Some selected links from Malaysian and global writers this week: Sabrina Naimah Alhady: Sexual harassment and the Malay men who shout #NotAllMalayMen Ashley Tang & Melizarani T. Selva: Thaipusa…
Some selected links from Malaysian and global writers this week:
Sabrina Naimah Alhady: Sexual harassment and the Malay men who shout #NotAllMalayMen
Ashley Tang & Melizarani T. Selva: Thaipusam group out to spray paint ‘inappropriately dressed’ women
Sivananthi Thanenthiran: What is an ‘appropriate’ saree blouse?
Bringbackthekebaya: Sexualization is a new concept
Erna Mahyuni: When Malaysian men think it’s funny to set women on fire
Belok Kiri: Agamawan pengedar dadah massa masyarakat
Ayman Rashdan Wong: CINA CHINA VS. CINA MALAYSIA
Nandini Balakrishnan: Canada’s Worst Serial Rapist Is Going To Be Released And He May Be Sent Back To Malaysia
Lauren Hoffman: What I Wish My Boss Knew About My Mental Health
Anonymous: Adoption, Racism, and Finding My Identity
Susan Harlan: Alternatives to Resting Bitch Face
Yonatan Zunger: Tolerance is not a moral precept
Jenny-Jinya: Why homosexuality is natural and important
Mark Hill: This Millennial Rant Deserves A Trophy For Being Most Wrong
How do Malaysian geek communities fail their most vulnerable members from sexual harassment and abuse and threats?
This post (trigger warning: descriptions of rape, sexual assault, victim-blaming, emotional abuse, sexual harassment and plain old harassment) crossed my timeline, some time ago. I’m not going to lie — reading the post upset me, mostly because it should have never happened. But it did, and gaming, especially tabletop gaming, has a major problem that it needed to confront.
Intro to the concept of intersectionality, in English AND Malay!
Interseksionaliti ialah rangka di mana kita kaji corak-corak penindasan. Istilah ni diperkenalkan oleh Kimberlé Crenshaw, seorang sarjana berkulit Hitam, untuk berbincang bagaimana wanita-wanita berkulit Hitam di Amerika Syarikat ditindas oleh pelbagai kumpulan berlainan: oleh lelaki berkulit Hitam yang menindas diorang secara gender, oleh minah salleh yang menindas diorang secara perkauman — dua-dua kumpulan ni sebaliknya harapkan wanita berkulit Hitam untuk sepakat bersepadu dengan diorang pulak lepas tu. Oleh itu, untuk wanita berkulit Hitam, diorang tak boleh asingkan pengalaman ditindas secara perkauman daripada pengalaman ditindas secara seksis. Mula-mulanya ni isu undang-undang, di mana diorang perlu buktikan bahawa diorang mengalami diskriminasi, dan mahkamah memerlukan diorang untuk membuktikan yang pengalaman itu hanya sama ada seksis atau rasis, walaupun sebenarnya pengalaman tu dua-dua seksis dan rasis.
Oleh Dr. Maimuna Mohamed Amin: Seorang suami meroyan doktor bukan muhrim melihat aurat isterinya yang bersalin. Sejak kebelakangan ini saya perasan ramai kaum Adam tidak berpuas hati dengan pihak Kementerian Kesihatan Malaysia (KKM) mengenai status doktor lelaki dibenarkan menceburi bidang Obstetrik dan Ginekologi (O&G) dan doktor wanita tidak cukup di hospital-hospital kerajaan dalam bahagian…
Saya tertarik dengan isu tudung baru-baru ini yang sedang hangat di kalangan para wanita Malaysia, terutamanya yang mendukung fahaman feminisme. Bukan sahaja kerana tajuk ini menarik dan topikal, tetapi kerana soal tudung ini juga secara tidak langsung melibatkan saya, walaupun saya tidak bertudung. Ramai yang tahu, bahawa di Malaysia secara amnya wujud suatu binari wanita. Binari ini bergantung…
I mean it’s been bugging me for… weeks, I guess. This question.
Here, we always talk about what should be in education, how education fails and the endless debate of what should be done. But I don’t hear a lot about why education exists. What kind of goals it should have, and why.
Maybe it’s not to turn people into docile workers for a capitalist workforce, but it should allow its subjects to create value and establish a livelihood. Maybe it shouldn’t be filled with propaganda, but that doesn’t mean you can pretend that it’s a completely neutral medium that doesn’t pass on its values, especially if those values mean, “what is truth” and “what is good”. Sure, you want students to advance based on merit, don’t you, but also be an engine to increase equality in society and increase diversity among the “worthy”, right?
I mean, if we’re not grappling with these questions, does it mean that we cede the decision-making for these questions to people who have thought about it, and are in the position to implement what their vision is?
My comic, “Not A Crime”, about the arrest and persecution of transwomen in Malaysia is finally ready! read the rest of the comic at my website http://www.kazimirlee.com/not-a-crime.html.
JUNE 26 ― Let’s talk about stereotypes. And in this regard most Sarawakians on this side of the South China Sea have heard it all.
From the article:
This is why a recent prank call by radio station Fly FM was upsetting. It was both insulting and in bad taste. The radio station should apologise for it.
In the call, a woman doctor was called by someone "in charge of transfers." She was informed that she would be transferred to Sarawak and that the tribe chief of the place she will be going to is on the other line waiting to speak to her. She didn’t want to go to Sarawak, so this was a big problem for her.
They connected her to the “tribe chief”, whose name doesn’t sound at all Sarawakian by any measure. The purported “chief”, sounding decidedly Indonesian, asked her to come and help his people, but she declines and in the end pretended to be mentally ill at the officer’s whispered urgings to avoid going.
And the “chief” believes her and asks for another doctor to be assigned to his tribe. The call, since uploaded to their website as a podcast, can be listened to here.
So, you have:
Fly FM, being pieces of shit with their… what was it called again? Krappi calls?
They relentlessly use stereotypes of Sarawakians
The woman they prank has these horrible beliefs about what Sarawakians are, and gets to broadcast them to national radio.
She then pretends to be mentally ill. Please note, she’s a doctor.
And this is supposed to be funny.
Seriously, considering how Fly FM is owned by Media Prima and how that crappy toxic environment from TV3 permeates into Fly FM… I’m not surprised, but I am deeply disappointed. With everyone.
For sale: Pants to cover women’s ‘aurat’ while giving birth
The maternity pants appear similar to an athletics track bottom, with only an opening at the crotch to enable delivery. In a March 20 Facebook post promoting the product, one administrator wrote that Muslim women’s modesty was often disregarded during childbirth.
“How embarrassed would your wife be. How embarrassed would the mother of your child be. Are we to just ignore the honour and aurat of our wives just like that? Where is the honour of Muslim women?” the post read.
The promotion then described the pants as one that covers the aforementioned body parts, with enough space just for the “baby to make its way out.”
It never ceases to amaze me the extraordinary lengths Malay-Muslims in Malaysia would go through to prove their piety to God. I’m starting to feel that the only way to make these wallahbros and their kins happy is to erase women altogether. Also, it does not escape my attention the fact that there’s money to be made here as well (a lot like the supposedly “scientific anti-hysteria kit” which costs a cool RM9000).
Like, I get it. Some Muslim women prefer to wear hijab. Some don’t. That’s cool. But what’s not cool is policing the aurat. Which is often exercised by the men-folk. And read the quote above… I’m willing to bet it was a statement by a wallahbro.
Even if it wasn’t, honestly, don’t we Malay Muslim women have agency over our bodies? Are we supposed to be ashamed of our bodies? Is the price of our modesty more valued than our lives? Is it so terrible that we give birth through our vaginas that it must MUST be obscured? I mean, this is LIFE, you know. This is NATURE. I simply cannot fathom how anyone could sexualise the vagina whilst a baby is being born out of it. I cannot brain any of this at all.
Would love to know the thoughts of fellow Muslimahs about this. If you’re a Muslimah doctor, even better!
“The Muslim observance of modesty has reached a new level here with the introduction of maternity pants that ensure a woman’s aurat or intimate parts remain covered throughout childbirth.”
That’s putting it mildly.
But what if there are complications? What if there’s a perineal tear? Is a woman’s modesty more valued than her own health and safety?
P sure this is a problem that could be addressed by having more women doctors, not by introducing ridiculous pieces of clothing that obstructs proper medical care.
I think there are many women doctors in Malaysia, but again it could also depends on the resources and specialisation of doctors at hand or at the hospital.
It would be great if there’s someone with medical or child-birth experience who could provide additional comments or insight on this.
Well, the issue isn’t the fact that there aren’t any women doctors in gynaecology already — there are, but the fact that well, in any hospital with many ob/gyns, you’ll have some doctors who are men, some who are women. It’s a matter of aptitude and interest, right, and in some cases not all doctors who are women will want to specialize in the field you want them to be.
were-cow‘s first ob/gyn was a woman, and while she was very good at what she did and we would have loved to have her again, unfortunately she wasn’t available for #2 due to illness. So we got a ob/gyn who was a man, and he did just as well.
The thing is, the root of the problem isn’t so much the fact that there is a shortage of women doctors in the ob/gyn space — there are plenty of women, but there are men who are interested in ob/gyn as well — as there is this creeping rigidity about how Muslims are supposed to interpret the rules of religion.
Let’s be clear here — the religion I was raised in prided itself in being adaptable and pragmatic in how religious rules were enforced, and it was drilled to me how the rules could be bent and even foregone if the end result of following the rules was harm to the Muslim. So the male doctor who is assigned to you needs to take a look at your birth canal in order to ensure your health? If he can’t see it he can’t make his diagnosis? Then let him, because God is All-Forgiving and All-Merciful.
I mean, there used to be an entire fucking chapter in Pendidikan Agama Islam KBSM called “wasatiyyah”, which is Arabic for “moderation”, and the basic lesson of that chapter was, “dey, chill the fuck out lah bro, don’t need to be such a fucking hard-case for religion”. Has that changed in the past decade-plus years since I was in school? I hope bloody not.
And it’s bad enough that there’s that long-standing sexism in medicine where women are expected to specialise in OB/GYN and men take up surgery without this compounding into the argument that more women should take up OB/GYN instead of other specialisations.
KUALA LUMPUR, June 25 ― The Muslim observance of modesty has reached a new level here with the introduction of maternity pants that ensure a woman’s aurat or intimate parts remain covered throughout childbirth.
The maternity pants appear similar to an athletics track bottom, with only an opening at the crotch to enable delivery. In a March 20 Facebook post promoting the product, one administrator wrote that Muslim women’s modesty was often disregarded during childbirth.
“How embarrassed would your wife be. How embarrassed would the mother of your child be. Are we to just ignore the honour and aurat of our wives just like that? Where is the honour of Muslim women?” the post read.
The promotion then described the pants as one that covers the aforementioned body parts, with enough space just for the “baby to make its way out.”
It never ceases to amaze me the extraordinary lengths Malay-Muslims in Malaysia would go through to prove their piety to God. I’m starting to feel that the only way to make these wallahbros and their kins happy is to erase women altogether. Also, it does not escape my attention the fact that there’s money to be made here as well (a lot like the supposedly “scientific anti-hysteria kit” which costs a cool RM9000).
Like, I get it. Some Muslim women prefer to wear hijab. Some don’t. That’s cool. But what’s not cool is policing the aurat. Which is often exercised by the men-folk. And read the quote above… I’m willing to bet it was a statement by a wallahbro.
Even if it wasn’t, honestly, don’t we Malay Muslim women have agency over our bodies? Are we supposed to be ashamed of our bodies? Is the price of our modesty more valued than our lives? Is it so terrible that we give birth through our vaginas that it must MUST be obscured? I mean, this is LIFE, you know. This is NATURE. I simply cannot fathom how anyone could sexualise the vagina whilst a baby is being born out of it. I cannot brain any of this at all.
Would love to know the thoughts of fellow Muslimahs about this. If you’re a Muslimah doctor, even better!
“The Muslim observance of modesty has reached a new level here with the introduction of maternity pants that ensure a woman’s aurat or intimate parts remain covered throughout childbirth.”
That’s putting it mildly.
But what if there are complications? What if there’s a perineal tear? Is a woman’s modesty more valued than her own health and safety?
P sure this is a problem that could be addressed by having more women doctors, not by introducing ridiculous pieces of clothing that obstructs proper medical care.
I think there are many women doctors in Malaysia, but again it could also depends on the resources and specialisation of doctors at hand or at the hospital.
It would be great if there’s someone with medical or child-birth experience who could provide additional comments or insight on this.
Well, the issue isn’t the fact that there aren’t any women doctors in gynaecology already — there are, but the fact that well, in any hospital with many ob/gyns, you’ll have some doctors who are men, some who are women. It’s a matter of aptitude and interest, right, and in some cases not all doctors who are women will want to specialize in the field you want them to be.
were-cow‘s first ob/gyn was a woman, and while she was very good at what she did and we would have loved to have her again, unfortunately she wasn’t available for #2 due to illness. So we got a ob/gyn who was a man, and he did just as well.
The thing is, the root of the problem isn’t so much the fact that there is a shortage of women doctors in the ob/gyn space — there are plenty of women, but there are men who are interested in ob/gyn as well — as there is this creeping rigidity about how Muslims are supposed to interpret the rules of religion.
Let’s be clear here — the religion I was raised in prided itself in being adaptable and pragmatic in how religious rules were enforced, and it was drilled to me how the rules could be bent and even foregone if the end result of following the rules was harm to the Muslim. So the male doctor who is assigned to you needs to take a look at your birth canal in order to ensure your health? If he can’t see it he can’t make his diagnosis? Then let him, because God is All-Forgiving and All-Merciful.
I mean, there used to be an entire fucking chapter in Pendidikan Agama Islam KBSM called “wasatiyyah”, which is Arabic for “moderation”, and the basic lesson of that chapter was, “dey, chill the fuck out lah bro, don’t need to be such a fucking hard-case for religion”. Has that changed in the past decade-plus years since I was in school? I hope bloody not.
For sale: Pants to cover women’s ‘aurat’ while giving birth
The maternity pants appear similar to an athletics track bottom, with only an opening at the crotch to enable delivery. In a March 20 Facebook post promoting the product, one administrator wrote that Muslim women’s modesty was often disregarded during childbirth.
“How embarrassed would your wife be. How embarrassed would the mother of your child be. Are we to just ignore the honour and aurat of our wives just like that? Where is the honour of Muslim women?” the post read.
The promotion then described the pants as one that covers the aforementioned body parts, with enough space just for the “baby to make its way out.”
It never ceases to amaze me the extraordinary lengths Malay-Muslims in Malaysia would go through to prove their piety to God. I’m starting to feel that the only way to make these wallahbros and their kins happy is to erase women altogether. Also, it does not escape my attention the fact that there’s money to be made here as well (a lot like the supposedly “scientific anti-hysteria kit” which costs a cool RM9000).
Like, I get it. Some Muslim women prefer to wear hijab. Some don’t. That’s cool. But what’s not cool is policing the aurat. Which is often exercised by the men-folk. And read the quote above… I’m willing to bet it was a statement by a wallahbro.
Even if it wasn’t, honestly, don’t we Malay Muslim women have agency over our bodies? Are we supposed to be ashamed of our bodies? Is the price of our modesty more valued than our lives? Is it so terrible that we give birth through our vaginas that it must MUST be obscured? I mean, this is LIFE, you know. This is NATURE. I simply cannot fathom how anyone could sexualise the vagina whilst a baby is being born out of it. I cannot brain any of this at all.
Would love to know the thoughts of fellow Muslimahs about this. If you’re a Muslimah doctor, even better!
“The Muslim observance of modesty has reached a new level here with the introduction of maternity pants that ensure a woman’s aurat or intimate parts remain covered throughout childbirth.”
That’s putting it mildly.
But what if there are complications? What if there’s a perineal tear? Is a woman’s modesty more valued than her own health and safety?
(via Lakota Warriors Vow to Crush Dirty Rainbow Hippies - The Daily Beast)
i am laughing so hard about this. this is what it looks like when white rainbow kids who claim to be all about native spirituality and respecting the land and blah blah blah, run into some real ass native folks…
ive been to the gathering three times in 99, in 02, and in 05…srsly, rainbow folks can be srsly srsly disrespectful without basic respect.
In summer of 2014, the Rainbow Family gathered at Uinta National Forest in Utah, prompting a nearby summer camp for Mormon girls to scatter. “You’re a rainbow family. He’s a rainbow family. People in the White House are a rainbow family,” one reveler named Novel announced when he arrived.
“It’s about world peace,” Novel told FOX 13 in Salt Lake City. “But I personally believe it’s like a very excellent place to meet people, to network, to become the true you.”
But by the end of the event, a woman with black dreadlocks whose hippy name is “Hitler” had stabbed a man in the head and shoulder.
White people, spoiling everything, not doing what they say.
Here’s the petition, by the way. It’s got some of the best language I’ve seen on a petition, frankly:
I will say this! I have met a bunch of you and do find some of you to be legit! Friendly and supportive to those I offer an apology for my aggressiveness & language! but that’s what it took to get your attention.”The greasy wheel gets the grease” As far as the rest of you who show no respect! You can burn in hell for all I care! I can handle it and encourage it! Bring whatever you think you got! Not saying I would win or lose but I will stand my ground! No matter what! We have no fear!
So in closing all we are asking is to take your event somewhere else! Your ways are not ours and we don’t want to share our ways with you “Spiritually” I have no problem excepting some of you as friends! Or standing with you on political or environmental issues! But I am a Lakota! You are not us and we are not you! Respect that! Stop imposing yourself on us! If you want us to respect you as you are then respect us as we are!
I’ve signed it. Needs like around 80 more signatures. Why not?
Traitors: How Privileged Allies Failed Sabahans During The Kinabalu Earthquake
Before we begin, a moment of silence for the dead.
Nineteen people. Of five different nationalities. Six of the dead included children from Singapore, who no doubt treated this excursion as an exciting, if daring, adventure the way kids under the age of 12 often do. Four of them were experienced mountain staff, who had given their lives to make sure that the people who were under their care were as safe and happy as they could be. They are remembered fondly, not only by their families, but also by the many people who they have helped ascend Mt. Kinabalu.
But perhaps none of that matters to you. None of those deaths matter, nor the livelihoods of those that depend on the mountain and the facilities around it. Maybe the damage to infrastructure on Kinabalu is not a big deal. Or the schools and facilities around the region. Not a big deal. Not important enough.
Certainly not important enough for the international news, right? Because that’s what you recall hearing1: a Government Minister of Muslim-Majority2 Malaysia “blaming” the earthquake on “angry spirits”. Never mind that fellow Sabahans have pointed out that he was speaking as a man dealing with a massive tragedy, and that sometimes, you know, when people hurt, they tend to blame anything: the supernatural, in this case.
And it’s bad enough when white Europeans decide to make our nations their playgrounds, even co-opting and re-creating spaces that reflect our deeply racist past. It’s bad enough when white Europeans, a people with a narcissistic and racist history of barging into holy places with nude selfies for their gap yuh, do it again.
It’s worse when even Malaysians join in in enabling these fuckers:
No, it isn’t the casualties of the earthquake, though those too were tragic of course. It isn’t the Malaysian government’s inept rescue operations. And it certainly isn’t the naked photos taken by foreign tourists atop the mountain.
No, the greatest tragedy of the Sabah earthquake is the response of many Malaysians to the foreign tourists stripping off on Mount Kinabalu for some harmless fun.
Was it, Shaun Tan? Was it some “harmless fun”? Is it harmless fun when someone comes into your domicile3, violates your boundaries and then ignores and belittles your protests? Is it harmless fun when your anger and hurt is used as examples of how “uneducated” and “childish” you are? Are subalterns never allowed their anger, for fear of staining the reputations of all subalterns forever and ever? Are they never allowed their grief? Must they conform to your ideas of “proper” protest and “correct” thought to be taken seriously, as “adults” and full human beings?
Here’s the way the narrative is being told right now, for many “educated” Malaysians:
A bunch of tourists strip on the summit of Mt. Kinabalu and pose naked.
An earthquake happens.
A Malaysian Minister blames the earthquake on angry spirits.
Sounds clear-cut, right? We can see who’s wrong here. It’s an easy narrative to fall into, as you can see from Kate Ng trying to explain to the erudite readers of the Guardian what happened:
Malaysia, despite its technological advancement and a strong desire for the world to see us as developed, is still a country steeped in culture and tradition. We are a nation in a state of transition, and, whatever you believe about the spiritual dimension of Mount Kinabalu, it’s important for all Malaysians that tourists treat us with respect. It’s the lack of consideration that these tourists displayed that really stings, regardless of how much store you put by the volcano’s sacred associations.
[…]
Malaysia needs to have a serious discussion about the best way to protect our culture. We are entitled to expect tourists to behave considerately. And we must be diligent in holding on to the way of life that makes our society so unique. But there is room for debate and development, for moderation. We claim to be a modern nation – we must live up to it. Blaming earthquakes on a group of tourists, no matter how they have behaved, will just not do.
Note how Ng talks about how Malaysia is stuck between True Modernity™ and primitive superstition tradition. Note the cringing, apologetic tone. Note the call for “moderation”, and how the issue is all about how we’re “blaming” the tourists and subjecting them to injustice. Note that someone who doesn’t even know that Mt. Kinabalu is a fucking pluton and not a fucking volcano4 is basically telling Malaysians how we should react.
Instead of following that narrative, let’s reframe it:
A bunch of tourists, directly contravening the taboo of the community that consider themselves custodian of the mountain, strip and pose naked.
Some time later, an earthquake happens. People die. Infrastructure is damaged. Livelihoods are affected. We call the people who survive heroes, but their livelihood is damaged, and it doesn’t look like we’ll step up for them.
a Chief Minister who not only holds a government post, but also the Paramount Leader of the Kadazandusun Cultural Association, now instead of dealing with one crisis5, has to deal with two. He speaks, not only as a Minister, but as a Sabahan and the Paramount Leader6 of his people, as Kinabalu is central to his experience too.
People, Malaysians, use #3 to dismiss the damage and pain felt for both #1 and #2.
Who’s the asshole now7?
Because that’s what it’s all about, really. It’s not about whether the spirits care if you’re naked or not. It’s not about whether they caused the earthquake or not. It’s about people being angered for having their boundaries violated and you responding by dismissing their pain and minimising their anger.
When people’s boundaries are violated, we call that abuse. When their narrative of abuse, their experience, their pain is dismissed or denied, we call that gas-lighting. It isn’t that difficult.
You do recall that the Dusun, like every other community in Malaysia, have had to face not decades but centuries of dismissal and dehumanization by colonial powers8. That these attempts at enforcing these actions are not only about laws and taboos, but demanding that we be treated with dignity? That we all have our sacred spaces, and we open them out to visitors in hopes that they will at least treat our spaces with respect?
I think what’s been most painful here isn’t really a reminder of how, to white tourists9. We’re basically a product. Our main concern isn’t about our dignity and worth as communities and human beings with agency, but how good our service is, and how much money we can bring in. That’s certainly a discussion we can have, but, right now, frankly:
No, what I guess still stings even now is how in many cases, the same voices that mock our fellow Malaysians are other Malaysians. That the most painful voices aren’t from “international”10 commentators, but from the effete Malaysian bourgeois liberal déraciné manque-elite. The ones who sip their flat whites and decry the rise of barbaric superstition amongst Malaysians. The ones who will talk about how they’re above racial and religious politics, yet engage in racism when talking about their “less advanced” and “less progressive” brethren.
I can deal with outsiders barging in — I think we have an entire stream of post-colonial thought that deals with that. The foe at the gates we can deal with. It’s the friendly fire that hurts.
Malaysians: You are literally spitting at the faces of people who are suffering right now when you belittle them for having “superstitious beliefs”, calling those beliefs “ridiculous”11, and focusing your attentions on how native people are getting it wrong and not being scientific about the fucking earthquake. Newsflash: no one cares what you think, asshole.
Also, that the anger that is being expressed, the hurt that is being felt, actually transcends religious and ethnic belief. I’ve seen Muslims that try to defend their Dusun brethren, not because they share that belief, but because they understand. Joseph Pairin Kitingan is Catholic. Literally, this pain they feel… they feel it as Sabahans, not as Muslims, Christians, or animists, or as a single ethnic group, but as a state, together12.
What they’re noticing is that, in their time of need, you spit at their face. Many of them will remember this. You’re trampling on the dignity of fellow Malaysians. You don’t believe in mountain spirits and ancestral worship? Fine. It’s not your belief. It’s not mine either. But so what? A community has had their taboos violated. And instead of helping, you are laughing at them.
Before you get too smug about how only the trash press were covering it that way: nope. Guardian okey. Like literally one of the last bastions of press free from corporate control. ↩
Nevermind that the people protesting are Dusun, who are not only Muslim, but Christians and animists. Nevermind that the protest focuses more towards Aki Nabalu as an ethnic cultural touchpoint, not a religious one. No. Muslim-majority. Got to get the classification of your brown people right. ↩
A horrible thought has just occurred to me: maybe you don’t think Mt. Kinabalu belongs to the Dusun people. Maybe you think it “belongs to the world”. But that’s horrible beyond belief, because what you’re really saying is that the wishes of people who live in the land, who centre their identity on indigenous sites, should always defer to “the greater good”, which isn’t defined by them. And that if they don’t like it, too bad, it’s going to happen anyway. It means that you’re okay with land theft and genocide, or okay with actions that sit on the spectrum of land theft and genocide. Maybe you have an arbitrary line that you draw just so you’re not “one of them”, because fifty steps is okay but a hundred is just too far. It also means that if you’re okay with this shit happening yet decry the plight of the Orang Asal or other indigenous peoples, you’re a hypocrite. ↩
IT HAS NO CALDERA, IT CAN’T ERUPT, IT’S A MASSIVE KILOMETRES-LONG PIECE OF IGNEOUS ROCK PUSHED THROUGH THE FUCKING CRUST DID YOU SLEEP THROUGH GEOGRAPHY KBSM OR WHAT DEYYYYYY! YOU WERE THERE SUMMORE! YOU WERE THERE! ↩
Repeat after me: it’s a fucking crisis when someone has their boundaries violated. It doesn’t matter if you think the reasons are unreasonable, it doesn’t matter if you don’t think it’s a big deal — get it straight: your opinions don’t fucking matter, you’re not the one being hurt. ↩
From the website: “…if no leader is considered worthy of the Huguan Siou’s Title, the office would rather be left vacant (in respect of the highly dignified and near sacred office of the Kadazandusun’s Huguan Siou), until such time comes when a deserving Kadazandusun leader is undoubtedly established.” This is not some small-time shit, okay? ↩
You. ↩
White Europeans. ↩
#notallwhitetourists! There, I said it. Now fuck off. ↩
You guessed it — white. ↩
“But,” you say, “Why are you all right with Sabahans having these outmoded superstitions yet so critical about Muslims being afraid of crosses, Hindu temples and pork?” Because, 1) Muslims have lived existences without having to worry about these things, because they don’t encroach into our liberties — if we don’t like we don’t go, none of these things challenge what it means to be a Muslim, and it’s a lesson we’ve forgotten, 2) what our authorities are doing, representing Muslims as a whole, is encroachment into the liberties of others and arguably against the spirit of justice in Islam and 3) we’d be pissed off too if some gwailo wanker decided to strip and piss in our places of worship, and they’d be in jail as well. Because, again, as a community, we have boundaries. And no one gives a shit if the boundaries don’t “make sense to you,” because that’s abusive talk, stop being a fucking enabler to abuse. ↩
Wait, standing together no matter the ethnicity or religion? Are you telling me that Sabahans are better at this whole 1Malaysia thing than… Peninsular people? Better than… holy shit, erudite and educated Peninsular people?!? Instead of sitting on their high horses they’re actually coming together??? WHAT SORCERY IS THIS DOES NAJIB KNOW ABOUT THIS OR NOT?!?!? ↩
Traitors: How Privileged Allies Failed Sabahans During The Kinabalu Earthquake
Today on KK: Tariq calling out Malaysians who have been gaslighting Sabahans:
Before we begin, a moment of silence for the dead. Nineteen people. Of five different nationalities. Six of the dead included children from Singapore, who no doubt treated this excursion as an exciting, if daring, adventure the way kids under the age of 12 often do. Four of them were experienced mountain staff, who had given their lives to make sure that the people who were under their care were…
I wasn’t planning on have a full rant, but I am seriously triggered by Maya Tan’s"opinion" on people with Tourette’s. I don’t give a fuck that she’s “apologised” - I think she apologised not because she was wrong (itupun she “apologised” by proxy), but because so many people are giving her a hard time for it. People like Maya Tan need to understand something - not all of us are lucky or privileged enough to be born perfect or beautiful.
To be fair, she is not really the person I am angry with. I am angry with so many folks here in general because of our horrible and ignorant attitude towards mental illness and disability. My older brother has autism, and I grew up watching people behaving like he shouldn’t even be let out of the house, much less breathe the same air. I get it - he’s not as “normal” as you lot, but don’t you think he deserves to access the same spaces as you do? Don’t you think he deserves to be treated like a human being as well?
I’ve been living away from Malaysia for eight years. Since I came home, I had to deal with some readjustments. Everyone thinks my readjustment has to dowith the food and weather. Guess what? My readjustment has a lot to with the seriously fucked up mentality that we have going here, ranging from the blatant racism (“oh it’s okay to use the N-word to describe African/black people… it’s not like in the UK where it’s not allowed”) to misogyny to Malay male privilege bullshit to prejudice towards refugees to patronising the Orang Asli for their beliefs to ableism.
The sheer arrogance of the privileged and entitled is staggering.
Malaysia - a country made for only the beautiful, rich, fair-skinned, and perfect. I wish you all well.
See also: Local writer suggests Tourette’s sufferers gag themselves.
