Transnational Sexualities

[itsbananamilkshake-blog]

Week 10

So I know in class we have talked about pride parades and that many people in the class has gone. Unfortunately, I haven't gone to a pride parade yet. I do plan to go in the future when the time comes because many people have said they were fun to attend. I believe in the last class, we discussed how other countries beside the U.S. have pride parades as well, and I came across South Korea’s pride parade this year. I was sort of shocked to see that South Korea had the pride parade because for one, the country is very Christian based and of course in this video it shows religious people protesting during the event. I know this type of thing happens in America as well, but i feel as though South Korean people would react way worse than us Americans. To my knowledge, i know that South Korea tends to be conservative/reserved about anything revolving around sexuality. So it was a huge surprise for me to find this video at all. Since the video is about 25 minutes long, I just want to do a brief skim of it. In the beginning, the youtuber talks about how excited he was about the parade and everything and how it might go down with the protestors outside of the event. Then it just goes on showing everything that happens at the event (which is probably 19 minutes of the video), booths, performances, and the pride walk. Watching this video made me feel as though I was actually at a parade due to it being a vlog, which was super nice. I also think that this video would prepare me for what would happen at the event as well, with the protestors and the crazy people trying to give you free hugs and are super friendly. 

[itsbananamilkshake-blog]

Week 9

Orientalism

When we defined it in class, we didn’t exactly have a specific definition for this term. From what I remember writing down, it was the making of things outside of Europe seem more exotic. As for a definition I found online, orientalism was used by art historians to depict aspects of the Eastern cultures. So it is talking about other cultures and how they seem to be different as a general term. But when talking about it in our transnational class, I think we were talking about it in the context of porn. Since it was in that context, we defined it more sexually saying that things outside of the norm in a country is exotic and different. And when I mean outside of the country, I mean the United States. For example, many people view Asian women to be submissive, but it is just a stereotype and not all (or maybe even none) are submissive like the US say they would be.

[itsbananamilkshake-blog]

Week 8

For me, I have been surrounded by different races/ethnicity my whole life. That probably was because I was a minority and all the minorities were all together. Growing up like that, I had friends of different ethnicities and once they started dating, they didn’t stick to the norm of having to date the same race they were, but they simply dated someone who they were attracted to. That really opened up my eyes to interracial couples and THAT seemed more like a norm to me than having same race couples because I was surrounded by it. My older brother was dating basically the rainbow his whole life, my mom has even dated outside of Vietnamese men, and tons of friends who have dated outside of their race multiple times or even all the time.

When reading the Vaid-Menon essay, I was sort of shocked that people would even say, “get over your racial fetish”.  For me, there isn’t a such thing as a racial fetish, unless people who think racial fetish is just specifically preferring one race over the others. But seeing the word fetish, I think of weird and odd. Some people could interpret it as those who like the type of stereotypes that they know of, for example, Asian women are submissive, that’s why white men are attracted to them. and I think that is probably the system Vaid/Menon is talking about and I can sort of see that.  But if someone else could explain that a different way then please comment! I feel as though I might have interpreted it wrong. 

[itsbananamilkshake-blog]

Week 7

So this week I chose to write about the film we watched in class, The Wedding Banquet. Even though I tend to not like older movies, I actually really enjoyed watching this in class. For me, I felt as though I could relate to this film because of the Asian culture, and since I’m Vietnamese, there isn’t much of a cultural difference when it comes to marriage and family. I feel like I was kind of anticipating for the moment for Wei Tung to come out and his parents to not be as accepting as they were in the film. Although I feel like it’s a film, that’s probably why they made it to be a happy ending instead of the unaccepting parents and not wanting to speak to their son again because they’re a disgrace type of ending. I feel like the Asian culture has definitely been more accepting of the gay community, but I also have the feeling that most countries aren’t as well. I think it’s because of the traditional thinking that they still hold onto, man and woman get married and have kids so their family name lives on. The film itself was very funny at times and I feel as though many gay couples could relate to Wei Tung’s situation if they were to be the same ethnicity or different.

[itsbananamilkshake-blog]

Week 6

I chose the book Gender and Sexualitty in Modern Chinese History by Susan Mann. The book has both modern and history in its title, pertaining to Mann talking about gender and sexualities starting from China’s history to modern day China. She talks about how gender and sexuality have been neglected in the history of China, and also about the governments concern and involvement. In reality, nothing goes beyond the traditional sex is for having kids and having a family is important and normal. Mann answers a variety of questions in the book focusing on the state policy, ideas of the physical body, and how things have changed or evolve in China’s recent history. This book also shows how changes in attitudes toward sex and gender in the 20th century, which shows China trying to become modern. 

[itsbananamilkshake-blog]

Week 5

This week I will be talking about my thoughts on this course and how it affected me not only in the class, but outside of class as well.

So far, this is one of my favorite classes because not only does Dr. Aizura keep the class interesting, but the topics itself is interesting as well. Coming into this class I knew I wasn’t very knowledgeable on the topic of sexualities. As I have said before, I tend to be very sheltered, resulting in not knowing or thinking about transnational sexualities either. Its so much more different than our Westernized view on sexualities. For example, when we did the pronoun exercise on the very first day of class, I never did think about asking someone their preferred pronoun. It just never came across my mind unless they did tell me themselves and told me what they preferred. Even about a week ago, I was working, and a group of three friends came in. two girls and a boy. They were all shopping, and the boy even tried clothing on, being mindful the store sells all girl clothing. Usually we wouldn’t allow a boy into our fitting room for the female customers that may feel uncomfortable with a male in the fitting room. But we put fact aside and let the boy in, he then came out to show his friends the clothes he tried on and I also had to comment on how it looked on him. After that, he returned into his fitting room and I turn over to his friends and said, “Yeah, that definitely was too big for hi-“ cutting myself off because I thought about our activity in class about the preferred pronouns. His friends gave me a weird look and I continued on with my work. I then told my coworker about what had happened and she told me that he preferred to use him and he. Just going through that simple exercise, really did keep me mindful of what I say to people, but it also makes me 10X more awkward because I’m already an awkward person. Then after our customers left the store, I found out that he had tried running for homecoming queen, but was suspended for doing so. I was in total shock. We talk about how internationally, people see us to be very open about all sexualities because of pride parades and gay marriage passing, but when it comes to smaller things (not saying that running for homecoming queen is a small thing, because I know it is a big deal. But putting things on a bigger scale it isn’t at the top of the list. Sorry if it doesn’t make sense.) like running for homecoming queen, a male gets suspended for such a thing, or certain restaurants wont accept gay or trans. It really disappoints me to still see this.  

[digenovanicolo]

Just a reminder

Bi girls aren’t secretly straight

Bi guys aren’t secretly gay

Pansexuals aren’t attracted to everyone

Nor are they attracted to pans

Bi and pans don’t all want a threesome

Bi and pans are not more likely to cheat

Asexuality is not celibacy

Nor are asexuals plants

Aromantics don’t need to be fixed

The ‘a’ in LGBTQA stands for asexual not ally

Demisexuals and polysexuals exist

[itsbananamilkshake-blog]

Week 4

In the article “Thinking Sex”, Gayle Rubin talks about sexuality in a political way. One of the things she brings up in the article is the “charmed circle” (which I don’t think many people knew existed). Basically there is an inner circle where they claim as the good side of sexuality, and the outer part of the circle is the bad part of sexuality. But since it is 2015, many things have changed since this article has been published. As a homosexual, you were deemed as bad and unnatural according to this “charm circle”. Now in 2015, as a homosexual, you have the right to marry your same sex partner in the U.S. because most people have come to accept that being homosexual doesn’t make you any different from a heterosexual person. But then there are certain things in the “charm circle” that people today even consider as bad. A good example would be doing sex for free or doing it for money. People still put a terrible light on hookers and prostitutes because they perform sexual activities for money, and I’m not exactly sure if they will change. But then there is a flip side, where now a days from my knowledge, people are tired of “vanilla” (a term I never heard of except for ice cream) in the modern age, and have been interested in bdsm and/or using manufactured objects. Both of those things today are known as normal and accepted, they aren’t seen as abnormal and weird, which I find very impressive. The reason why I say that is because I feel as though the United States has come a long way on realizing many things are pretty normal, we just make it abnormal if it seems odd or looks bad in our western point of view, but that doesn’t mean we have reached the end of the road yet on accepting other things. 

[itsbananamilkshake-blog]

Tumblr Prompt Week 3

One term I wanted to define this week is feminism. The reason why I chose this term is because I did not know about this term until last year, which is pretty amazing. And how I found out about this term was actually through tumblr! People I were following would post about feminism articles or events that were happening, and I didn’t know what its exact definition was except that it sounded like the word feminine. To which I thought it had something to do with women, which it does. The word feminism is defined as public support of women’s political, social, and economical equality to men. I then realized (a year ago when I was looking up the word feminism) that I had already known of the definition of feminism before the actual word for the definition. Which I thought was very interesting. And recently in class, I didn’t know that there were multiple other feminism terms that could slightly change the definition. For example, Chicano feminism, where Mexican-American women who reject the stereotype of playing the traditional house hold role. Another example is transnational feminism, where we defined it as many things in class, but can also be defined as simple as showing the difference between international and transnational feminism.

[itsbananamilkshake-blog]

Tumblr Prompt Week 2

The one definition of transnational that we brainstormed up in class that resonated with me was the word diversity. The reason why I say diversity is because living in the Western side of the world, I have seen a majority of white people and black people opening up about their sexualities, but I haven’t seen the other ethnicities been so open about the topic. As an Asian who was raised under Christian beliefs, My family made it feel like talking about such things were taboo. As for me, I was the curious and rebellious type, so I was open to the different ideas of others and even accepted a lot of things. For example, the LGBTQ community is very diverse in culture and ethnicity, and I didn’t know this until the last few years of high school. I just wish I was more exposed to these type of things before. Knowing that though, means that not only are people open about their sexualities in the Western side of the world, but maybe possibly all around the world unless they are still considered not a norm and abnormal in their own country.