Yellow Peril by Tze Ming Mok

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Yellow Peril: Are you gonna liberate us girls from male, white, corporate oppression?

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  • Sue,

    Out of interest, has anyone *ever* been physically attacked or even approached by anyone in NZ as a result of Internet discussion?

    Does it really matter?
    is abuse only bad if it's physical?

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 527 posts Report Reply

  • stephen walker,

    that's part of the reason why i never get involved in threads about muslims. they are so many negative and really harsh voices, yes even on pa, and i feel like a lone battler who can't possibly take them all on.

    There were some discussions a few months ago in which rampant Islamophobia was left pretty much unchallenged except by me and Simon Grigg. After a while you just start to think, "Why aren't other people pulling them up on this stuff?" Eventually you just start to think, "Why am I wasting my time when no one gives a shit?"

    And to those offended by the "white boys' playgound" quip: You are easily offended by...the truth...it is a male caucasian-dominated arena for social intercourse. get over it!

    nagano • Since Nov 2006 • 646 posts Report Reply

  • Nobody Important,

    does this thread get extra credit for inspiring some of the longest posts on PA?

    expat • Since Mar 2007 • 319 posts Report Reply

  • Sonal Patel,

    Jumping out from the shadows (but only briefly) ...

    I haven't commented on PA System that often, some of it has to do with being away from NZ, some of it has to do with not being too fired up issues raised (one notable exception being the thread that would never die), and because the reponsibility I had with my previous job, I didn't want to out myself (anonymity wouldn't have helped me).

    On reflection I have to admit that I pay more attention to your posts Tze Ming because you pick up on issues that no one else on PA does. I remember the day of the Diwali Mumbai bombs being a turning point in my political reflections on NZ. No one except you, (mainstream, alternative media or otherwise in NZ) seemed to comment about it and that made me very upset (which is another tale, for another time). If I had a blog at the time I probably would have blogged about it but I didn't.

    As it stands right now, I don't blog about political issues for a number of reasons: because I'm not home where I understand the system better; I'm tired of fighting the same fight over and over again; I'll choose another medium to express my throughts; or more often than not someone is saying it much better than me (like Sepia Mutiny, Reappropriate or your good self).

    Brisvegas • Since Nov 2006 • 18 posts Report Reply

  • Tze Ming Mok,

    Finn said:

    Why talk of "Taking back" blogs ...? I don't get that, sorry.

    However the thread has been skewed in various directions, the Take Back the Blog blogswarm is a symbolic online event to express solidarity with female bloggers who have been subjected to harassment, intimidation and threats of violence. If Finn really doesn't get that... well, wow - I'm sorry too!

    On the upside, it's always good to see Sonal; I second Anjum's props to Manakura for holding out as long as he did; and thanks to the rare appearances, first time postings, and thoughtful tomes from women PA readers generally on this thread. I appreciate you being here.

    SarfBank, Lunnin' • Since Nov 2006 • 154 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown,

    Ultimately, dude, this post wasn't about you; it was about us. I hope you can get over it.

    Hmmm ... "get over it" ...

    Tze Ming, Steven's initial post was sincere, and your answer -- "precious", "not about you", "sad", "perceived slight" -- was dismissive and somewhat bullying in tone. Muscular, perhaps.

    And I missed the part about the thread being "obviously dedicated to the women of PA being able to talk about their experiences of the internet." If you wrote it - and you used the phrase "white boys" three times - and someone wants to say something about it, I think they have the right to do so without being belittled.

    In answer to a question in your post, yes, PA does skew white and male, although not dramatically so. The biggest departure from the general population is in income (high) and professional qualifications.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown,

    However the thread has been skewed in various directions, the Take Back the Blog blogswarm is a symbolic online event to express solidarity with female bloggers who have been subjected to harassment, intimidation and threats of violence ...

    I assume it's an adaptation of the "Take back the night" mobilisations against sexual violence. Nice idea.

    On the upside, it's always good to see Sonal; I second Anjum's props to Manakura for holding out as long as he did;

    Eh? I'm not sure Manakura was "holding out" against much. He's very well liked around here and was frequently complimented for his posts. He even won the Flying Nun box set! I'm sure there was a fatigue factor, in that there was a lot of content in his posts. but I don't think he faced any more attrition than anyone else.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • Finn Higgins,

    However the thread has been skewed in various directions, the Take Back the Blog blogswarm is a symbolic online event to express solidarity with female bloggers who have been subjected to harassment, intimidation and threats of violence. If Finn really doesn't get that... well, wow - I'm sorry too!

    Thanks for removing the context in the quote.

    I don't get the idea of a symbolic online event to exclusively express solidarity with female bloggers who have been subjected to harassment etc, when there's plenty of bloggers who aren't female who're victims of the exact same behavior. Why arbitrarily restrict your solidarity? What's that supposed to symbolise? I'm not a fan of dividing up society by gender, and this seems like a division being made when the problem is wider. Does your solidarity exclude Islamic men, who're the subjects of far worse abuse on the internet than women, collectively, in mainstream political discourse right now? If so, why?

    Wellington • Since Apr 2007 • 209 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown,

    I don't get the idea of a symbolic online event to exclusively express solidarity with female bloggers who have been subjected to harassment etc, when there's plenty of bloggers who aren't female who're victims of the exact same behavior. Why arbitrarily restrict your solidarity?

    Because protests against, say, "all bad things" tend to lack focus. In the context of recent events, it's both logical and reasonable for a group of bloggers to express solidarity with women online.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • WH,

    On reflection I have to admit that I pay more attention to your posts Tze Ming because you pick up on issues that no one else on PA does.

    Ditto that. Tze Ming's work is always interesting, even if I am part of the white male corporate oppression she is writing about.

    Although one person's flippant comment is another's insulting provocation, if one was to focus on that one might miss the other things she is trying to say. Its a mistake I often have to battle my own instincts to avoid (unsuccessfully, more often that not).

    I find expressing disagreement is tricky (whether socially or online) because you don't want to shut down a unique point of view or hurt anyone's feelings but there is always that aspect to it. As Span mentioned, comments often get skewed to points of disagreement, and don't focus so much on the thoughts and feelings that people might share.

    Since Nov 2006 • 797 posts Report Reply

  • Mark Easterbrook,

    Alert! White Boy chiming in...

    Away from my desk last week, or I would have come to this sooner...

    Tze Ming, I think the root of the offence that some of the other white boy's here have taken is that, to throw a blanket term over all white males unfairly drags us into the company of those we do not want to identify with.

    I do not consider myself as part of the same subset of people as George W. Bush, for example, or Gerry Brownlee, or the National Front munters. I use other identifiers to define myself.

    Being white and male does not mean I feel I have anything in common with other white males. If by being a white boy, I am required to fit the same subset as Byron Kelleher, do you as a yellow girl have to fit the same subset as his wife, Singapore-born ex-porn star Kaylani Lei?

    At university, I hit some negativity early on from both lecturers and fellow students who, seeing only my 'white boy'-ness, assumed I had nothing to say that they wanted to hear. So I kept saying what I had to say, and eventually they realised they were wrong to assume anything based on race and gender.

    Big deal, some might say, welcome to the world of the minority. But I can clearly remember the way a particular self-identified feminist lecturer would physically react when I put my hand up before she got to know me. I could see her bracing herself to rebutt what I said before I even opened my mouth. I didn't like the way that made me feel.

    And I think that's the crux of the issue here - by calling someone by a loaded name - and "white boy" IS a loaded name - you can hurt them. If that someone is Kyle Chapman (for example), the attack may be justified but, ironically, the bullet won't wound. If that someone is me, Che Tibby, RB, Steven Crawford, or anyone who feels they have tried hard to overcome the dark side of their white-boy-ness, so to speak, the attack hits AND it hurts.

    Feel free to suggest I get over it - I have a stromg enough sense of self that this stuff isn't ruining my day - but I'm just trying (probably poorly) to show the view from the other side.




    Christ that was a long post.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 265 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown,

    Christ that was a long post.

    It's the Curse of Tze Ming: long posts, and long threads with a notably high poster-to-lurker ratio. This is a good thing.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • andrew llewellyn,

    Out of interest, has anyone *ever* been physically attacked or even approached by anyone in NZ as a result of Internet discussion?

    Not internet, but as a result of a letter I wrote to the DomPost a few years back, I received a hand delivered letter full of gibberish & warnings from someone purporting to be god (that'll teach me to criticise the SPCS).

    It was harmless, indeed highly amusing, but I was unnerved that someone took the trouble to look me up in the phone book & visit.

    Since Nov 2006 • 2075 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown,

    Out of interest, has anyone *ever* been physically attacked or even approached by anyone in NZ as a result of Internet discussion?

    I get bailed up by strangers fairly often, which is usually gratifying and cool.

    But I've also had a couple of people obtain my phone number by deceit and call and talk to family members when I'm out. I didn't like that.

    I seem to recall getting the strange hand-delivered letter once too.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • Emma Hart,

    There have been times I've been very glad that I live in NZ, and the effort required from the odd freak who can't tell me from my role-playing character to seriously RL-stalk me is prohibitively huge.

    I don't think anyone wants to trivialise real-life physical violence: at least with on-line harassment, you always have the option to switch off and walk away. But the damage done by verbal harassment is still real. I once got an email so amazingly abusive it made me cry for three days. From a woman, who was employing me at the time.

    Christchurch • Since Nov 2006 • 4651 posts Report Reply

  • andrew llewellyn,

    I seem to recall getting the strange hand-delivered letter once too.

    Anything like http://sunnyo.blogspot.com/2005/03/god-mispelled-my-name.html?

    Since Nov 2006 • 2075 posts Report Reply

  • andrew llewellyn,

    That should have been a clever link displayed simply as "this one?"

    Oh well.

    Since Nov 2006 • 2075 posts Report Reply

  • andrew llewellyn,

    Since Nov 2006 • 2075 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown,

    I once got an email so amazingly abusive it made me cry for three days. From a woman, who was employing me at the time.

    The most outrageously abusive email I've ever had was from Nick Wood, after I wrote a story based on a highly abusive Ihug staff memo someone leaked to me.

    It was so OTT it was hard to take seriously, although I did briefly worry that he'd do something silly with my internet.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • Heather Gaye,

    Rich said:

    If I'm right, it's reasonable to assume that anyone who threatens you is no more likely to take on physical form than the characters in a video game. So treat the nasty people as a string of bits, delete their outpourings and move on.

    For a few weeks I was the target of a string of abusive emails & forum comments. It wasn't any kind of random misogyny but a personal matter, it could be argued that I deserved it. I also knew the person sending the emails wasn't going to follow through. Over the course of those weeks, I stopped going out, I'd rush home from work in the dark with my hood up, and I'd sit alone in my room with the lights off. It really annoyed and frustrated me for being so affected by "a string of bits", but that was my life for a month, and no amount of trying to shake it off worked. I simply dreaded going outside. It may not seem rational, but those kind of threats are the abuse.


    Personally I've often had the tendency to fob off feminist opinion as hysterical hypersensitivity (it doesn't help when they all seem so angry). My first reaction was the same as Finn's - that it's not a male/female thing, but an arsehole thing, and that sex just happens to be a convenient target.

    I think that's because I've never been a victim of any kind of sexual discrimination (I'm not sure why that is, lucky me). I've only started understanding that misogyny actually exists (and is whole lot more nuanced than my original, rather blunt understanding) by reading feminist blogs that are heavy on real-life examples. I think that's what causes at least some of the division in this topic - that it's difficult to acknowledge that a problem exists, and the impact it has, if you've never really been exposed to something that you can specifically identify as that problem. It's telling that Finn describes the distinction (women vs other bullied people) as "arbitrary".

    Morningside • Since Nov 2006 • 533 posts Report Reply

  • Heather Gaye,

    ...the revelation in this particular case was those astounding 25-to-1 AOL figures. I know it's a small part of the net, and perhaps we're different round these here parts, but seriously, twenty-five to one???

    Morningside • Since Nov 2006 • 533 posts Report Reply

  • Tze Ming Mok,

    Okay, look - I don't see where I was 'tarring' anyone with the same 'white boy' brush as any evil imperialist, when I said 'white boy's playground'. In an earlier draft of the post, I even referred to whether we 'girls' wanted to 'play' or 'not play' in said sandpit considering the hygienic conditions, followed by an elaborate riff on gendered toys. But it was already a pretty long post, and that part was the wrap-up. The statement of race and gender was a fact, the 'infantilisation' was a joke, and one I assumed the 'nice white liberal boy' readership would have the self-deprecation to take okay, rather than as nasty patronisation. Some have, some haven't. Russell, I'm sorry that you think I was bullying to Steven, and I'm sorry to Steven if he feels bullied. However, yes, I still think it is precious for some of these guys to have been so incensed: and the fact that from the post, this was the one to have occupied a substantial part of what they were interested in, is definitely sad in my view. When I said this post and thread was 'dedicated' to women, I meant not prescriptively, but obviously in terms of context, content and feeling, in the way you might dedicate a song on the radio, and I think it is sad that one or two people thought even this was necessary to contest. Doesn't mean they don't have a right to say that; I just think it's sad. It makes me sad, that's for sure.

    In terms of Manakura, as you say:

    I'm sure there was a fatigue factor,

    That's all I was specifically talking about, in the context of Anjum's comment. Still, one doesn't have to be receiving a hiding on blogsites to experience different kinds of fatigue, when you are in the position of being the sole person repping your 'race' in a forum, even a really really nice one. Anjum will know what I mean, and so does Manakura, although I won't speak for him here!

    In that vein, I think I'm done here. [throws toys]

    SarfBank, Lunnin' • Since Nov 2006 • 154 posts Report Reply

  • Finn Higgins,

    Jesus you people are fast. Don't you work?

    A few things at a time...

    Andrew Llewellyn - me too with the hand-delivered god-bothering, but replace "SPCS" with "Destiny" and "Dom Post" with "Herald". That was about the point where I started making sure I'd considered the likelyhood of any real benefit before using my real name in public forums. I still use it, but only in environments where I tend to think the readership are likely to be reliably sane.

    Heather - no dispute from me that gender discrimination exists and is common in our society. But my viewpoint on the issue of online harassment is that it's a practical issue with practical solutions. It happens because people put their names and channels of communication out there in public, which is a choice that you do get to make. Yes, being a woman makes you a higher profile target and that's not fair. But the problem and the available solutions are identical to those faced by anybody else who's the target of abuse online - often those holding controversial opinions. As such I don't see that raising the problem as a gender-specific issue is going to address any practical solution. If somebody could outline to me how exactly it would solve the problem then I'd be thrilled to listen, but it strikes me that the time would be more fruitfully spent discussing approaches to creating online forums where such problems can be integrated into the design considerations and minimised. I'd like to see the problem solved as much as anybody, but feminist blog days seems about as likely to solve it as, say, a good word from Bono.

    Tze Ming - I think your misunderstanding lies in the fact that you believe it possible to self-deprecate other people.

    Wellington • Since Apr 2007 • 209 posts Report Reply

  • 3410,

    I agree, Tze Ming. This is so overblown.

    Out of all the jokes made on PA, some of them infinitely more cutting, this one gets all the attention?!

    Makes you wonder if there's not some reason for it.

    I note that this was your first post in six weeks, which suggests that you might be dealing with competing priorities at the moment. I sincerely hope that the ridiculous direction this thread has taken does not put you off for good.

    Looking forward to your returning with a blistering critique of this hypocracy. Kia Kaha.

    Auckland • Since Jan 2007 • 2618 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown,

    But the problem and the available solutions are identical to those faced by anybody else who's the target of abuse online - often those holding controversial opinions. As such I don't see that raising the problem as a gender-specific issue is going to address any practical solution.

    But I don't think it's identical. The Kathy Sierra case, which started all this, went from escalating sexual threats and a nasty Photoshopped picture to some creep posting her home address. I was astonished that some apparently sensible people could regard her as the baddie (sorry, "attention whore") after that.

    I do think women online are more vulnerable than men. I can't recall a case of a male blogger being subject to that kind of sexual threat, but I can think of a few blogs where you'll see misogyny most days. So if some people want to mobilise and highlight that fact, I think it's a good thing.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

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