Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: sexism

Am I talking about gender again? Kind of

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Because I live in my own little world, I often forget that most people are more fixated on gender than I am. Here is my post from two days ago (I skipped yesterday) in which I maundered about the travesty of gender roles rigidity. I’m still thinking about it because I’m still watching stuff that is tangential to Korean culture content.

One thing I find interesting about different cultures is how something that is verboten in one country is not in another. For example, in American culture, you rarely hear cis het dudes talking about how pretty/hot/cute another guy is. Even when talking about famous men who are known for their good looks (say Hugh Jackman–someone who many women find wildly attractive), most cis het men won’t talk about how hot they are. They may say the guy is handsome or good-looking, but that’s it. Or if they do say he’s hot, they have to add some version of ‘no homo’. Most of them are aware enough to know that they can’t say that exact phrase (though, distressingly, a few still do), but they say something close to it. Usually, “I’m a happily married man, but…” which is better. Still. There’s no need to qualify when you’re saying someane is hot.

That’s how I feel. I am surprised how Korean men (on YouTube, anyway) have no qualms with saying a male celebrity is cute or sexy or pretty. There’s usually no qualifier and no need to be at all apologetic. I’m assuming it’s a cultural thing because it seems to me that popular Korean celebs (at least in K-pop) have to do all kinds of wild things while in the public eye. It’s almost like they’re living in The Truman Show where they have no privacy at all. The things that their fans think they have the right to know is astonishing and a bit disturbing, actually. So it’s probably not surprising that everyone feels comfortable commenting so frequently on how hot/pretty/sexy the celeb is.

At the same time, at least in K-pop, the idols themselves are supposed to be young and pure. It’s a really interesting dichotomy that I find fascinating from afar.

I want to emphasize that I’m not saying it’s better or worse that celebrity culture in America–just different. There are positives and negatives to both. I’m just bringing it up because in relation to gender, it’s way more upfront about the sexism than is America. As someone who lives in a progressive area, sometimes, that makes it harder to deal with the isms. Why? Because they’re more hidden, but they’re still there. I just have to look for the giveaways and listen for the dog whistles.


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Gender redux; gender reflex

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One more post about gender? Yes, sadly. Here is the post from yesterday in which I talked about how I just did not feel gender at all or get it.

I was reading a question and (answers)  about gender (eh, kind of. It’s good enough for the purpose of what I want to write in this post)–well, in a way. It was a work blog, and the question was from a woman who had been at her work for sixteen months, but only recently started getting complaints about the skirts she was wearing. She stated that she was having bloating issues and did not wear tight clothing/belts that would bother her stomach (paraphrasing). She stressed that the skirts fell to just above her knee, which was acceptable at her job.

Other women wore the same kind of skirts, including her boss–the person who reprimanded her about her (the letter writer’s (LW) attire), and there were men who wore hoodies and were fine while the LW’s bare shoulders were not. She was in a customer-facing position, and she wondered if that was part of the difference. But she was frustrated, embarrassed, and did not want to have to buy a whole new wardrobe.

I want to say that this has been a left-leaning blog for as long as I’ve been reading it (which is seven or eight years, I think?) with a lot of self-proclaimed feminists. The amount of commenters who came up with an embarrassing amount of reasons why this was reasonable on the part of the boss was discouraging. Very sexist reasons, I may add. I was glad to see a few people call it out, but for the most part, the commentariat went all-in on the sexism.

Including one woman who was really ugly with it–saying older women needed to be told when they looked ugly. No, not in those exact words, but close enough. She may not have meant it, but that’s how it came across, and she doubled down on it when questioned.

What really got to me was what always happens with questions like this–the desperate search for anything other than sexism as the reason the sexist thing is happening. “She’s wearing a too-tight skirt” (despite her saying she had uncomfortable bloating and wore nothing too tight); “Maybe it’s rolling up/she doesn’t realize how it looks on her”, which got a distressing amount of similar comments, etc. “Maybe the sleeveless arms are considered unprofessional” (but not the hoodies?).

Very few of them remembered or addressed the fact that the LW had been at her current job for sixteen months, but the comments had only started recently. None of the comments took that into account, which was frustrating AF. In the year 2026, we have gone backwards with feminism, I feel. A commentor actually wrote with all their fingers that a woman not shaving her legs in America was considered “gross”. Again, in the year 2026. I haven’t shaved anything in thirty years and have never gotten any shit for it. Then again, I’m Asian. And I live in a very progressive area.


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Where I draw my line (accepting differences)

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Yesterday, I was talking about a post on Ask A Manager that talked about how to deal with a man at a convention who was annoying/harrassing several attendants of the con. I meandered hither and yon and never addressed the first person who said it was ableist to ban someone because of their disability.

It’s interesting to me how much energy is given in defending autistic white cis boys/men and how little into doing the same for non-male people with autism. Mainly girls, but also nonbinary/genderqueer/agender people. I think the third category is completely ignored as is almost always the case. But with autistic girls, they are not afforded the same benefit of the doubt.

First of all, many are not even diagnosed. If they act out in the stereotypical male autistic way (stimming, shouting, melting down, etc.), they are more likely to be reprimanded or punished for it. I’m grossly simplifying matters, of course, but I’m not wrong, either. It’s that way with many things that are considered typical male behavior (including ADHD).

That gender issue is the reason I never even consider that I had autism, but I’ve talked about that elsewhere. Back to the post.

The commenters were pretty good at dissecting the one comment about Alex potentially being banned for his disability (versus being banned for his behavior). If anything, he was given more leeway because he was neuroatypical as the past committees tried to find ways to accommodate that.

Side note: I think one of the best suggestions was to have a code of conduct that could work for everyone. Someone else added that there should be a specific notice about sexual harassment. Several people suggested the code of conduct, which I appreciated. But those who were saying that there should be specific rules for Alex were off-base, I think. If it’s a very small fandom then perhaps you can have rules per person, but it quickly gets ungainly.

The sceond defense of Alex was that it’s not up to neurotypicals to decide if a neuroatypical perosn’s behavior is weird or not. I agree when it comes to behavior that does not directly affect the neurotypical person such as stimming, not looking someone in the eye, etc. However, when it comes to interactions, yes, the person being interacted upon gets to decide how much they want–especially in personal interaction (as opposed to work).

Side note: It’s the same when people say that you should date all races. That it’s racist not to. Well, the latter is true, but as a person of color, I do not want someone to date me out of guilt or obligation. I have had a few white women espouse this belief, and, uh, no thanks. I don’t need your pity date, thank you very much. I don’t want to date someone who is not eagerly wanting to date me!


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When neurodivergent and creepy intersect

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Many times, creepy dudes try to excuse their behavior or other creepy dudes’ behavior by whataboutautism?! Meaning, they pull out the ‘maybe they’re on the spectrum’ card at the merest whiff of the c-word (creep).

I was reading today’s Ask A Manager column, and there was a question about a middle-aged man at a con (that is almost all women/young girls) who monopolizes conversations, can’t read social cues, and in one case, stalked a woman in a social media group for this particular fandom and had to be banned. Then, he sent gifts to her house as an apology. This same woman will be attending the next con as a speaker.

Before I dive into it, here’s my last post about compartmentalization.

Some other details: in the past, Alex (the man in question) had a chaperone to smooth over the interactions (paraphrasing the LW). In a nutshell, he would monopolize someone’s time and not read any cues that they wanted him to stop. If someone was definitive with him, he would simply move onto the next woman/girl and do the same thing with them. The Letter Writer, who is on the committee for this year’s con, said this committee couldn’t babysit Alex this time around.

The majority of the commenters said just to ban Alex. A sizeable minority suggested some version of babysitting, including a stoplight solution (three different buttons. Green for ‘I’m up for chatting’. Yellow for ‘I only want to talk ot people I know’. Red for ‘Stay the fuck away from me’. More than one person pointed out that it wouldn’t work in this case because the problem was specifically Alex and not talking to people in general.

One thing that ran through the comments was how much energy was devoted to one man at the expense of everyone else. Several women had complained about Alex. The LW hastened to add that there was no evidence of anything untoward (I’m assuming meaning grooming-like behavior), but that the girls did not like it and did not know how to tell him to stop talking to them.

I firmly believe that many times when people talk about how creepy men are just misunderstood or on the spectrum, they are full of shit. Oftentimes, it’s neurotypical men who are creeps themselves who toss out this excuse because they want a shield for their own creepiness. Also, it’s been pointed out that being called a creep is considered worse than actually being a creep, much like being called a racist is a hundred times more hurtful than actually being the victim of racism.


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Gender is a social construct, part three

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Here’s the thing about gender. In an ideal world, I would not have to think about it at all because I don’t care about it (to an extent). Just as I don’t think about religion or children unless someone else brings it up. In that ideal world, I would just be a woman and people would accept that without question. I would not have people telling me that I was womanning incorrectly or pointing out all the ways in which I was not really a woman. I ended the last post by talking about the sexism of my father. His attitude is one big reason I’m a feminist now. He definitely believed that I was a fuckup as a woman, but he wasn’t the only one.

Here are many ways I have been dismissed as a woman:

1. Not having children (always at the top).
2. Not getting married.
3. Not caring about fashion and/or makeup.
4. Not liking dolls (as a girl).
5. Not caring about cooking, cleaning, or sewing.
6. Liking sex.
7. Imaging having sex with strangers.
8. Liking sex a lot. As in every day a lot.
9. I don’t shave anything (I’m also Asian).
10. I don’t do anything to improve my appearance.
11. I treat men, women, nonbinary, genderqueer, agender people as equally as I possibly can.

Just a note on that last one. I’m not saying that women are worse about this, but that women can be as bad about it. Because of how patriarchy works, women oftentimes do the major lifting of keeping other women in check. Patriarchy wouldn’t work if there weren’t women who were willing and/or eager to hold up the status quo. This is just an unspoken truth about sexism. Women are just as capable (if not more) of being sexist against other women.

Side note to the side note: This is part of the insidiousness of sexism. Women learn early on that in order to move up in America, you have to appease the men at the top. One way of doing this was to be more ruthless than men, claw your way up the ladder, and then kick it down below you so no other women can climb up it.

Side note to the side note to the side note: This is why I’m deeply suspicious when people say that the world would be a better place if women were in charge. I say it depends more on the system than the gender of the people in charge. If the system is sick, then it doesn’t matter the genders of the people in charge.

Back to my list.


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A talk about difficulty, part three

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Hello! Today I want to jump into the topic of sexism. It will tie in with my main topic of difficulty in FromSoft games, though I can’t guarantee I’ll get there today. The reason I’m bringing it up is because it factors into the whole tiresome difficulty debate. Here’s a link to the last post I wrote about this topic.

Over at the RKG Patreon, there are several more people who commented about how disappointed they are with the summoning situation. They say it’s not fun to watch

*SPOILER WARNING*

Mimic Tear beat the bosses. And that part of what they liked about Retry/Prepare To Try was Rory beating his head against a boss over and over again. They mention the Laurence boss fight more often than not (which I dropped below), and it was notorious for taking Rory 15 hours to beat. It’s an epic fight in which the guys pretty much stopped speaking by the end of it just because they had nothing left to say. People still consider it one of the best episodes of all time.

The thing is, though, it was one episode out of twenty. That’s how many episodes there were in the Bloodborne playthrough. Most of them an hour or less. The first series of Retry Elden Ring was thirty episodes with several of them being around two hours. Or at least an hour and a half. We are on episode 42 and not even halfway through the second series. Of three. There are going to be three series in total, not including the DLC. It’s really disheartening to read the comments on Patreon (I don’t dare read the YouTube comments) from all the guys (and, yes, it’s almost all guys) who are so stuck on the summoning thing) when the boys put so much work into the series.

Here’s the thing that really grates on me. There are literally thousands of people doing no-summons runs. That’s kind of the thing for the FromSoft content creators. Not using summons. That’s, like, the base for a FromSoft content creator these days. No shield is also the norm. No magicks because that shit is for pussies, yo. I’m being sarcastic, of course, but that is truly how people in the community feel.

Sometimes, I wonder why I play games with such a toxic fanbase. I mean, there probably is this much bitterness in all fanbases because people are shortsighted no matter what, but there is something about the FromSoft games that bring out the worst in some people. There are a lot of great people in the community, of course, but, boy, the toxic people are so fucking unpleasant.


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Bagua brings out the beast in me

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When I talk about Taiji, it’s really difficult to convey the feeling of flow that I get in when a weapon form is going well. I have said that holding a sword was like having an extension of my hand, but that’s a very clumsy way of phrasing it. And trite. I can talk about how it feels like dancing, but that’s incomplete, too.

Bottom line. You really do have to experience it to know what it’s like. As with anything, really. It’s a fact of life that we can’t know what anyone else feels. That doesn’t stop me from trying, though. Taiji and now Bagua are so important in my life, I want to share that with other people.

It’s interesting, though, how when I was on Twitter (yes, TWITTER), I used to tweet about my love for Taiji weapons. Inevitably, I got very different responses from people based on their gender. This was back when people identified mostly in the binary. Men would respond by saying how hot it was, either implicitly or explicitly. Some were very explicit.

Women, on the other hand, were appalled and horrified by what they saw as  me being violent. Because of course that’s the only reason someone could be interested in weapons would be because they had a violent nature. One woman even said that she didn’t think I was like that. Like what, I didn’t know, but I could guess.

Both of these responses irritated me and reeked of sexism. With the former, they just wanted to get with me and it was titillating to think of me as being good with weapons. It’s much like female cops often have a hard time dating because men were either intimidated by them or arroused by the fact that they wielded a gun.

In both cases, they weren’t seeing the policewoman as a person but as a woman with a gun. It’s the same with guys who want to fuck me because I do martial art weapons. Although, I guess, to some extent it’s similar to dudes who just looooooove Asian women. It’s not seeing a person as an individual.

I’m not necessarily saying it’s bad to think someone’s hot because of any one thing. Everyone does to a certain extent. I mean, we all objectify others (well, those of us who want to have sex with others), and there’s nothing to be ashamed of. It only becomes a problem when it’s all a person can see in the other person. Or in this specific case, when a dude thinks that me doing martial arts weapons is for him somehow.


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I’m always not a woman to some

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When I tured twenty-six, my mother commented that she had my brother at that age. I had nothing to say to that so I shrugged and dismissed it from my mind. Quitck backstory. I realized when I was tewnty that I did not want kids. Like, definitely did not want them. I had never been that sure about anything in my life. Ever. Not before and not since. It came down like a message from the angels above, and I shouted out, “Hallelujah!” Ok. No. I did not do that. But the relief I felt when I realized that not only did I not want kids, I did not have to have them, was immense. I can’t describe the weight it lifted off my shoulders.

Before that, i just assumed that I had to have them because that was the culture I grew up in. The Taiwanese culture, I mean, though it was backed up by the American culture, too. Women were nothing if they did not get married and have children. It was what they were born (and bred) to do. We were chattel and cattle, and more than one person referred to my birthing hips when I was in my twenties. Excuse me. Not person–but woman. Because it was only women who pushed me to have children, who nagged me about not having them, and who tried to make me feel selfish for not having them.

It was never men. I emphasize this because women are often the worst when it comes to upholding the patriarchy. There are many reasons for that, but that is not the point of this post. The point is that the fifteen years I was pushed to have children, mostly by my mother, is what planted the seed that I was not comfortable calling myself a woman.

My mother actually said at one point that it did not matter if I wanted children or not because it was my duty as a woman to have them. Think about that for a minute. Let it marinate in your mind. I was supposed to put aside my personal feelings and procreate because that was my express purpose as vagina-bearing person. That was what my mother was saying to me. That’s pretty horrifying if you think about it.

Oh. the one exception to men not pushing me about kids–when it came to the question of an abortion. More than one man I’ve talked with was firmly against it. One was a Catholic guy (claimed liberal) who said that if a woman ‘played’ then she should have to ‘pay’. Which was another terrible way to view parenting. It’s a punishment for your sins. That’s literally what he was saying. He claimed it was the same as if you were skiing and broke your leg. You had  to deal with the broken leg. I pointed out that ‘dealing with a broken leg’ did not include leaving it broken and saying, “Well, I broke it, so I have to keep it broken.”

I mentioned that if  iwere forced to have a baby, I would probably kill myself to get out of it. And the fetus would die with me, so two entities would be dead. How was that any better? He said that I could get a note from my doctor in that case. I said why should that be necessary? Why should I have to prostate myself and reveal my mental health issues just to be able to do what I wanted with my own body?


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Removing gender from the equation

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One frustrating things about isms is how pernicious and pervasive they are. In addition, people will make constant excuses why what they do isn’t sexism or is somehow benevolent or benign. (Speaking specifically of sexism. When it’s racism, it’s usually how they didn’t mean it that way or they didn’t mean you. Also irritating and exhausting, but in a different way.)

I remember reading a comment section at Slate before I self-banned myself from reading the comments on that site. It was about sexism and there was a guy who said that he held the door open for his female friends, and he was not sorry about it. Now, presumably, if they’re his friends, they don’t mind (though perhaps they just don’t want to make a fuss. If it were me and it was just a casual friend–liek a friend of a friend situation, I would internally roll my eyes and ignore him). But if he’s doing this for random people or people at work (and I think this was a letter about the latter? I don’t remember. Wait. Was it Ask A Manager? I don’t think so. Not that it matters).

He could not be talked out of his position that this was a nice tihng he was doing for these women. No matter how much he was grilled on it by the other commenters, he doubled down on it being respectful. I think he even said that was how he was raised. When it was pointed out to him that there were many women who were pointing out that they didn’t find it respectful and would not want him to do it, he kept repeating that he was doing it to be respectful.

He could not get it in his head that if the recipient of his gesture did not find it respectful, then it wasn’t, indeed, respectful. It’s surprising how many people don’t get that. Personally, I hold the door for anyone who is within five feet of the door when I get there. I don’t care about their gender. It’s just polite. But if someone were to make a big fuss about it because they were male and perceived me to be female, well ,then we would have an issue.

With this guy I mentioned (I’ll call him Eric because that’s the name he used), he made it clear that he did not do this for his male friends. In addition to being old-fashioned, it’s just weird if you’re in a group of friends and you only hold the door for some of the people and not the rest. Would he do that for, say, black people and not white? Highly doubt it. The excuse that it was considered respectful fifty years ago doesn’t hold water at any rate beacuse things change. Customs change. Would he also not give a job to a woman because she is  supposed to be at home taking care of her children?

And what if he doesn’t know the gender of one of his friends? Does he ask them? Or just assume? I would be annoyed as hell about it. Like I said, if he was an acquaintance and it was a one-time thing, I probably wouldn’t say anything. But I would definitely demote him in my mind.

He kept repeating that he was being courteous and gentlemanly (or something like that). Which showed that he was more wedded to the idea of looking good than actually being good. Not that he would look good these days for that kind of behavior–at least not like it was viewed fifty years ago. But how very white male of him. what he thought as a man about how he terated women was more important than how actual women told it made them feel. He didn’t care if it was actually respectful of the women he was purportedly saying he was treating with respect.


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Smash the patriarchy

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One recurring tension when fighting for justice is dealing with things as they are versus with as you want them to be. Do you meet people where tthey are or instist they be better? In other words, do you rabble the rousing or do you slowly build coalition? Back in the day, it was ACT UP vs. assimilation. Martin Luther King versus Malcolm X.

One thing that annoys me is the clap back of ‘you’re showing your privilege’ without any follow up. I never say ‘check your privilege’ because it’s meaningless in and of itself. And, what are you supopsed to do once you chcck it? Ok. I checked it. It’s there. Now what? I’m being glib. I don’t think it’s bad to think about the ways in which you have privilege, but then, you should do something with that privilege.

At Ask A Manager, there was a question about…I don’t remember what it was. I’m going to say wearing a bra. It was somethnig of that sort. I said I would absolutely quit over being forced to wear a bra. Other people said the same. We were in the mionrity, but we were also people who didn’t wear bras in the first place.

Someone bleated about privilege and how not everyone could quit their jobs like that. I said that’s the reason why people with privilege should take a stand when they can, otherwise, what’s the point of checking said privilege? I wasn’t trying to be a dick, but I get tired of ‘checking your privilege’ being the end of a conversation when it should  just be the start. Yes, not everyone can quit their job without having another one in place, so why not rjeoice for the people who can?

It was interesting to see so many women push hard for wearing a bra. I don’t care, obviously, but it’s a myth that it’s better for your boobs. Or that not wearing a bra is bad for them. It’s not. In fact, scientifically, there has been some proof that not-bra wearoers have perkier boobs than those who wear bras.


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