Exoticizing

This was written as a mini essay for my class. It refers to parts of “Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan” by Lafcadio Hearn, “Lost Japan” by Alex Kerr, and “In Praise of Shadows” by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki. I think it’s still more or less understandable even if you’ve never read any of these, I apologize if it isn’t.

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A lot of people don’t understand that exoticizing is a problem. It’s saying positive things (on the surface) about a thing, so how could it be bad? However, exoticizing a culture, religion, group of people, or anything else, generally involves othering it. By talking about how the experience in Japan is so indescribable is to also say that it’s so different from the experience where he lived before that. It could even mean that Japanese is completely different from any English speaking country, that the words only don’t exist in English because Japan is that different a culture. It fetishizes the Japanese, and possibly all of “the East” into something mystical that can never fully be understood by people of “the West”, rather than just people in a culture that is different to his own the same way that his culture is different to all others.

Now, it’s important to acknowledge cultural differences. Expecting all cultures to be a carbon copy of your own is unrealistic, and it is possible to acknowledge the beauty in other cultures without exoticizing them. However, treating any culture that’s “too” different to your own as exotic and foreign to such a degree also leads to treating the people as that. Hearn says (emphasis added) “everything as well as everybody is small, and queer and mysterious”. He doesn’t just see the physical place of Japan as this, but all its people as well.

The way he treats artists is a very good indication of why this is so problematic. He says that artists achieve their skill “[n]ot by years of groping and sacrifice” but “his art is an inheritance”. Japanese artists don’t work to be good. They’re just naturally talented. The same could be said for occidental artists- even Michelangelo’s craft was heavily shaped by the millennia of species and cultural development that predated the Italian Rennaissance, yet no one says that Michelangelo was an artist “without sacrifice”. The work of occidental artists is acknowledged and respected, saying that Japanese artists don’t work but have inherited their skill is to completely erase all of the work that goes into Japanese craftsmanship and to discount the effort of Japanese artists. It also groups all Japanese artists together, rather than recognizing the individuality of each.

This is exactly what exoticizing does. It sounds very nice and complementary, but underneath it discounts the value and individuality of the people in the group being exoticized, reinforcing the otherness of the group which reinforces the superiority of the speaker. The people who exoticize are also prone to trying to force the group or culture to stay the way they see it (even if they aren’t seeing the whole picture in the first place), trying to stop individual people and even whole cultures from developing the way people and cultures naturally do, regardless of whether the change is beneficial to the people it effects.

As I said before, you can appreciate a different culture without exoticizing it. It can be a difficult to mark a line as to which is which, though, because there’s no definite line. Alex Kerr’s writing is considerably better, particularly in that he talks about the way he, personally, feels rather than using language to imply all westerners would feel the same way, and acknowledges the history and present of Japan. But he still talks about how Japan was the most beautiful place in the world because of its forests, probably without ever visiting the other tropical rainforests in the world to compare them. He talks about why Japan is developing even though many Westerners would like it to maintain its traditions so they can be tourists there in a positive light, but also refers to the effects of this development as creating a “cultural Frankenstein’s monster”.

Tanizaki Jun’ichi does talk about the difficulty of trying to balance traditional Japanese houses with Western convenience, noting that a lot of aesthetic and comfort is lost for that convenience. He shows annoyance at the way Western utilities are designed, wishing that they could “be designed with a bit more consideration for our own habits and tastes”. This is a fair thing to ask, it’s not uncommon for things- ideas, religions, styles, or furniture- to adapt to the culture around them when they’re brought to a new one. But with as much as Japan had to adapt to, it didn’t have time to adapt these new ideas to itself the way that happens when things move from culture to culture naturally.

There is also a difference in the way that Tanizaki mourns the Westernization of Japan. First, he doesn’t curse progress the way that the Westerners did, he often acknowledges why it happened and that it’s good, he instead wishes that it could have progressed to benefit the Japanese more. While the Western writers wish that they could lock Japan in the time they find “best” and not develop at all, Tanizaki wants Japan to have had the chance to develop in its own direction, he recognizes that Japan has been developing and wasn’t stagnant, that even if the West hadn’t forced itself on Japan, Japan would not remain the way it had been.

The Westerners actually don’t seem overly bothered with the welfare of the Japanese compared to their personal preferences, which is another reason why what they wrote is so problematic- they aren’t writing with regard for those they write about, they write only concerning themselves and how these changes effect Westerners, ignoring that they only had a chance to see that Japan because of those changes that forced Japan to westernize.

Why 101 Must Be By the People it’s about

101 type things should really not be run by anyone but the group in question. If they can’t actively be run by them, the group being represented needs to be heavily involved in the planning, and the whole thing should be reexamined to figure out why it can’t be run by people from the group being represented. If you have a hard time understanding this, I want you to think about something really important to your identity. Maybe your sexuality or religion or where your family is from or what country you’re from. If you’re straight, Christian and from the USA, try to think of something that most people aren’t as knowledgeable about in this country. Being a big part of who you are, it’s really important to you that people understand and respect this- that doesnt’ mean they have to know the intimate details of, say, how you have sex or the exact rituals involved in certain holidays or every single custom. With the sex thing, it’d probably be creepy if they tried to find out. But them having a good knowledge of it makes it easier for you to talk about how it effects you and know that they respect this important part of you.
Now, with how important it is that people know accurately about this, I want you to consider this situation:
Someone who is not of your sexuality, religion, family origin, country, etc  is going to be giving talks to tell people what it’s like to be. A person who has never been that sexuality (sexuality can change), never been a part of that religion, never even been to that country. This person cannot possibly know what it’s like first-hand to have your sexuality, what it’s like to be a member of your religion, what it’s like to have family who comes from that place, what it’s like to have been born or raised in that country. And this person is allowed to stand up and tell a roomful of other people who also have no idea what that’s like exactly what it is like.

How great are you feeling about that? Someone else, who has no idea what it’s like to experience that integral part of your identity, standing up and telling people what it’s like to experience that integral part of your identity. It sounds kind of weird, doesn’t it?

That’s what happens, even at the best of times, when a person who isn’t of a specific group gives an information session about that group. Even if they’ve spoken with people from that group on every subject, that’s still second hand knowledge, which is warped by that person’s own experiences. In cases of oppressed groups, this can be a big problem. Little details like what a privileged person considers correct, respectful wording vs what an oppressed person does can effect what information people get. Anyone who hears about the oppressed group from the privileged person aren’t hearing what oppressed people would say about themselves, but what a privileged person thinks oppressed people would say. This, of course, also reinforces the privilege of the person because they’re controlling what people (even if only a small group of people) know about the oppressed group.

And that’s just the best of times.

Let’s make matters worse. Not only is this person going to be telling people about something very important to you, but you find out that they don’t know as much about it as they really should or that the way they’re planning to do misrepresents or is otherwise offensive. When you try to help/tell them about this, they treat any of your opinions as less important than their plans, may even tell you straight out that they aren’t going to be doing one of the most important things you feel people need to know about, and make it clear that they’ll be doing it however they damn well please because they, of course, know better than you about your own experiences.

How great are you feeling that anyone who goes to one of these talks is going to come out more knowledgeable and respectful of that integral piece of your identity? And this is very possibly something that could happen, even by well-meaning people.

Schrödinger’s Rapist

There’s a really good post that, if you haven’t read, you should called Schrödinger’s Rapist. It brings up a very important reality of the world- a person has no way of knowing if someone you perceive as male is a rapist or not (this is true of anyone, but men tend to commit more rapes, and this is a bigger concern for people perceived as women). The chances are pretty low that any given man is, only about 4% of men are serial rapists, but these are not harmless people- this 4% is also responsible for 25% of violence against women and children. This 4% is a very dangerous 4% for a woman.

But that also means that chances are pretty good that a person a woman deals with on a regular basis is one of these men. Depending on your lifestyle, a lot of people can see hundreds or thousands of people in a given day in resturaunts or shops or cafes and other such places. A small number of those people are, most likely, rapists. And they don’t wear nice “I’m a Rapist” buttons so that people can know to avoid them.

Phaedra Starling describes her experiences of being a woman dealing with people she perceives as men.

Well, no. But do you think about it all the time? Is preventing violent assault or murder part of your daily routine, rather than merely something you do when you venture into war zones? Because, for women, it is. When I go on a date, I always leave the man’s full name and contact information written next to my computer monitor. This is so the cops can find my body if I go missing. My best friend will call or e-mail me the next morning, and I must answer that call or e-mail before noon-ish, or she begins to worry. If she doesn’t hear from me by three or so, she’ll call the police. My activities after dark are curtailed. Unless I am in a densely-occupied, well-lit space, I won’t go out alone. Even then, I prefer to have a friend or two, or my dogs, with me. Do you follow rules like these?

So when you, a stranger, approach me, I have to ask myself: Will this man rape me?

Most of the people replying to this post are noting their agreement and have names that suggest they’re perceived as women regardless of their actual gender. This by no means indicates that ALL women have this experience, some of the commenters who could be perceived as women in their lives didn’t agree with the post. But there are 1,000 comments on that post and the vast majority of them are agreement. This is not something that only one or two women think about. Also, it can’t be ignored that we’re in a rape culture that uses the threat of rape to control women and guarantees that any actual assault suffered may very well be treated with disbelief and further abuse scooped on top of it.

The few men I showed this to responded that this wasn’t fair. She was exaggerating. There was this idea that it isn’t fair of women to acknowledge that a complete stranger could be a rapist and react accordingly. It isn’t really fair to women that this is the situation, that a lot of women end up mildly or majorly altering how they act to lower their risk of being assaulted. But the idea that it isn’t fair to men that they’ll be treated with suspicion as part of the way that these women help to keep themselves safe? That’s a pretty problematic idea.

Schrödinger’s Rapist doesn’t include accusing a stranger of rape or mistreating a stranger, it just means being aware that you can’t know if a given person is or isn’t a rapist just by meeting them. It means being aware of the person’s actions to try to get a judge how likely it is that the person is. It means that if you don’t want a person to think you’re a rapist, you shouldn’t give that person reason to believe you are one. The idea that people should assume that you definitely aren’t a rapist until you give them reason to believe otherwise (and I’d guess that too many people would consider only actually raping the person as “reason to believe” a person is a rapist) is basically saying that people shouldn’t be allowed to do what they need to do to be safe because it bothers male privileged people.

A difference between Schrödinger’s Rapist and other Healthy Cultural Paranoias is that a good number of women are attracted to men, plenty of them are only attracted to men. There is no other option, so they have to trust that the men they dont’ think are rapists actually aren’t. Given the number of acquaintance, dating, and spousal rapes, this really isn’t often the case. If you can’t tell if someone you know well enough to call a friend or marry is a rapist, there’s clearly no way to know if a complete stranger is.

Of course, if the idea that people who perceive you as male could think that you’re a potential rapist, there is always one thing you can work on doing: stop people from raping. That would take care of the problem far better than chastising people for looking out for themselves.

Healthy Cultural Paranoia

Recently there was a post on tumblr about why a person of color (or any oppressed person) not wanting to date a white person (or any privileged person) isn’t “reverse racism” (or “reverse” anything else). It pointed out the phenomenon of Healthy Cultural Paranoia, and said this about it:

HCP is a defense mechanism. Maybe it’s too much work to date someone who is that much more privileged than you, or even get to know them, when you have other options. I have difficulty getting to know conservative Christians because of how I have been treated. Yes, after I get to know someone, it can be a good experience, but I wouldn’t go out of my way. I would only get to know them if I didn’t have a lot of choice. I have not nearly faced the discrimination that POC have faced in our society. I do want to emphasize that though “paranoia” has a negative connotation, hcp is healthy and is not a sign of weakness.

Misogyny

Misogyny, especially cis misogyny, is a somewhat unusual discrimination compared to most others. Men and women are constantly around each other. Men are born to women, and the vast majority have mothers and sisters. A few boys are raised by single fathers or multiple fathers but no mother, but the majority are raised in part or in whole by women. When they grow up, the cis boys are expected to marry a woman in this society that sees marriage as the ultimate form of love. Cis men are expected to spend the majority of their lives living with and emotionally closest to women. I don’t think there are many men who don’t love at least one woman.

This is distinct from most other discriminations. There are still people who aren’t even on first name terms with a person they know isn’t straight or cis or monogamous or singlet or any number of things (although this doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t actually know someone like this, just that they don’t know they do). Cis straight monogamous singlets certainly aren’t expected to spend most of their lives with trans, non-straight, polyamorous people or multiple systems. Society is still pretty segregated racially, even in places that are majority people of color it’s not unusual for a white person not to have any close friends of color. At my highschool at lunch time, white people primarily ate with other white people, it was very rare for a white person to be sitting at a table that was majority people of color or for there to be more than one or two people of color at a table of white people. I don’t think any of the tables were as diverse as the school was.

“Politically” Correct

Just over a week ago, I was making my way through customs. I referred to my neutrois partner as my “partner” and, when the person asked for clarification, I begrudgingly went with what my partner is legally. Because of my legal sex and their legal sex, I’m guessing the guy perceived me to be straight and started talking about how he has to ask because you have to be “politically correct”. I didn’t say anything because, you know, this is customs and I’d rather get into the country without hassle.

I hate the term “politically correct” because people seem to think it means “non-offensive”. It doesn’t. In theory, it does. But in practice, it generally doesn’t. It really means “what the people in power are willing to say is inoffensive”. Sometimes marginalized people can push enough to get enough privileged people to acknowledge that a word is offensive and stop using it, but plenty of times privileged people can replace it with a word they want. “African American” is a good example of it, and Abagond explains why it’s so problematic (original emphasis).

Confused

In Shrek 2, the wolf (from Red Riding Hood, who is always shown in a granny’s nightgown) is referred to as “gender confused”. We haven’t seen any indication that the wolf is confused about his gender, only that he apparently enjoys wearing a granny’s nightgown and sitting in beds where you’d expect someone else to be. He doesn’t even attack anyone and is fine working with the 3 Little Pigs. I haven’t heard any version of the fairy tale that involves the wolf impersonating the grandma because he’s questioning his gender (although, if there were, it’d be like the Silence of the Lambs in how accurately it reflects the actual process of gender questioning). What is apparently the earliest written version of the tale specifically states that he does this because “it been more than three days since he had eaten“. In all of the versions of the site, there are no transgender implications of any sort, although other details vary a good bit. And this was used in a movie aimed at children. Yes, the villain says it, but I’m sure a good number of people were thinking it, and the wording was chosen to get a laugh because people find it “funny”. Because it’s acceptable to say that a man who wears a dress is confused.

I really hate the idea of gender “confusion”. Not because no one ever questions their gender or no one is ever confused about their gender, but because it’s so often applied to people who are completely unconfused about their gender. Gender “confused” is just another way to attack and invalidate non-cis people and anyone who’s gender presentation isn’t normative. If someone is doing something because of confusion, you don’t have to respect it (and I suspect this is a bit of ablism as well, these people aren’t in their “right minds”, so they can’t make any decisions about their own lives). It’s just “a phase”. If they weren’t confused, it wouldn’t be happening. Saying that a man wanting to wear “women’s” clothes or a woman wanting to wear “men’s” clothes is confused is saying that their desire to wear those clothes doesn’t deserve to be respected, that they aren’t valid desires but a matter of “confusion”, that only desires that are inline with cisnormativity are acceptable and everything else is the result of “confusion” and just a phase. Saying that trans people are “gender confused” (and not just people who are questioning their gender/s/lessness) is to say that we’re confused about our gender, that our genders aren’t what we know them to be, that we don’t deserve the right names and pronouns and terms because we’re just “confused”.

The Military is like Sex Work

So, DADT was repealed as those of you in the US probably know. I would comment more about this, but Teen Wolf did a better job than I could. Just read that post, really, it’s better than this one.

The military is something I have as many conflicted feelings, and for the most part the same conflicted feelings, as I do on sex work. The biggest one is this:

There are people who genuinely choose to do this with no coercion (ex. can’t get any other job and need to eat) and who enjoy what they do and these people should be free to do so. But there are a lot of people who end up in the military and sex work out of desperation- that’s what a lot of Teen Wolf’s post was about, poor queer kids who end up in the military because they have no other option rather than because they want to be there. These people are the most likely to get screwed over by any system, and both sex work and the military can hurt someone very badly when they get screwed over by the system. And even for people who do choose to do it and want to, there can be situations that are permanently damaging emotionally and physically and both jobs can put a person at risk even if they’re as careful as possible and do everything right. People should, of course, still be allowed to do these jobs if they know of the risks- but this makes it even more problematic for the people who don’t have a real choice in the matter. (and even people who appear to have been coerced into it can have genuinely chosen it and would have chosen it even if their circumstances are different, but that doesn’t erase the people who really are coerced into it)

Beyond that, my view on DADT was the same as my view on same-legal-sex marriage. It’s not a great system, in fact it’s a very broken system that needs to be repaired. But the reason for keeping people out of it were incredibly busted and unacceptable.

How much socialization effects us

While working on a post I’ll do on binarysubverter once I’m up for it (it’s a controversial post so I’m waiting til I can handle the comments), I started thinking about something. And this is all just theorizing in the philosophical sense (as opposed to scientific) so if it doesn’t mesh with your experiences- please feel free to tell me and know that I don’t mean to suggest this is set in stone.

There is a fairly “standard” backstory that not all trans people share. The story is that, in the case of a woman, she always wanted to play with dolls and the other girls and found the boys’ games boring and wanted to wear skirts and have long hair. In the case of a man, he always wanted to play with trucks and the other boys and found the girls’ games boring and hated to wear skirts and wanted short hair and was probably a tomboy since that’s more acceptable. Essentially, it’s one of very much matching the gender roles of your gender.

Gender and Pronouns

A genderqueer person at my school goes by she/her/hers/herself. I don’t know if this is most comfortable, or easiest for other people (or if easiest for other people is most comfortable for her), or what. It really doesn’t matter. She is genderqueer, she is not a woman, she is troubled when one of her teachers refers to the class as “women” (including her) because she is, again, not a woman, is it really fair to call her pronouns female? But with our current system, using the correct pronouns for her is misgendering because we believe she/her/hers/herself as being female-specific and can only be used for women. You can’t call her by her correct pronouns without insulting her gender. That’s a messed up system.

This is something I have been thinking about for awhile- I’m on a few forums where people put their pronouns and sometimes it’s “he/him/his” or “it” or whatever else. Then sometimes people say “feminine” or “male”. The more I think about it- why? Especially on feminine/masculine pronouns. If a feminine man wants to be called he, why wouldn’t his pronouns be as feminine as he is? Isn’t this just further associating presentation with gender? And while they may be related- a masculine woman is still a woman, and if she wants to be called by she/her/hers/herself, why should her pronouns be any less masculine than she is?