Hillbilly Xenophobia Meets Its Match

(via queerpocalypse-deactivated20110)

We must recognize the efforts of the courageous, such as Manal al-Sherif, who risked social and legal punishment for her push for women’s rights. As the AP reports:

Authorities detained a Saudi woman on Saturday after she launched a campaign against the driving ban for women in the ultraconservative kingdom and posted a video of herself behind the wheel on Facebook and YouTube to encourage others to copy her.

Manal al-Sherif and a group of other women started a Facebook page called “Teach me how to drive so I can protect myself,” which urges authorities to lift the driving ban. She went on a test drive in the eastern city of Khobar and later posted a video of the experience.

More on women challenging the ban on driving here.

紙老虎. According to the Chinese, a “paper tiger” is that which appears dangerous or threatening as a tiger, but is in fact harmless. This concept is in one way, a variant conclusion to the “yellow peril” narrative. Here, Wesley Yang’s insightful essay harasses (and that’s truly the correct word here) many narratives—both social and self-told—that dominate the notion of Asian American achievement. Touching upon meritocracy, the Bamboo ceiling, Amy Chua’s “tiger mother parenting” and its flip-side, Yang hopscotches the personal, social, cultural, ethnic, and racial frays that conspire to obscure Asian Americans. It’s a must read piece which includes some jaw-dropping anecdotes, such as the following from Eddie Huang, owner of BaoHaus in the Lower East Side of Manhattan:

Huang had a rough twenties, bumping repeatedly against the Bamboo Ceiling. In college, editors at the Orlando Sentinel invited him to write about sports for the paper. But when he visited the offices, “the editor came in and goes, ‘Oh, no.’ And his exact words: ‘You can’t write with that face.’ ” Later, in film class at Columbia, he wrote a script about an Asian-American hot-dog vendor obsessed with his small penis. “The screenwriting teacher was like, ‘I love this. You have a lot of Woody Allen in you. But do you think you could change it to Jewish characters?’ ” Still later, after graduating from Cardozo School of Law, he took a corporate job, where other associates would frequently say, “You have a lot of opinions for an Asian guy.”

Read the full piece here.

WATCH: asians in the library of the world: a persona poem in the voice of alexandra wallace

Slam poet Beau Sia’s persona poem that inhabits the voice of UCLA student Alexandra Wallace who went on YouTube to rant against Asians directly challenges notions of cultural myopia and hegemony, American-ness as white-ness, and xenophobia that underscores the kind of racialized lashing out exhibited by Wallace. In Sia’s words:

after watching “asians in the library,” and many subsequent postings in response, i wrote this. rather than attack alexandra wallace for her thoughts, i decided to write a persona piece in her voice, as a means to address some of the greater issues revealed in her rant. in the end, this poem isn’t really about her and what she said, but more the thoughts and beliefs people hold, without considering the entire history that may have led them to think and believe in the manner that they do. my hope is that we can all use this moment to recognize that we all need to improve our ability to understand and share this world with each other. this is just a small contribution to furthering that conversation.

Bless the Japanese and their sense of order and civilty.

She was elderly and alone, injured and in pain. When the massive earthquake struck, a heavy bookshelf toppled onto Hiroko Yamashita, pinning her down and shattering her ankle.

When paramedics finally reached her, agonizing hours later, Yamashita did what she said any “normal” person would do, her son-in-law recounted later: She apologized to them for the inconvenience, and asked if there weren’t others they should be attending to first.

+ here

Oh the pain the wealthiest Americans must endure! The rhetorical horseshit that is “shared sacrifice” that the Republicans are selling and Democrats are starting to peddle too are make clear here in this side-by-side comparison of what the wealthy are retaining and what everyone else is loosing.

(Source: jackdean.posterous.com)

What Would Jesus Not Do?

Some people just don’t get the spirit of Christianity, only the dogma.

[via: 9gag]

WATCH: How the Rest of the World is Catching Up to the U.S.

What the segment is suggesting is that it’s not that the United States is falling behind, but that the rest of world is catching up to the “healthy & wealthy corner” of the graph. But the statistics in how the United States performs in things like educational testing show that in fact the US has not only started to lag, but to decrease in aptitude.

“…Western tourists — as liberal and open-minded as they believe they are — tend to be stunned by all the penis images in this conservative society where people seldom show affection in public. According to Ura, that’s because Westerners are accustomed to nudity and sexuality on the female form – flaunting nudes, torsos and breasts – whereas the Bhutanese traditionally shy away from reducing females to sex symbols.

‘Representation of female nudity is conventionally a blatant sign of reduction of the female to sexuality,’ Ura said. ‘Phallic imagery that reminds men of their self-centeredness is a counterculture, not a celebration of the male.’”

+ here

[Photo credit: Iva R. Skoch]

Where the Homos Go

(via political-cartoons)