Supposedly, people are getting all up in arms about the movie Kick-Ass — because Hit-Girl swears like a sailor, gores her way through upwards of 50 people over the course of the film with all sorts of weaponry, is unrepentant to boot, and worst of all: she’s 11 years old.
I really enjoy how sexism immediately comes into obvious, irrefutable play despite all supposed to-do about the age:
Why exactly is it perverse? To see a child engaged in violence? Or is it because it’s a female child engaging in violence that’s the problem?
I really suspect it’s the latter and not the former. After all, it’s not as if foul-mouthed, violent male characters are lacking in the market and yet there isn’t a huge brouhaha about that.
It gets funnier:
Frank Furedi, a professor of sociology weighs in with: “This promotes the idea that infantilising adulthood is ok and that we are no longer expected to draw lines between us and kids.”
Oh. Give me a break. Infantilising adulthood? So what do we call the current trend of putting prepubescent teens in stripper outfits and those high heels for babies?
On a related tangent, here’s a clip of 7 year old girls performing dance moves that look as if they’ve come straight out of Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” MV:
Or, if you don’t like videos, here’s some pictures:
Granted, there’s somewhat of a firestorm going on because of these girls, but this isn’t the first or only instance of things like this happening.
Girls have been increasingly sexualized at younger and younger ages for years now and yet that sort of behaviour is alright and yet violence isn’t?
I love how there’s the comments that range from claiming that because it’s dance and therefore an art form, it’s not dirty or inappropriate to those who claim that sexualization is only in the eyes of the beholder and whoever sees this as being problematic should really get their mind out of the gutter.
Deanna:
I completely agree with you. These girls are talented little dancers and have skills! They are doing real choreography! There is a difference between getting dirty on the dance floor and body isolations! and do people not understand the difficult turn sequences in this piece.
Ken:
Unless you are one of these girls’ mothers, shouldn’t you keep your ridiculous ultra-conservative opinions to yourself? Anyone who sees sexuality in an outfit on a 7-yr old needs serious professional help. If your mind wasn’t thinking that way, you wouldn’t have this opinion. Period. Look yourself in the mirror and ask why you would see a costume on a 7-yr old as sexual.
Beammer:
The outfits look like swimsuits.
Peters (executive vp of The Hozman Group):
“It has been taken out of context.” and “There was NOTHING provocative about what they were doing.”
Presch (parent of one of the kids):
“The costumes are designed for movement, unrestricted movement and to show body lines.” Also, this is because “the judges need to be able to see the girl’s movement and technical skills.”
Um. Right. I see we’re going from justifying to rationalizing to flat out bullshit in very short order. I wonder if Presch thinks the rest of us are all idiots who haven’t seen ballet performed before. I’m sure that leotards would show body lines and allow for full range of body movement.
I’m gratified that there’s still people who still think that this sort of dance routine and costuming choice is wildly inappropriate for 7 year old girls, but the fact that we have managed to let public morality slide to the point where this sort of performance is considered de rigeur in this sort of venue is frankly appalling. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that if a 17 year old I knew was doing this, I’d still be somewhat taken aback. You know it’s bad when Beyonce was wearing much less skin in a much less provocative manner in the original video.
Back to Hit-Girl. I appreciate how Chloe Moretz, the actress who plays Hit-Girl seems to be taking this way more in stride than some of the people blowing their tops off.
“Hit-Girl isn’t very adult at all. She may say this stuff, but she doesn’t know any better. That’s how she was born and raised. She watches John Woo movies — what do you get from John Woo movies? You get violence and cussing. And that’s all she knows. She doesn’t know how to speak kind words to people. Her Dad tried to raise her like that, she really doesn’t know any better.”
and
It’s a movie for a reason. It’s not meant to be taken as real life.
She also doesn’t suggest that kids watch it nor does she think that Hit-Girl should be a role model. She does see it as female empowerment insofar as it’s a female character who is kicking ass instead of being the damsel in distress.
What I really enjoy is the dichotomy. When it comes to violence, cursing, and such non-feminine pursuits, where are all the comments about it being art, about perversity only being in the eye of the beholder, about taking a chill pill because obviously to pull this off takes talent and that therefore excuses all?
Elisabeth Rappe puts it beautifully when she says that it’s because the violence isn’t sexual in nature.
Charlie’s Angels where they seduce men and then beat them? Perfectly alright.
Death via sex? That’s alright too.
But having a girl get all bloody and spill gore? Oh wait, that’s not ok at all, because a woman is supposed to either be the whore or the Madonna. The Madonna nurtures, teaches by loving pacifistic example, and “lends civilization to a brutal world”. Irony quotes. The whore kills with sex, poisons, and is essentially a back-stabbing bad girl who you do not want anywhere near your mother.
When it’s a girl doing all the bloodspilling, it’s no longer “just a movie” or “just entertainment”, it’s something infinitely more subversive, perverse, and problematic.
Hypocrisy, people. Hypocrisy. You’re so bad at this game.
A friend emailed me an article from the Economist.
He asked me my thoughts on the article, and one thing really stood out to me: the author says that “most obviously, China should scrap the one-child policy”.
I think that’s just rank stupidity talking.
The authors says in the article that other countries without the one-child policy also suffer from a skewed sex ratio. This, to me, says that the one-child policy may be a significant cause in causing the numbers to be as ludicrous as 200 boys to 1 female, but it’s not fixing anything to scrap that policy.
There’s a couple of problems with the entire situation:
For those couples who can afford multiple children, they’ll simply keep having children until they get their desired boy. If there is enough affluence, then this would just cause a population surge at worst and at best there would be more girls brought into this world to live in a world of passive abuse and neglect with names like “bringing brother” and “summoning brother” or “might as well keep feeding”. Yes, that last was actually a common name.
For those who cannot afford to feed, clothe and school multiple children, then abortion is still the answer. As standards of living rise in China, more and more couples are realizing the immense amounts of money, time, and energy required to raise a child to be successful. With this in thought, it is more than likely that under those circumstances those people who would prefer sons would abort girls anyways to keep the best for their sons.
In rural areas, I can all but see rag-tag armies of girls doing the chores, working in the fields, toiling whilst their brothers go to school. For a family who has to scrimp and save for tuition, the only person in the family who will go to school is, of course, the son.
As a Chinese female, I would rather die than live in the above scenarios. It would be kinder to strangle me at birth or even much more humane to kill me in the womb. To live and be denied education, to be seen as lesser simply because of my gender, and to be seen as a breeder on legs? No thanks.
Of course, others may not share my view. Others will probably think that life as a slave is better than death. That’s alright. We’re all entitled to our own opinions.
Speaking as a Chinese woman living in today’s times seeing the gender inequality and the crimes that rise from it: bride-napping, sharing stolen wives between brothers, gang rape by villages of men who just want to breed their next generation of rapist sons — at this point I’m not even particularly keen on living in China. Sounds like a rather dangerous proposition to me, actually.
It speaks rather eloquently to me that when the demand for women rises, violence against them also rises in proportion to said demand instead of more respect. Instead of having more choices, our lives are put in more danger.
Nothing is going to change, not the sex ratio, not women’s rights, not anything unless some fundamental views are changed. Before that, perhaps scientists can comfort themselves that at least the numbers aren’t looking quite so horrible at the expense of having more people on the face of this earth — but nothing is fixed.
I was watching Renovation Nation on TV tonight and came across some rather interesting things.
For one, there’s an couple in California who built a huge house and is claiming that it’s green.
Righto.
This monstrosity is something like at least 3,000 square feet if not more, has only 5 bedrooms, boasts 5 bathrooms, and a fully automated toilet. Granted, it’s a toilet that only uses 1.2 gallons per flush — but still.
Supposedly, between materials and whatnot, these people went from being 12 LEED points in the hole to being 12 points over platinum, which requires 80 points.
To be honest? I was not at all impressed.
Sure, it seemed that they had made a sincere effort to be as green as possible in terms of building materials and whatnot — but I honestly felt like that much space with only five bedrooms was ridiculous, even if they were talking about having a large family. I also thought that it would have been much more admirable if they had spent their money on being carbon neutral like that other couple in Colorado who had solar energy, solar thermal, and geothermal systems going instead of that ridiculous remote controlled toilet and huge-ass rooms.
I think I read somewhere that someone doesn’t really consider any huge house green at all and I think I have to more or less side with that person on this one.
Now, if they had 10 bedrooms and planned to fill them all — that’s another story.
But does a home really need a separate bathroom for each room, and that much space per person?
Personally, I like a smaller living space both because I find that easier to clean and because I hate rattling around in houses.
If I ever got to design the ideal home, it’d have enough insulation to keep the house toasty warm in winter even without much additional heating, solar thermal and solar power for everything else, and possibly some geothermal thrown in for good measure.
It’d also have three stories up and at least one basement floor — but then I’m intending on living with a ton of people, so I’m not at all abashed of how much space this place is going to be.
I just saw on the news that the number of teens in Taiwan who get HIV through one-night-stands arranged via the Internet is on the rise. Also in the same news story is the little factoid that many, many Chinese girls are getting abortions at the average age of 15~16. There’s even a name for it: the summer vacation abortion crowd.
Then there’s the news story about the girl who went out with a friend to meet two boys she met online. Said girl went on to be raped and brutally murdered. My god-mother’s boyfriend said vehemently that he’d break the legs of his children if they tried to go out and meet someone they met online.
Then there’s the advertisement on Taiwanese TV that I saw, the one where a girl who is ostracised in school, bullied, cheated on by her boyfriend finds solace in an online game.
Where to begin? Where to even attempt to think about this? How to even start a dialogue without going into a frothing, screaming fit?
It’s not about Internet and how evil it is.
Further, it’s not about how evil sex is and how we should keep our poor babies pure.
It’s not about simply forbidding your child to have online friends.
It’s about knowledge.
Why so many parents refuse to see that it’s lack of knowledge that’s hurting their children is beyond me. What boggles me further is how many parents are so willing to blame everything — society, the internet, technology, the school, teachers — everything except their own lack of good parenting when their children suffer horribly because they simply weren’t told.
They might not have been told that if they go out to meet online friends, it better be in a very public place and that they’re never allowed to go someplace private with them the first few times. Perhaps they weren’t told that sometimes people can lie to you on the internets, especially on the internets, and that it can be very dangerous as a result. Probably they weren’t told or they didn’t know that their parents were justifiably worried about them having online friends and weren’t being old sticks in mud.
The girls that end up having abortions — they weren’t told that you can get pregnant the first time, the same day you lose your virginity. They weren’t told that they have a good chance of having miscarriages or pregnancy complications because of their young age. They weren’t told that they might have to have an abortion in a small clinic that will botch things and render them infertile for the rest of their potentially very long life. They weren’t told how devastating it is for some women to knowingly choose between being an under-age mother and killing your own child. I know they weren’t told, and I cannot say how it hurts to know that somewhere even now, a young girl is making the decision to kill her own flesh and blood because she wasn’t told.
I believe that sometimes you just don’t know because you didn’t know the possibility of such a thing. I believe that, because for the longest time I didn’t know many, many things that seemed to be absolutely commonsensical to other people and it isn’t that I’m stupid or that I didn’t know how to use the Internet to my advantage or anything except I didn’t know that I didn’t know until it was far too late.
I also believe that it’s the duty of parents to educate their children, to prepare them for the world that they’re going to be in, and it is so beyond unacceptable for me to know that so many parents shirk their duties because they either have a stick up their ass about explaining why something is not a good idea or because they’re embarrassed to talk about sex.
Can we just fucking accept that refusing to talk about fucking can be dangerous? Can we just accept that abstinence doesn’t fucking work? Can we perhaps accept that our children are getting to where they need good solid reasons for your rules and it’s not fucking enough to just say no?
I myself accept that sometimes people are stupid. See the case in point, my friend who despite knowing all that there pretty is to know, had some mingling of bodily fluids with someone without protection.
But perhaps knowledge will help temper that stupidity. Maybe. Hopefully.
I do know that lack of knowledge can only hurt more than having it.
For those who want to wade through the entire puddle of fail, here’s the link.
To start off with, I’m really appalled regarding Patricia C Wrede’s attitude towards The Thirteenth Child.
To quote:
The *plan* is for it to be a “settling the frontier” book, only without Indians (because I really hate both the older Indians-as-savages viewpoint that was common in that sort of book, *and* the modern Indians-as-gentle-ecologists viewpoint that seems to be so popular lately, and this seems the best way of eliminating the problem, plus it’ll let me play with all sorts of cool megafauna). I’m not looking for wildly divergent history, because if it goes too far afield I won’t get the right feel.
Um. Whut?
First of all, I’m appalled that you’re dismissing the portrayal of an entire race of people as a problem. After all, you’re a writer, isn’t portrayal what you do? Secondly, I’m disappointed in you that you’re so casually restricting viewpoints of Native Americans to these two stereotypes — I think you’re a better writer than this and you’re both being dismissive, insulting, and lazy. Lastly, how can you think that an America without Native Americans isn’t wildly divergent? I rather think that’s also insulting.
God, I hope I’m taking that quote entirely out of context, but I honestly don’t know how I can put it in context.
Then, yet another writer I truly admire really lets me down here.
Lois McMaster Bujold actually starts out rather reasonably, in my opinion, by stating that:
The book actually began with a contemplation of the what-if question, “What would happen if the megafauna survived into historic times…?” The theory presently being argued in archeology is that the pre-Columbian settlers wiped out said megafauna, and that’s the one Pat chose to follow up; so if one wants mammoths and short-faced bears and terror birds, the Bering land bridge human immigration needed not to have taken place, 13,000 years back. From that, the rest followed, q.s. to the limits of a necessarily slim volume.
Alright. So we’re talking an either Native Americans or megafauna scene here, ok. I can buy that. I do wish that she had admitted that the premise could have been interpreted badly, but I’m not horribly upset by her treatment.
Then she starts venturing downhill by not directly addressing the question but asking for the function of fiction:
Which begs a larger question: what is the function of fiction? Social engineering? Propaganda, sermon? Or something else? Windows? Mirrors?
People who come down on the social-engineering side do tend to value a book by how well it serves some agenda outside of itself. I see that as a slippery slope, myself.
What, by the way, is a “moral writer”, in your lexicon? Just for my orientation. That almost slipped past as an undefined term, there.
The problem with her question is that the point is the premise bothers people because it literally erases people who have historically faced genocide. The function of fiction as mirror or window or entertainment isn’t the point. And her question of the definition of moral writer is phrased rather patronizingly, I thought.
It only gets worse:
You know, I thought you were making a few interesting points, till you came to this:
“I’ve come to the conclusion that based on the shadow cast by white supremacist colonization and the ongoing genocide of the original inhabitants of the Americas, I can’t– in good conscience– read the Thirteenth Child. It’s not so much recoiling from a shadow cast by a distortion in my head but disgust with a trope that holds that even when they’re strangers in a strange land, all white people need in order to prosper is whiteness.”
My mother — born in 1912 — used to have a phrase for this: “My mind is made up. Don’t confuse me with the facts.”
A stance of moral superiority really cannot be floated over an abyss of ignorance. (Though I admit, people routinely try.) It’s especially not a sound footing for this book which, within the limits of its scope, actually does some very interesting things with subverting assumed Avyrupan dominances.
I will stop recommending you read it, however. The book deserves better than to be pored over by an inquisitor only seeking evidence for a conviction already decided upon.
See, I expected more from Bujold than that. The fact that Skywardprodigal made good points isn’t obscured by her inability to read the book. Also, I thought her tone was definitely patronizing in this post and it seemed that she wasn’t so much interested in discussing the subject, again, as being confrontational. Very disappointing. Not that I think that the others are being brilliant paragons of humanity, but I really did expect more from Bujold.
And the dissenters haven’t even gotten really inflammatory yet.
Then there’s Avalon’s Willow of the Elizabeth Bear kerfuffle fame. I will come out on a limb and freely admit that I cannot agree with this person. She’s abrasive and insulting, not to mention often patronizing. I can see her point, but her presentation turns me off like nothing else:
Don’t you know the Coaltion of White Female SF Authors passed out a memo that states they categorically cannot be thought to hold racist thoughts cause they decided so?
Then Elizabeth Bear told them how all they had to do to interact with PoC was lie to them and belittle them cause it would raise book sales and they all agreed that willful blindness was the new hotness.
What are you doing bringing *HISTORY* and *LOGIC* and *CONTEXT* into conversation? How dare you introduce Post-Colonial Ideology. White people don’t know what that is, it involves brown people. How dare we assume they’d pay attention.
Also? This is Tor’s site. TOR, Skyward. T. O. R - THE ORIGINAL RACISTS. You seriously should know better.
Meanwhile, yet another fantasy novel that glosses over the ugly realities of colonialist narrative by disappearing the native brutally conquered tribes in order to have white people skipping merrily towards Manifest Destiny?
Colour me unsurprised.
You and I, however, know that if it weren’t for grave robbing thus discovering signs of another civilization, stealing of the corn set aside by the natives for their next season’s harvest, and lying in wait for someone to return to claim it; the colonists would have starved to death.
But yeah, who needs Tisquantum. They have Mammoths! And hey, at least no one in this book’s universe will ever bust out with the typical. “But my great great grandmother was a Cherokee Princess!”
I’m going to ignore that shot at Elizabeth Bear and how Avalon’s Willow thinks Bear thinks the coalition of white female SF authors should treat POCs. That remark that implied history and context and logic has no place in this conversation because it involves whites? The one about calling TOR the original racists? I can’t hold with calling an entire company the “original racists”. Feel free to call one person or two people or three or even twenty names — but an entire boatful of people?
Then there’s Kynn who thinks that the theory which says that the Native Americans contributed to the extinction of megafauna is insulting. When challenged, she says:
Whether or not you think it SHOULD be insulting, it definitely IS insulting. (I’m not an American Indian, but I can see the insulting components of this type of worldbuilding.)
Personally I think that humans have caused animal extinction many, many times, and I really can’t see how it’s insulting. You can say it is a faulty theory, but to insist it’s racist?
Bujold steps back with some more fail:
OK, I’ve gone away and thought about this for a few days. Let’s try again. (Also resolved: do not make blog posts after midnight, or after consuming a sleeping pill that isn’t working.)
I have no argument with the larger issues of cultural/racial erasures and historical crimes in the real world; these are real and harrowing (and universal, the more you know about everywhere. _Carthago delenda est_ and all that. But 20,000 wrongs don’t make a right, merely a trend.) Ditto on-going local oppressions; despite the fact that Native Americans are over two million strong, voting citizens, fellow exiles in the 21st century, and many are educated, articulate, and perfectly able to speak for themselves (most of the major tribes have websites now, a thought both hopeful and boggling) poverty and discrimination do still fall disproportionately upon many others. Back to this in a moment.
I still have a profound problem with any argument that leaps from hearsay to condemnation without any intervening stop at “evidence”. It doesn’t matter *what* the subject is, the *form* is wrong, even if the conclusion after examining the evidence bears out the initial belief. And it’s just as wrong in a court of public discourse as it would be in a court of law. Worse, someone making this leap throws every other assertion they may make into doubt — were they all arrived at as casually and cheaply? Don’t do this, people, and don’t let others get away with it, either — because someday, your own life or happiness may depend upon just such due process.
But I also believe that a person who holds admirable opinions, yet does nothing, is scarcely distinguishable from a person who holds execrable opinions, and does nothing. Virtual virtue doesn’t count. Talk is cheap (especially on the Internet.) As Stephen Leacock swears he heard two Scottish Calvinists arguing on a train, on whether damnation is achieved through good works or grace alone, I’m on the good works side, myself.
The past is beyond anyone’s reach, and history is fractal — one sperm over, and we would all have been our siblings, and our own self-centered universes would never have sprung into being at all — so what can an ordinary person do right-here-right-now about any given hurt in the world? The two standard answers are money and time — well, and blood, but I don’t direct where that goes. And “start anywhere” is usually pretty good advice, when one is spoiled for choice.
So I asked my friend who knows about such things, and she supplied these, her favorites — more could perhaps be added:
“Oglala Lakota College — www.olc.edu (They always need contributions to help students pay their loans, without which they can’t graduate.)
Lakota Funds (making mini loans for economic development and training people to run their own businesses) http://www.lakotafunds.org/
Soaring Eagle — not Lakota, but Cheyenne is a neighboring tribe; this is a residential home for elderly Cheyenne started by their long-term priest, Father Emmett Hoffmann, to help elderly folks who needed care (and keep them from being sent off to Denver, away from family and anyone who spoke their language): www.soaringeagle.org/
Also, Running Strong for American Indian Youth — not limited to Lakota, but does do neat things there — organic gardens, etc.”
Didn’t take me long to choose, as I’m always for education — which reminds me that I need to contribute to the engineering scholarship fund in my Dad’s name back at OSU — but to make it extra easy –
And you may at least congratulate yourselves for tipping me over from “I really ought to do that one of these days,” to “There! Done!”
Full disclosure: It was I who invited Pat over, a few years back, to watch a fascinating BBC documentary DVD titled “Walking with Prehistoric Beasts”, which started the cascade of interests that resulted in the book you aren’t reading. So, while the first rule for avoiding Internet insanity is still “do not feed the energy monster”, I really cannot tiptoe away from this. Even though it would be *infinitely* smarter to do so.
Um, Bujold, grats. You just non-apologized, if I’m reading that sentence about posting after midnight with a sleeping pill that isn’t working properly. You also still didn’t address everyone else who has been trying to convince you that “Yes, there kinda is a problem with this premise.” You also, I’m hoping unintentionally, told people to just shut up and actually do something about the issue, like throwing money at it, in a very patronizing way. I really do like you as a writer, but I feel like you’re slamming your foot in your mouth at supersonic speed. Especially with your addition of boggling when referencing Native American tribe websites. May I ask what exactly is boggling about that? I also note that you never respond to comments that ask you that question either.
At post 121, she still doesn’t address the issue. That’s ok. Whatevs. I give up at this point at your trainwreck of a post.
Lastly, how everyone jumped all over Hapax’s comments regarding how she regards books is illuminating. I love how “white privilege” is slung around casually, constantly.
The way I interpreted what she’s been trying to say this entire time is that she feels there is something to be gained from every book — therefore she’s against censorship, even when it’s as innocuous as people saying “I cannot in good conscience read this book”. Although, once you really get down to it, isn’t someone saying that they couldn’t in good conscience do something sometimes pretty compelling reason to follow suit and not do it?
I simply love how she’s lambasted:
Newsflash, minorities, you need to read poisonous literature for your edification. Because if you don’t buy it, well, the poor white writers and readers will just keel over and die without your pained support, right after pillorying you for refusing to give their racist and othering work ‘a chance’. Because none of this is about your feelings. It is about changing the world! By buying and consuming the work of, again, racist white writers.
I’m honestly not quite sure how “almost everything has worth in my eyes” is translated to “you must zomg buy all books by all authors, especially the poisonous ones and read them!”
Then there’s Kynn:
Also, hapax, your privilege is really dripping all over the place in ways that may prove too caustic for many people to want to engage you, especially if they are people of color who have been subject to oppressions you have not had to face. You are very glib and white and privileged, and I wince (as a white person) at many of the things you are saying.
I don’t think it’s an accident that only white people (such as Bruce, who has been excellent on this thread) are willing to engage you. You seemingly just don’t realize how repellent your words are.
Really, I think the worst one can accuse Hapax of is derailing the subject. I don’t think she’s saying that criticism of books isn’t allowed or that there’s some sort of golden rule for how one chooses to decide what they read. I think she makes that pretty clear by saying that she doesn’t hold anyone else to the priorities she holds herself to. I don’t know what lenses these other people are viewing her words through, at all.
Lastly, I note that Patricia Wrede has still managed not to come and even try to explain, despite a couple hundred comments. That is full of more fail.
What a massive load of fail, all of it. In the end, I’ve lost faith in two authors I used to love and I’m again reminded of how ugly people can be when confronted with a viewpoint they do not share.
So. I think that little picture is rather self-explanatory, isn’t it?
My reaction?
If you know that it’s illegal for someone who is underage to engage with someone who is of age in that particular manner, than you should damn well stop because you are putting them in a position of potentially being sent to jail and being required to register as a sex offender whereever they live hereafter.
You have the right to fap, to wank, to participate in any exploratory sessions you may desire so long as you’re not adversely interfering with someone else’s life.
At a certain point it isn’t about draconian laws regarding who may fuck who or arbitrary laws and whatnot. It’s about you not having the right to put someone in jail because you wanted to get your rocks off.
This is based, of course, on the presumption that the other person doesn’t know. If s/he is a pedo, then things do get somewhat different.
I remember vaguely when I was guild master of a guild in World Of Warcraft. I distinctly remember that same “FUCK YOU” response when I learned that one of my guild officers was having ”pornographic interactions” with one of my underage members.
Of course, the way I learned was when the irate parent of said underage teen logged onto her account and started cross-examining me about whether I knew about this entire debacle. I was not amused.
I was pissed at the teen who I had previously knew to have no compunctions disregarding age limitations because of her unimaginable stupidity regarding said age limitations. I knew that she didn’t respect limitations because she filled out my survey on gaming behavior despite my having said that you must be 18 to participate. The thing is, those things are there for a reason, not just for LOLs and it irked me immeasurably that she would take things into her own hands without finding out the why and wherefores.
I was even more pissed at the guild officer because he essentially abused his postion, and he took advantage of a young girl whilst knowing that she was underage. I can’t decide if I’m happy that I didn’t know of this beforehand or if I felt betrayed that I wasn’t told what exactly was going on until I got slammed with threats of a police investigation into the “going ons of this guild”.
Just, not cool. Not cool at all. Play your games if you must, but leave me and my reputation out of it.
My grandmother has a Filipina maid who comes in for 4 hours once a week.
I met her today. She didn’t appear to be much taller than I was, but she was painfully skinny in comparison.
Her name is Venus.
She rather suddenly asked me if I’ve read “My sister’s keeper” and I said yes. We then had a brief dialogue about how it was a good book, but far too sad.
My grandmother mentioned to me that she was currently working illegally after having come here on a now-expired work visa, was sometimes too sick to do the full four hours, is married with children and here being a maid despite having had a college education.
I have never been ashamed of having a maid. Despite the connotations when spoken in American society, growing up in Shanghai meant that it was normal to have hired help. Normal to have someone wait on you hand and foot, complete with breakfast in bed and meeting you at the school bus stop to carry your bookbag if you wished it.
It’s interesting to see how “A yi“, or “auntie” has evolved to meaning the hired help in Shanghai. Amongst the crowd I walked with, we had to specify if we meant a real relative, a friend of the family that was given the honorific, or the maid. It made for interesting conversation dynamics and is a quiet, but potent, footnote on the society I lived in.
I’m not ashamed now that my grandmother pays for Venus’ help either. Grandmama discreetly gifts her with food and other small things, feeds her well before allowing her to go on to her next job cleaning the house of a friend, and tries to find more people to give her jobs. I suspect that her sympathy for this woman’s plight is also some good part of why she has a maid every week and not less frequently.
The feeling I have is much more complex and dark than that.
When I was a child, it not only was normal to have hired help, it was easy to see that woman as an extension of the household. Especially as we had the same older woman who took care of us as if we were her own for seven years. Seven years is both not uncommon and rare, now that we’ve moved past the idea and era of loyal retainers and into an age of pseudo-capitalism.
Then, we knew that it was their job. They were often paid well, ate well with the family, and treated well.
However, this is different; looking upon this woman who is in a foreign country, speaking a language not her own, a plane trip and country borders away from her family, sick and college educated and yet washing floors for a living.
This feels like exploitation.
It feels dirty in a way that having a maid as a child never was.
Regardless that my grandmother attempts to help her. Despite all the kindnesses that the many women of my grandmother’s community might do for her.
Are the people who hire these desperate women actually helping them, or are they part of the problem? And what of the larger question of why supposedly illegal Filipino maids are so prevalent in Taiwan?
I do not know what to think. It is slightly painful to even look this topic in the face. To think that Filipina and maid are somewhat synonymous here.
On a slightly darker note, I mention that there was an old man who killed himself after his long-time Filipina maid finally returned home.
That is another something I have no idea what to think of.
Did he deliberately attempt to keep her with him by not paying her as much as she perhaps needed to return home? What must his relationships with his family be like, if the thought of losing his long-time caretaker was enough to drive him to suicide? What must she think of him, benefactor/patron or someone who kept her paid enough from leaving him but not paid enough to help?
The Asian community in the U.S seems to be having a slight problem.
Akai rice: reputed by telemarketers to make you younger, help you lose weight, help prevent and alleviate symptoms of diabetes, detox, lower blood sugar …
What, wait, it doesn’t also cure AIDs?
There’s one main Chinese channel that you can get via Comcast in Framingham, MA. Zhongtian. Perhaps you can get more channels elsewhere, but I’d be willing to bet that if you’re Chinese, either you have Zhongtian or you have it and additional channels.
Which makes the people who are selling this almost unavoidable if you’re Chinese and watch Chinese TV.
My mother’s friend was buying this rice at $13 for 3 pounds. Consider that I can buy really good rice for about $1/lb and pretty damn good brown rice all the way from Japan for $2/lb…
Skeptical cynic that I am, my first reaction to hearing that it came from France was: “Since when does France produce enough rice to be exporting it? I’ve never even really heard of France producing rice in any large quantity. And also, is rice even a traditional food pre-immigrants? Wut?”
Then, honestly, all those claims just sound like that theory I heard that having sex with a virgin cures you of AIDs.
In an effort to find out more, I Googled Akai rice.
No hits that were official, not counting that website I linked to. No official French company’s website. However, I did find that Wikipedia thinks they’re running a scam. There’s also some mention of them on ripoffreport.com, but I don’t know how reliable that is.
So I kept looking.
No mention of “Akai Ranch” when I tried Googling that and Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer.
Turns out, they do grow rice in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. However, that’s the only truth I can find regarding their claims. Well, asides from the fact that, yes, they do have flamingos and bulls and horses and a nature preserve there.
As for the region, there’s a Camargueredrice that’s apparently gourmet and ridiculously expensive. However, there’s no hits for “Riz rouge de Camargue” + “Akai Ranch”. Nor are there any hits for “Camargue red rice” + “Akai Ranch”.
Then my mom brought a bag home because her friend was all about how great it was and how it helped her daughter lose weight. I looked in the bag and it looked like a mixture of whole grains, but what was really disturbing was that they didn’t list exactly what was in the bag. The ingredients list is as follows: “Akai’s blend of aromatic rice-grains”.
Um. The last I heard, the FDA requires an ingredients list on all food products. It really sketches me out that there isn’t a “real” ingredient’s list on that bag.
At this point, this Akai business is starting to sound really troubling.
Then let’s talk about nutrition.
If you eat whole-grains, you will feel fuller for longer on slightly less food. This is because unprocessed grains take longer for you to digest and the additional fibre will make you feel fuller, faster. So yes, if Akai is a blend of whole grains, then eating it will probably make you lose some weight assuming all other variables stay constant. Easier said than done, I know.
Detox? Well, I know that people have become healthier since going on a whole-grain diet, but detoxing? They can’t support that with any sort of science.
As for blood sugar: if they are whole grains, because it takes longer to break down and there’s more fiber so you’re essentially releasing less sugar into your bloodstream over a longer period of time. So I can see why you wouldn’t have a huge surge of blood sugar post-meal. But claiming that it alleviates symptoms of diabetes is just irresponsible.
I’m not even going to dignify that comment about looking younger after a diet on Akai rice by addressing it. Wait, maybe I just did.
Anyways. There’s nothing Akai rice can do for you that you couldn’t get with a much cheaper bag of brown rice. If you want to go hardcore, feel free to look up multi-grain rice substitute blends, or recipes for them and mix your own.
At $4.33/lb, you decide if it’s a scam or not. I’m noting that Lundberg’s blend is $4.59/lb, but at least you get a real ingredients list and it’d still be probably be cheaper to mix your own if you buy in bulk from your local natural food store.
Personally, I’m positive even if mixing my own from grains bought in bulk is more expensive, I’m not giving a company that spreads such irresponsible claims my money. In my opinion, they’re essentially preying on people who are either ill or just want to eat and feel better.
I was just reading an article that was talking about how waiters and waitresses are being under-tipped as a result of the declining economy.
Personally, I always tip at least 15% for normal service. It is my opinion that if you can’t afford to tip, just stay at home.
It’s interesting though. My parents haven’t lived in the US for more than a decade. So their idea of a good tip used to be that 10% is extraordinarily generous. I had to tell them that what with being in Boston and inflation, 15% is better if you don’t want spit in their food.
Even if you think that wait-staff should be paid a normal wage and shouldn’t have to rely on the tips of patrons — that’s quite another thing entirely. The fact is that you’re essentially cheating the waiter out of income if you don’t tip at all.
However, what really surprised me was that this article claims that 20% is the norm and 25% for good service.
I have to admit, I just about swallowed my tongue.
What? 20%? Have I been under-tipping this entire time while feeling smug about doing the right thing?
I did some Googling and it seemsthat 15% is still the accepted standard. Perhaps it’s just the usual NYC hyper-inflation at work here.
Mayhaps I’ll just stick to my 15% — until Emily Post tells me otherwise.
Part of my problem of eating meat sustainably and locally is that I don’t own a car or have ready access to one. The other part is not having a large enough freezer.
This means no driving out to farms which only sell their products on the premises. This also means not being able to just drive home half a cow at cheap prices and have a place to store it.
Of course, if I wanted a bit less options and slightly higher prices than what I’d get for ordering half a cow, I could go with Lionette’s. I’m pretty damn envious of those people who keep blogging about getting half a sheep for less than 3 dollars a pound. I don’t know if Lionette’s is still willing to deliver, but even if they are, I’m not able to make the minimum order to get free delivery. When money is tight and you’re already buying more expensive meat, those delivery fees can add up. $10 can potentially buy me another two meals worth of meat. If I tried to get enough meat to make the delivery worthwhile, I simply don’t have the room to store it.
Of course, I could walk down and schelp it myself — but honestly, the thought of lugging around meat and having it sit at room temperature for an hour or more gives me the shivers. Not a huge deal in this weather, but when warmer weather rolls around, we’re going to have issues.
Although, if I could afford free delivery, it would be another good reason to meal plan. That way I can just order next week’s meat supply and have it delivered every Friday.
At any rate, I’m going to work on documenting just how much meat Caesura and I go through on a weekly basis. Hopefully this will help in eating more mindfully, resulting in a fatter wallet and less consumption.
At the very least, we’re going to have one vegetarian meal a week. Not much, I know, but considering I really only have one vegetarian recipe that I make — it’s some place to start.
On that note, why is pre-shredded mozerella cheaper by the pound than a big block of cheddar cheese at Stop and Shop? That totally goes against all I’ve been taught about how to shop.
