Old Man Yells at Cloud

So I hear that North Korea has threaten South Korea again and that was the first picture that came to mind. Seriously, North Korea seems more and more like a cartoon villain. 

Response to straight acting guys

So I heard it again today: a gay guy who doesn’t care about gay rights or gay pride. I suppose they must get really tired hearing the rest of use harping about injustices and other social justice related rhetoric. I get it, though. You don’t have to worry about that shit, and it’s depressing. Why rock the boat, right?

Well, let me just say I am beyond sick of hearing about how gays guys don’t care their rights or pride. You have the luxury to not care. The rest of us don’t. You may be able to pass off as “straight acting”. The rest of us can’t or won’t. I am glad that you’re privileged enough that society’s homophobia hasn’t reached you (yet). But try to see beyond your nose. It’s not about you, or how comfortable you are. Try and empathize with those of us who live in fear that people will cause them physical harm for being gay, or those us who can’t enjoy the rights that heterosexual couples enjoy. Basically, check your god-damned privilege.

The reason that some of us are so unabashedly prideful and flamboyant is because society has denied us that ability. We are denied the ability to be ourselves – something that our straight counterparts can do without question. We fight for rights, because if we don’t, bigots will take it away. Some of us reject the notion of “straight acting” because it implies that appearing heterosexual is more desirable, or (for gay men) that straight equals masculine. There are bigots out there who say the same thing – which gay people shouldn’t be out about who they are that they should do their best to act straight – and use that demote us to second class citizens. There is nothing wrong with being a flamboyant gay person (unless you start going off about how others aren’t gay because they aren’t flamboyant. Then we’ve got a problem.) But it just seems to me that guys who are irked about flamboyance do so because they can’t handle that people have different flare.

And last thing to consider is that those of us who wave the rainbow flag with pride aren’t any “gayer” than the “straight acting” folks. Many of us could easily appropriate the “straight acting” label if we wanted to. But we don’t. Because why should we settle for being “normal” when we could be happy? No one is forcing you to be flamboyant (if they are then they are wrong too). No one demands you participate in pride week or wear rainbows. Just don't hate on us if we do. M'kay?

Hold Your Horses, Real Men

If you are ever around the blogger-spheres long enough, you will eventually run into blogs that serves as shrines dedicated to all sorts of bodies. These serves as the blogger’s ideals and desires about the human body and can range from celebrating androgynous people to hyper feminine/masculine. In of itself, there is nothing wrong with expressing your tastes in human bodies. We have our preferences; I tend to prefer varying expressions of masculinity. I like muscular men, as well as hairy men, and non-hairy men. I have preferences, but I don’t force others to conform to those preferences. What is troublesome is when you assume your tastes in body should be the default – that it is natural, or inheritably more desirable. Because then you place far too much value on the body and you begin making implications about the bodies of others. Often, these are unfortunate implications. As a gay man, I often run into blogs raving about “real men’s” body. First, let me say this is a real man’s body:



This is a real man’s body too:



And this:


And these:









These are all real men body, because these are all men. A man is not limited to a certain set of physical characteristic. Men and their body are dynamic, gradient, and negotiable. To say that the first picture is a real man and the others are not is exclusionary and ultimately detrimental – especially to gay men. Let’s take the first example. There are those who claim that a “real man” must be hairsuite. That statement leaves out so many other men and makes them to feel inferior. What of those men who cannot grow body hair through genetics? Can you really deny them as “real men” simply because they were born that way? As far as men go, all the people featured above are men. They aren’t prepubescent. They don’t identify as a women, though they may embrace femininity or have female reproductive organs. They are men, but classifying men under one physical archetype undermines that. Instead of being inclusive, we open ourselves to hierarchical thinking. We play into the very institutions that have oppressed us. Remember, to some people gay men aren’t real men. So how can we complain about the heternormative hierarchy denying us our manhood, when some of us will deny manhood to a feminine man, an androgynous man, a transman, a shaved man, a skinny man, a fat man and all other type of men?

Elevatorgate

If you have not notice, there has been much discussion over something that happened to Rebecca Watson in a skeptical conference in Dublin. A guy asked Ms. Watson for coffee in an elevator at 4 AM and was turned down, and Ms. Watson asked men to not put women in such uncomfortable positions. Doesn’t seem like much. Guys get turned down all the time, right?
Well, it is more than that really. You have to remember the social contexts that this all happened in. Unfortunately, men have not made women’s lives very easy in our society. We tell our boys that it is appropriate to be aggressive – to be the go-getter and get the ladies. We are told we need to be fierce and intimidating because that is what our modern ideal of men details. It is all about virility and getting laid. And if you cannot get laid you become the butt of comedy. Unfortunately this backfires when it comes to our interactions with women. Women are told that they are to be subservient, docile, and forever vestal. Well you can see what happens next. Men feel the “need” to force sex out of women, and it gets nasty. Even in our developed “civilized” world, 1 in 6 women are sexually assaulted. This is complicated by the fact that we call women “accusers” of rape and often we say “they deserve it” because of the way they acted or dress. They are made the criminals despite the fact that they are the victims. And that is the sad fact of our culture.
Okay, well men get assaulted too, right? Yes. Duh. But how often does one hear that a guy was “asking for it” because of the way he dressed or how flirty he was that night. In fact, how often does guy get sexually assaulted? Most guys (baring hate-crimes obviously) are assaulted because they have resources available to the mugger. Women can be assaulted because they are women. It is a guy’s privilege. We aren’t victims because we are guys – despite all the paranoia of a Femi-Nazi conspiracy against us. And we have a lot of privilege in this situation. Here, if we were on an elevator with a creeper we have these privileges:
• We don’t have to worry if that guy will rape us. We’re going to assume coffee actually means coffee and not something else. This is due to the fact that we don’t have to be cognizant of it as it rarely, if ever, happens to us. Women don’t have this privilege, not even here in “first world”.
• Due to our Western culturing to be aggressive, we are more likely to fight back if the guy did try something.
• The other guy will probably be more intimidated by us as guys. Despite movements forward, our culture still tells us that women are weaker.
• If the guy successfully assaults us, we won’t be blamed for acting slutty or anything like that. While you are tempted to use the popular parable of a rich looking guy being responsible for his own mugging because he shouldn’t be dressed like that in a ghetto neighborhood consider these things: when is anyone ever deserving to have their rights violate? Is a slutty girl more deserving of it than prime-n-proper Mary Sue? Does she not have the same basic rights to human dignity as the rest of us? Also the circumstances are different. The rich guy is being mugged for his resources; the “slut” is being raped because she’s a woman. Finally that scenario is unlikely because of a lot class privilege that I won’t get into right now.
Hopefully you understood that. But you’re probably still thinking. “But what if all he wanted is a coffee?” The answer is “How the [expletive] is she supposed to know that?” The matter of fact is that we men are all potential rapists. In technical terms we are Schrödinger’s rapists. They cannot tell which one of us is “the Nice Guy” or which one is the assailant. [Expletive] even I, a gay guy, am a Schrödinger’s rapist. I am “straight acting” and enough of a dude where women may see me as a threat. But I am not mad about it. Considering the context of the situation, it is reasonable. It was a potentially dangerous situation. I understand that, given our societies problem, a woman has every right to view me as a potential rapist. And if you are a nice guy, you shouldn’t be made either.
We really are the one to blame for this. We’ve given many women no reason to trust us. Our culture makes us out to be monsters for women. And we perpetuate it. We try to be the “bros” and the Tucker Max of our society. We assume things about women that we shouldn’t. We make them feel inferior or foolish with says like “dumb bitch”. We make them feel unwelcome when all we do is wank about ourselves. Even now, when all Ms. Watson try to do is explain that men at skeptical conferences make women uncomfortable by objectifying as potential sex dolls, we tell women to shut up. Even Richard Dawkins try to shut her up by saying her issue was trivial compare to women in other parts of the world. (And it is quite ironic too given our culture and the recent GOP legislation is effectively making it just as bad for women here as it is anywhere.) We cannot even give women space to talk. That’s how intrusive men come off as.
If you are really a nice guy, then consider this. Women owe nothing to us as a class. Don’t think that being a nice guy gets you a pass to do or say whatever to women. In fact, insisting that women listen to you, or that you are entitled to her time whether she wants it or not is a hallmark of a Nice Guy™. Being a Nice Guy™ is essentially being an entitled dick. A Nice Guy™ is not a nice guy. So this is from a dude to other dudes: If a woman says your being a creepy, listen to her. And don’t be a [expletive referring to male genitals] about it.
If you want, you can read Greta Christina’s take on the situation.

But why should we?

Joe. My. God has posted on the subject of gay culture fading away to a more heteronormative view of the world. As noted by the author of the quote, some LGBT people sees this as a fair trade-off. I say "oh fuck no!"

I understand where people would say that the assimilation of LGBT culture into the mainstream culture is a good thing. We have been fighting for our rights to be viewed as normal people and normal citizens. We want to show people that we are harmless and productive members of society. Most of us are!

But that doesn't mean we should lose our culture. The very thought makes me think of all the forced assimilation that Native Americans went through. Or the Aborigines. Or Asian Americans. Native Americans were force into a European imposed hegemony. They lost traditional culture. Where one culture was more egalitarian in their treatment of sexes and gender, the hegemony made sure they reflected their ideals about sex and gender. This is what worries me about the assimilation of LGBT culture into the mainstream; The will lose something that could be valuable later on. Furthermore, it implies a superiority of one culture and one group over another. Asian Americans were seen as "model minorities" because they assimilated faster and fitted into the the Western ideals of how proper people should act. If LGBT culture were to do the same, it would be like admitting that the fundies are culture is better. As I've put in my Southeast Asian culture class, we are internalizing the colonialism, making the struggle for autonomy all for naught.

Mind you that I'm not cultural relativist. Practice that are detrimental to society as a whole should be done away with ("honor" killings, burning witches, headhunting, institutionalized sexism, and things like that.) Still, I don't see how being a diva or dressing in fabulous colours make you a determent to society. In the end I think we should not seek to erase LGBT culture for a normative view. Instead it should be a piece of the picture like a part of a grand mosaic. So be productive, be normal, but be a flaming diva if you want to be too.

Vanity

I love to post pictures of hot guys. Of course, these are most certainly my preferences and my perception of hotness. And it is most certainly not the only thing I look for in a person. Good looks can take you as far as arousal. There are plenty of hot guys I wouldn't even give a second thought, or even spit on if I ever saw this person (a certain evangelical football player comes to mind *cough*tibow*cough*).

To Be Honest, I Don't Trust Any Of You.

The current ruling party of Cambodia, is indeed a sellout party. They've only shown time and time again that they care more for corporate. interest than they do the interest of the people. Money flows into the system, but where is the money for environmental protection, health care, welfare and education? Needless to say, something is fucked up in Cambodia's Parliament. They've done little to stop environmental degradation, corporate exploitation, and exploitation of underprivileged citizens.

But Nationalists are no better. What Nationalist wants is nothing but fascism, feed through a populist ideal. They could really give a shit about improving the lives and environment of Cambodia. Look at all their rhetoric: They're either about returning to a glory day, waging war, or something that amounts to an ethnic cleansing. Sorry, but the "glory days" are gone. Cambodia needs to move on. Culture changes and the Khmer culture is no exception. (You think it hasn't? You've clearly haven't paid attention to the last 2000 years.) Khmer people should be proud of their culture, for sure, but what one generation wanted is not going to be what the next generation wants. War waging is pointless. Unless it's for defensive purposes, it's nothing more than a show of bravado that will lead to pointless deaths and lost of finances. Not to mention that Cambodia would lose face in the international community. All the anti-Vietnamese and anti-Thai rhetoric is nothing but unadulterated racism. It's just the same type of racism we see here in the United States against Latino immigrants: scapegoating and ethnocentrism. People migrate. People move. It's been like that in Cambodia for eons. Even during the Angkor period, there were massive amounts of people of different ethnic groups coming in and out. Sure, Vietnam has done a lot of fucked up things to Cambodia, and their current policy is just as invasive to Cambodia's national sovereignty, but this doesn't call for banning all immigration or killing them off. As for Thailand, well we all know they have issues right now. Thailand, like most of the world, suffers from the grand delusion of Nationalism feed by it's government to advert attention from the real problem. Khmer Nationalist, Viet Nationalist, Thai Nationalist and American Teabaggers all look the same to me: a bunch of ignorant gobshits who refuse to identify the real problems. You all yap like toy dogs who don't know that you're all privileged losers.

The real problem for Cambodia is internal. Cambodia need to reform it's economic policies, regulate corporations, increase production without infringing on the rights of hill tribes or degrading the environment further. Cambodia needs to focus on the education of it's people instead of stupid nationalist rhetoric. All these things the current government are failing. They fail and they fail hard. But honestly the nationalists don't help.

Hotness and Question

Actually I want to ask my readership (under the megalomaniac assumption that you exist): Do you think I'm relying on eye-candy to attract readers? I know that many gay male bloggers tend to do this.

Romance of the Scienceblog

If you guys haven't been keeping up, or if you're not scienceblog follower then let me summarize the fallowing to you: It's the fucking Three Kingdoms over there except with out the three kingdoms. Okay more like the disintegration of the Easter Han in general. When Zimmer and Yong left to Discoverblog, it's like the individual territories that ceded themselves to outside forces. We can consider the intrusion of Pepsi to be like the Yellow Turban rebellion, weakening the power of SB. The railing of this intrusion is like the campaign against the Yellow Turbans. Finally after SB quails the Pepsi incident, like the Han, the individual bloggers begin to make their own way and break away from SB. Superbug, Zuska, Speakeasy Science, PalMD, Grrlscientist, Laelaps, and Bora are some of such bloggers that chose to break away from the seemingly inept SEED media. PZ and Laden are in strike. A number of other scientist like Orac are considering their resignation as well. Yet like the Han, there are a few bloggers, like Brayton, Tetrapod, and Klemetti, are still there and functional. But like the last Han Emperor, SB has been unable (or perhaps unwilling) to fix the situation.

Well, at least the fallout isn't because they were caught sockpuppeting. That event was just aggravating. At the same time though it was unexpected. SB's fallout was a storm we could see coming. Complaints about the ads, the paycheck, and the commenting system had been there for awhile. Pepsi just broke the back of the all the bloggers there.

The consequence of this is quite clear: A great lost of readership. People like to read stable blogs and not have to change so abruptly. For PZ, I know already that his announced strike has caused a great deal of his readership to move on.

So what's left today? In the end of the day a blogger does whatever he or she wants regardless of the readership. I blog but still have virtually no one reading it. PZ could equally do the same and yet some how he'll have followers. Blogging isn't as simple as finding a domain in which to host it. If the conditions is wrong, no matter how much a blogger wants to write, they will refrain from doing so.

Better PR

The leader of the opposition party, Sam Rainsy, was recently arrested for removing border posts on the Cambodia-Vietnam border. The concern is that Vietnam was encroaching on Cambodian territory in secret, which is not uncommon in territorial dispute. Just earlier, Thai nationalist were arrested for attempting to alter the Cambodia-Thailand border post. Of course, let us remember that this whole border dispute is a product of colonialism. Prior, there was NO border definition amongst any of the states of Southeast Asia.
Well, Sam Rainsy is objecting that they are unfairly prosecuted and have evidence for their claim. They can rightfully claim so, since the government is riddle with lobbyist corruption. Ah, but Sam Rainsy isn't going to get by with just a prosecution claim. The problem is that the opposition is party is riddled with racist agenda. I don't disagree that the current government is a foreign sale out. Any educated Cambodian will know that Hun Sen is an eleitist power hungery brown-noser who follows the beckoning of the more powerful East Asian states. But what exactly do want to replace him with. Racist war-mongers aren't exactly an ideal candidate, yet that's exactly what Sam Rainsy has been portraying themselves to be. Ay, the whole issue of ethnic relations in post-colonial Southeast Asia could fill volumes and the Viet-Khmer relationship is just a part of that. Presenting yourself as racist isn't going to help your cause, especially for a country whose trying to get recognized by the international community. Yeah the Viets are stilling Khmer lands, but hey the Javanese are taking the Papauans' lands, the Burmese taking the Kayins' land. Don't claim your the only ones. Yes it is noble (to the extant that you believe in the nation state system) to guard your border, but bringing racism into it makes you no better than the enemies who probably considers you barbarians likewise (see pot kettle black).

Ratanakiri

So, I hear on the Phnom Penh Post that there has been tension between ethnic minorities in Ratanakiri and large timber companies. Considering the trend of ethnic rivalry in SEA, it shouldn't be a surprise. Still, I had hope (perhaps naively) that Cambodia's relation with it's ethnic minorities would be different. Especially since they share a history of genocide with each other. But alas, political and economic power wins out. It's not bad enough that logging in R'kiri has become server over the years. Now they are beginning to push the ethnic minorities there off their tribal land. (This should sound familiar to any American.)

Bashing His Majesty

This past Christmas was spent with the relatives. Usually, there was karaoke, beer, food, and political talks on Cambodia. I didn't listen in much, mostly because I've heard them all and much of it was unverifiable. Nonetheless, I did catch a few words about His Majesty, Norodom Sihamoni. It wasn't good words.

Now before anyone state it, I'm not condemning negative talks against a Monarchy. I am very opposed to Thai laws restricting criticism of Royalties because it prevents any true freedom of speech. However, I will criticise nay-sayers of His Majesty. Not because I don't want people disrespecting the king, but rather because people refuse to disrespect the actual problem - the prime minister. This is Cambodia's own version of censorship. Since criticising the PM is dangerous, people deflect it on His Majesty. They say that HM lets so and so happens and isn't doing his job. Uh, hello? HM is just a figure head. The real power is with the PM, but no one outside of Cambodia has the guts to say it. (Surely, plenty of Khmer journalist based in the U.S. do, but I find their integrity rather faulty and often rather racist.)

So why are people criticising the king? Well duh he's an easy target. Sihamoni doesn't have the level of respect from Cambodian that His Majesty Bhumibol Adulyadej has in Thailand. Sihamoni isn't feared like Hun Sen, so whenever Hun Sen's cabinet screws up, it's much easier to mitigate the blame on the King (even easier to mitigate on a lower authority, of course.) So, what's the problem? You've got to be real. Put the blame where it belongs, not on the easiest target (that's called scapegoating don'tcha know.)