oh finally; thanks for ceasing to fail, LJ
RACEFAIL '09
I ran across it a few weeks ago; I thought it had blown over and decided I didn't need to comment on it.
And then I found out it was still ongoing.
Here's a quick summary of the brouhaha.
And an additional development wherein Elizabeth Bear is a little conspicuous about her unclothed arse.
So here's a thing about me: I love fantasy. I adore speculative fiction, I revel in it, it is my pride, my joy, my refuge, my comfort zone.
Here's another thing about me: I am Asian -- my parents can both trace ancestry to Qin China, and I have a smidge of Nonya blood through my father's side of the family, which I found out about quite recently. I have lived in Asia almost my entire life, first in Hong Kong, then in Singapore. I was born in Malaysia, and I am so very glad to call my mother's hometown my own also, because I love the town, though I don't know that I could live there year-round.
And apparently, if I want to make it in this industry, it'll have to be alongside people I have virtually lost all respect for. Who have stepped all over my racial background, who have marginalised me simply because I haven't a shred of Anglo-Saxon about my person, and who refuse to see that they have hurt me.
I've lurked around fandom for a long time. I've seen people from all over the world involved in it. I've interacted with some of them, and the days of my actual interactions with fandom people lies far in the old, old days of Sheroes. This section of the fanbase now means ... nothing?
Oh, fuck that.
I used to think Making Light was cool. Now, I'm glad I never really got involved there. Goodbye, Elizabeth Bear; I'm relieved I didn't pick anything up after Carnival now.
Will Shetterly can fuck off, and take Kathryn Cramer with him. You know, I've been questioning my paranoid decision in like '04 or something to flock my LJ. The whole coffeeandink thing? Is absolutely reminding me of why paranoia can be good.
Here is one more thing about me: I attend an American university, which is jarring for me, since I grew up in bits and pieces of the British Commonwealth, along with being, you know, Malaysian Chinese in America. I've been congratulated, more than once, for my grasp of the English language. Most times, I demur and I reply that English is my first language. This is untrue. My first language is Singlish, which has a horrendous grammatical structure, made of piecemeal scraps of Chinese, Malay, and Tamil, I think? hammered forcibly into the English.
But if you asked me to articulately write on something, anything, in Singlish, I would not be able to. It just feels and looks too awkward to me.
My cousin asked me, this past December, to say something in an American accent. I tried, and I found that I could not, because I associate my different Englishes with different people. I have trained myself to the point where I cannot speak Singlish to my schoolmates, and I cannot speak American to my family.
I am proud that I can approximate a 'neutral' accent. There was a boy in my international high school who was Indonesian Chinese, and had a very strong Singlish accent (Singlish, Malaysian English, and Indonesian English are about interchangeable, though there are regional differences, of course, as the language/dialect is jargon heavy). He was made fun of a lot, though he took it with good grace. I always thought myself superior for being able to avoid the teasing where he couldn't.
Now, I wonder if he was braver than I could ever hope to be.
I have trained myself to write in the Queen's English, and I don't know how to express myself in the written word with Singlish. I don't know that I could express myself face-to-face with you in Singlish.
How's that for cultural appropriation?
Thank you, SF/F pros, for telling me that this means just about nothing to you.
Oh, what a negative note that is to end on! Just to fix that, here, links: verb_noire (whoops, almost spelt that as 'verbe'; evidently there is too much French being screwed into my head (this is a lie, I'm failing it!)) and fight_derailing.
Edit: I posted this entry late last night, fuelled on a nauseous stomach (which is not entirely the fault of RaceFail) and a diet of, uh, cornflakes and dried beef. So! There are things I want to add to this public entry, clarify my position a bit.
I mentioned up top that I'm Chinese. I mentioned that I was hurt by the discussion and poo-flinging that has been around through the entire debacle, but I failed to touch upon my RL situation re: privilege, which people know if they live around South-East Asia, but probably not if they're American, which is where most of the primary players in this thing reside.
Me, currently? I am in Switzerland, doing a year of study overseas. If there's anything wonky about timestamps, it's because my LJ is still set to Singapore time, and because I am not actually in LA at this moment in time.
I'm Malaysian, and a Malaysian Chinese who happens to be Christian, which comes with a set of problems in Malaysia, which has a racial majority of Malays, and Malay Muslims. It is the norm for my cousins back home to bribe their way into actually getting their driving licences. For me to get my Malaysian IC, my aunt had to help us through her contacts in Kuala Lumpur, or it would have taken forever and a day.
However, I grew in Singapore, which is quite unlike most of South-East Asia in that its population ratios, from least to greatest goes like this: other minorities, Eurasian, Indian, Malay, Chinese. Last I read, in my social studies textbook when I was twelve, the percentage of Chinese peoples in the Singapore population was 70%. This means that I grew up as part of a racial majority. Before I was seven, I lived in Hong Kong, which is an island off China, so you imagine how that goes.
Now, I'm a girl geek, so I feel more at home in fannish settings and am generally rather awkward at social situations. I am subject to lovely things as geek fallacies and a weakness for a good book over, say, clubbing or attending church events. I tend to feel more at home online, in the midst of geek media culture, particularly to SF/F, and more recently, manga and anime fandom.
One of these two, which is the one I grew up with, is predominantly white. I've been immersed in white culture since I was very young; after the move to Singapore, my mother slipped an Enid Blyton book into my lap, I turned to British and subsequently American lit, and I never turned back. TV shows and movies, which I watched infrequently, were usually in English. (This is probably why I fail at my Mother Tongue. Oh Mandarin, how I hate to love you.) When I left primary school, my parents sent me to an international school, where I came into contact with people from everywhere, but the predominant language was English, our teachers were predominantly white (my three favourite teachers were from New Zealand, Australia, and Canada goooooo British Commonwealth).
But I have always lived in places where I was surrounded by large Chinese populations. I have never been threatened in the way one reads about in newspapers. I have never been harassed for the colour of my skin or the shape of my eyes, because the majority of everyone looked like me. I knew I had to be wary, of course, at all times, but that's also because I'm female and small, and because of geek paranoia.
I am a person of privilege.
If I have ever felt marginalised, it has been in the places where I chose to rest my head, in the fandoms that I sought out. But they all live far away from me, and the reality of my physical life, the one I spend offline, is that I am a little grain of sand on a beach of sand grains.
So while I feel horror and hurt over the comments of people I used to look up to, this is me having nothing next to people who have had to be a minority all their lives, and even in the relative anonymity of the Internet, are still being set aside because they 'look funny'.
I ran across it a few weeks ago; I thought it had blown over and decided I didn't need to comment on it.
And then I found out it was still ongoing.
Here's a quick summary of the brouhaha.
And an additional development wherein Elizabeth Bear is a little conspicuous about her unclothed arse.
So here's a thing about me: I love fantasy. I adore speculative fiction, I revel in it, it is my pride, my joy, my refuge, my comfort zone.
Here's another thing about me: I am Asian -- my parents can both trace ancestry to Qin China, and I have a smidge of Nonya blood through my father's side of the family, which I found out about quite recently. I have lived in Asia almost my entire life, first in Hong Kong, then in Singapore. I was born in Malaysia, and I am so very glad to call my mother's hometown my own also, because I love the town, though I don't know that I could live there year-round.
And apparently, if I want to make it in this industry, it'll have to be alongside people I have virtually lost all respect for. Who have stepped all over my racial background, who have marginalised me simply because I haven't a shred of Anglo-Saxon about my person, and who refuse to see that they have hurt me.
I've lurked around fandom for a long time. I've seen people from all over the world involved in it. I've interacted with some of them, and the days of my actual interactions with fandom people lies far in the old, old days of Sheroes. This section of the fanbase now means ... nothing?
Oh, fuck that.
I used to think Making Light was cool. Now, I'm glad I never really got involved there. Goodbye, Elizabeth Bear; I'm relieved I didn't pick anything up after Carnival now.
Will Shetterly can fuck off, and take Kathryn Cramer with him. You know, I've been questioning my paranoid decision in like '04 or something to flock my LJ. The whole coffeeandink thing? Is absolutely reminding me of why paranoia can be good.
Here is one more thing about me: I attend an American university, which is jarring for me, since I grew up in bits and pieces of the British Commonwealth, along with being, you know, Malaysian Chinese in America. I've been congratulated, more than once, for my grasp of the English language. Most times, I demur and I reply that English is my first language. This is untrue. My first language is Singlish, which has a horrendous grammatical structure, made of piecemeal scraps of Chinese, Malay, and Tamil, I think? hammered forcibly into the English.
But if you asked me to articulately write on something, anything, in Singlish, I would not be able to. It just feels and looks too awkward to me.
My cousin asked me, this past December, to say something in an American accent. I tried, and I found that I could not, because I associate my different Englishes with different people. I have trained myself to the point where I cannot speak Singlish to my schoolmates, and I cannot speak American to my family.
I am proud that I can approximate a 'neutral' accent. There was a boy in my international high school who was Indonesian Chinese, and had a very strong Singlish accent (Singlish, Malaysian English, and Indonesian English are about interchangeable, though there are regional differences, of course, as the language/dialect is jargon heavy). He was made fun of a lot, though he took it with good grace. I always thought myself superior for being able to avoid the teasing where he couldn't.
Now, I wonder if he was braver than I could ever hope to be.
I have trained myself to write in the Queen's English, and I don't know how to express myself in the written word with Singlish. I don't know that I could express myself face-to-face with you in Singlish.
How's that for cultural appropriation?
Thank you, SF/F pros, for telling me that this means just about nothing to you.
Oh, what a negative note that is to end on! Just to fix that, here, links: verb_noire (whoops, almost spelt that as 'verbe'; evidently there is too much French being screwed into my head (this is a lie, I'm failing it!)) and fight_derailing.
Edit: I posted this entry late last night, fuelled on a nauseous stomach (which is not entirely the fault of RaceFail) and a diet of, uh, cornflakes and dried beef. So! There are things I want to add to this public entry, clarify my position a bit.
I mentioned up top that I'm Chinese. I mentioned that I was hurt by the discussion and poo-flinging that has been around through the entire debacle, but I failed to touch upon my RL situation re: privilege, which people know if they live around South-East Asia, but probably not if they're American, which is where most of the primary players in this thing reside.
Me, currently? I am in Switzerland, doing a year of study overseas. If there's anything wonky about timestamps, it's because my LJ is still set to Singapore time, and because I am not actually in LA at this moment in time.
I'm Malaysian, and a Malaysian Chinese who happens to be Christian, which comes with a set of problems in Malaysia, which has a racial majority of Malays, and Malay Muslims. It is the norm for my cousins back home to bribe their way into actually getting their driving licences. For me to get my Malaysian IC, my aunt had to help us through her contacts in Kuala Lumpur, or it would have taken forever and a day.
However, I grew in Singapore, which is quite unlike most of South-East Asia in that its population ratios, from least to greatest goes like this: other minorities, Eurasian, Indian, Malay, Chinese. Last I read, in my social studies textbook when I was twelve, the percentage of Chinese peoples in the Singapore population was 70%. This means that I grew up as part of a racial majority. Before I was seven, I lived in Hong Kong, which is an island off China, so you imagine how that goes.
Now, I'm a girl geek, so I feel more at home in fannish settings and am generally rather awkward at social situations. I am subject to lovely things as geek fallacies and a weakness for a good book over, say, clubbing or attending church events. I tend to feel more at home online, in the midst of geek media culture, particularly to SF/F, and more recently, manga and anime fandom.
One of these two, which is the one I grew up with, is predominantly white. I've been immersed in white culture since I was very young; after the move to Singapore, my mother slipped an Enid Blyton book into my lap, I turned to British and subsequently American lit, and I never turned back. TV shows and movies, which I watched infrequently, were usually in English. (This is probably why I fail at my Mother Tongue. Oh Mandarin, how I hate to love you.) When I left primary school, my parents sent me to an international school, where I came into contact with people from everywhere, but the predominant language was English, our teachers were predominantly white (my three favourite teachers were from New Zealand, Australia, and Canada goooooo British Commonwealth).
But I have always lived in places where I was surrounded by large Chinese populations. I have never been threatened in the way one reads about in newspapers. I have never been harassed for the colour of my skin or the shape of my eyes, because the majority of everyone looked like me. I knew I had to be wary, of course, at all times, but that's also because I'm female and small, and because of geek paranoia.
I am a person of privilege.
If I have ever felt marginalised, it has been in the places where I chose to rest my head, in the fandoms that I sought out. But they all live far away from me, and the reality of my physical life, the one I spend offline, is that I am a little grain of sand on a beach of sand grains.
So while I feel horror and hurt over the comments of people I used to look up to, this is me having nothing next to people who have had to be a minority all their lives, and even in the relative anonymity of the Internet, are still being set aside because they 'look funny'.