Category Archives: imho is just a polite way to say I know you don’t give a hoot what I think but I’m going to say it anyway

2016 Presidential Debates or “What fresh hell is this?”

Winner: Fact checkers. They’ve been in high demand and kept busy. I hope they’re being paid per fact checked.

Winner: Twitter. Once again, Twitter proved its relevance. Without Twitter, I would have thrown something at the TV or died from implosion, you know, all that screaming inside my head and my chest.

Loser: All of us.

To be fair, I learned something useful from the pundits afterwards: From now on, if I ever get into an argument, I am just gonna rudely interrupt you the whole time, contradict you with false information, accuse you of having never done anything and saying/doing things you’ve never done, and threaten to use the judicial system for my personal vendetta against you, and we’ll still end up in a draw with all my earlier trespasses against decorum forgiven because right before the end of the discussion, I’m gonna say that I respect you for your never giving up. Thanks for the great tip!

All the great tweets, memes, jokes aside, as the debate wore on, it became more and more embarrassing by the minute. What are we watching? Are we on Jerry Springer? Trump may belong on that show. Hilary does not deserve this. WE don’t deserve this.

Do we even need the 3rd debate? Donald Trump used both debates as an opportunity to repeat lies throughout the 90 minutes. Why are we giving him this platform? We all have better things to do than to sit through 90 minutes of lies. Asking Hillary to face him off at another debate is giving this man the legitimacy that he has failed to earn over and over again. How many more chances are we giving him? Why aren’t we using “extreme vetting” on him as someone worthy to be “debated” against?

The world according to Trump:

Muslims = Terrorists
African Americans = Inner City dwellers
Women = Pussy for grab

I’ve lost my ability to be agape at Trump’s ability to lie with such ease and at people’s ability to remain “indecisive” on this. To be honest, I envision in the near future this’ll be a go-to case study for Psychology/Sociology/Ethnography 101. “Why did people afford him so many ‘benefits of doubt’ so many times?”

https://twitter.com/kumailn/status/784870837052596224

A PSA about those popular Travel quotes

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Dear Internet, please stop sharing, re-posting, re-tweeting, liking, +’ing, quotes about travel that do not check privileges inherently associated with the ability to pick up and go.

I love travel. I enjoy travel. Heck, I focus in the travel product area at work. But I also understand that the ability to travel is a privilege. It implies wealth (or at least disposable income), ability and confidence to find hospitality (say you have no money but you want to rely on the kindness of strangers – I’m going to assume that this works a lot better for a white male in most parts of the world), physical capability, lack of restrictions of responsibilities for another human being, and more. That’s why quotes like this bother me to no end. It’s as if we’re accusing those who can’t travel (for one reason or another) of lack of imagination, of an inability to aspire for more in life.

“The Distress of the Privileged”

Surprises from Germany!

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Best find in Germany: Kinder Eggs (Kinder Surprises). I was indeed pleasantly surprised that the toy is a Lufthansa plane. And the pieces all fit together nicely. (Remember those horrible experiences with your sobbing, disappointed kid because the cheap toys broke or could not be put together even with Super Glue?) My son said, “Duh. That’s called German engineering!”

You can’t find these in the U.S. because the toys inside pose choking hazards. I just learned of the brouhaha of Kinder Eggs in the U.S. – Not only can you not find them in the stores, the U.S. Customs will confiscate them if they search your luggage and see them. Sometimes even a fine is imposed: My Google search turned up a 2012 story of $2500 fine per egg.

It’s overblown and ridiculous esp. considering how we refuse to even talk about stricter gun laws here in the U.S. The irony is killing me right now.

They say when you are from outside looking in, you learn new insights about yourself. Kinder Surprises. Yup.

The Ducks

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According to my computer it is December 26 already and therefore I guess it is safe to talk about why I STILL insist on not wishing strangers Marry Christmas in the U.S. unless I am absolutely certain that they celebrate Christmas: Because Christmas in the U.S. remains a religious holiday.

One’d thought that Christians in this country would be happy and proud that their holiday, the holiday celebrating the birth of the person of whom their religion is the namesake has not gone completely secular despite all the gross commercialization that’s going on.

Although I personally have no problem when strangers wish me a Merry Christmas (and I will wish them the same too), I do not care to assume that everyone I meet in the U.S. is Christian. Of course I know that the “wishing you a Merry Christmas” comes from good will, and it is much appreciated. Nevertheless, the “assumptions” implied in the greeting bother me especially since people simply take it for granted and don’t even realize that they are making assumptions.

[Digression] The irony is? If I were in Taiwan, I would have had no problem wishing anybody Merry Christmas because over there Christmas means Santa Claus, Reindeer, Snowman, Christmas trees, poinsettias, Christmas lights, catchy Christmas music, a great excuse for college students to host parties, a rare opportunity to exchange gifts (vs. cold hard cash in red envelopes <– how mundane & boring) It is an unofficial holiday to celebrate the spirit of giving. Who am I kidding. It is the spirit of spending & shopping that’s being observed…

Christmas in Taipei We do it better

I hung up the phone with a customer service rep two days before Christmas and turned to my husband who’d just come back from mass with his mother and our two boys.

“Wow. The rep just wished me a Merry Christmas. I’d say he took a gamble when he said that because how’d he know that I celebrate Christmas?”

My husband raised his eyebrows. “You know. The nice thing to say when people wish you a Merry Christmas…”

“Is to say thank you and Merry Christmas to you too. Yes I know that. Christmas to me is more or less a secular holiday, and I don’t mind celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ because it does not matter to me either way. I am happy for you guys. I am agnostic. I believe in everything.” I raised my eyebrows back at him.

“In the homily today,” he started, “the priest told us a story about ducks. Some guy was in his house during a snowstorm and he heard loud thumping on his windows. He looked and saw a bunch of ducks hitting his window – they’re trying to come inside the house but they could not tell that there’s glass. So the man went outside to open the doors to his barn next to the house, thinking that it would be a suitable shelter for those ducks. However, no matter how hard he tried, shooing them, waving at them, luring them with food, he could not get those ducks to stop hitting the window and change their course towards the barn. He realized that he’d have to wait for the ducks to find their way to the barn on their own.”

He looked at me triumphantly, fully satisfied with his success of being a contrarian. Argument for argument’s sake.

“Hmmm.” I took a deep breath. “That is offensive.”

“Why? I am merely saying that you will find your way on your own.”

“It’s offensive because you are assuming that I am LOST and have to find my way somewhere. I am not lost. I am happy where I am. I don’t need to find my way into the church or whatever. Hey, wait a minute. Were you trying to convert me?! I thought Catholics do not proselytize?! What the fuck?!” I protested loudly, in front of his decidedly un-religious brother too, nonetheless.

My husband grinned sheepishly, with the look of someone who just said something he did not intend to mean and got called out, “Well… Maybe the barn is not religion. Or church. Maybe the barn just means happiness in life. That you will find happiness in life on your own…”

“Hmm. Yeah right. The ducks my ass. Seriously what the fuck dude?” I walked out the room, still annoyed because I was unable to explain clearly WHY the story of the ducks is presumptuous and offensive when told to someone who does not wish to and need not be converted.

Later when the three of us were driving to a bar, the subject of ducks came up and we started teasing my husband about our “interesting” discussion earlier.

“Oh come on. I am never going to live this down, am I?”

“You know.” it dawned on me, “Here’s why I find the story of the ducks offensive. It’s like if I simply say ‘I forgive you’ and then walk away. ‘I forgive you’ predicates that you’ve done something wrong that needs to be forgiven. It is grossly unfair, isn’t it?”

I don’t know how to end this post so let me share this idea with you: “I forgive you.” would be a great epitaph.

Dear America… Never mind.

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Two teenagers take a photograph with an Abercrombie & Fitch employee inside Westfield San Francisco Centre during Black Friday in San Francisco, California November 29, 2013. REUTERS/Stephen Lam

As a mom to a teenage boy, I’ve yet to step inside any Abercrombie & Fitch. (Let’s leave aside whether I meet the standards for the type of customers the jackassy CEO envisioned wearing his company’s clothes) I find the idea disconcerting to shop at a store that showcases relentlessly half-nekkid virile young men. “Hey, look at me! Do I make you randy? Now come in and bathe in the glory of my bare chest. And while you are at it, remember to pick up some clothes from here so your son can look like me.”

Eh. NO.

The same way I found it disturbing when I overheard a mom say to her preteen/teenage daughter, “Ooo. You look sexy. Do you want to get it?” Really? I understand the concept of treating sex and sex talk as a natural/neutral subject. But we’ve got to draw the line somewhere. Somehow in our eagerness to promote girl empowerment, we’ve found girl empowerment in places where there was none. [Advertisers surely have taken great advantage of our wishful thinking. The branding efforts by many products surrounding Hunger Games – Catching Fire are some of the most brilliant yet infuriating, ok, at least annoying, marketing campaigns. Nerf guns for girls – sized for smaller hands. About time! And they’re pink! Of course…] We’ve pushed the line way way way back. It is so easy to equate sexy = empowered, and call it a day.

Sex does not equal power. Sex became a means to power for women because we were left with few options and recourse.

This is why

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Yesterday I stepped on the soapbox and pontificated on why we need more feminism, now, even while some famous and influential female celebrities refuse to be identified as a feminist when asked point blank “Are you a feminist?” My cerebral writer and thinker friend Christine left a much more eloquent comment highlighting the significance of the confluence between “feminist” and the word “bitch” in popular imagination.

Being identified as a bitch opens a woman up to disrespect, disdain, renunciation, and violence.

“The bitch deserves it.”

Someone on my Twitter stream was exasperated that something called “rapeseed” even exists. I laughed because I’ve always felt the same way about this and would never want to be caught dead with a bottle of “rapeseed oil” in my kitchen. Just because. I decided to find out WHY it has such an unfortunate name. So I searched for “Why is rapeseed named” only that I did not get far before I caught sight of this and had to pause and hyperventilate…

Really? Really?!

By now you must have come across images from the ad campaign for UN Women (dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women) created by Memac Ogilvy & Mather Dubai. It’s infuriating, to say the least.

In the face of “prevalent opinions” as revealed by Google searches, we remember what Arundhati Roy said about the Voiceless:

[T]here’s really no such thing as the ‘voiceless’. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.

— Arundhati Roy (2004)

I am a feminist. (With a necessary disclaimer)

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Jezebel collected statements from several famous (and influential and therefore powerful, and yes, many are influential simply because they’re famous. We could sit down and ponder on the curious progression from fame -> influence -> power in this Social Media age. Think Kim Whatshername. The fact you know who I am referring to without her last name is proof itself…) women declaring that they are in fact NOT a feminist, and why not, in this post “The Many Misguided Reasons Famous Ladies Say ‘I’m Not a Feminist'”

It’s enough to make Gloria Steinem turn in her … Oh, never mind. I am glad that she’s still around and actually active on Social Media, even providing the last word to end meaningless controversies surrounding Miley Cyrus.

My gut reactions aside, I am torn. I can see why these women are wary of being associated with the label “feminist” for which there is a profusion of entrenched negative connotations: man-hating, belligerent, combative, complain-y, chip on the shoulder, even militant. Marissa Mayer’s statement said it all:

I don’t think that I would consider myself a feminist. I think that I certainly believe in equal rights, I believe that women are just as capable, if not more so in a lot of different dimensions, but I don’t, I think have, sort of, the militant drive and the sort of, the chip on the shoulder that sometimes comes with that. And I think it’s too bad, but I do think that feminism has become in many ways a more negative word.

What we need is not less feminism, but more. Instead of disavowing feminism because a long-standing smear campaign has been waged against it, more of us should claim it, changing the negative connotations so prevalent in pop culture and mainstream consciousness.

I fell head over heels in love with Caitlin Moran when I read this passage in her How to be a Woman and laughed out loud with my fist pumping [only one fist because the other one was holding my Kindle. In case you wonder…]:

We need to reclaim the word ‘feminism’. We need the word ‘feminism’ back real bad. When statistics come in saying that only 29% of American women would describe themselves as feminist – and only 42% of British women – I used to think, What do you think feminism IS, ladies? What part of ‘liberation for women’ is not for you? Is it freedom to vote? The right not to be owned by the man you marry? The campaign for equal pay? ‘Vogue’ by Madonna? Jeans? Did all that good shit GET ON YOUR NERVES? Or were you just DRUNK AT THE TIME OF THE SURVEY? ― Caitlin Moran, How to Be a Woman

We need more Caitlin Morans amongst us.

We need more feminism even though right now we need to claim the label for ourselves with a caveat,

I am a feminist if by being a feminist you mean someone who believes in equal rights for women.

Quite often feminism is explained by what it is not, and the litany often begins with this disclaimer:

Yes, I am a feminist. No, I don’t hate men.

So here we are, having to first appease men, to prove that nothing reverse-sexist is going on here, while speaking out against inequality. Although it is factually correct – feminist <> men hating, am I the only one who finds this ironic?

We need more feminism exactly because most of us need the caveat in order to feel comfortable identifying ourselves as feminists. We need to somehow “temper” feminism so we could function and interact with the others peacefully in the society by providing a more socially acceptable, less threatening definition for the label.

We need more feminism because, well, we are still renouncing it for fear that we may appear aggressive, demanding and complain-y. In short, a bitch.

Just ask ourselves, “What do we call a man who asks for his fair share, who asks to be treated with courtesy, who asks to be dealt as he deserves, who stands up for himself?”

A real man.

Exactly.

WTF Wednesday: Must We Show So Much Boobage as We Empower Ourselves?

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Behold, m’ladies. The latest ironic, gender-stereotype-busting, geek-affirming musical video designed to empower us, by showing the world: Fuck Yeah, We Are Women, We Are Bad Ass, We Like the Same Things that Men Like and We Are Good At Them, Too. Plus, We Have Boobs.

This video and this tweet from Nathan Fillon (yes, of Firefly fame) is why I should not be allowed to roam the Interwebs…

I find offense everywhere I turn and then burn a hole in my head because I agonize over things that, to most people, don’t matter. Look at me, here I am, trying to find fault with a musical video featuring female (supposedly) geeks named TEAM UNICORN. Come on, what’s the matter with me, shouldn’t we all love geek girls and Everything Unicorn?

I can never decide whether to rejoice and feel empowered or to throw up my hands and resign because of what is now considered to be “female empowerment”… by those who are on our side, men who are supposed to be more enlightened than most of their counterparts.

The top comment for the video is from a proud dad whose daughters watched JLA before Dora the Explorer. I am very happy for him and proud of his girls too for smashing gender stereotypes, crossing the boundaries. I loved ThunderCats & Transformers etc. when growing up. So people are liking and sharing this video NOT because of the gratuitous boobage?…

It is getting harder and harder to be a modern woman.

In her seminal essay “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All“, Anne-Marie Slaughter, perhaps facetiously, wrote, “… women feel that they are to blame if they cannot manage to rise up the ladder as fast as men and also have a family and an active home life (and be thin and beautiful to boot).”

At the turning point when high heels are no longer tortured devices invented by men to force us to all sway our hips unsteadily in order to exhibit the fantastical, imagined femininity but rather a figurative pair of Samurai swords that we wear to demonstrate our resolve, and to dare men to face our sexuality and general badassness with respect, I became extremely confused and simply gave up.

Show your sexuality. BUT demand respect and autonomy. What the lady giveth, the lady may taketh away.

Be a diva if you’d like. Be girly and feminine if that’s your style. Accumulate wealth. Climb the ladders. Emulate men in all their power, glory and vice. Be all that you can be.

That’s exactly the problem, isn’t it? When everything counts in theory, nothing makes impact in reality.

We are not being allowed to be all that we can be. For starters, we are NOT free to be un-sexy, un-pretty, un-thin. Have you noticed the myriad of female empowerment icons all looking pretty darn hot? If they don’t look hot now, no worries, they will as soon as they take off their geek glasses and their hair pins. We are being (re)trained to (continue to) be the object of desire. Do your progress thing. Be a Super Woman. Better yet, handle everything. You’ve got the power. But make sure you look hot while you are doing it. The male gaze lingers on. Probably even more perniciously because now we are in on it.

Sometimes I just want to stand up and scream, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house!”

Then I reprimand myself for possibly (mis)appropriating Audre Lorde’s famous words and for being a defeatist. I also feel guilty for not being a feminist AND a sexpot AND a fierce warrior Ninja AND a genius mathematician all at the same time.

Sitting down now. But not before I post this:

:-)

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My parents taught me well: never gloat. Never rub it in.

So I will simply put these up with no comments added.

Now… In case you are worried that we are all going to get a big head and become complacent and start subscribing to this false belief of a perfect world and have blind faith in the American people, NO WORRIES! There was (and still is?) a trending hashtag on Twitter “VoteWhite”… Yup. I saw a few of them and it’s just as sickening as you’d imagine. In fact, I could not have imagined some of the things that people actually tweeted to the public. They’re not concerned that everybody could see how much of a backwood racist they are? Including their employers? I assume these people are all gainfully employed since unlike the democrats, they do NOT need government assistance being so self-reliant “We built all this” and all. Anyway, keep this in your back pocket and show it to anyone that says, “There is no more racism.”

Thank you to “crazy things racists say openly in the 21st century” for keeping us on our toes.

Peace out.

The Absence of Alternatives

My therapy sessions…