How Intimate and Functional is Your Feminism?

I'm presenting at a conference in a little over a week. I was given 20 minutes to talk about feminism, new media, and identity. Twenty minutes.

I remember when I was in college and thinking that writing long papers was one of the biggest challenges. "What am I supposed to write about?" I always looked for fillers to make my number pages increase, as if writing MORE signified more meaning.

Eight years after college, I learned that it's short papers, abbreviated periods of time that holds true challenge. How do I only have 20 minutes to create this presentation when I have so much to say?

In preparing for this conference, I've been writing primers on feminism, my feminism. My perspective. My truth. I have been reviewing the definition of feminism and its futility in the common, everyday world in which we live in. How feminism affects the relationships we claim mean so much to us. How feminism affects our communication patterns in workplaces built on hierarchy and authority. How feminism challenges and/or enhances our expectations of the men in my life (and especially the women in my life!).

How does feminism, YOUR feminism affect you? How personal, how intimate do you allow your feminism to become?

If personal transformation is key, or a precursor to societal transformation, intimacy with feminism cannot be sidestepped. It takes a monstrous force to allow oneself to be vulnerable enough to change, vulnerable enough to change our relationships and beliefs that influence our daily behaviors. That is the function of my feminism -- using it as a ladder to climb for a better view, reaching higher [deeper] levels of clarity. It is not navel gazing if we actually USE feminism for self-transformation, instead of using it as a lens to think or muse on our own experiences. Once we're done musing, it's time to enact change. Put our lessons into practice.

For me, action and change are found in small-sounding shifts. For example...

I stopped lying.

I stopped lying to people when they ask how I am feeling. I stopped saying that I feel great and have enough energy to be pregnant, go out, cook, take care of myself, work a full time job.

I stopped lying and began saying what is really happening: I'm tired. I'm tired by 2pm everyday and need to sleep. Saying this means I've asked for help. Admitting this means allowing others to see that I'm changing and I'm affected by that change. It means acknowledging that I am not as energetic as I once was. It means allowing myself to be seen in my own skin. It means not pretending and letting whatever expectations of me that others held to fall to the ground and stay there.

I stopped lying because the energy in creating a lie - however slight the alteration of the truth it is - distracts and subtracts from the energy bank I DO have.

The result is I am able to see myself as I am: a very pregnant woman, very much in love with this experience, and needing time to Be exactly as I am.

It wasn't the hugest lie to tell. Perhaps the liberation I feel has more to do with the fact that I am being more FULLY myself, allowing more of the truth in, instead of filtering it out.

It's meant closing my door to sleep. It's meant reaching for more water. It's meant coming to grips with the darker parts of pregnancy that are creeping closer and closer in my insecurity. It's meant more doctor's appointments and less bravado.

It means being real.

Feminism, the kind I am presenting, has to do with that kind of liberation. It begins with small lies we tell ourselves to get through the day, it begins with taking down ridiculous facades we don't even need to begin with, and frees up our identity to pay attention to who we really are, what we are really about, and refocus that energy in what truly matters.

It is my hope, or plan, that beginning in those seeds of truth will allow us to grow into truth-filled bodies where we can recognize the people and places that truly need more energy and hope.

I serve no other person well if I begin from an unstable foundation.

The Complicated Life as a Regular Person

My blog is doing it's own ecdysis and I'm not sure how to respond.

I am watching it, observing it. Similar to how I am with my stomach.

My stomach is this ever expanding universe of placenta, amniotic fluid, uterus, blood, fat, and baby. Inch my inch, it makes itself more elastic-friendly.

And as my belly grows, my blog is shrinking. Or becoming shy.

Who am I now? Three years ago, I was this bold, feminist writer, searching for meaning, community, and blasting mainstream feminism for its uncaring blind spots and US-centric mannerisms.

And now?

Now I am morphing into my own authentic writing style.

My desire to write has grown day by day and my time to devote to it is decreasing day by day as my energy levels deplete and whatever hormone is responsible for making my brain so scattered increases, I am wondering

Where is my writing going?

I'll tell you where it's going -- it's going to a place that I've never taken it before. Or, at least, I'm going to TRY and take it to a place it's never been before: intertwined with my life.

Unbeknownst to most followers of this blog, I have a tiny blog for friends and family to read about my daily life. Unbeknownst to my other blog, I have this blog to write longer, free writes about life, feminism, injustice, irony, and love.

Symbolically, I am ready to merge the two together. I feel this NEED to make things as simple as possible and that means to stop separating my writing audiences. It means to be scared and let people in my circles of life KNOW my writing and try to have some faith in them. I have more faith in putting my words to strangers and faceless commenters than I do people I have to face in life.

It will mean careful writing, truthful writing, brave writing.

THAT means more time, more deliberation.

One of the things that most excites me about this step is my bravery to write like the memoirist that I am. I am not so much a blogger as I am a writer. I am funny. I also like to write about injustice. I am just a regular woman with an extraordinary desire to create and express the usually forgettable details of life. I am excited to return to MY kind of writing. I am excited, in a way, to use humor again. To be me.

And with that, my friends, my plan is to push this blog into a full website in the near future. I'm working on this (among many things), but it's in the works. I ask for your support, your thoughts about a feminist memoirist website, and overall patience in getting this thing up and running.

My goal is to have it up before my son arrives.

With new life, comes a new beginning.

This is my ecdysis.

The Last Ungendered Day

I started using the self-descriptive term "feminist" about five years ago and although my life's work to create a better world extends much longer than those five years, the lens of feminism - my feminisms, to be precise - has positively enhanced the way I experience and percieve the mystery of socialization and gender.

Tomorrow, I have my 20 week ultrasound. Before pregnancy, I didn't know that 20 weeks is a milestone. Usually with prenatal care, an "anatomical" ultrasound is done, which means Adonis and I get to see the baby growing in my uterus. We see the face, ears, feet, hands...everything...including its genitalia.

Many things have surprised me about pregnancy, but none moreso than the impact of hormones in my body. My memory has been underwater, my moods sometimes swingy, but my emotions have been fairly calm. I've felt peaceful. One of the few pieces of anxiety I've been experiencing relates to gender and finding out the sex of the baby.

I've been pretty open about my feelings concerning my pregnancy through my letters to Veronica, my unborn daughter, which I started a long time ago...well before I was pregnant. And one of my fears is not just having a child, it's about having a son. I think that my fear dwells in my uncertainty if I can teach a child and have a larger impact than the rest of the world. All the lessons this child will learn will have to be undone at some level. It begins tomorrow. It begins the moment the ultrasound technician will say "boy" or "girl."

And the barrage of texts, emails, FB messages, and comments wanting to know will begin. Along with the pink and blue bull that I don't believe in.

Facing the reality that I am carrying life within me has meant coming to the reality that I am deeply responsible for the wonder and destruction this child shall bear on the world once it enters this life and takes its first breath.

I am faced with the reality that the men who rape women once had mothers too and I wonder what they learned (or didn't) about loving and treating women, both in personal relationships and strangers. I think about the way teenage boys careen by the waterfountain at school and mock the budding bodies of womanhood and adolescence out of their own insecurity. I am, essentially, afraid of what boys because, after working with violated women and children, I know what they are capable of.

I don't want to raise a son contributing to another woman's disempowerment.

But feminism has also taught me that not only are men capable, and actually prefer, to be loving, active, energetic leaders for goodness and wholeness, it's also taught me that women are not grouped together in their fight for equality. The bullying, the cut throat competition, the hidden jealousy, the betrayal...raising a daughter now terrifies me just as much as raising a son. After I've work with violated women and children, I'm afraid I'll raise a daughter who doesn't care about her worth and values her sexuality only at the price set by society and media.

Whether son or daughter, I'm afraid she'll give up on herself.
I'm afraid, quite simply, they won't care about the world they way I do and I won't be able to stand their selfishness.
I'm afraid that when they ask me questions about what I've done to make the world better, I'll look in the mirror and only see a half-worn human and full blown coward.

Somehow, in the years I've contemplated and studied gender and advocated that all persons are equal, I'm petrified I'll find that I've only kidding myself because I know the world can and will knock me on my butt with its cruel, streamlined, flick of the wrist power to teach domination, selfishness, individualism, and greed.

Knowing this child's gender makes it all real, too real, because once I know "boy" or "girl," I'll inherit an entire set of specific strategies the world has planned to brainwash my kid. I don't have anything except what I *think* I know, a lot of guessing, intuition, and a loving partner.

I hope those seeds are enough.

Will they know how to love, truly love themselves and another human being?
Do they know the world is not fragmented and we, all of us, are inexplicably connected?
Does having this much fear dictate what kind of mother I will be?
Who will be there to save me when I'm the one in trouble?

In some funny way, I want this child to forever remain as it is right now - perfect, growing, dependant on nothing but amniotic fluid, oxygen, and my voice. Not only do I fear about this child hurting, but I'm afraid of the harm the child will be capable of doing as well.

Tomorrow I will know if I am having a son or daughter.

Marry Me Because I'm "Asian"

Thanks to Racialicious and to Angry Asian Man for a heads up on this article about how children of immigrants are "looking closer for love," according to the Washington Post who says that there is a surprising trend occurring for the second generations (children who are born in the United States and their parents are immigrants) and 1.5 generation (immigrants who enter the country at a very young age) who are choosing to marry someone from their own racial background.

The research findings are confounding social scientists who predicted that the most open-minded, Obama-witnessing generation would be increasing the number of interracial marriages. What they're finding (gasp) is the opposite - that as the number of Asians increase in the classrooms, workplace, campus, and bar lounges, the more second gens are looking for someone who understands the split identity crisis, "As children, they felt divided loyalties, growing up with one foot in their parents' home country, the other in the United States. Now, as adults, they wonder: Would I be happy with someone as American as I am, or a recent immigrant?"

At first glance, the numbers make sense and the case for same-race marriage solidifies with research: as the immigrant pool increases, so should the pride and yearning for one's cultural background be reinforced as they decide to match their race with their future spouse.

Was this research done in 1995 when nearly all Asians were swept under the same rug? Has everyone forgotten the wonderful lessons of reality television? Does no one remember the 2006 Survivor "social experiment" where teams were grouped according to race? Grouping Latinos together was fine, grouping African Americans together seemed logical, throwing the Caucasians together never rocked any boats, but throwing all the Asians together was like throwing cats in a bag.

The point wasn't that Asians don't get along. The point was showing how ignorant ABC producers were in thinking that people with Asian backgrounds were relatively the same. I guess it's a hard concept to grasp. Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Japanese, Indian, and Filipinos (just to name a handful of Asian races) are all tremendously diverse cultures whose heritages spells out extremely different experiences, even if they are "American."

When any one project, research article, or person groups Asian cultures together, it erases the rich lines of difference between them. Growing up, the erasure came from merging all Asians under one roof ("Whenver I see an Asian, I just assume they're Chinese," to "Should I take off my shoes when I come to your house?" to "I bet you'll be a doctor, right?"). But the erasure also came by class. As long as I was a well-educated middle class Asian womyn, I was similar enough to my White friends that they, "...never see race, just the person underneath." My mother's accent was "cute," and my Brown skin was "a tan."

One mentality erased me by piling on stereotypes all over my actual life so it was kept hidden. The other valued sameness and ignored the rest. Both practices made me invisible. Both practices infuriated me.

I know nothing of holistic medicine or herbal teas. Geishas are as foreign to me as speaking German. "Asian sounding" last names became identifiable only as I built relationships with people from Japan and Korea and China, not because I was born with black hair. I ate rice with a spoon and fork, not chopsticks, and wondered why "gook" and "chink" were thrown at my wide-set brown eyes, Filipino features written across the ocean of my face. I slowly understood growing up that racist comments weren't hoping for accuracy, they were meant to categorize and control.

Returning to my parents' homeland reinforced the unique existence of second gens. There is a component of belonging in the Philippines. Physically, I blended in easily and the roots of my culture are born there, but the moment I opened my mouth or talked politics, the differences shine brightly. The westernized tongue was thick in the Philippines and I stood out in my opinions of social action, negotiating personal space, and measuring "progress." Here in the United States, I physically stand out in most areas of the country (excluding NYC or CA), but my values are a mixture of eastern and western.

To be a second generation citizen in this country is not to straddle two worlds, it means to have a multi-divided intellect that can perceive and think on several different levels of intuition, cognition, and emotive signals. Surviving in schools and in social settings always depended on my ability to quickly perceive and act; to measure and weigh each step before deciding how to proceed accordingly. It was exhausting living that way, but that was the way.

The article does not break down how the research is analyzed, but just say for the sake of argument that the researchers take on the 2006 Survivor mentality that groups all Asian cultures together. Likely, then, it would consider, say, a Chinese-Japanese marriage as same "asian" race, and Filipino-Caucasian as interracial. For that, I only have three words: how utterly lazy.

The author also throws this classic line near the end as well: "Their forebears often met spouses through family introductions or arranged marriages."

Pardon me, who are "their forebears?"

Because I've never heard of any arranged marriages in my family line. The majority of the second gens in my family (20-30 of us) are pretty much in interracial long term relationships (including my gay and lesbian cousins who are not married), and our parents' marriages were hardly arranged. That might be true in another Asian culture, but not as much in Filipino culture. Here is my poetic dedication to stereotypes:

Asians
We don't speak English at all
We all eat dogs, cats, and rats
and can't drive to save our lives
We all run laundry mats.

Our women are fetishes
Our men are sexless and short
We're always number one
in any academic cohort.

We're super smart in science and math
and I'm quiet, shy, demure
and if I've got a colonized mind
a White man will be my cure!

Cuz I'm an Asian Asian Asian

There are no magic potions that trick your skin into feeling like you belong and I never looked to my primary relationship to fix that. I certainly wanted someone to understand, first hand, how it felt to walk into a room and be stared at or mocked, criticized, or discriminated. But that wasn't my litmus test. It wasn't one particular "thing" that I looked for, it was a combination of insight, gentleness, strength, and integrity that attracted me into intimacy.

There are times when I wish Adonis understood my lived experience beyond that of a cerebral reasoning. The smell of Different is incense that never leaves your clothes. Throughout my entire childhood, I felt others mentally burn a word on my forehead and while sometimes I forgot about it, something would and (still does) always happen that reminds me there's nowhere to hide from the world so long they can see the Brown of your skin or the shape of your eyes. I wish he could deeply absorb what that meant to me, to always be seen as a scary paradoxical mystery.

Our cultural differences have sparked some of the most intense fights and loving conversations and I'd be lying if I said it never bothered me that I feel quite alone in my racial identity. But that's the story of immigration and children of immigration in this country. Isolation is the birthmark of our parents, disguised isolation is the trademark of second gens.

I was open to loving anyone, but I never considered the notion that someone from a similar ethnic background would take that particular loneliness away. It's profundity is a part of my fabric and it's evolved with me as I learned how to be in significant relationships. Undeniably, yes, I wanted someone who could understand the longing that came with being racially different, but that wasn't the only kind of longing I was limited to. As a person who knows longing so well, I looked for someone who understood it on multiple levels - a longing for intellectual stimulation, a longing for God, a longing for sports and board games.

Each person - regardless of Asian race - will define "home" very differently. For many Filipinos, religion is of utmost priority. Walking into Adonis' home and hearing them make plans for mass, or tease each other about being late for church, or gripe about the length of Easter Sunday - THAT felt like home to me. The way their four siblings interacted reminded me of being in my four sibling family. The way family was centralized (oh, so very Filipino) and the loud talking, laughing, and efforts to connect as much as possible while everyone was home, that felt very familiar. And while the Sunday brunches' menu did not include pork adobo, rice, or longaniza, I felt a sense of home in his family. That "sense" of home never translated into Home, but I don't look for Home anywhere else than in my own reflections and memories.

The intensity and intricacy of our lived experiences is unpatterned. For me, it was not enough to look for someone who had a connection with culture, I was looking for someone who had a connection to their family, to their spiritual side. Among countless filters, temperament tests, and personality traits, I looked for someone who connected this world with the next, who loved to tackle mystery and faith, and trusted that the road would not be easy, but most certainly worth it. And corny jokes. Must love and tell corny jokes.

I guess that's the Filipino in me.

A Split Sister

I often write about biculturalism. I am Filipina. As a Pinay, there are not that many seekers out there looking for the same thing - truth of identity, complexity, and shifting explanations of self, home, and resistance.

Thank you, my dear Nadia, for showing me Jen Clare Garawan, who uses art to explore her Asian American identity. My sister, your work is beautiful!

Mabuhay!

Finding Filipinas

It can be challenging to find uplifting notes about Filipinas in the news.

When I google "Filipinas in the news," I am disgusted and disheartened to find stories about Filipinas being chopped up and then loaded into a washing machine, or another Pinay being molested or slain, or another being charged with a death sentence after a brutal slaying of a young child in Kuwait.

That's more than enough...Tama na...

And after all of those pleasant fields of affirmation, the very bottom of the page has an advertisement to help connect Pinays with "local and foreign men." (Niiiiiice specificity.)

I shan't be satisfied with a Ramiele Malubay link from WikiPilipinas, as lovely as she is.

For a quick brief of some great accomplishments of a few Filipina womyn, read over here...

Mabuhay!

Bi-Cultural Pinay

This is an essay I wrote for a writing contest whose mission is to uplift the online Filipina image and challenge the destructive online stereotypes of Filipino womyn.  Learn more about the Wikipilipinas: Filipina Stories

Sometimes it is the field between the two roads where the richest soil is toiled.

Where do Filipinas fit in the United States? Where do I want to fit in the United States? Growing up Filipina, bi-cultured, and questioning my identity was an unanswered and fathomless feat. It was not until my mid-twenties when I began to sharpen an under-utilized tool: my voice. Independence, significant relationships, and deepening my career brought a carriage of hard-edged stones as I contemplated heavy issues, such as belonging, ethnicity, sexuality, race, and gender.

I was born and raised with Brown skin and thick black hair in middle-class, blond and brunette Midwest North America. In the classroom, I rebelled against the model minority stereotype in my love of writing, not natural sciences. In any free moment, I wrote poetry, essays, and letters about the world, my world, and dreams of being a journalist. My brothers and I wrestled. I sang Broadway classics with my sister while she played the piano, and my family reunions were legendary in time and food consumption.

Growing up, there were a thousand precious elements of my culture held dear to my Filipina heart, but I related to them differently than my parents. I feared showing my true colors to Philippine-born Filipinas because I didn’t know how to speak Tagalog or dance the Tinikling. I grew up with Filipino food, but I didn’t know how to cook many dishes. I attended Filipino parties and picnics, but did not have many Filipino friends. Belonging to either side was an endless footpath of negotiation and uncertainties.

It can be psychologically, emotionally, and socially destructive to never be fully seen or counted, both literally and metaphorically. Questions about my ethnicity, “Chinese, right?” grew irritating and the proverbial Asian umbrella which grouped Asian women together proved entirely too small for my questions. This enduring isolation led me to separate my Filipina self and operate under conditioned fragments. The more I questioned, the more I unraveled.

Wherever I went, wherever I traveled, the mystery of Filipinas followed. No one really knew what Filipinas were about except what they had briefly observed in the news or the stereotypes projected by popular culture. Filipinas were sexy, docile, domestic workers or mail order brides. They were quiet, submissive, and eager to please. They loved serving their husbands and tending to their children. Filipinas, most importantly, were born in and from the Philippines.

I was none of those things.

I wanted to know who else was out there in the world of Filipinas. In all my education, there were not many resources for Filipina mentors, models, or heroes. In the United States, communities of Filipinos reside primarily in coastal cities, particularly in the west. The majority of programs and opportunities to cultivate and influence the image of the Filipina were never in my grasp. The more I looked into the media, the more I understood how Filipinas were misrepresented. The exploitation, objectification, and sexualization of the Filipina began to hold personal insult and outrage. My angry thoughts grew deafening and eventually unchained themselves from a wall of silence and complacency.

Then, I began to blog.

In the explosion of the online world, blogs have come to hold various meanings and purposes. As it as with any other facet of a corporate driven society, opportunities for financial gain often come at the expense of others. Online businesses have pushed the image of the Filipina as a woman for sale, always ready to meet men, and marry in any circumstance. I contend that any blog, site, or organization that promote ads which feature Filipinas as dependent and/or exchangeable commodity, should be refuted by the entire Filipino community. Our online ethos must commit to decrying this type of marketing and media. If Filipinas do not stand to gain more freedom, respect, and visibility, I will not and do not endorse the blog, site, or organization.

Bloggers need to raise awareness of the social injustices that jail the Filipina spirit (such as global sex trafficking, abuse of domestic workers overseas, immigration issues, and enslaving poverty) and they also need to be aggressive in their denouncement of Filipina commercialization. To enhance the online image is to affirm the authentic presence of the Filipina. It is time for us to come out of the dark with strong voices, accents, poetry, opinions, music, intelligence, theories, and ideas. Bloggers need to do this by promoting work, featuring accomplishments, and highlighting leadership roles held by Filipinas.

My online voice is the one facet of media in which I can contribute to a new definition of the Filipina. She is just like you – filled with conflict, hope, joy, and life. She has a past that rests behind her eyes that holds the power of her foremothers who are presidents, doctors, engineers, poets, mothers, nurses, teachers, policy makers, lawyers, gardeners, and healers. The Filipina is the woman who has risen and fallen in the history of governmental corruption, war, and colonization. She is also the woman who has fought, endured, and organized against oppression. The Filipina is everywhere. She is a powerful force; formed to the contours of her native country, and shaped by whatever citizenship she holds.

As a Filipina blogger, I embrace the opportunity and responsibility to make the unknown known. I accept the challenge to change the online image of Filipinas by introducing my whole self, my own bi-cultured spirit. By expanding the online definition and image of the Filipina diaspora, I hope it transpires into offline empowerment for both myself and other Filipinas around the world.

The State of Brownhood

When I was younger, I hated when my dad pinched my nose. Out of nowhere, in the middle of trying to wield permission to attend a weekend slumber party, his face would grow into a big smile and I'd watch his long brown fingers extend to pinch my little Filipino nose. Hard.

In pain, I'd jerk back, "DAD!" He had problems with gentleness at times. I often wondered if he remembered I was not my brothers, but a smaller framed girl, a very impressionable young girl.

"Your nose is flat," he smiled as if to justify the pinch.

"Yeah, I know. So's yours, " I would retort, rubbing my sore nose.

"The irony of mixed-heritage Filipinos not being accepted as Filipinos is exposed when one considers the pains that Filipinos in the Philippines and abroad take to maintain a standard of appearance that has its roots in colonization: for example, keeping out of the sun so as not to get 'too dark' or pinching the nose to make it less flat," writes Linda A. Rvilla in her article Filipino American Identity: Transcending the Crisis.

I grew up bicultured: in the US, but in a Filipino home raised by Filipino parents. In the long roads of sifting through identity and arriving to a loving appreciation for my culture, never did I anticipate the work of analyzing my own parents' upbringing or their learned inferiority. For every inquiring feminist, all questions begin and end with your family. What runs in their blood also runs in mine.

As I sprinted out to play outdoors, my mother would yell out the summer door, "Don't get too dark!" My father pinching my nose. My round curvy brown body was surrounded by white girls dying to be thin and dieting for attention. It's taken nearly three decades to purge the poison, especially when I read how skin whitening is now on the rise in the Philippines.

The racially imperialistic Western standards of acceptance and beauty are larger issues of globalization, media, and cultural equality. How else does one explain the surge in blepharoplasty - when an Asian person undergoes surgery to widen their eyes? Or how do you explain why so many Asians are elongating their legs? One young woman, after leg-lengthening surgery comments, "It hurts, but it will be worth it to be taller. I'll have more opportunities in life and a better chance of finding a good job and a husband."

The pinched noses and cautions not to get "too dark" remained an unchecked part of my childhood until I began to read magazines and notice the high energy levels for conformity. Where did I fit in? Would I ever fit? The questions were cyclic and relentless. I considered my options. 1) Rearranging my face 2) Pretending I don't have thick straight jet black hair 3) Staying out of the sun for the rest of my life because I tan deeply in less than 10 minutes. I was left with no options but to begin accepting my state of Brownhood. I could spend a lifetime in shame or learn how to fight and love my skin, my color, my eyes, and hair.

In college, I found myself in an elevator with a few White women who kept glancing at me. Familiar with stranger gazes and rude stares, I looked back at them. One asked, "How do you keep your tan so even throughout the year?" It was winter at the time. I replied, "I spend a fortune at Jamaica-Me Tan," and walked out of the elevator.

I chose and continue to choose pride because I never wanted to be tall or White.

And my eyes are wide enough to see the oppression and reality in which western ideals have bled and beat and removed the Asian features and Brown pride out of so many women.

I choose Pinay. I choose me.