1/ Literally every single brown person in SG has said something about brown face and I’m really proud of them and I don’t need to repeat what they said. But let’s talk a little bit about brown skin and what it means. For reference, me at pride in bi pride flag colours.
2/ I love my skin colour. Like, I really love it, it is not some kind of fake pride. I think it is one of my best features and truthfully on some days I actually wish I were naturally a little darker and in summer I get my wish. But this hasn’t always been true for me.
3/ growing up in India I was bombarded with colourism. There are a thousand face whitening creams and I certainly tried my share of them. My mother and others taught me to do things to make me look fairer. Coming to Sg, it was even worse because now I was in the minority.
4/ Chinese people, since young, have been making fun of my skin colour. One kid with asked me with a smirk why Indians were still dark after generations in Singapore. A senior in school said that us juniors all “looked Indian” after a week at OBS (all of us except were sunburned)
5/ that and countless other microagressions, some about skin colour and some about other things. Someone said they couldn’t pair up with me for a first aid exercise because they were allergic to coconut (what?).
6/ as a teen I was made to hate myself and my skin colour and everything else. I read an article in the @STcom talking about inter-racial relationships and why there were fewer Chinese men dating Indian women coz of our “strong features”, than the other way around.
7/ at 17 I came out as bi and then has to deal with a whole other layer of insecurity wrt women. Several things happened around then and I started looking at myself differently and started gaining self esteem. But I had to break out of all the ridiculous things laid on me.
8/ all of this to say, #brownface is not some neutral harmless thing because Chinese people, even those who think they are not racist, did *everything possible* to make me feel uncomfortable in my own skin. They do not get to cosplay us after this.
9/ it took a lot of self esteem building and radically challenging internalized colourism and racism for me to love myself - my wavy hair, my brown skin, my curves, all of which many Chinese people and local media kept telling me were unattractive and undesirable. It was hard.
10/ brown skin is not politically neutral. It never has been. It has been our entire existence. To have someone do #brownface for laughs, after already spending all the time telling us how terrible it is how to have brown skin? Just fuck off already.
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1) On the face recognition/verification thing, I have some Thoughts, being a privacy lawyer, sg qualified lawyer and an activist. Hold on to your hats because this will be a long rant and it is literally my living here.
2) I work in the EU in a Pte co to manage their privacy program. Bc on GDPR I’m on my toes every single damn day. B4 that I did some privacy/in house work in Sg and there is a huge gulf in how privacy is perceived here and SG
3) let’s face it, privacy compliance is a struggle here too but the base level of compliance and respect is still higher than anywhere in SG. In SG I had to explain to HR that no they shouldn’t see the medical records of the employees and they didn’t have the right to.
I mean I’m far more scared of all those men who take photos/videos of women in showers, or those who beat up migrant men to show off their martial arts skills, or those who strangle their girlfriends. They are the bigger threat to society than some random drug mule ever will be.
Don’t believe me? Okay. 23 year old dude gets a short detention order, a day reporting order and community service for what should have been attempted murder but was charged as “voluntarily causing hurt”
I’ll stop treating them like Serena Joy when they manage to get
- equality for actually-born babies in health, education and all other outcomes
- global ability for people to freely choose when and how they get pregnant
- a global end to rape and sexual assault /contd
- an end to pregnancy violence and discrimination
- an end to domestic violence
- a reasonable standard of living for every human being alive: that means all their basic needs are met w/o struggle and there is no poverty
- end to mortality during childbirth
- complete accommodation of all disabilities
It doesn’t mean that if they achieve all these things, I’ll agree with them but I will maybe stop treating them like Serena Joy.
I’m a gamer and a now-ambivalent HP fan. I won’t buy the new HP game anw out of boycott instinct but I think it goes too far to say buying it is not ok. There are several things I boycott I don’t judge others for not boycotting. For eg Uber.
Uber is a horrible sexist company and they are horrible to both employees and their users. But some disabled ppl rely on it. I haven’t bought anything from Barilla for years. I’d never work for Big Oil, Tobacco or Arms/Defence but some ppl need to feed their families.
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism. Some ppl don’t know everything about the product they are buying, or their origin. Some ppl know but have no choice. Your boycotts are your personal choices and no one should be shaming you for not participating in a boycott.
This. I’m tired of the liberal greenies talking about having children as a poisonous move for the planet. I get really annoyed by people who didn’t want kids anyway framing their choice as a sacrifice for the environment. How is it a sacrifice when you didn’t want them at all?
Like no one has to have kids. Having one is YOUR choice and no one should take that away from you. If you don’t want to have them, that’s fine. But stop dumping on people who do.
And let’s remember that some people never had a choice to begin with. Not everyone has access to condoms and implants. Some people were raped. Some people seriously don’t know what you mean when you say contraception, even in developed countries.