White Men, Asian Women, and Feminism

For some reason, William Sparrow, the editor of the Asian Sex Gazette, has an occasional column at Asia Times Online. I suppose I should expect this from the editor of such a fine publication, but Sparrow's piece today was particularly loathsome.

Sparrow argues that women are gaining power in Asian countries while still recognizing the proper differences between men and women. The first part of the equation may well be true. Women do seem to be playing a bigger role in the public sphere at least in many Asian countries. But for Sparrow and other white men who go to Asia for the women, women's sexual prowess is their ultimate value. Those differences for Sparrow are about sex.

For Sparrow and his ilk, feminism has always been a repudiation of sex, despite the vast amount of feminists who no one could legitimately ever accuse of being opposed to sex. He writes: "I've heard countless men expressed how nice it is to be somewhere that they can tell a woman that she is "beautiful" or "sexy" and have it taken as a compliment rather than a lawsuit." Yes, in my experience, men who say these things are often total fucking assholes who claim that they are just telling women how beautiful they are. In reality, they may be going way over the line, sexually harassing women in really bad ways.

When I lived in Asia in the mid 90s, I knew men who had come to Asia for the women. They said things like this all the time. And you know what? They had almost no respect for women at all. Many seemed to outright hate women. They liked Asia because there one could supposedly find a submissive woman that would have sex whenever you wanted and not talk back to you. They wanted the myth of the patriarchal past, when men dominated the household and the bedroom.

Sparrow also talks about "angry feminist protests in the West - the type typified by anti-male rhetoric ("Use condoms or beat it") and signs about male oppression ("Keep your laws off my body") and empowerment ("Riots not diets")." Funny, I've hardly seen any anti-male rhetoric in years, at least among anyone under the age of 50. I guess demanding safe sex means that you hate men. Huh. Also, fighting for abortion rights is hardly the same as being "angry" about "male oppression." And I guess women's empowerment sucks or something. What a jerk.

Sparrow's views about feminism become crystal clear when he reports on what one female working at a Bangkok bar thought about his description of western-style feminism. Her response:

"Do women in your country - these 'feminists' - actually do what you're saying? (bold face added)" she asked. "[They] get angry for men looking at sexy women? They cut off their hair, don't wear make-up and dress like men?"

"No wonder [foreigners] like Asia so much."

Hmmm...so for Sparrow, all feminists hate men and sex. Really? Because most of the feminists I know talk way more about sex than I ever do. They quite often wear makeup. They rarely "dress like men," whatever the hell that even means today. I guess Sparrow hasn't been in the United States since 1975.

It's also worth wondering, as is often the case in some Asian countries and certainly in Thailand, if these female bar workers he talked to were also sex workers. Naturally, we don't know that from the article.

Sparrow's attack on those man-hating feminazis totally ignores the real oppression that many Asian women face. We'll leave the sex industry out of this. Domestic violence is an epidemic in many Asian countries. When I lived in South Korea, you saw women with black eyes way too often. They had a saying that was something like (and to get this you have to know that it references some sort of fish dish where you pound the fish) "Women and fish need to be beaten twice a week." I was teaching elementary school teachers English at that time, preparing them to teach their kids. So I brought this up to them. They were mortified that I knew this. I got called into the state education board the next day and was asked why I was teaching communism. The reaction against me telling them that beating women was wrong was sharp and swift.

But I guess issues like domestic violence, not to mention unequal wages, rape, high rates of childbirth, and the rising tide of fundamentalism don't play a role in Sparrow's ideal Asian feminism. Rather, Sparrow is much more comfortable with women who are just happily pro-sex. What else matters? He closes with an appeal to support feminist NGOs, but it really feels like a non-sequiter thrown on by an editor to make the piece more palatable.

Growing Tensions over Spain's Treatment of Brazilians

In early March, tensions between Brazil and Spain flared up over tourism. It began with Spain's sudden refusal to admit 452 Brazilians into the country at Madrid's airport in February. Brazil has a system of reciprocity in terms of visas and tourism; hence, if you live in the U.S., you pay $110 for a tourist visa to Brazil because the U.S. makes Brazilians pay the same to try to obtain a tourist visa to the U.S.* (and if you don't like that, call your local congressman/woman and senator to complain about the U.S.'s policy). Since Spain had begun turning away Brazilian tourists, in early March, Brazil turned away 8 Spaniards for "irregular papers" (which appears to have been the case - Brazil has been trying to crack down on European sex tourism for some time, and part of that crackdown has been an insistence on having your papers in order. (And that's not to say the 8 Spaniards expelled were sex tourists.)

*(Even so, the reciprocity is not complete, because Americans applying for a tourist visa to Brazil are almost guaranteed to get it, and do not have to go through an interview. Brazilians, on the other hand, have to be interviewed at one of the American consulates in Brazil, and if you are refused the visa, you don't even get your $110 back).

Last week, Foreign Policy Blogs had a post up contextualizing the situation a bit more. I think its generally right about Brazil's historical acceptance of immigrants, and Brazilian emigration has been on the rise in the last 40 years or so. I think the one weakness in the post's article, though, is the implicit presumption that the Brazilians who Spain turned away were part of this wave of illegal immigrants. Many of those turned away from Spain in February were middle- and upper-middle class tourists and professionals who were traveling to Spain either for professional duties like international congresses, or to sightsee and escape Brazil during Carnaval (not everybody loves Carnaval, after all).

I understand that Spain may be struggling with illegal immigration, but that in no way excuses Spain's terrible treatment of those who were detained, where Brazilians were "'treated like dogs,' and complained of being held for several days in crowded rooms, receiving insults and bad treatment, or being left for hours without any information about their status, and without food and water or access to their luggage." Compared to this treatment of Brazilians, and the fact that Brazil politely and expediently turned away 8 (and not 452) Spaniards seems more than fair. If Spain really is concerned about illegal immigration, from Brazilians or anybody else, that's within its rights, but there are better and more productive ways to deal with the issue than to just turn away people en masse from the airports, which solves nothing and just leads to diplomatic tensions and travel boycotts from Brazil (I actually knew 2 people who cancelled their trips to Spain to boycott the treatment of Brazilians).

As the post points out, it is essential that both Brazil and Spain work together on this. Spain needs to deal with people more professionally and humanely, be they illegal immigrants or legal tourists. And the possibility of brain-drain as Brazil's talented scientists and businesspeople leave is a threat, though not as great as it was years ago, given how well Brazil's economy is doing and how the government is giving incentive to public university graduates to stay in Brazil.
Still, it's good that both sides sat down last week to start discussing this, and hopefully things will improve, particularly for those Brazilians traveling to Spain legally.

Why I Generally Hate Travel Writing

This review of São Paulo is an example of everything wrong with travel sections: cultural imperialism, the "the world is my playground and I can't be inconvenienced with things like poverty", the "I'm here to see how the rich live" narrative, the "the third world is dirty and ugly" meta-narrative, "other class-cultures are crass to me" (the complaint about graffiti, which, from having seen it personally, is quite well done and artistic), the complete ignoring of social and economic problems while simultaneously trying to find the best "values" possible...it has it all. I don't love São Paulo, but this article is just as offensive, ridiculous, ignorant, and neo-colonialist as they come.