links links links also let's oppress weeaboos

The Biyuti Collective has a wonderful post On Manners, Etiquette and the White Man’s Rules.

It is important that so many white people use standards of etiquette to judge how civilized and human some people are. It is important that within the last ten years there is an incident like this in Canada. That children of colour are being held to and judged on some arbitrary white standard of etiquette. That they are being shamed and policed.

[...]

I have trouble eating with a knife and fork. I’m always awkward with them and often end up creating a mess. I never use them. I’m a pro with a spoon and a fork. With chopsticks, even. Knife and fork? Clumsy, awkward, and just not the best utensils for the sorts of things that I eat.

The “cutlery controversy” in Canada incident is referenced.

The boy’s mother pursued a formal apology, reporting that, in a telephone conversation with school principal Normand Bergeron, he had told her “Madame, you are in Canada. Here in Canada you should eat the way Canadians eat.”^[3]

The story first appeared in the West Island Chronicle. According to the Montreal-area newspaper, “When (the boy’s mother) questioned Bergeron about punishing students for their table habits, she says he replied that, ‘If your son eats like a pig he has to go to another table because this is the way we do it and how we’re going to do it every time.’”

[...]

“I don’t necessarily want students to eat with one hand or with only one instrument, I want them to eat intelligently at the table … I want them to eat correctly with respect for others who are eating with them. That’s all I ask. Personally, I don’t have any problems with it, but it is not the way you see people eat every day. I have never seen somebody eat with a spoon and a fork at the same time.”

It doesn’t need to be reiterated of that this is racist as fuck, and disgusting. And have you ever considered how inefficient it is to eat many dishes with a fork and knife? Stupid even, and inefficient? The spoon-and-fork way is both superior and more decorous: it’s neat and lets you gather up all the things you want to gather up. It lets you clean the plate. If occidentals want to find dirty primitives to sneer at, they need only to look into a mirror.

Rochita Loenen-Ruiz guest-posted Decolonizing as an SF Writer at Kate Elliot’s blog.

In the course of this journey, I have been told that I need to learn English better. That I can’t possibly grasp the nuances of the English language the way a native English speaker does and that I will never be published as an SF writer.

And then, there are people who say that because I write in English, my narrative is contaminated and no longer true to the culture I come from.

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People who follow me on twitter may have been watching a particular exchange yesterday. I now feel that it is necessary to clarify some things, since people appear to misunderstand me about a very crucial matter–to wit, that I’m an advocate of some strange form of feminism that is an all-human, encompassing movement in which the rights and identities of weeaboos, otherkin, furries, fandom, geeks, nerds and their ilk must be respected and campaigned for. Now I’ll say, and dispel this misconception once and for all, that I do not give even one single shit about the fake oppression and the martyr complexes enjoyed by weeaboos, otherkin, furries, fandom, geeks, nerds and such ilk.

You might think this is not a thing which requires clarification. So did I! Well, both you and I are wrong.

It began with the Claymore posts, which attracted the attention of some dude. You know the type: the kind that makes “anime fan” into an identity, the kind that says proudly that he considers “otaku” a badge of honor–one which to flaunt, to wave around, in celebration of cultural appropriation and blatant fetishization. Thus was born the BURNING WEEABOO TIMES. (Bonus: part two.)

He bristled at my stance on otherkin, too! The idea of the weeaboo–or the otherkin, or just any average dudebro geek–who believes themselves oppressed, a minority that suffers from a lack of privilege… it should be a straw man. It really, really should be. And yet! Here we are.

This dude believes intersectionality is a thing that is about including weeaboos, that by making fun of him and his ilk I’m being hypocritical, and this grand, sweeping inability–

@requireshate @randomjeweler I mean seriously, you want me to justify why you should respect other human beings? And you’re feminists?

–to comprehend that feminism is a thing that might, oh just might, exclude them. A fine combination: he doesn’t just not understand feminism, he appropriates intersectionality as a thing which ought to take seriously the oppression of weeaboos. As the twitter exchange trudged on inexorably toward inevitable stupidity, Moritheil dabbled in some thoughts on trans identities (that they are comparable to his “anime fan” identity), about gay people–

Moritheil is, simply, one of those: the male tapeworms of the world who identify as feminist, but who will only listen to the kind of “feminism” that makes them complacent and comfortable, adore only the feminists who agree with him and stand at the ready to pat his ass. He’s R. Scott Bakker, the weeaboo edition. And, just like Bakker, he believes women harm feminism.

Jennifer Kesler of The Hathor Legacy has an intriguing post about patriarchy and man as a cultural construct. There are parts I disagree with (and there will be parts that you disagree with,) but on the whole I feel it is far better than the paradigm of feminism as simple self-aggrandizing by women, for women.

Heaven forbid feminism be by women, for women! You can read the rest on your own, but I find it telling that one of the people who agree with Moritheil and endorse him wholeheartedly says–

Looking at requireshate‘s behavior, you’d almost think the idea of feminism is to prove that women need not be bitches if they can qualify as assholes…

It’s amusing how the females who like Claymore get the neutral-ish “fans”, while the males are necessarily “nerds” and “weeaboos”. But I guess that’s what you get if you let immature little girls imagine themselves as the vanguard of feminism.

Moritheil doesn’t moderate this comment or call the person who made it out, largely because I imagine the person who made it is a fellow weeaboo shitstain and more importantly, he agrees with Moritheil. As you can see, Moritheil is a FEMINIST. Indeed, as his OKCupid profile (thanks, @kingrat) indicates…

I am a self-admitted radical feminist who listens to Liz Phair as he does the dishes. This could be interpreted as amusing, awesome, or horrifying, and if your answer isn’t one of the first two, don’t talk to me.

Radical. Have some random wapanese:

Tadano ningen.

Jitsuwa, roku nen mai, watashi no shigoto nakama subete wa nihonjin. Anno toki, minna shabureita nihongo.

Dakara, nihongo, watashi chotto wakarimashta.

You’d think a proud orientalist nipponophile would have written it out in kanji. For more on this, he rhapsodized over the awful judgeyness that anime fans must face.

Try as I might, I can’t really see picking on otaku, but trumpeting your sensitivity towards gays and lesbians, as any different from having learned what you can and can’t get away with. It doesn’t seem to indicate that you’ve actually internalized the idea that stereotypes can be damaging.

If you believe, honestly, that all that is so much rubbish, then that’s one thing. You are at least consistent in your denial that stereotypes have serious effects. But if you genuinely believe in the cruelty and harm caused by applying to stereotypes to other social groups – identified by gender, race, sexuality, or religion – and you then turn around and enjoy making people squirm based on their group identity as otaku (however spurious it might seem), then we have a problem.

[..]

Obviously otaku aren’t oppressed in the way that, say, homosexuals in America have been. But just as obviously it’s ludicrous to demand that they undergo that kind of marginalization and suffering before recognizing them as people.

He lists himself as straight, by the way.

UPDATE: desperate backpedaling to save face.

Posted by acrackedmoon on May 14, 2012

http://requireshate.wordpress.com/2012/05/14/links-links-links-also-lets-oppress-weeaboos/