-Caveat Lector- ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- From: "Michael Albert" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: ZNet Commentary June 9 Sonia Shah and important message... Date sent: Tue, 8 Jun 1999 19:39:28 +0100 --------------------------------------- Here is today's ZNet Commentary Delivery from Sonia Shah. The attached file is the same material in nicely formatted html so that you can read it in your browser if you wish. To pass this comment along to friends, relatives, etc. please note that the Commentaries are a premium sent to monthly donors to Z/ZNet and that to learn more about the project folks can consult ZNet (http://www.zmag.org) and specifically the Commentary Page (http://www.zmag.org/Commentaries/donorform.htm). Here then is today's ZNet Commentary... ------------------------------------------ ZNet Commentaries June 1999 Tragedy or Travesty? The Tragic, Passive Asian Woman By Sonia Shah Much of the New York Times's international coverage consists of tales of senseless violence and woe in distant lands--i.e. tragedies, which are by definition insoluble. This trope of the miserable, oppressed, backward Asian woman is probably entrenched enough in mainstream society such that not much detail is required to conjure up the image. But details we do get, from the Times, without any of the concomitant causes and contexts that we may require to understand these stories as anything but absolute horrors. One front page story featured a photograph of a group of slumped, grim group of Indian women, with the newsworthy headline: "Once Widowed in India, Twice Scorned;" the caption describes how these Indian widows are all called "servant" and survive solely on handouts. Details of slave-like working conditions, illiteracy, hunger, rape, forced prostitution, and, of course, wife-burning follow. "Attitudes evolve at a glacial pace," the reporter duly notes. Another long front page story featured rural Chinese women committing suicide in masses, mostly by drinking pesticides. The reporter unsuccesfully attempts to explain the high suicide rate by variously noting that perhaps the women didn't really want to die, that Chinese culture "reinforce[s] women's feeling of worthlessness and helplessness," or that they may feel it is "honorable." While the high suicide rate is clearly inexplicable, at least by the Times, (the reporter notes that these women "show no signs of mental illness, depression, or alcohol use,") it also may not even exist: the fact that the suicide rate is very poorly documented is noted several times in the article. A May 3, 1999 article was tagged to a study showing that 2/3 of the women elected into village governing councils in India, on the basis of a 1993 quota law setting aside one-third of all such positions for women, are "actively engaged in learning the ropes and exercising power." The study, in other words, showed that a government attempt at radical social transformation to benefit women was basically successful. Yet, the vast majority of the article is devoted to vignettes about two illiterate women from a low-literacy state-which the reporter admits is least indicative of the successes of the program. They are variously described as "ghostly shadow[s]" being "shooed away to make tea," having a "submissive posture," dropping their voices to whispers, covering their eyes with veils, nursing their babies at the slightest whimper, and falling to their knees to prostrate themselves to their elders (I know what they are referring to here, and *nobody* actually falls to their knees except in Hindi films). In other words, "changing deep-rooted social attitudes cannot be accomplished by legal fiat," asserts the reporter, contradicting the study that gives the story whatever news- value it may have. Even the rare coverage of Asian women activists or leaders is framed in such a way as to maximize Asian passivity and degradation. Maria Rosa Henson was the first Asian "comfort woman" to accept a reparation payment for her enslavement in a Japanese military brothel. The Times' story about Henson calls her an "avenger," despite the fact that most former comfort women and their advocates refuse the reparation payments on principle, instead demanding official legal compensation. Remarkably, the first six paragraphs of the story are devoted to Henson's "gratefulness" to one of the hundreds of military men who raped her, Captain Tanaka. According to the Times, Henson recalled "the occasional cups of tea and kind looks he offered her during the months he forced her, at the age of 15, to provide sex to 10 or 20 or 30 Japanese soldiers a day." The reporter goes on to devote over one- quarter of the article to Henson's gratitude to Tanaka, despite the fact that these "niceties" are clearly irrelevant to the story, and the characterization of Henson they imply is misplaced at best. Tanaka didn't help Henson escape in any way, nor did his kind looks mitigrate the horror of the experience, including his own rapes of Henson. Although the reporter insists that Henson "was grateful to Captain Tanaka," Henson herself writes that she was "angry all the time" and that she will "remember always." The crude attempt to characterize Henson as a timid, thankful, inadvertent avenger falls flat on its face. Asian tragedies and horrors-wolf attacks, rampant filth and infection, contaminated blood supplies, angry mobs, and horrifying customs-often make front-page news, and whether news-worthy or not, provide fine opportunities to reiterate Western repulsion toward Asia. John F. Burns points out, uselessly, in his story on a case of food poisoning in New Delhi, that most Indians "defecate into buckets or on open land." The paternalism is so glaringly obvious that even the reactionary columnist A.M. Rosenthal noted the "arrogance, ignorance, and condescension" of the Western attitude. And since we rarely hear of the lasting effects or long-term outcomes of these events, the conclusion that the spectacle of horror *is* the story becomes obvious. The suffering is real, of course. But it isn't a tragedy--it's a travesty. Sonia Shah is an editor/publisher in the South End Press collective, and editor of Dragon Ladies: Asian American Feminists Breathe Fire. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Sonia Shah Editor/Publisher South End Press collective 7 Brookline Street, #1 Cambridge, MA 02139 617-547-4002 617-547-1333 fax general office email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lbbs.org/sep/sep.htm Michael Albert Z Magazine / ZNet www.zmag.org A<>E<>R ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled one is truly vanquished. -Johann Christoph Schiller, German Writer (1759-1805) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly. -Bertrand Russell + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Everyone has the right...to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." 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