Are Public Address readers bored yet of election talk and national identity discourse? I mean... national identity?? SNORE! Back to what you really come here for: Hot Asian chicks flashing their crotches and talking about their sex lives... for, like, democracy and stuff. Totally.
The Reporters Sans Frontières Asian Freedom Blog awards have been publicised on this site before. This trash-talking INXS-idol-humping blog has, itself, been bizarrely designated an Asian Freedom Blog on the site of an actual Asian Freedom Blogger. But more fittingly, Yellow Peril today commemorates Amnesty International Freedom Week by opening nominations for the Yellow Peril Asian Freedom Slag awards.
Human Rights Watch has disseminated its I Blog for Human Rights logos throughout politically-conscious cyberspace. I encourage you to acquire the full set of accompanying I'm a Slag for Human Rights logos, and to take the new Yellow Peril Which Asian Freedom Slag are you? test.
These are my four nominees, all Chinese or from the Chinese diaspora - please write in with your own sub-regionally-focused or ethnically-clustered nominations.
The Yellow Peril Asian Freedom Slagroll:
Sarong Party Girl (Singapore)
Here in New Zealand, her blog would have been just another postfeminist diary of a fairly smart and very slutty teenager. With the occasional 'arty' soft-focus titty-shot. Ho-hum. What happened? She's Singaporean. The cleancut online citizens of the Lion City freaked out. They were concerned for her parents, very concerned. They gave themselves RSI and exceeded her bandwidth, by exercising that rigorous, upright concern. They also called her ugly, denigrated her breast-size, and hate-mailed her for criticising the sexual prowess of Asian men. Basically, it was a failure of intelligent discourse, despite her very classic liberal call to arms which failed to strike a chord:
"If you're just going to call me a slut, just don't bother. I rather be a slut then an idiot with a tight wedgie up my ass. You're just spamming up the comment feature. I'll try this bloody thing for a few days and see if people actually bother to say anything worthwhile. If they don't, then it really kinda defeats the purpose. You are completely welcomed to disagree with me, but you better have a good reason to do so, and you should do it nicely. Otherwise, go shit on your own blog and leave the people who actually have something worthwhile to say, alone.
Actually, I think it would be really interesting if people generally have intelligent, logical arguments and voiced them here, because now a whole lot of people are reading. And it will be nice to know that we aren't as conservative as the powers that be think we are. And maybe we're ready for a change."
Lainie (Malaysia)
Just across the Straits is Lainie, the dirty-minded lesbian IT-geek-next-door, whose fascination with male porn, adventures in sex-toy purchasing, and fondlings of her girlfriend, are casually chatted into the mainstream in a country where 'sodomy' is still a criminal offense.
"Happy birthday to CJ In honour of the day he was born, I present thee a few paragraphs about some gay porn I watched recently, because born rhymes with porn.
Nah, actually I just happen to be watching porn."
Furong Jiejie / 芙容姐姐 (Mainland China)
Furong Jiejie's closest living conceptual relatives are <A HREF="Everyone loved the Asian Freedom Blog awards - now nominations are open for the Asian Freedom Slag Awards!
" target="_blank">the Notorious MSG, who brag about their irresistability in an almost identical manner. Haters have called her deluded, ugly and fat. Actually, she's perfectly normal-looking, with a booty and rack that most little Chinese girls would be envious of, let's face it. The virulence of her detractors is astounding. They cannot seem to accept that a normal woman could have such a high opinion of herself, and be this happy with her appearance. Even Malaysian celebrity-blogger Kenny Sia has displayed an astounding lack of appreciation. I thought he had a better sense of humour than that - but I guess no-one disses Xiaxue and gets away with it these days. Did Furong Jiejie spring forth as a fully-fledged ironic-intellectual performance artist from the Republic that irony forgot, or she is une slague savante? Either way, it's pure genius. With a hundred million - yes, a hundred million readers in China, Furong Jiejie is starting to unnerve the far less popular Communist Party of China, who are pressuring her blogserver to marginalise her site. From her Chinese-language site (roughly translated):
Reporter: What is the ultimate reason for your success?
Furong Jiejie: I think I'm different from other people. I have the courage to display my talents. People only have one lifetime - why not reveal your gifts for everyone to see?
And from her Engrish site:
"In your life you cannot find one as lovely as me.
Men have fainted at the sight of me.
I cannot stop to pick them up or I would be late.
Bye-Bye!"
Let a hundred million Furongs bloom.
Bai Ling (Western Diaspora)
Bai Ling is all but indescribable. You may as well just follow the link. She doesn't have a blog, but has her own section of Gofugyourself, THE badly-dressed-celebrity site. She is also the only Asian Freedom Slag in this Slagroll who has actually participated in a genuine democracy movement. And been paid for naked pictures, not just given them away online. So... um. Great?
"My name means 'white spirit,' meaning 'free spirit,' " said Ling, who, wearing a short denim skirt and a stringy silk blouse, was about as free- spirited as you could get while not getting an NC-17 rating.
"In America, I feel I can dance more freely. In China, just the contrary. I feel like I have to be aware of everything."
May as well shortcut some arguments since I really should be writing up my Jung Chang interview (who could have been a Freedom Slag if she'd managed to work more nookie into Wild Swans):
What the hell does being a slag have to do with human rights?
Well, which freedom is more closely related to the civil and political freedoms of speech, thought, conscience, association, and political opinion: Freedom of sexual expression, or the freedom to shop? I think the former. In that regard, Sarong Party Girl is more of a Freedom Blogger than Mr Brown or Xiaxue.
Why is Xiaxue not a Freedom Slag, when she's just as arrogant about her looks as Furong Jiejie, and also rather funny?
She's just not enough of a slag. If she gets sued for libel by a government agency, for example, for bitching about the dress-sense of civil servants, then she'll be a Freedom Slag. Mr Brown dips his toes into the freedom pool every so often, in between shopping, but doesn't get reprimanded, and is also not enough of a slag.
Don't these Freedom Slags perpetuate the three-headed stereotype of Asian women as either whores, Dragon-lady bitch-queens, victims, or a combination thereof?
Probably. Although they also add new stereotypes: exhibitionists, ungraceful heffalumps, freaky kooks, confident mediocrities, and prolific writers.
Aren't Freedom Slags just depressing for women?
What would be considered daring acts of liberated female sexual expression in conservative societies, do seem little more than mundane sexploitation to the residents of the decadent, liberal-democratic West. Oftentimes, it's mundane sexploitation there as well. The true test of a Freedom Slag is the context within which they operate. If they are being admonished by an all-powerful state and vilified by a repressive conservative society for Slag-like activities that are harmful to no-one, then they're a Freedom Slag. If they are just being laughed at, they're are probably merely a garden-variety Slag. When there's potential for disruption in a repressive society, grab it.
Here's to Freedom Week.