musings

Context: 

1. famous sg blogger xiaxue had haters on her facebook photos, who left typical hater comments.

2. she decides to retaliate by posting their full names and their family photos on her blog, so everyone knows who they are.

3. the straits times (national newspaper) lauds her for doing this, portrays her in a good light

4. People respond.

   a) My friend June writes a blog about it, one of the comments on this blog highlights an example of how xiaxue victim-blames, in terms of rape culture.

   b) I respond! kind of.

First. I read the blogpost where xiaxue victim-blames, and when I first read it a few years ago, I didn't think much of it. Thought that xiaxue was being her usual controversial-opinion-self. That is, she blogs about something controversial just for the sake of it, and to get more hits. 

Now I'm reading it, and I can't have an unbiased opinion on it, because it's triggering for me. This triggering feeling is in relation to the rape discussed, and it just makes me feel really uncomfortable. It's not a detached feeling, it's just that it feels too close to home and I don't like it. (trying to sort out what I think here.) 

So. The commenters on June's blog say that this is an example that xiaxue is really misogynistic, and therefore, the recent action against male haters on facebook cannot be described as "feminist". But I don't get it. In school (literature, social anthropology) if we want to describe something as "feminist", in literature we base it mostly on textual evidence, and we don't say something is feminist just because the author is feminist. In social anthropology, something is feminist or post modern or whatever because of the time the article is written. We compare the text to other texts that have come before it, and to other texts written in its time. The text can be seen as a reaction to what has happened before, or the prevailing mentality during the time it was written. 

Because of this, I find the argument that "xiaxue is not feminist" inherently flawed, because in literature and social anthropology, you judge if a person is feminist based on his/her texts, not his person. There usually is one key text that essay-writers cite a lot that illustrates his stand on the matter, and we don't usually track what this person has said over time. There are exceptions though. Like Mary Douglas was very structuralist when she first wrote her Lele ethnographies but recently she's pulled back a bit, and her stand has become less radical. 

Back to my point! The point is, that referring to what xiaxue has written in the past to help shape our opinions on what she is like now feels like a personal attack. In academia, personal attacks are always frowned upon, are they not? (I've been to lectures where people present their papers, and professional colleagues present their opinions on the paper that is presented in a very civilized manner. Usually.) Therefore, our claim that xiaxue is not feminist is invalid. But this does not mean that xiaxue is feminist. We have to analyze her most recent text to determine if this is so. 

Of course, if the anthropologist is dead then it's harder to make personal attacks, and the attacks are on the argument the person made, not the person. Last I checked, xiaxue is still alive, there are people who know her, and there are people who will go "you know, this one time, I saw xiaxue doing this and this..." All of which contribute to our public perception of her, and in this case, whether she is feminist or not. 

Obviously also xiaxue is not in academia. She's a public personality, and so the reactions to what she says don't follow academic rules, but whatever rules the public sees fit. I brought up academic rules because they are logical, and helps us decide if we agree or disagree to something in an organized way. (I like academia. It mostly consists of smart, well informed, and in the case of social anthropologists, not heteronormative people. But I digress.) Public response to a piece of media is going to be anything but civil and organized. 

hmm. I don't find it logical to pull up something that she's written in the past to contribute to our judgement of the latest blogpost. It's not professional (ok basically I think it's stupid and confusing) to make personal attacks on the person, when what you really want to discuss is the morality of a particular set of actions. 

I'm also doubtful of the fact that the people on the internet who have responded to this incident think that it's okay to take pot shots at xiaxue's morality and forget that she, like any other person, is complex. At this point, xiaxue seems like a straw man. Which is all entertaining and convenient for people, I guess.

the internet and its usefulness

today one of the actresses bought me a drink. ^__^ I guess she just felt sorry for me and I felt so bad. sigh. Like I feel bad if someone buys me a drink because most of the people who hang out with me are just as skint as I am. This is not the point~ the point is.

She asked me what I did in my spare time, and I said I played the ukulele (default answer now. I mean the truth is that I well read and tumblr and cry while watching videos and do the laundry but those aren't interesting things, are they?) Then she asked how I learnt how to play it, and I said the internet. and then I answered her earlier question, "How did you find out about this volunteer opportunity?" by saying that I found it from the internet. So then she calls me an "internet buff". I guess well she's from another generation entirely, or another kind of person entirely... okay well she's not the type of person I'd usually hang out with.

I just feel a little bothered by this. The way she said it made it sound like I was someone incapable of doing anything outside the internet. Now I feel like I have something to prove, that I need to prove that I'm able to do something/ make social connections without the internet. But the truth is, I can't. I literally can't do anything now without it.

I'm searching for directions to get to my mystery shopping job, and what do I use? The internet.
I'm looking for a new flat now, and I use the internet.
I look for jobs? internet.
Life modeling gigs? internet.
Even the place in my uni was done through UCAS (okay, granted, there _is_ no other more efficient way to do this, and *everyone* goes through this system) and where's UCAS? the internet.

I guess I grew up with the internet, and every single aspect of how I live is done through it. It's so quick and easy. The actress asked if I learnt how to play the ukulele from a book, and like. Dude, if I learnt how to play the ukulele from a book, I would have given up by now. I was spoilt and fickle enough to not want to go through strum patterns or ALL of the chords or music theory to learn how to play properly. I just wanted to be able to play along with my favorite songs. I can get the chords for my favorite songs from the internet. I can't get specific chords from a book. During the ukulele society session at my uni which I went to, we played songs that I hadn't heard before, and I wouldn't have played those songs if I were learning the ukulele on my own.

Who wants to learn how to play "Old Jamaican Road" or whatever when they first start? It's already hard to teach your fingers to remember the chords, and for your fingers to grow calluses. You don't want to make the experience more miserable by playing a stupid song that you don't even like, and knowing that there are songs that you like that you could potentially be playing, but you can't, because all you have is this dumb book.

The only time someone in real life taught me anything about the ukulele, when I first got it, were my friends who already had ukes. June (friend in singapore) taught me the chords to "creep", and I think I must have tried it out on her ukulele. Whenever my friends brought ukes to meetings, I was itching to touch them, and that's why I bought one. After that one song, and all I knew were 4 chords, I learnt everything else from watching people play stuff on youtube and from chord fingering lists.

No doubt there must have been ways of finding a job, volunteering opportunities, or a flat when the internet was not as popular, but I don't know them. There's the newspaper. My parents think that networking is very important to find a job, that "knowing people" is important. I feel like such a slimeball when I talk to people with the intention of getting something for myself. I'm rubbish at networking.

I feel there would have been more support surrounding non-internet resources when the internet was not as commonly used. By "support" I mean people whom you could ask, telephone lines which were actually manned by real people who wouldn't put you on hold, things like that.

Let's say I wanted to find a flat without using the internet when I just moved here. I'd go to my uni's accommodation service because I'm a first year, and I'm new to the area. I did that in september, and they were not helpful at all when I asked them about alternative housing since they had run out of space in halls. They just gave me a University of London Housing Services (ULHS) pamphlet, and wished me good luck. The ULHS covers *all* the colleges in London, including King's, Imperial--- colleges that were well within central London and were about 45min to an hour from where my school was. I ideally don't want to live in a place 1hr away from school. And I went through the rooms available through ULHS, and the nearest one was too far away. I would have needed to go to the physical ULHS office if it wasn't for the internet, which is stupid, or call them, which is also stupid, because I'll have to be like, "oh, I need this this and this in this area" and it would be a long phone call that I'm not comfortable making, because I'm not even paying them as agents.

I have to end this soon. Just. What I want to say IS that it's really inconvenient and sometimes impossible to do things without the internet for me. For someone to expect me to find volunteer opportunities through personal connections alone is weird because okay my friends in London are all students who go to my uni. Through them, I can only find volunteer opportunities within university societies. It's very limiting that way. I'm not used to that at all. I do volunteering in order to meet people outside of school, and to get to see free shows. Without the internet I wouldn't have known the show I'm currently working at exists, or if the company producing the show existed. Hell, without the internet, I don't think I'd be volunteering as much.

I understand that people used to be able to do it without the internet, and people still do, but I can't.