a tendency to deem diversity unnecessary after Mr. Obama’s triumph.

Adam rightly notes the disincentives for blacks to speak up about discrimination, writing “why dwell on racial bias when it’s something you can’t really control? It’s obvious that racism doesn’t make success impossible, and things are obviously better now than they once were.”

And Ta-Nehisi agrees, adding, “I was in competition with a lot of other people who weren’t black. Obsessing over discrimination would have been, from that perspective, like a rooking guarding Jordan complaining about the officiating. You aren’t going to win, and it distracts you from actually doing your job. You may not like your assignment. It may be unfair. But that really isn’t up to you. My charge was to find some way to win, not to enumerate the obstacles in the way.”

Unfortunately, neither Adam nor Ta-Nehisi notice something that was glaringly obvious to me on my first reading of the piece: not a single black woman was quoted in it. Luo may have interviewed black women, but he certainly didn’t give them a voice in a story about black — not just black male — professionals.

And while Ta-Nehisi’s post is a great exploration how blacks navigate racism and success, even he only refers to black men — Obama, Deval Patrick, Cory Booker, Booker T. Washington.

This is not a minor problem.

Black women go to college at higher rates than black men, and 27 percent of black women are employed in managerial positions, while only 19 percent of black men are. I don’t think it’s much of a leap to suggest that there are more black women looking for professional jobs than black men.

Of course, black men have a unique set of challenges. And while black women share a similar experience with them, it surely wouldn’t do to quote women in a story about men. Likewise, quoting a variety of black men doesn’t speak to the experiences of a variety of black people. What about the single mothers? Or young women who are struggling to be taken seriously in the male-dominated corporate arena? I know plenty of black women who would have a lot to say about having a business degree and a ‘black’ name, or being interviewed by someone who’s not just of a different race, but also of a different gender.

The stories of the men in Luo’s piece are valuable, but in a story about black professionals, they just don’t get the job done.

Time Magazine reports on women migrant workers who have been raped, and the resulting pregnancies:

While globalization has turned much of the world into a wide-open labor market, it has also created complex human and societal dramas. Women account for up to 50% of the world’s 100 million–strong migrant-worker population — and there is no effective entity to protect their rights and dignity. In 2008, Indonesians working abroad, commonly as domestic staff in the Middle East and parts of Asia, contributed about $6.8 billion to their national economy via remittances, according to the World Bank. And while statistics are difficult to come by, there are increasing reports of many who are physically abused, raped and — in some cases — killed by their employers…

…female migrant workers are raped and then dumped on the streets by their employers, who refuse to give them their passports after discovering that the women are pregnant. The women are then arrested by police and placed in jail. Sometimes they are deported before the child is born.

Normawati says there are dozens of children who were abandoned by migrant workers in homes throughout Jakarta and surrounding areas.

I really appreciate the way this article draws attention to the intersection of gender and workers’ rights.  The article focuses on Indonesian women working in Saudi Arabia and Jordan, but their stories are an illustration of a wider problem — those hit hardest by callous economic policies are almost always poor women of colour.

But it must be said that I do not care for the way Time Magazine characterises the women migrant workers.  The article doesn’t interview any actual migrant workers;  as a result both the mothers and the children they leave are painted as voiceless victims, when there is definitely a lot more to their existence than that. (For example, the women are referred to as “raped migrant mothers” – not “women who were raped while doing migrant work.” Potentially a small difference, but the first phrase reduces the women to the word “raped.”)  As well the article repeatedly emphasises how these women have ABANDONED their children; leaving the reader with a rather crude and over-simplified picture of women in unimaginable situations, forced to make terrible choices.

And while the article points out that countries like Saudi Arabia and Jordan provide insufficient protections for migrant workers, it’s the same story everywhere.

Perhaps another bone to pick with the article is the way it localises problems that pervade the entire world, especially industrialised countries – like the exploitation of migrant workers, violence against women, patriarchal prejudice towards children born of rape – to the Middle East and Indonesia.

For example, Canadian organisation Justicia for Migrant Workers works to protect the rights of migrant workers in Ontario and beyond. J4MW tries to protect workers from both their employers and the Canadian government, whose policies sacrifice workers’ rights for “economic stability.” Their Campaigns page will give you an idea of the kinds of rights violations workers are facing.

Below is a list of other organisations that work for migrant worker rights. I found most of them by asking around and random google searches; if you have more you’d like to add to the list, leave them in the comments! I had trouble finding any organisations that specifically represented women migrant workers and their issues, which is probably pretty telling.

Damayan Migrant Workers Association Holds Health Fair & Gender Rights Training (North Star Fund Blog) (US)
Damayan Migrant Workers Association (US)
United for Foreign Domestic Worker’s Rights (Southeast Asia)
Migrante International Website (Philippines)
Migrante International Blog (Philippines)
Immigration Advocates (US)
United Farm Workers (US)
Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (US)

Thanks to Jane, Angela and Sunny for their help!

The literature on sex equality is shot through with accounts of this predicament, variously described as a “double bind,” a “Catch-22,” or a “tightrope.” In many workplaces, women are pressured to be “masculine” enough to be respected as workers, but also to be “feminine” enough to be respected as women. (I put the adjectives “masculine” and “feminine” in quotation marks when otherwise unmodified because I use them to describe perceptions rather than realities about traits held by men and women.) The sheer mass of evidence further persuades me that demands for conformity made of women are not generic, but target them as women. I also become convinced these contradictory demands mean the story of contemporary sex discrimination is more complex than a single narrative of forced conformity to the dominant group.

To see how distinctive this Catch-22 is to women, consider the absence of a gay equivalent. If gays were in the same position as women, straights would constantly ask me not only to cover but to reverse cover. If I dressed conservatively, I would be asked to wear edgier attire. If I “acted straight,” I would be urged to be more flamboyant. But I do not think gays occupy this position. With significant exceptions of the “queer eye for the straight guy” variety, straights generally only ask me to cover. In my experience, the reverse-covering demand is more likely to be made by gays themselves.

Racial minorities are more like gays than women in this regard. If I, as an Asian-American, “dress white” and speak “perfect unaccented English,” I will find safe harbor. Whites make occasional reverse-covering demands – “Speak Japanese so we can hear what it sounds like,” or, “No, tell us where you’re really from.” But again, I have fielded reverse-covering demands more often from other Asian Americans, who tell me to get as politicized about Asian American issues as I am about gay issues.

When gays or racial minorities are caught in the crossfire of covering and reverse-covering demands, it is often because we are caught between two communities. The majority community (straights or whites) makes the covering demand, and the minority community (gays or racial minorities) makes the reverse-covering demand. Recent literature on African-American “oppositional culture” illustrates this dynamic. In response to white demands that African-Americans “act white,” some African-Americans have developed a culture of “acting black.” An African-American could easily be caught in a Catch-22, but not one generated by whites alone. More generally, negative epithets for racial minorities who cover – such as “oreo,” “banana,” “coconut,” or “apple” – seem to come from minority groups rather than from whites.

What makes women distinctive is that the dominant group – men – regularly imposes both covering and reverse-covering demands on them. Women are uniquely situated in this way because their subordination has more generally taken a unique form.  Unlike gays and racial minorities, women have been cherished by their oppressors.  Men have long valued the “feminine” traits women are supposed to hold, such as warmth, empathy, and nurture.

The mind-set through which men limit women in the name of loving them is known as “separate spheres” – an ideology  under which men inhabit the public sphere of work, culture, and politics, while women inhabit the private sphere of hearth and home.  The two spheres ostensibly track the different characters of men and women – men are thought to be suited for the public sphere because of their “masculine” attributes, women for the private sphere because of their “feminine” ones.  This ideology permits men to cherish and to confine women at the same time – women are revered, but only in the home.  In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville describes this arrangement with the approval typical of his period: “I have no hesitation in saying that although the American woman never leaves her domestic sphere and is in some respects very dependent within it, nowhere does she enjoy a higher station. ”

For centuries, separate-spheres thinking barred women from the workplace.  In 1872, the Supreme Court upheld an Illinois statue prohibiting women from practicing law.  Concurring in that judgment, Justice Joseph Bradley observed women were unfit to be lawyers because of their “natural and proper timidity and delicacy.”  He concluded: “The paramount destiny and mission of women are to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother.  This is the law of the Creator.”

Notice how Bradley does not exclude women by devaluing them.  Instead, he underscores how much he admires women – their attributes of “timidity and delicacy” are “natural and proper” and the offices of wife and mother are “noble and benign.”  ”I really like women,” Justice Bradley seems to say.  ”And I really like wives, and mothers.  It’s because I like women and wives and mothers so much that I don’t want women to be lawyers.”  It’s hard to imagine a justice denying the rights of any other group using such affirming language.  I would be more reconciled to my exclusion from the military if the courts would admit my “natural and proper” sodomitical tendencies better suit me for the “noble and benign” office of law professor.

A century later, the Court changed its thinking.  In the 1973 opinion that began the Court’s sex-equality revolution, a plurality of the Court observed that the tradition of cherishing women so long as they remained in the home put them “not on a pedestal, but in a cage.”  That recognition gradually swept away the most obvious barriers to women’s equality in the public sphere.  Today, few places exist where the state or employers can post a “No Women Allowed” sign.

Nonetheless, separate-spheres ideology has contemporary traces.  Men often require women who enter traditionally male workplaces to display the attributes of both spheres.  If women are not “masculine” enough to be respected as workers, they will be asked to cover.  If they are not “feminine” enough to be respected as women, they will be asked to reverse cover. Separate-spheres ideology has modern life in the Catch-22.

A cottage industry of advice manuals has sprung up to address this generation of sex discrimination.  Grooming manuals for professional women – blazoned with titles like New Women’s Dress for Success – promise to help women satisfy both demands.  They instruct women to avoid pastels or floral prints lest they be perceives as too “feminine,” but also to wear make up lest they be perceived as too “masculine.”  They recommend shoulder pads, but not “shoulder pads on steroids”; earrings, but not earrings that dangle; and hair that is neither too long or too short.

Work-style manuals similarly tutor women in the art of acceptable androgyny.  Consultant Gail Evans’s bestseller Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman begins with the premise that to work in corporate America is to play a game whose rules have been written by men.  She encourages women to assimilate by following rules of “masculine” behavior, such as “Speak out,” “Speak up,” “Don’t expect to make friends,” and “Be an imposter.”  At the same time, Evans stresses “things men can do at work that women can’t” such as sexualizing their work demeanor, behaving rudely, or looking unkempt.’

— Kenji Yoshino, Covering, pp. 145-149

by Special Correspondent Wendi Muse

Continued from “Bela or Bust: Part 1: On Gender” . . .

Author’s note: My apologies for the delay between part one and part two! I have recently moved back to the United States and in between re-adjusting and job hunting, I had not had the chance or the mental clarity to sit down and actually write!

The popular anecdote goes “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.” If I were to rephrase this expression to fit Brazil, I’d say “Beauty is next to Wealth.” Though Brazil has grown considerably with tourism, natural resources, and factory-based goods as its largest sectors of revenue, on the ground, the class divide is evident and going strong. One ironic way to overcome class and bridge the class divide, at least superficially, is through a well-kept appearance. I say ironic here because in order to appear a social or economic equal, one must continue to consume, thus depleting one’s income, even if it is far from disposable.

Luckily for many Brazilian women, maintaining one’s physical appearance is not so heavy a financial task. Even in large cities, one can get an amazing manicure/pedicure for less than $20 reais ($10 USD), a facial for $50 reais ($25 USD), a “Brazilian” wax for $15 reais (known there as “depilação de virilha”; $7 USD) and multiple sessions of lymphatic massage for $100 reais a month ($50 USD). In comparison to the cost of aesthetic maintenance in the United States, Brazilian women are the fortunate ones. In some ways, the cheap costs, even for the average Brazilian, allow for a democratization of access to beauty, whereas in the U.S., this is not so much the case. And when one can find cheap beauty related services in the U.S., the question of service, quality, and even employee rights follows the far too reasonable price tag.

With relatively equal access to stellar services, many women have access to maintaining an image that puts them physically on par with their wealthier counterparts. In other words, she may not be rich, but at least her looks are equal to if not superior to someone with greater material wealth. In the United States, this “phenomenon” of sorts, democratization and equality by way of the physical, can be witnessed in the purchase of clothing and vehicles by those of a lower income. As quality attire is not nearly as expensive in the States as it is in Brazil (due mainly to import taxation and trade issues) and the intellectual property rights of high end designers are often violated by chain stores like H&M and Forever 21, people of the working and lower middle classes have greater access to some of the same clothing styles worn by the rich. As wealth, at least in the past, seemed less of a precarious state in the U.S., the preoccupation with “looking rich” was not evident. In fact, I would go as far as to argue that in many cases, the wealthy in the States can be indistinguishable from the general public (look at stores like Urban Outfitters, which peddles the image of tattered, vintage, and reconstructed clothing at a high price). This is not the case in Brazil, where the wealthy can be spotted from miles away.

Beauty can also mean an escape for some Brazilian women living in poverty, hence the idea of being good looking and well-groomed being given such high cultural value. There are frequent favela (slum)-based beauty pageants, model searches, and even the same video model industry seen in the states, one of them being the ever-present competitions for the next “it” girl in funk carioca (known as baile funk in the U.S.). Named for the most abundant parts of their bodies, the Mulheres Fruta (“Fruit Women”) are famous for their physical beauty. Take Mulher Melancia (“Watermelon Woman”). Famous for her backup dancing for MC Creu’s “Dança do Créu” (NSFW) and her more than generous backside, Andressa Soares (pictured above, right, with Mulher Melão (Melon Woman), left) has been in Brazilian Playboy and even a European tour all as a result of her bottom. Amazing. But it sure beats poverty any day, I suppose.

While beauty may not involve a direct translation into fortune and fame, it nevertheless serves as a surrogate for wealth in the social realm, calling for positive attention that would otherwise be absent in the face of poverty. It also can become an exportable currency, a stereotype for which Brazil is famous (beautiful women), but one that has also led to destructive and exploitive relationships between women who use their beauty as a source of income and the tourists who flock there to consume it.

Even novelas, Brazilian soap operas, repeatedly regurgitate the same Cinderella stories, creating the framework for the myth that beauty is a ticket out of the slums (or at least can allow for a temporary vacation with a wealthy benefactor). But this dream, just as many other rags-to-riches narratives often do, falls flat when translated to reality. Class mobility, while a possibility, is a rare occurrence in Brazil. So even though beauty could be considered a temporary equalizer, the end result of glaring poverty and a large percentage of the wealth staying within a small percentage of the population is what continues.

Next: On Race (Part 3)

by Special Correspondent Wendi Muse 

Continued from “Bela or Bust (Introduction)” . . .

Author’s note:
I recognize that to say that the preoccupation with being beautiful for women in Brazil boils down to three separate entities is oversimplifying. Gender, class, and race obviously intersect constantly and are difficult to consider beyond their Venn diagram-like existence. Yet for the sake of clarity and hopefully accessibility, I have decided to discuss this topic in three parts: 1) gender, 2) class, and 3) race.

Despite Brazil being one of the most powerful countries in Latin America, it is still working to develop an image that coincides with the nations with which it frequently interacts for diplomatic purposes and international recognition. While issues surrounding class are certainly a cause for shame to the Brazilian national identity, one of the other issues on its pulse for change is gender. Brazil has undergone rapid change in the last few decades in terms of women’s equality, with women moving from predominately domestic roles to working beyond the home and holding positions of power. Yet even with these achievements, the obsession with physical perfection has not dwindled, though in Brazil’s case, advances in women’s rights and an extensive beauty regimen are not necessarily at odds. In fact, in an ironic twist, what some women in the United States may find as a sign of oppression has become a mark of power and success.

Having grown up in the South, I’m accustomed to seeing women spend hundreds of dollars a month on their appearance and hours on maintaining it, but when I moved to Brazil, I was sincerely shocked to see that in both small towns and big cities, full-service beauty salons were everywhere, including people’s homes. Many Brazilians know someone who knows someone who does waxing, hair straightening, and nails in the back of her house. As Brazil has one of the largest informal labor sectors in the world, beauty certainly makes up a large part of this statistic, mean that many women have additional job opportunities even when they remain in the home. From Avon, Racco, and Mary Kay sales to nail care and lymphatic massage, the opportunities for a supplemental income are endless and easily accessible for women of all walks of life.

An intense focus on beauty has also been a mark of pride for women, especially as they climb socially. With more women each year entering the workforce in Brazil, peer recognition and respect are contingent on appearance. As more women hold positions of power, the pressure to remain beautiful only grows, as it can sometimes guarantee a better position and internal advancement within a company. However, this is not a phenomenon that is exclusive to Brazil, as this situation is often repeated in the United States, yet to a less obvious degree.

At this point, some of you may be asking what exactly I am implying when I say things like “intense focus on beauty” or “extensive beauty regiment.” When I say this, I am talking about what we would consider “high maintenance” in the United States as the accepted norm for women’s appearance. A woman must always be “bem arrumada.” This means that even when one goes grocery shopping, heels, nice clothes, and styled hair is the norm. One of my students once told me that she felt absolutely dirty when her nails were not done, and another informed me she would never leave the house with wet hair because that was super “pobre” (“ghetto”). Sure, some of the beauty norms make total sense, particularly those related to hygiene and personal maintenance (i.e. frequent waxing) considering the heat and beach cultures of some regions of Brazil. There is also a cultural connection in that just as many Americans obsess over cleanliness, Brazilians often obsess about neatness. This desire to be neat and clean goes beyond the household and can be easily observed in people’s overall appearance. But in terms of the daily need to be basically perfect, a pressure that is placed disproportionately on women, there is certainly room for questioning and criticism.

I’ve seen girls as young as 4 and 5 wearing heels and getting their nails and hair done, as if even female children are to be part of the adult beauty pageant I see on a daily basis. A recent article in the Brazilian magazine Veja indicated that more and more each year, young girls are becoming beauty statistics as they frequent salons almost as much if not more so than their mothers. With the expectation for young girls to be well-groomed, there also comes a similar expectation for them to be well-dressed. However, as clothing here tends to be generally more provocative (read: lower cut, worn tighter, more revealing), that expectation is somewhat poorly placed if we’re talking about children. Clothing here that would not be well accepted in the United States, at least not for daily wear (i.e. clothes Americans would wear to a club) make up the every day clothing, even work clothes, in certain regions of Brazil, so there is obviously a cultural difference. But I am not alone in my statement here that clothing for young girls has become increasingly limited to clothing that too closely replicates the clothing of their mothers and older female peers.

Even the clothing for women, at least that which is cheaper and more accessible to the general public, is somewhat troubling in that the focus seems to be to reveal as much of a woman’s form as humanly possible, yet at the same time, to infantilize her. I once remarked that I was tired of seeing clothing made for “baby prostitutes,” as so many of the items available for women would be incredibly revealing yet covered in pastel bows, equipped with tiny pockets, buttons, or additional frou frou that made me feel more like someone who is 5 instead of 25. Of course, style is different everywhere, clothing trends change, etc. But I mention all of this because I think it goes hand in hand with the gender divide and the issue of beauty.

Brazilian men, who certainly are the benefactors of such beauty standards (i.e. economically) are not held to nearly as high expectations when it comes to appearance, and that relates to anything from physical care to clothing choices. It is arguably the same in the United States, though in both countries some men are beginning to become more appearance-focused. What is different, however, is that in general, women in Brazil (appearance-wise) tend to fit into a very specific box and men in another, the divide being so great that determining one’s sexuality (i.e. gay, lesbian, straight) can boil down to the simplest of things like if a woman’s nails are manicured or wears dresses out dancing (or not) or if a man cares about his weight and hair color (or not).

So while from a distance, the idea of Brazilian female beauty being that of heavenly proportions, in actually, women in Brazil just tend to work much harder on average than women in the United States and some other countries in the West. But that beauty certainly does not come without a heavy price, one on which one’s social acceptance and class mobility can depend far more so than elsewhere.

Next: On Class (Part 2)

by Special Correspondent Wendi Muse

“So, are the girls hot?”

This is the most common question I receive from American men when I explain that I have been living in Brazil. These men come from all walks of life, are of various racial, ethnic, and class backgrounds, and of varying levels of education, exposure to other countries, etc. Long story short, this question seems to be on the minds of many men. It is, for better or for worse, a universal curiosity.

But in my response, I quickly put things in perspective.

“Well, for one, Ugly travels. I see just as many unattractive people in Brazil as I do in the States, and equally as many beautiful people on both sides as well. But I can safely say that the majority of women in Brazil work really hard to be beautiful, more so than the majority of American women.”

There are usually follow-up questions about body types (butts being the primary focus, of course) and clothing styles (are the clothes all skimpy?) and I handle those accordingly. The preoccupation with appearance in Brazil-related questions is to be expected considering that one of the primary portrayals of Brazil in the United States relates to beach culture, scantily-clad women, and sex. But when one takes the time to consider the reasons behind the high standards of beauty in Brazil, it is obvious that there is more to being beautiful and participating in the process of achieving that than just a bikini wax or the perfect nails. Beauty in Brazil is a complex matter involving gender, race and, most certainly, class.

In terms of statistics, Brazilian surgeons perform cosmetic plastic surgery at one of the highest volumes in the world. According to the Brazilian Society of Plastic Surgery, 1,157,540 cosmetic surgical procedures were performed in 2007, placing Brazil behind the United States in the volume of annual procedures (the U.S. ranks number one with 1.8 million, a number that does not include reconstructive surgery or non-invasive procedures like botox injections). For 2008, the Brazilian beauty industry (and this number only accounts for formal sectors) recorded $21.7 billion reais (about $11.8 billion USD) and a 10.6% growth in revenue since 2007. Articles upon articles remark at the growth of the beauty industry despite the pending doom of the global economic crisis. Coincidence? I think not.

In the upcoming weeks, this 3-part article on beauty in Brazil will continue with analysis based on race, class, gender, and media. Be sure to stay posted for more!

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*Bela (yes, just one L, aka that is not a spelling mistake) means “beautiful” in Portuguese
**Pictured: Brazilian model Adriana Lima
***For statistical citations, please see the following:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/6430219/The-Plastic-Surgery-Capital-of-the-World

http://www.yourplasticsurgeryguide.com/trends/asps-2007.htm

http://www.esteticafacial.biz/cirurgia-plastica-0
http://www.revistamercado.com.br/vernoticia/45/2/

Because this is a fashion plus politics blog, I want to post some very brief thoughts about the protests rocking Iran after what some observers are calling a fraudulent election, reinstalling President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad against his main opposition, moderate reformer Mir Hossein Mousavi. (For news about the election and protests, The New York Times’ The Lede News Blog is frequently updated. For more analysis, check out Juan Cole.)

A glance at the Western media coverage from before and after the election reveals an overwhelming visual trope — the color photograph of a young and often beautiful Iranian woman wearing a colorful headscarf, usually pinned far back from her forehead to frame a sweep of dark hair. Such an image condenses a wealth of historical references, political struggles, and aesthetic judgments, because the hijab does. As Minoo Moallem argues in her book Between Warrior Brother and Veiled Sister: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Politics of Patriarchy in Iran, both pre- and postrevolutionary discourses commemorate specific bodies –whose clothing practices play a large part— to create forms and norms of gendered citizenship, both national and transnational. What Moallem calls the civic body becomes the site of political performances in the particular contexts of modern nationalist and fundamentalist movements.

This particular image being disseminated throughout the Western press right now is no exception — we are meant to understand the looseness of the scarf, the amount of hair she shows, as political acts, manifesting a desire for Western-style democracy. But this shorthand is too simplistic, too easy. As Moallem argues, Islamic nationalism and fundamentalism are not premodern remnants but themselves “by-products of modernity.” As such, the image of the Iranian woman in her loose headscarf is not a straightforward arrow from Islamic backwardness to liberal progress, but a nuanced and multi-dimensional map of political discourse and struggle.

In her book, Moallem writes, “while I am interested in the production of the civic body, I want to show its instability over time in Iran.” We can see this instability in the histories of forced unveiling and forced veiling that mark particular historical and political moments in Iran. Very briefly, and no doubt simplistically, the pro-Western Reza Shah banned the veil in 1936 in a broad modernization effort, authorizing police to forcibly unveil women in the street. Women donned the veil during the lead-up to the revolution as a visible act of defiance against the Shah’s corrupt and brutal rule. After 1979, the broad coalition that had briefly united against the Shah was destroyed by the conservative Shia cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, resulting in a fundamentalist regime that, among other things, enforced veiling for women. As such, Moallem argues, forced unveiling and forced veiling are not dissimilar disciplinary practices that regulate the feminine body as a civic body subjected to the order of the visible. Moallem observes,

“My grandmother’s body –like my own later– was marked by corporeal inscriptions of citizenship. Both of us shared an incorporated traumatic memory of citizenship in the modern nation-state. She was forced to unveil; I was forced to veil. Living in different times, we were obliged by our fellow countrymen respectively to reject and adopt veiling. Our bodies were othered by civic necessity.” (Between Warrior Brother and Veiled Sister, 69)

This is the barest intimation of the complicated history of the civic body we are seeing in photographs from Tehran now — in which the young woman with the scarf tied loosely, the lock of hair curling against her cheek or forehead, is made to stand for both this history and also for so much more. As such I would issue two cautions. The first, we cannot necessarily know from how a woman ties her headscarf what the shape of her politics might be. And second, we might commit further violence (refusing her complex personhood, for instance) in assuming that we can.

But because the hijab is so often made to stand as a visual shorthand for Islamic oppression in the West, I wanted to reference its specificity as a political performance of a particular feminine civic body in Iran (which would be different than its history in, say, Turkey, where some female Muslim university students are demanding their rights to education against the state ban on headscarves in public schools and government buildings) in order to render these photographs that much more complex, and the emerging political situation that much more nuanced, in this moment.

(Image Credits: New York Times, Huffington Post, Getty)

A couple of weeks ago I had the Toronto launch of my novel, Shine, Coconut Moon. I prepared myself in the usual way, going over what I would read, how I would introduce myself and the book to the guests, and anticipating audience questions during the Q&A. This Q&A, however, threw me off. I should have known better than to expect the usual, “So, when did you know you wanted to be a writer?” line of questioning from my Canadian peeps.

The questions they wanted answers to were more along the lines of: So, what would you say is the difference between Canadian racism and American racism? And, Would you say South Asians in the U.S. are more assimilated than South Asians in Canada?

Maybe I brought it on myself with the intro.

Before reading an excerpt, I talked a bit about how, while living in Canada, I never thought of myself as Canadian – I was always Indian or Punjabi or Sikh and then later, South Asian. It wasn’t until I moved to the U.S. and lived through eight years of the Bush administration, that I felt the most Canadian I’d ever felt in my life. That was when I realized that things I’d always taken for granted (free universal health care being only one of many) were values that formed and shaped who I was. They were the underpinnings of what I thought was right and just. And I was clearly not in Canada anymore.

But having to answer those tough questions for fellow Canadians was one of the most difficult things I’ve had to do yet. So much of the experience sits as half-formed thoughts that I had to somehow mold into coherent responses.

Things like the fact that when I lived in Canada, I reveled in my “ethnicity,” wore my Indian-ness with unapologetic joy. But the minute I crossed the border I shrunk from everything that made me appear “too” ethnic. I was hassled at the border several times when I visited home and tried to return. My partner at the time begged me to remove my nose ring and to dress more “corporate” so that I would get across. And the time that I followed that advice, the crossing was smooth and uneventful. I understood, then, on a much deeper level, why that push for assimilation was so strong south of the border.

Things like the fact that most of the South Asians in the U.S. were recruited during the “Brain Drain” from India in the 60s and 70s while Canada threw open its doors to “unskilled labor” from parts of South Asia. And that this history is critical in looking at the differences between the experiences of South Asians in the U.S. and Canada. Whereas the “professionals” who came over to the U.S. became a “model minority” – held up as examples of what was possible if one were to just pull themselves up by their bootstraps, unskilled laborers sweated in low pay factory jobs, stood for hours on assembly lines, and cleaned up after their Canadian bosses.

And yet, to write the post-9/11 thread in my novel, which takes place in New Jersey, I went back to the first years after we arrived in Canada. The fear of backlash, the hostile environment toward anyone who was perceived as Muslim, or Arab, or a terrorist, the shame of being unwanted and unwelcome in your own home – all were as true for Indian-Americans (and anyone else with brown skin) post September eleventh as they were for South Asian immigrants in Canada in the late 60s and early 70s.

It was within the first year after we arrived in Canada that the Sikh temple next door to us was set on fire with the words, “Pakis go home” seared onto the walls. And immediately after the events of September eleventh, Sikh temples were bombed and set aflame in both Canada and the US in retaliation for the attacks in New York and Washington.

In Canada, we as children fought the slur of “Paki” by distancing ourselves from it. We tried to explain to our tormentors that we could not be Pakis because Paki comes from the word Pakistan and we were from India. Therefore we could not be Pakis. And those of us who were from Pakistan came up with other stories to prove that we were not the same as the people our tormentors hated. In the U.S., immediately after the attacks, there was a major media campaign that had television commercials at regular intervals with people of all backgrounds proudly proclaiming, “I am an American.” In other words, I am not the Muslim, Arab, Brown, terrorist, “other” that you hate; I am just like you.

So while the histories of the two countries are different, the politics and psychology of fear are the same. One of the questions I was asked was along the lines of, “We always hear about American racism and how horrible it is, wouldn’t you say Canadian racism is just as bad, if not worse?”

I struggled to answer this one, because I honestly don’t know which racism is worse. I know that discrimination of any kind is about fear and shame . . . it makes you not want to be who you are and you have to fight to love your own Self. I know that the U.S. has a history of slavery and internment camps, but Canada has the Komagata Maru incident and a healthy scattering of Neo-Nazis in all provinces.

And I know that here in North America, we fight whatever our fight is – discrimination based on gender, race, sexuality, class . . . while in other places women are fighting the politics of Faith. They are fighting for the right to say no to sex with their husbands. They are fighting men who call them whores because they are not being “good Muslims” and are, instead, embracing the ideology of “Christian infidels.”

And the only thing I know for sure is that none of us is fighting for the right to be Brown or female or gay or wealthy. We are fighting for our very basic human rights. The right to be who we are, exactly as we are, and entitled to the same privileges as anyone else.

So as I considered the questions at my book launch at the Toronto Women’s Bookstore, I was grateful to be in a room with such thinking, probing minds. People who are looking for answers—hoping, knowing that the way things are right now isn’t really working for anyone. And that there absolutely is a better way . . . we just have to keep asking the questions that will help us find it.

This post is dedicated to Frankie Manning. Frankie died this morning of complications related to pnemonia. He was one month shy of his 95th birthday. I will really miss him.

Frankie is a lindy hop legend. He choreographed the first clip below and is the dancer in the overalls.

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In the 1980s, there was a lindy hop revival. Lindy hop is a partner dance invented by African American youth in Harlem dancing to swing music in the early 1930s. Named after the “hopping” of the Atlantic by Charles Lindbergh Jr., it became wildly popular in the 1930s and ‘40s, traveling from the East to the West Coast and from black to white youth. Since its resurgence, Lindy Hoppers have enjoyed a national scene with websites, workshops, competitions, and city-wide social events that draw national and international crowds.

Though lindy hop was invented by African Americans, lindy hoppers today are primarily white. These contemporary dancers look to old movie clips of famous black dancers as inspiration. And this is where things get interesting: The old clips feature profoundly talented black dancers, but the context in which they are dancing is important. Professional black musicians, choreographers, and dancers had to make the same concessions that other black entertainers at the time made. That is, they were required to capitulate to white producers and directors who presented black people to white audiences. These movies portrayed black people in ways that white people were comfortable with: blacks were musical, entertaining, athletic (even animalistic), outrageous (even wild), not-so-smart, happy-go-lucky, etc.

So what we see in the old clips that contemporary lindy hoppers idolize is not a pure manifestation of lindy hop, but a manifestation of the dance infused by racism. While lindy hoppers today look at those old clips with nothing short of reverance, they are mostly naive to the fact that the dancing they are emulating was a product made to confirm white people’s beliefs about black people. Let’s look at how this plays out.

This clip, from the movie Hellzapoppin’ (1941) is perhaps the most inspirational clip in the contemporary lindy hopper’s arsenal:

By the way, the dancers are in “service” outfits because of the way lindy hop scenes featuring black dancers were included in movies. Typically they would have no relationship to the plot; they would occur out of nowhere and then disappear. This was so that the movie studios could edit out the scene when the movie was going to be shown to those white audiences that were hostile to seeing any positive representation of black people at all. If you want to see how the scene above emerged (black “help” suddenly discovering musical instruments and spontaneously congregating), you can watch the extended clip here.

Here’s another clip (not to diss Duke Ellington, but the dancing starts at 0:57):

Both of those clips feature a dance troop called Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers. You can see other famous dance segments in Boy! What A Girl! and Day At The Races.

The clip below, from the Ultimate Lindy Hop Showdown (2006), reveals how powerfully contemporary lindy hoppers have been influenced by clips like the ones above. Watch for how the styling, moves, and trick reflects the clips above:

Another good example can be found here (but the angle, audio, and visual quality are not very good).

So we have a set of (mostly) white dancers who naively and wholeheartedly emulate a set of black dancers whose performances, now 70 to 80 years old, were produced for mostly white audiences and adjusted according to the racial ethos of the time. On the one hand, it’s neat that the dance is still alive; it’s wonderful to see it embodied, and with so much enthusiasm, so many years later. And certainly no ill will can be fairly attributed to today’s dancers. On the other hand, it’s troubling that the dance was appropriated then (for white audiences) and that it is that appropriation that lives on (for mostly white dancers). Then again, without those dancers, there would likely be no revival at all. And without those clips, however imperfect, the dance might have remained in obscurity, lost with the bodies of the original dancers.

As a white lindy hopper myself, for over ten years now, who desperately loves this dance, I find this to be a deep conundrum.

I don’t know what Frankie would have had to say about this critique. But I do know that he loved lindy hop to his last days and he was grateful for the revival. Here he is dancing with Dawn Hampton, another legend of lindy hop, at the age of 94:

I’lll miss you, Frankie. And I’ll keep on dancing, embodying, with ambivalence, all the great contradictions of the dance and the history of this country.

*Note – Spoilers and lengthy.*

My mother would never win any awards, believe me. You could call her an absentee parent: if she wasn’t at work she was sleeping and when she was around it seemed all she did was scream and hit. As kids, me and Oscar were more scared of our mother than we were of the dark or el cuco. She would hit us anywhere, in front of anyone, always free with the chanclas and the correa, but now with her cancer there’s not much she can do anymore. The last time she tried to whale on me it was because of my hair, but instead of cringing or running I punched her hand. It was a reflex more than anything, but once it happened, I knew I couldn’t take it back, not ever, and so I just kept my fist clenched, waiting for whatever came next, for her to attack me with her teeth like she did to this one lady in the Pathmark. But she just stood there shaking, in her stupid wig and her stupid bata, with two large foam prostheses in her bra, the smell of burning wig all around us. I almost felt sorry for her. This is how you treat your mother? she cried.

And if I could have I would have broken the entire length of my life across her face, but instead I screamed back, And this is how you treat your daughter?

Things had been bad between us all year. How could they not have been? She was my Old World Dominican mother and I was her only daughter, the one she had raised up herself with the help of nobody, which meant it was her duty to keep me crushed under her heel. I was fourteen and desperate for my own patch of world that had nothing to do with her. I wanted the life that I used to see when I watched Big Blue Marble as a kid, the life that drove me to make pen pals and to take atlases home from school. The life that existed beyond Paterson, beyond my family, beyond Spanish. As soon as she became sick I saw my chance, and I’m not going to pretend or apologize; I saw my chance and eventually, I took it.

If you didn’t grow up like I did then you don’t know, and if you don’t know then it’s probably better you don’t judge.

You don’t know the hold our mothers have on us, even the ones that are never around – especially the ones that are never around. What it’s like to be the perfect Dominican daughter, which is just a nice way of saying a perfect Dominican slave. You don’t know what it’s like to grow up with a mother who never said a positive thing in her life, not about her children or the world, who was always suspicious, always tearing you down and splitting your dreams straight down the seams. When my first pen pal, Tomoko, stopped writing me after three letters, she was the one who laughed: You think someone’s going to lose life writing to you? Of course, I cried; I was eight and I had already planned that Tomoko and her family would adopt me. My mother of course saw clean into the marrow of those dreams and laughed. I wouldn’t write to you either, she said. She was that kind of mother: who makes you doubt yourself, who would wipe you out if you let her. But I’m not going to pretend either. For a long time I believed her. I was a fea, and I was worthless, I was an idiota.

—The Wildwood, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

My eyes drank in every word of Wildwood, the second chapter in Junot Díaz’s novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. On the plane from Baltimore to Austin, the narrative gripped me solidly by the throat, turning a casual curiosity about Oscar into a desperate longing to hear more from his sister Lola.

When the plane touched down, my sweatshirt was crunchy with the salt from shed tears and I had run through six napkins while the story unfolded. I grabbed my bags, and called my boyfriend who had been badgering me about reading the novel for some months now.

“Why didn’t you mention Lola?” I asked.

“Who? Oscar’s sister? Why is that…oh.” His voice suddenly bloomed with recognition and we sat in silence for a few seconds.

In all the reviews I have read about the novel since I finished the final page, the character of Lola is generally a footnote. Described as a beautiful girl, or a troubled girl, or Oscar’s sister, the strength of her narrative and her story seem overshadowed by the book’s focus – obviously, Oscar – or by the story of her mother, Belicia, the beautiful prieta who seemed forged partially from the steel intended to break her into submission. And yet, to me, Lola’s story was the most compelling, reflecting back in stark focus so many emotions, trials and ideas that were intimately familiar to me and the other girls I knew growing up.

Some seem confused at why Lola’s story was included or why things were so hypersexualized, but to me, it was so painfully true to life that I had to catch my breath after reading. Others have raised approximately half of the question, which is wondering why the female characters reflected on their bodies so often. The blogger over at Asking the Wrong Questions writes:

[C]ontinuing unabated through all these upheavals, a deep-seated racism that runs the gamut from the valorization of light skin to anti-Haitian genocides, and a misogyny that permeates every aspect of Dominican life.

If, that is, misogyny is even the right word. To hate women, after all, one must first acknowledge their personhood, if not their right to express it. In Díaz’s Dominican Republic, and in the immigrant neighborhoods in which Oscar, Lola and Yunior grow up, women are things, objects of desire, whose worth is measured solely by their attractiveness to men. And they all buy into it. The internalized racism on display in the novel is scary (Oscar’s dark-skinned mother is self-conscious of her skin color, and as a girl will only date light-skinned boys), but not nearly as terrifying as the internalized misogyny that every single female character–even the indefatigable Lola–drinks down with her mother’s milk. Oscar, fat and unattractive, at least survives his childhood, but when a neighborhood girl is similarly afflicted, she goes crazy with self-hatred. Nearly every female character in the novel has a boyfriend who slaps her around, and to whom she goes back again and again. Not a single one of them seems to consider that she doesn’t need a man in her life.

That blogger and I may have been reading the same book, but there is a chasm of cultural ideas and nuance that fall here, shading Diaz’s words and leaving us on different shores of understanding.

Damn, where do I even start?

Growing up young and brown, I cannot think of a time post puberty when your skin color wasn’t reflected upon, at least in passing. One hopes it becomes something we grow to love about ourselves and come to embrace – however, it can become a measure of worth and the perceptions of others have a strong hand in shaping that reality. One of my cousins realized early on that light skin was to be praised, and spent the rest of her days at the pool covering up with a beach towel so her skin would not tan. I escaped hearing much commentary about my mid-brown skin tone (not light enough to be tagged with “red boned,” “yellow,” or “light skinned” not dark enough to be called “midnight,” “darkie,” or “blackie”) but you start hearing the same refrains over and over again, sinking into a place underneath your skin, when you wonder why light skinned automatically translates into “more beautiful” and dark skinned automatically translates into “less beautiful” you never really get an answer. There are so many words used in Oscar Wao to describe skin color (morena, indio, prieta, mulatta, black) that I find it strange that the ranking systems so clearly pointed out in the book are re-interpreted as “being conscious” of one’s color.

In Oscar Wao – like in life – skin color references are cultural shorthand for other things. In the chapter surrounding Belicia’s (Oscar and Lola’s mother) life, her tone is used in multiple ways.

The first to mark her as different and possibly cursed – her parents did not share her coloring and Belicia being born dark was seen as a bad omen.

The second was to reinforce the contempt shown to those who are brown skinned. Light skin is associated with both desirability and class status and there are multiple scenes that take pains to show how she was treated, in spite of her great physical beauty, because of her tone.

The third was to demonstrate how this system plays out, even today, where straighter hair, lighter skin,and keener features is envied and still desired, and it is still common practice to point out desirable and undesirable features and to catch hell for what you have that others may envy and to catch more hell for features you have that don’t conform to set standards of beauty.

This is why, in a later passage, Lola notes ” I never caused trouble, even when the morenas used to come after me with scissors because of my straight-straight hair.”

And this is why my best friend in the world carries a lot of scars from being deemed too pretty, too different. She caught so much shit in school from other girls for possessing features that other girls found desirable.

“You think you’re special because you have long hair/light skin/green eyes? Do you bitch?”

On the flip side, taunts about not conforming to the ideal are often just as harsh. I had another darker skinned friend who told me that Biggie’s line “black and ugly as ever” was shouted at her on a few different occasions, prompted by the simple act of walking down the street.

Dismissing these complicated navigation of beauty ideal and cultural manifestation of those ideals as simply “internalized racism” reminded me of why I can sometimes be wary of the application of anti racist terms. Throwing light skin privilege in with the genocide of the Haitians also had me scratching my head as to how one small term can encompass all the issues involved with both of those situations, things that Diaz takes great pains to parse out in the book. It also drives me nuts that these things were tagged as “internalized racism” when there are some extremely powerful outside forces dedicated to maintaining these types of hierarchies. Yes, there are those in our communities of color that take it upon themselves to maintain these fucked up standards, but let’s not act like these issues materialized out of thin air.

Hell, even Wei – “the Chinese girl whose father owned the largest pulpería in the country” and besieged by racist remarks herself – felt the need to tell Belicia:

You black, she said, fingering Beli’s thin forearm. Black-black.

Moving on to the issue of internalized sexism, I have to run back to Asking the Wrong Questions and tackle the sexism assertions line by line:

In Díaz’s Dominican Republic, and in the immigrant neighborhoods in which Oscar, Lola and Yunior grow up, women are things, objects of desire, whose worth is measured solely by their attractiveness to men.

So, this only happens in the DR and immigrant neighborhoods? Can they pass this memo around to other men?

And they all buy into it. The internalized racism on display in the novel is scary (Oscar’s dark-skinned mother is self-conscious of her skin color, and as a girl will only date light-skinned boys), but not nearly as terrifying as the internalized misogyny that every single female character–even the indefatigable Lola–drinks down with her mother’s milk.

Thanks for ranking racism and sexism, and for never even thinking that the two could possibly complicate each other. For example, a lot of women of color have been othered by these rigid eurocentric standards of beauty and start to adopt the type of hyper-conformity that borders on performance. If women – of all races and backgrounds – are informed that the key to self-worth is being found attractive by a man (and not a man of their choice, any man at all that gazes upon them) and at the same time women of certain races are told that they are out of the bounds of attractiveness of various reasons, it only stands to reason that some of us will go above and beyond to ensure conformity and try to capture some semblance of the ever-out-of-reach ideal.

Oscar, fat and unattractive, at least survives his childhood, but when a neighborhood girl is similarly afflicted, she goes crazy with self-hatred.

Hmm, and Olga couldn’t possible serve the purpose of illuminating that disparity?

Nearly every female character in the novel has a boyfriend who slaps her around, and to whom she goes back again and again.

And this is still a major problem in our communities. That hasn’t changed.

Not a single one of them seems to consider that she doesn’t need a man in her life.

This was my head desk moment. This was the point where I felt like the gulf of experience was a bit too big to hope to bridge.

I must have been reading a different book.

Because in the book I read – as in life – the men in each of these women’s lives were not central figures. There are men, yes, and Oscar is the unifying force in the narrative, but the people Belicia and Lola were involved with were not the point unto themselves. The men stood for the method of escape. With the exception of The Gangster and Yunior, all the men in the book that Lola and Belicia were involved with were ways to get the hell out.

Lola’s boyfriend Aldo is the method to escape her mother. Sure, she loved him. Kind of. But reading through the lines, the catalyst for her leaving with Aldo was that he asked to her to come live with him. Sex was part of the travel cost. As I have written before, a guy is the easiest way to escape a fucked up family life.

But this easily overlooked difference belies the true genius in Oscar Wao. It isn’t just a documenting a fictionalized account of the things that happen in our real life communities. The book shines in how Diaz fills in what would normally be an outline, and shows us the after. Or more appropriately, how Diaz demonstrates how there ain’t no happily ever after. There are just choices and consequences. Lola runs away, with a guy, and promptly finds that this man is not the answer to her problems:

It was like the stupidest thing I ever did. I was miserable. And so bored. But of course I wouldn’t admit it. I had run away, so I was happy! Happy!

Notice how Lola did not say, I had left to be with Aldo. The man is the method.

I kept waiting to run into my family posting up flyers of me on the boardwalk, my mom, the tallest blackest chestiest thing in sight, Oscar looking like the brown blob, my tía Rubelka, maybe even my tío if they could get him off the heroin long enough, but the closest I came to any of that was some flyers someone had put up for a cat they lost. That’s white people for you. They lose a cat and it’s an all points bulletin, but we Dominicans, we lose a daughter and we might not even cancel our appointment at the salon.

No where in her hopes is a point where Aldo starts treating her like a queen. You know why? Because her leaving home wasn’t about him, specifically. He was just the one who happened along at the right time to be the catalyst.

Belicia didn’t fare much better.

In Belicia’s chapter (The Three Heartbreaks of Belicia Cabral), she spends the beginning of her story pining for Jack Pujols. The blogger at Asking the Wrong Questions attributes this to:

(Oscar’s dark-skinned mother is self-conscious of her skin color, and as a girl will only date light-skinned boys).

I didn’t see that at all in the text. Belicia is forced to be conscious of her skin color – society will not allow her to forget. And Belicia does not like Jack because he’s happens to be light skinned. Most of the students at her tony prep school are fair skinned with light eyes, a function of structural racism, a reflection of a system that bestowed wealth and opportunity on those who are light and scorns those who are dark. She goes for Jack because he is the best – the best looking guy in school, the one from the wealthiest family, the one all the girls want – not simply because of his coloring.

And Jack was -at the time – the best ticket out.

The man is the method.

So, if the man is the method, how does one get the man?

Let’s go back to some of the graphic language in OW that gets it smacked with the sexist label.

Beli is unable to catch the eye of Jack at school, and despairs for a bit. Until, one transformative summer:

Where before, Beli had been a gangly ibis of a girl, pretty in a typical sort of way, by summer’s end she’d become a mujerón total, acquiring that body of hers, that body that made her famous in Baní. Her dead parents genes on some Roman Polanski shit; like the older sister she had never met, Beli was transformed almost overnight into an underage stunner, and if Trujillo had not been on his last erections he would have probably gunned for her like he’d been rumored to have gunned for her poor dead sister. For the record, that summer our girl caught a cuerpazo so berserk that only a pornographer or a comic-book artist could have designed it with a clear conscience. [...]

If Beli had been a normal girl, being the neighborhood’s most prominent tetúa might have pushed her into shyness, might have even depressed the shit out of her. And at first Beli had both of these reactions, and also the feeling that gets delivered to you by the bucket free during adolescence: Shame. Sharam. Vergüenza. [...]

For the first month, that is. Gradually, Beli began to see beyond the catcalls and the Dios mío asesina and the y ese tetatorio and the que pechonalidad to the hidden mechanisms that drove those comments. One day on the way back from the bakery, La Inca muttering at her side about the day’s receipts, it dawned on Beli: Men liked her! Not only did they like her, they liked her a fucking lot. [...]

Beli, who’d been waiting for something exactly like her body her whole life, was sent over the moon by what she now knew. By the undeniable concreteness of her desirability which was, in its own way, Power. Like the accidental discovery of the One Ring. Like stumbling into wizard Shazam’s cave or finding the crashed ship of the Green Lantern! Hypatía Belicia Cabral finally had power and a true sense of self. Started pinching her shoulders back, wearing the tightest clothes she had. Dios mío, La Inca said every time the girl headed out. Why would God give you that burden in this country of all places!

Telling Beli not to flaunt those curves would have been like asking the persecuted fat kid not to use his recently discovered mutant abilities. With great power comes great responsibility…bullshit. Our girl ran into the future that her new body represented and never ever looked back.

Beli, a person who lamented in the book about how she was bored with her life, that she longed for something else, but her mental skills weren’t quite up to par. She wasn’t the smartest. So what was left to her? Her work ethic was one. But there was something else, this thing that she never requested, never asked for, and yet was here. And at her disposal.

Notice how Diaz described it:

By the undeniable concreteness of her desirability which was, in its own way, Power.

In its own way, Power.

Not just Power.

Because this type of power never comes without a price. It is a very common experience to be forced to quickly understand that you have suddenly shifted from being at the mercy of adults to holding this double edged sword of sexuality. And the choices Beli makes later are based on her using her appearance to substitute for the benefits she would have achieved if she was not limited by her skin tone, gender, and upbringing. There is the idea that women need to use every tool at their disposal to get ahead, that because life is so fierce and unforgiving, you have to work with what you have, whatever it may be, and make whatever trades you need to make.

And Beli looked at her present, looked at her tool kit, thought about what she wanted and made her decisions accordingly.

This may not be right.

This may not be moral.

But it’s real.

(To be continued in part two.)

I finally got around to watching AmericanEast this weekend. Full disclosure: I had originally read Tariq Nelson’s review, which was a pretty good rundown.

AmericanEast is an attempt at mainstreaming American Muslims and attempts to portray the struggles Muslims face in the United States. In my opinion, they overdid it and never established a coherent plot. And on top of that, I found that the characters had no depth and some were cartoonish caricatures.

The movie centers on Mustafa, an Egyptian immigrant who owns a café in a heavily Middle Eastern part of Los Angeles. His life, and the lives of several close to him, is one problem or tragedy after another: at one point during the movie, I asked myself whether anything good was ever going to happen to anyone.

Mustafa has a sister, Salwah. Tariq outlines her character:

Salwah Marzouke, Mustafa’s sister, was a nurse that styled hair in the back of her brother’s restaurant and was arranged to marry her cousin Sabir. However she did not like him and they did not get married. But the cousin was never informed (at least not on camera) and the story was dropped. Salwah was also interested in a doctor at her hospital who was not Muslim.

The movie stresses over and over that marrying Salwah off is Mustafa’s duty (or so he believes). Sabir comes from Egypt to marry Salwah and take him back home with her, although she is less than excited (that’s an understatement) about this arrangement. Even though she often fights with her brother, she gives off major submissive, dutiful vibes that plague many female Muslim characters in the form of wide-eyed, helpless stares contrasted with humbly averted eyes and lowered chin.

She is attracted to a white, non-Muslim doctor who works with her at the hospital, and after the arranged marriage “thing” magically goes away, she agrees to let him cook Japanese food for her at his house. They start getting hot and heavy, but Salwah asks him to stop suddenly. She nervously apologizes, stammering that she thought she could “do this” but she can’t, and gives him the whole “it’s not you, it’s me, you wouldn’t understand” before rushing out.

Because Salwah’s character isn’t developed enough for us to know what she’s thinking (did she realize that she’s just not that into him? Did she decide that he was going too fast for her, and maybe she’d like to begin again under different circumstances? Did she think that maybe she should give Sabir a chance? Or maybe she realized she was on her period?), the viewer must fall back on the dutiful vibes and assume that she’s backing out of sex or maybe a relationship with this doctor out of an obligation to culture or religion or tradition, despite the fact that one of her friends stated that Salwah is “no Virgin Mary” earlier in the movie.

Salwah’s inclusion in the movie symbolizes The Great (and imaginary) Conflict between America and the “Muslim World” or a clash between tradition and modernity. The movie sets up these false dichotomies through Salwah, having her arranged marriage illustrate tradition (which is often synonymous with religion) and her career and brief date illustrate “modernity.” The burden of “marrying her off” is a traditional one her brother feels he must carry, although she is not interested in being such a burden. In fact, because Salwah has two jobs and supports Mustafa and his rapidly failing café, it is he who is the burden.

Mustafa also has a daughter. Tariq explains her role in the movie:

Leila Marzouke, was Mustafa’s dope smoking/dawah giving daughter. She had a scene that was like an infomercial in which she is talking about Islam and Middle Eastern history with her friend while smoking marijuana. That seemed to be her only purpose in the movie. Came off as very forced and as if the movie was preaching to the audience.

I definitely agree with Tariq’s analysis of her character, and have serious issues with the cartoony “history/philosophy” lesson about Islam and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. First, having all the Arabs in the movie be portrayed as brown dudes with turbans and huge noses was incredibly off-putting.

Second, condensing an entire region’s millennia of history into a cartoon is mistake enough, but so is leaving out everyone but American, Israeli and Arab players, as if Kurdish Saladin was the only non-Arab/non-Israeli/non-American to make a significant difference in the area’s politics. Whatev.

What irked me the most, however, was when the Crusades were over, and supposedly everyone was cool. The cartoon showed Christian and Muslim man alike at a huge party, complete with camels and I Dream of Jeannie-inspired women ornaments. Camels and bellydancers. Really? Perhaps here’s where I should remind you that this movie is intended to break down stereotypes. I guess that doesn’t extend to racial or sexist ones.

But, as Tariq says, this is the largest reason for Leila’s inclusion in the movie. The other main reason is to get ordered around by her father (“Leila, see what the customer wants”) or serve as a catalyst for escalating troubles for her father (like when she irritates a consistently rude café regular, who then yells at her father).

In fact, women in general seem to be nothing more than props or catalysts in this movie. Murad, an anti-Jewish café regular, uses women to establish a connection with Jewish Sam as they smoke a hookah pipe: “The best sex I ever had was with a Jewish girl and a Muslim girl at the same time. You know how people fight over Jerusalem? That’s how they fought over my dick.”

Classy. And it also helps break down the stereotype that Arabs and Muslims are sexist pigs who have little regard for women. Oh, wait…

Despite the fact that this movie really did bother me long after I saw it, the aim of Hesham Izzawy, the director, was a noble one. The movie, however exaggerated and exclusive of women, does highlight issues and problems that Middle Eastern Americans and Muslim Americans often face in a country whose mainstream gives us “War on Terror” products like 24 and Obsession, which vilify Muslims and Middle Eastern people through flat characterizations of “angry bearded terrorist #1” or “captive veiled woman #5”.

The movie does so while addressing uniquely American issues. Fikri, a café regular, states that all this hatred toward Muslims and Middle Eastern people is because of our newness: “This happened to the Italians, the Irish, the Jewish when they were new here. Now we’re the new ones.” A definitely interesting and relevant historic observation that hints at a brighter future.

Ray Hanania might be a little more rosy on his assessment of the movie and it’s impact than I (the film wasn’t picked up by theaters), but I believe that this movie, written and directed by Arabs and Muslims, and featuring a large Middle Eastern American cast, is part of a larger media movement by Middle Eastern Americans and Muslims designed to mainstream themselves into America’s culture. Television shows, movies, books, and comedy tours featuring Middle Eastern Americans and Muslim Americans are actively working to get their voices heard and represented. Though the waves of immigrants from Ireland and Italy had to wait for generations to be accepted into the mainstream, Middle Eastern and Muslim Americans like Izzawy are refusing to play the same waiting game.

This incident of obvious police violence occurred last Novemeber. On Thursday Deputy Paul Schene pleaded not guilty to fourth-degree assault in Superior Court. According to the Washington Times,

“Schene was investigated previously for shooting two people — killing one — in the line of duty in 2002 and 2006. Both times his actions were found to be justified, said Ian Goodhew, prosecutor’s deputy chief of staff.”

It is telling that Schene did not want the video released because his lawyers felt that it would be prejudicial. Apparently in this instance a picture does not equal a thousand words.

When we think of police violence we think of black men however, black women are routinely beaten and attacked when they are forced to interact with the justice department. When Kathryn Johnston was sitting peacefully in her home and the police stormed in with a trumped up no knock warrant it cost her – her life. This 92 year old grandmother died from 6 bullets.

Dymond Millburn was in her own backyard when undercover officers supposedly confused her with a white prostitute and physically assaulted her. Their confusion was justified because she happened to be wearing short shorts at the time of the incident. In defending themselves they attempted to slut shame her and many participated convinced in their belief that all black women are deserving of such treatment.

Duanna Johnson was sitting in an airport minding her own business when she was physically assaulted by two white police officers. They struck her repeatedly in the head and referred to as a he/she and it. Before she was murdered she filed a lawsuit against the Memphis PD that resulted in two of their officers being fired.

There is also the case of Shelia Stevenson.

For the crime of riding her bicycle on the sidewalk, this woman was punched repeatedly in the face. Former police officer Carlo Drogo accidentally maced his dumb ass and of course had no compunction about making Stevenson pay for his stupidity.

You will note that in all of the above mentioned cases the police departments where quick to attempt to smear the victim. The Philadelphia News makes it a point in their story to report that there is an outstanding warrant for Stevenson. Even if someone does have a previous history of criminal activity how does that justify any of the violence that suffered at the hands of people that are sworn to protect and serve them?

LaTanya Haggerty was catching a ride home with her friend when they were pulled over for double parking. Within minutes she lay dead when the officer confused her cell phone with a gun. Though her family received 18 million in a settlement I am sure they would have preferred to have their daughter in their lives. Caroline Sue Botticher, an unarmed African American woman, died after police in West Charlotte, N.C., fired 22 rounds at the car in which she was a passenger when it failed to stop at a police checkpoint in April 1997. There was no evidence to suggest that anyone in the car was armed. Sandra Antor was lucky enough to escape with her life after being pulled over for speeding. She was however yanked out of her car, and wrestled to the ground by Lance Corporal W. H. Beckwith.

Time and time again black women are assaulted by the police and yet the community only seems to rally when a black man is murdered or otherwise injured. Whose lives do we value? Police brutality is not a genderized issue. Our bodies are routinely beaten and in same cases we are subject to the extra indignity of sexual assault. When we speak about police violence being an issue for the black community it needs to be understood that without the inclusion of black women we are not seeing the whole picture.

The pressure young black women feel to defend black men against racist attacks, even at their own expense, is a new variation on the centuries old standard for black women’s race loyalty. This community wide standard – which asks women to take the hit (metaphorically and literally), to be content with dynamics in which they sacrifice themselves and care for others’ interests over their own – mimics the terms of an abusive relationship. As bell hooks has pointedly reminded us, although we should avoid demonizing black males “[b]lack females must not be duped into supporting shit that hurts us under the guise of standing beside our men. If black men are betraying us through acts of male violence, we save ourselves and the race by resisting.”

—Tricia Rose, The Hip Hop Wars, p. 127

Latoya’s Note: I’ve been thinking about these ideas a lot lately, in various conversations of feminism, on threads about Chris Brown and Rihanna, and looking over some of the conversation threads here. So I wanted to open this up to the floor. Other women of color, I encourage you all to participate and talk about how the dynamic described plays out (or does not play out) in your experiences. Men of color, I want you to listen first. You can feel free to comment, but I notice on a lot of threads men tend to become extremely defensive when women want to talk about things that are literally killing us.