short & sweet: on hijab

I go back and forth

like a metronome

sometimes I wear it

sometimes I won’t

most times I just want people to see

the person behind the hijab

is me.

Learn to be an ally, friend.

I still get emails in my inbox everyday… particularly for one blog post about why it makes you racist if you’re proud to be white.

A LOT of these comments are vile – really racist trolls who sacrifice their time of day to write comments to my blog. Since this is my space , most of these comments don’t see the light of day and simply get deleted.

I did put up some examples of vile comments in this blog post recently and if you were interested to read some examples of ‘Good Mornings’ I’ve been getting for the past few months, go ahead and read them here.

Otherwise, below is a succinct explanation of why I will continue to leave the blog post up. Someone else has succinctly written this paragraph and expressed their sentiments about guilt vs. allyship better than me so here are their words:

I am not calling for ‘white guilt.’ Guilt re-situates the oppressor in the centre of the response to this oppressiveness. Your guilt is not necessary, or useful. Instead I ask for you to become an ally. Allyship means discussing, situating yourself within, and challenging privilege. Having privilege does not make you a bad person. You were born with it; it is not your fault. However, are you going to use it to perpetuate systems of oppression? Or are you willing to validate experiences, not give dismissive and patronizing responses to the experience of minoritized communities, and engage in respectful discourse over race and its effects? It means not making wistfully patronizing statements about your desire for minoritization. Likewise, it means realizing that whiteness is a form of racialization, just as constructed and mediated (but not nearly as oppressed) as any other racialization, that needs discussing and deconstructing. You’re racist. It’s not (fundamentally) your fault, until you decide to do nothing about it. Now do something.

-       Reblogged from McGill Daily

Let’s be clear here: EVERYONE has something they can work on when it comes to overcoming guilt and instead, learning to become an ally or friend.

Just because I am not white doesn’t mean I don’t have shit to work on in my life. I am still learning how to overcome my guilt associated with my privilege to immigrate to this land people call Canada. I am still learning how to become a friend and ally to the First Nations communities that are here – the Musqueam, the Tsleil-Watuth, the Squamish peoples – whose land I reside on and whose land I am complicit in ensuring it remains oppressed, fracked, taken advantage of, whose land I eat and breathe and live from, whose land I found love, whose land I make my living off of. I am still learning how to do this. And this is only one of the few things I am learning how to do.

Some of us have more shit to work on than the rest of us because some of us have been born with more privilege. And those of us who have more privilege have more reasons NOT to do this work – whether it be a thought that ‘this doesn’t matter’ or that you might lose something if you do it.  This risk assessment is the exact reason why it makes it all the more important that you DO do the work.

Just because you learn how to be anti-racist doesn’t mean you will lose your privilege. It doesn’t mean brown and black people will suddenly take over the world and put all the whiteys in concentration camps. Trust me, your privilege will still be there. The difference is you’ll be less of an asshole next time you talk to someone. Who knows, you might even start to have deeper conversations with those brown/black friends of yours whose presence in your life you so desperately call on to prove you’re not a racist. (by the way, doing this is what makes it racist).

For all you trolls out there, if you still don’t get it after reading this post – I really have nothing to say. I intend this to be the final time I revisit this particular blog post because frankly, I’m sick of your shit. Keep your comments coming and I’ll keep deleting them.

Girl, we fight battles!

I dedicate this to Joy and Sya.

We all have our own battles to fight. Thank you for your friendship.

————————————————————————————-

Girl

we fight battles

you and me

We fight battles

 

emotional tug of wars

we are

ambushed and interrogated

emotional tug of wars

we are

cornered and humiliated

 

in a war

with no blood or guts

but equal amounts of pain

no less

 

Girl

we fight battles

you and me

We fight battles

 

how did we get here

fighting a war we didn’t know

how the hell did we get here

when we thought this thing was over

 

Girl

we fight battles

you and me

We fight battles

 

How are we free?

colonized minds

do not resist

500 year old chains

 

Girl

we fight battles

you and me

We fight battles

 

Girl

we fight battles

and we won’t stop

fighting battles

 

because

 

Girl

We fight battles

you and me

Warriors

in

battle

I’m a skin-whitening, body-griping, anti-racist feminist. Yup.

I might as well come right out and say it.

I have and continue to engage in skin-whitening practices.

Things I do include staying indoors when it’s too sunny out, worrying about my skin when I forget to put on sunscreen, carrying an umbrella or a hat around with me and yes, using skin-whitening facial products.

I have had to sort through many feelings of guilt and shame for engaging in these practices so I recognize that for me to ‘admit’ this in a public forum – on my blog, today- is an act of personal resistance.

I refuse to accept the shaming that happens to me and so many other women of color who most will label ‘race traitors’, women who hate our brown skin, women with low-self-esteem or women who have been victimized by the ‘system’. I reject the narrow interpretations and judgments of my actions. I reject the shaming of black and brown women who engage in skin-whitening practices.

What exactly is the point of shaming women for pursuing beauty when it is one of the few sites of power available to us while ignoring the sexist and racist systems that set up this situation in the first place???  It is unproductive. It robs us of our voices. It denies us the luxury of being contradictory and imperfect – like everybody else.

Skin-whitening has been a long running interest for me, both personally and professionally. Intellectually, I started engaging with this material in 2011 as a capstone paper for my Women Studies undergrad degree. Since then, I have presented my thoughts at several conferences including the F-Word conference at UBC on April 28, 2011 and the 12th International Conference on Diversity in June 2012. Un-intellectually speaking, I started skin-whitening much, much earlier.

As I did more academic research into this issue, I became increasingly upset. I would read tons and tons of articles written by self-identified feminists who would judge, shame, poke fun and generally caution women against skin-whitening. After talking it over with a good friend (shoutout to Jennifer!), I realized I was actually reacting to the massive shaming that was directed at women who chose to engage in skin-whitening practices. This type of ‘holier-than-thou’ critique typically comes from white women or lighter skinned brown women towards their darker-skinned counterparts. Some examples are Jezebel’s Lindy West who did this with her piece on groin-whitening feminine wash in India and Tyra Banks’ 2008 episode on skin-whitening among Black women from the Tyra Banks show. Just type ‘skin whitening feminist’ into Google and you’ll find more articles that tell you how bad it is to whiten your skin, how you are such a sellout/victim if you do it etc etc. Enough guilt and shame all around, really. Fun.

So I did what I usually do when I get angry – I wrote. And as I wrote, I came to realize my own stand on this issue. It is important I write this and put this out there for people to read. I want people to know that the issue of beauty, health and women’s self-esteem deserves more complex treatment than we have been giving it so far.

I feel it is important to shift the discussions around skin-whitening AWAY from the shaming and veiled policing of brown and black women and TOWARDS acknowledging that the issue is much more complex.

Skin-whitening practices are embedded in systems of capitalism, colonialism and male dominance. We need to acknowledge that women of color have to navigate through this ‘triple threat’ daily. We receive contradictory messages about how we should look and how we should be every fucking day of our lives and we are the ones who have to live with the imperfect choices we make. If we start to try to complicate this matter, we can start to do some justice to this issue.

First, we need to understand that the skin whitening phenomenon has a long history spanning Europe, North America, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and the African continent. White women were actually the target of skin whitening from the Greco-Roman period up into the mid-20th century. Marketing for skin-whitening products towards women of color only started in the 1950s when the press began to notice use of skin whiteners among African-Americans.  Today, the skin-whitening market is estimated to be worth $5.6 billion in Asia alone.

It’s no secret that historical and ongoing colonization sustains the ‘white is right’ ideals of beauty. One of the most obvious ways that this ideal of whiteness has stubbornly persisted throughout the centuries are the systems of pigmentocracy that developed globally across many communities of color. A pigmentocracy is ‘a social hierarchical structure based on favoritism of white skin and European-looking features’ (thanks to Hernandez-Ramdwar at Ryerson University for this).  Basically, the less white and European looking you were, the lower you are on the social ladder.  Different pigmentocracies developed across the world – specific to the histories of colonialism, capitalism and male dominance of each location – although the underlying idea of ‘white is right’ is the same. The pigmentocracy in Brazil is different from India, which is different from Jamaica, which is different from the Philippines which is different from Singapore. You get my drift.

It is also important that we understand the pursuit of skin-whitening is not an aspiration to become white or ‘look like a white girl’. It is a quest to separate yourself from the Indigenous Black and Brown ‘look’. In insular South East Asia for example, rising through the pigmentocracy means separating yourself from the working-class, dark-skinned, Indigenous Malay look to an upper-class, lighter-skinned, Eurasian beauty. This is fundamental to understand because it adds more complexity to the issue versus simply thinking that all black and brown women want to become white. In a sense, we do want to ‘become white’ but it’s not the blonde hair, blue eyes or pale skin we covet…rather the gifts that come with whiteness. Its multiple and unyielding privileges.

Skin-whitening practices should be considered an “active strategy used by some groups to claim power over others in the same society’ (Lipsitz, 1998).  People who can ‘compete’ for the privileges of whiteness are those who can afford to participate. High-end skin-whitening products can cost anywhere between $20 – $500 a bottle and the ‘full range’ of products (facial wash, toner, moisturizer, day essence, night serum and spot-on correctors) can easily go up to $1000. Ironically, those who can afford expensive skin-whitening products are constantly reminded that we have to ‘keep this up’ because skin-whitening is rarely permanent. It takes money, time, dedication and constant vigilance to achieve and maintain fair skin and its privileges. A harsh reminder to folks of color that whiteness is not something that is earned, it is a privilege some are born with and others aspire and work towards.

If we start to look at skin-whitening as an ACTIVE strategy employed by black and brown women, we can start to move away from thinking that these women are PASSIVE victims of the systems who need ‘help’ and ‘advice’ from those of us who ‘know better’. Let’s be honest here – giving unsolicited advice, however well-intentioned and shaming women who choose to engage in skin-whitening is patronizing. I know, deep down, that I am fine the way I am. I know I shouldn’t fret over my freckles. I know I shouldn’t fret over my double A cup size. I know I shouldn’t think about the acne scars on my back. I KNOW all this. You don’t have to keep telling me.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that the choices we make with our beauty routine have everything to do with the pressures we receive about it. For me, this angst comes from my mother who still frets over her freckles. To me, she will always be my beautiful mother but now I know that telling her to stop fretting or that she is ‘pretty no matter what’ denies her own experiences of living in this shitty world which insisted on telling her otherwise. Telling her to stop fretting would also mean that I am myself, in denial about my own gripes with my body.  I grew up not only watching my mother fret but my grandmother, my aunts, my cousins and my friends fretting. If it was not their dark skin, it would be something else about their bodies.

Does this mean that I blame the people around me for ‘making me’ think this way? NO. By choosing to go through with my weekly ritual of skin-whitening, does it mean that I don’t love my Brownness, or that I’m not thinking of the examples I am setting for the young girls watching me? NO. Does it mean I wholly blame colonialism and capitalism for making this world the way it is and abdicating my personal responsibility for continuing to practice skin-whitening? NO.

Women make hundreds of choices everyday, and unless we are walking around in their heads, we have no idea what led them to the decisions they make. (many grateful thanks to Renee from Womanist Musings for this nugget of wisdom).

So yes, I am a skin-whitening feminist. And I am also an anti-racist activist.  My world is not a binary. I do not have to choose one or the other or be put into categories. This is how I choose to see the world. Because of this, I can embrace the complex, the complicated, the messy, things that don’t make any fucking ‘sense’ and things that don’t fit into the colonial viewpoint of right and wrong, black and white, skin-whitening sellout or staunch anti-racist feminist. I can be both because I choose to be both.I can learn to live with my contradictions.

One day, I want to be able to stop griping about the freckles on my face, my flat chest, and my acne scarred back (among other things). Until then, spare me the guilt and shaming. PLEASE.

As long as we live in a society that experiences ongoing colonization, capitalism and male dominance, the skin-whitening industry will always exist. We need to start complicating the notion of choice while also recognizing the need to access it. When we can begin and continue to complicate, decolonize our concept of beauty and disrupt its connection to the value of a person, we will allow ourselves to imagine a world that is far different than the one we inhabit today.

The inspirational Renee Martin

Hi everyone, hope your Tuesday is going well so far.

I’ve not written something like this before and seldom do I engage in efforts to raise money for any cause. Call me jaded but I don’t like knowing that my money will go towards administration fees and paying the livelihood of individuals I don’t know who work in the non-profit organizations I donate to. But this time…this time, things are different.

Renee Martin from Womanist Musings – a blog I frequent and whose writings I respect and admire – is raising money for a new mobility scooter. Renee’s writings give me inspiration, educate me and challenge me in radical ways. She hasn’t written anything in past few days and in those few days, I personally missed her presence in the blogosphere. Her blog creates a space like no other – for women of color like me to really think about how we live in this world and for everyone to fully question the larger systems of oppression that exist today.

I know many of you look up to me and to my writings and thoughts and for that, I thank you. But I’m not going to sit here and take full credit for my ideas. My ideas have been shaped by countless number of people along the way, most notably my professors, my friends and fellow writers I respect like Renee. To me, Renee is an inspiration – she writes with gusto and passion and unabashed bravery among the unforgiving feminist blogosphere. Her voice is invaluable in a sea of voices. She is an inspiration to me and if I have been an inspiration to you, then she has been an inspiration to you too.

If you have extra money and want to help her get a new mobility scooter, please visit her website.

If you wanted to take a look at some of Renee’s writings, here are some of my favorites:

Trayvon Martin and Fear in a Black Mother’s Heart

Men, Sexism and Faux Oppression

No Feminist Wedding for Me, Thank You – this one is not written by Renee but serves as an example of how she collaborates with other women of color writers and creates a space for everyone to engage respectfully and intellectually

Princess Hijab – again, not written by Renee but an example of how she collaborates with other writers and issues

Urban Fantasy: Escapism when the Real World has too many Minorities - this is from another one of her blogs that focus on urban fantasy. It’s great!

 

Happy Feminist Friday!

It’s our 3.5 year anniversary today. Yay for us and for all our family members and friends who’ve supported us along the way.

That’s pretty much all I have to say. My brain is dead from this week and I’m looking forward to the weekend.

Peace.

How the personal is political: From reflection to action

**Warning: This post contains excessive positive language and lots and lots of love. The language is very mushy-gushy, lovey-dovey and touchy-feely. If this will trigger your cynicism or negativity, please don’t read this.

How can we, as a culture and as members of the global community, involve, educate, and inspire girls in a positive way?

I’ve been brewing over this question for a month, ever since I signed up for Gender Across Border’s ‘Blog for International Women’s Day’…and honestly, I STILL don’t know how to answer it.

But this is what I can do.

I can look back at my own journey…how I became involved, how I was educated and how I was inspired. After all, the personal is political isn’t it? So here. I offer my story.  I hope my story will join the many stories out there about personal journeys of coming to terms with being me – a woman, a brown woman, a Malay woman, a Muslim woman, a lover, a fighter, a feminist, an anti-racist, an activist.

I want to start my story by situating myself. I’m currently writing on unceded Indigenous land in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. For those of you who don’t understand what ‘unceded’ means, please take the time to Google the word and educate yourself on its implications. It is important that I position myself because on this land, I am merely a visitor. (As a Muslim, I would also say that I am merely a temporary visitor on Earth)

I’m not going to bore you with the minute details of my life. I’m just going to give you a snapshot. I’ll be naming some important actors in my life so far – people who’ve been influential, inspirational and fundamental to my development as a girl and as a woman.

I grew up watching and learning a lot from the women in my life.

The women in my family inspire me.

If I there is one thing I learned from my Mama…I would say that it was to be fierce. My mother is fierce in everything she does. She loves her daughters fiercely, she loves her husband fiercely, she loves her friends fiercely, she loves her parents and her siblings fiercely.  She is unafraid to live in contradiction and she is unafraid to say what she thinks. She is unafraid to believe the best in people and she is unafraid to feel. I learned from my mama that it is okay to cry and that it’s alright to let ‘friends’ treat you like shit as long as you become wiser, smarter and faster at recognizing the negative energy in your life.

My sisters – Kin and Rais-  inspire me to love. They inspire me to love someone other than myself. They inspire responsibility, learning how to cope in emergencies, and optimism. My sisters might look up to me but little do they know that they are my role models. When I look at them, I see strong, caring, genuine women whom I will always share my life with.

My aunts – Uda, Uteh, Tante, Andak, Ma Long – inspire what family means. Their relationship with my mother taught me what family means. You can disagree, fight, argue, tear each other’s hair out, put lizards in each other’s textbooks, lodge a Cold War but at the end of the day, family means everyone gathers when someone is in the hospital. At the end of the day, you still love each other… no matter how hard it might be to admit it.

My cousins -Adel, Ella, Alysa, Alya, Jeehah, Reisydah, Nina – inspire what sisterhood means. Sisters can be people who only share a bit of your DNA – or not at all. Sisters are people who make time for you and who you make time for… even if it means you see each other once a year or once every ten years.

My Nenek and Nek Ngah inspire meaning into the term ‘traditional Malay women’. Let me  tell you- to me, there is nothing traditional about these women. My neneks taught me to make the most of what life gives you. To raise children in the best way you know how. To know when your voice is needed and when it isn’t. My neneks taught me to be stubborn and to hold on to what you believe in.

The women teachers in my life educated me.

In elementary school, I struggled. I struggled with Math. I disliked Science. I struggled with being the only Malay kid in my ‘Stream 1′ class. I struggled with being scrawny, skinny and really, really dark-skinned. My teachers in elementary school – Mrs. Tan & Mrs. Sim – taught me to focus on my strengths (English, Art, writing, reading, my neat handwriting) and keep working on my weaknesses. I still dislike Math and my relationship with Science is limited to science fiction fandom and psychology but my teachers taught me something important. They taught me to believe in myself.

In high school, I was so fortunate to have two women teachers who really believed in me. I was only as popular as my involvements in Student Government, Choir, Newspaper and the honor roll made me. Frankly, I was an over-achieving nerd (I still am). I was awkward and unsure – trying to fit in and trying to make the most of high school without breaking any of my parent’s rules. Miss Greason and Miss Childs both taught me to never be afraid of being myself. They accepted me and weird ideas in creative writing, they encouraged my efforts in Math. They were always gentle when talking to me and always, always supportive.

In university, I met some of the best teachers I’ve had in my life. Sunera, Nora, Litsa showed me what it takes to become outstanding women of color scholars. They told me I could ‘do it’ and they’ve supported me ever since. Becki and Nikki supported me throughout my ventures in the Women’s Studies program and dispensed valuable advice whenever I needed it.

My girlfriends involve me in their work and their lives.

We’ve shared secrets together, we’ve cried together, we’ve argued together, we’ve laughed together, we’ve ate desserts together, we’ve travelled together, we’ve sinned together and we’ve talked for hours on end.

My friends in elementary school – Zat, As, Fara – they generously involved me in their lives a few years ago and taught me that I was accepted even though I came back, after 10 years of being away, with a funny accent, strange ideas and in need of a serious tan. I’m so excited to watch our renewed friendships grow.

My secondary school friends – Bella, Aisha Cat, Shaza, Ruby –  pushed me to become a leader and believed in me. They accepted my sarcasm and nerdgasms and reassured me when I needed them to. They told me I was different. In a good way.

My high school friends – Erin M., Anna K., Aysha, Sarah, Ashley, Sinikka, Chanu, Ripika, Laure, Alizaeh, Makana, Haejin, Alice, Inhee – were there for me throughout my awkward phase. They were there for me in Turkey, in the water after banana boating, in student government, in school dances, in classes, in the hallways. They involved me in healthy activities throughout high school and kept me from feeling like I was strange and nerdy (even though I really, really was and still am).

My best friend and roommate from first year in university – Sonia – is the most giving, most gentle, most warm and genuine person I know. She still makes the top of that list. I owe a lot of reassurances from panicked, late-night calls to her. Also, a lot of shared experiences from just being ‘Asian’.

The girlfriends I met from the first day of orientation – Amy, Emily, Swati – taught me that time meant nothing for friendship if it was not backed by genuine compassion and care. They have stood by me through my best and worst times at university. Through the snow, sleet, cold and rain that Vancouver has given us.

My Chinese-Singaporean girlfriends – Sulynn, Joy, Livia, Grace, Natalie, Zoe, Mel, Jiefang  – were always willing to listen to what I had to say even if it differed from their own opinions. They made me feel like my thoughts, actions and ideas were valuable. They engaged me in open and honest conversation. Their friendship is invaluable especially in a national community that insists on second-guessing my nationality (are you Malaysian??) because of the way I look.

My friends who’ve supported and nurtured my feminism – Lau, Jennifer, Erin K., Anna, Sarah-Nelle, Reggie, Ej, Kim, Anna W., Rebecca Bailin, Anoushka Ratnarajah, CJ, Tati, Irese, Nina, Homa – they involved me with their lives. They took the time to explain why what I said was ‘problematic’, they congratulated me on my achievements, they appointed me to positions and believed that I had the ‘kahunas’ for it. They share their thoughts and their ideas and listen to mine. These are women I look up to who and women I respect.

My friend and mentor, Shehneen – she showed me what it means to be an authentic person. She is unafraid of hard work, of new experiences and new things. She taught me to be patient and to listen to myself. Through her own authentic voice and beauty, she taught me that I was real and beautiful.

So how can we, as a culture and as members of the global community, involve, educate, and inspire girls in a positive way?

We can admit to ourselves that we are dependent on each other. We can accept that we do not live for ourselves. We can stop and think who made us who we are and who we are blessed with to know. We can reflect on our histories, think about our current lives and imagine what the future would like. We can hope.

Most importantly, we can keep on doing what we’re doing – raise funds, attend school, write, play, sing, dance, draw, paint, teach, love, fight, do the dishes, make love, watch TV, make dinner, pack lunches, counsel, listen, speak, cry, fight, read and learn.

As women, as mothers, as daughters, as nieces, as cousins, as granddaughters, as students, as lovers…we are already doing so damn much.

Girls are always watching, listening and learning.