Intersectionality bites

by liberal japonicus

Hi all, this is a bit after the fact, but I've been marvelling about a few things that seem to require an examination through intersectionality. My take on intersectionality is that it is based on the fact that gender and race and other identities can often interact in ways that might be unexpected and for myself, I find that bell hooks is the person I have read and appreciated about this subject. Of course, people who really like intersectionality think that everything requires an examination through intersectionality, but some things require it more than others. Anyway, below the fold, three bites at the apple.

To get into it, the first one was Pelosi's visit to Taiwan. It's interesting that the Chinese tolerated Newt Gingrich's visit when he was Speaker (25 years ago), but made a lot more noise for Pelosi's. Here as WSJ article with a little background

Gingrich did visit the mainland first, and at the time when a Democrat was president. But I have to wonder if Pelosi being a women had the Chinese feel more affronted. Did it enter their calculations? And what do the Taiwanese make of this? I think I mentioned this, but I heard that Pelosi's district used to have a large Cantonese Chinese-American population (so Taiwan and Hong Kong), but demographic change has had immigrants with roots from the mainland supplant that group, so from an electoral standpoint, Pelosi might responding to a situation that no longer holds. But it was also pointed out that Pelosi might be responding to concerns by Cali companies that need chips (electronics, not potato).

I may have a chance to find out more. My hometown is welcoming a rather large chip factory (again electronics, not potato)
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Tech/Semiconductors/Can-TSMC-give-new-spark-to-Japan-s-Silicon-Island

that may see an influx of people from Taiwan, so I hope that I can meet some and find out what they think. I've talked to some of colleagues in the department (we have 3 native Mainland Chinese and one of the Japanese teachers who did his PhD in Taiwan), but because they are at the university working with me, I don't like to question them too closely. I've also been reading quite a bit about Confucianism (see bite #3) and I'm wondering if Taiwanese versus Mainland Chinese has different understandings of key points about gender.

And, of course, another intersectionality aspect is the discussion of this trip in terms of how Pelosi views her 'legacy', which seems to be a very gendered thing.

The second bite is the ongoing clown car dumpster fire to replace Boris Johnson. As I said, this is a little behind, but I'm still wrapping my head around the initial candidates. If you didn't actually listen to what they were saying, it was a pipe dream for diversity. A couple of Guardian articles will get you up to speed

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/15/tories-different-origins-skin-tones-need-diversity-sunak-austerity-badenoch

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/20/the-guardian-view-on-the-tory-leadership-race-diversity-but-not-in-thought

I've got a few ideas about why diversity is more visible on the Tory side. I feel like being a woman/POC/LGBT on the left requires a reining in of goals, perhaps a pretty substantial reining in. Not really possible for someone there to move ahead of the consensus, which then makes it impossible for someone who might truly represent diversity to be a leader. Expanding to outside the UK, Obama is a counter-example, but it seems to me that if he did have any progressive goals, he kept them pretty well hidden. I feel like a lot of folks on the left might blame Obama but I tend to see that as built in to the rules of the game. One of our most upper class presidents would be FDR, perhaps this is going too far back, but it suggests to me that you can't really have a true candidate of the left, which is why it shouldn't really be a surprise that the person most identified with the left is an 80 year white guy from Vermont. A minority candidate is always going to be within that line and never pushing it. On the other hand, on the right, it is relatively easy to pick and choose one's spots to be transgressive. Badenoch, for example, claimed that appropriate advances and sexual behavior was more 'puritanical' for millenials, presumably advocating for a loosening up of sexual mores. Mordaunt argued for same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland and Truss famously was a LibDem and a remainer previously. UKians can chime in with corrections or, preferably, other bon mots to support this.

One bon mot came up in the comments concerning Ugandan Asians, and it's interesting to me that a lot of those found a home in the Conservative Party
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/27/how-did-british-indians-become-so-prominent-in-the-conservative-party

The Conservative leadership of the time identified this demographic as potential voters. From the 1980s onwards, the Tories began to court an imagined “Indian community”, limited to east African Indians who had settled around London. Successful British Indians were held up as evidence of what could be achieved under a free-market Conservative government. In 1988, Thatcher welcomed the new Indian high commissioner to Britain with the following words: “We so much welcome the resourceful Indian community here in Britain. You have brought the virtues of family, of hard work and of resolve to make a better life … you are displaying splendid qualities of enterprise and initiative, which benefit not just you and your families but the Indian community and indeed the nation as a whole.”

The strategy is the same as a previous GOP one, pointing out that Hispanics tend to be more conservative that most and they might find a home in the Republican party. However, that always seemed a bit glib, given that Hispanics aren't really a unified bloc, so I feel like it is, like the Tories, identifying a slice of a minority and appealing to them and then holding them out as evidence that they are for the wider demographic.

The last bite is the continued fallout from Abe's assassination. Start with this interesting article that points out that Abe's assassin was successful in ways he could not really imagine.

We can start with the fact that Shinzo Abe was not really loved in Japan. After a long career in hard right politics, multiple corruption scandals, and his more recent career trying to control the Kishida government from backstage, most Japanese had long had enough of him. There were many who respected him and others who feared him, but very few to whom he was a figure of genuine endearment. The Japanese people would never have wanted to see Abe die in the manner that he did, but most were long ago ready to see him retire from politics.

Next came the fact that Yamagami’s motives in killing Abe did not fit into any preexisting narratives. Had Yamagami been a leftwing activist, for example, the assassination would have been met with universal rage from conservatives and a great deal of disquiet from ordinary Japanese. Indeed, many commentators in the first weeks after Abe’s assassination anticipated that there would be a political crackdown, and that authoritarian strains in Japan’s body politic would become more pronounced.

But when people began to learn that the killer’s motive related to the Unification Church–a more-or-less unknown entity within Japanese political debates–there was at first a sense of confusion. People didn’t know what to make of it. Was the assassin just some kind of lunatic, or was there more to the story?

At first, the Japanese media refused to even name the Unification Church. Hesitantly at first, the mainstream media eventually began to investigate and unravel the story. It took them weeks to gain the confidence to report the story more fully, but with a figure of the significance of Shinzo Abe at the center of it, they couldn’t really avoid doing their jobs on this occasion.

And then something odd started to happen: As the Japanese people learned more about Tetsuya Yamagami and what he had experienced in his life, their overwhelming reaction was not a feeling of anger about the loss of the unloved Abe, but sympathy towards his assassin. They felt pity for his troubled life and for the ways in which he had been a long-term victim of the Unification Church. While few wanted to say out loud (due to the moral hazard factor) that killing Shinzo Abe may have been his only practical recourse, the fact is that more people came to sympathize with Yamagami than with Abe.

As the article points out, a lot more investigative reporting is being brought to bear on the connections between the Unification Church and Abe's party, the LDP. The current PM, Kishida, is seeing big drop in his approval, with 87% of Japanese say LDP ties with Unification Church are a "problem." Nearly two-thirds (64%) say a "serious problem."

There is a really interesting class issue here that space does not really allow for full details, but a short version is that Abe's assassin attended one of the top 3 high schools in the Nara area and probably all his other classmates went on to university. However, because of his father's suicide and his mother's embrace of UC, which essentially had her give all her savings to the UC, Yamaguchi aimed to assassinate the wife of the founder, Hak Ja Han Moon, but because of COVID travel restrictions, he changed to target Abe. It's really hard to read a national move, but I think the article is correct, there seems to be quite a bit of sympathy and, as noted, the assassination of Abe did not redound to the conservative party in a way expected by anyone. Whether it is enough to reorient the party remains to be seen (Kishida remains a cipher to me), it certainly has shook things up.

One intersectional point I've been quite interested in is the fact that the theology of the UC explicitly identifies Japanese guilt for the annexation of Korea as well as treatment of Korean nationals during WWII. This journal article discusses this

Marriage has a very important meaning within the UC, which views an indi- vidual as “spiritually incomplete” until he or she is “joined to a spouse in holy matrimony”, such that “there is not so much future for a celibate in the UC”. Since family formation represents God’s creation, a family formed through a heterosexual marriage thus becomes the portal through which mankind’s eternal happiness is attained. As a result, marriage is described as ‘blessed’ and a ‘blessedness.’ This model is carefully managed by the founder Moon and his wife, who are regarded as ‘True Parents’ by their followers and, in turn, consider the marriages of couples through the UC’s arrangements as ‘blessed marriages.’ A ‘blessed marriage’ is made possible only by Moon, who gives his followers the opportunity to create a perfect and sinless family. Similarly, the Unification Church sees marriage as containing the meaning of salvation, and hence capable of cleansing one’s ‘original sin’. However, an international marriage has an even more special meaning within the UC, as it is the basis upon which the ‘great global family’ is created.

This places the mass weddings that the UC church is known for in context. UC theology is very much family centric and I see it as a syncretic notion taken from Confucianism where proper relations are what keep society together. This also goes back to their theology, which argues that God did not intend for Christ to be crucified but that he was supposed to marry and have a family, and that family relationship would mirror the relationship between larger entities, such as between nations and between people and God. Thus, the founder, Sun Myung Moon, and his family, provide the template for the perfect family, where the wife is obedient to the husband (little more on that later)

I was pretty surprised by the numbers of Japanese women who had married and moved to South Korea, but this Mainichi article seems to support that point
This article has a more journalistic take

These ceremonies came at a price, with members paying different fees depending on which country they came from. According to an e-calculator the church created, US members must pay $700 to liberate their first seven generations of ancestors. Japanese members must pay 700,000 yen, or just over $5,000 USD. The racial hierarchy stemmed from the church's belief that Japan must atone for its sins committed against Korea. Moon was born during the Japanese occupation of Korea in 1920, a period of harsh oppression that has bred resentment that still lingers among some members of older Korean generations. As a young adult, Moon joined the Korean independence movement and was arrested and beaten by the Japanese police, according to his autobiography, "As a Peace-Loving Global Citizen." Since the church's inception, Japan has played a curious role in Unification Church theology. Moon designated Japan as the "Eve nation," which would be both partner and subjugant to Korea, the "Adam nation." Rather than shunning Japan, Rev. Moon attended college there so he could learn about the country with the ultimate goal of bringing it under his wing. "Instead of refusing all contact, Korea needed to evangelize Japan so that it would be in the position to be the senior partner in the bilateral relationship," Moon wrote in his autobiography.

This is where intersectionality really bites. Since the 80's, Japan has pushed an idea called 'kokusaika', which translates to 'internationalization'. Lots of things, including the job that first brought me to Japan, have been motivated by this notion. However, it is a notion that gets applied unequally in terms of gender. For example, a larger percentage of female students tend to do English and a larger percentage do overseas exchange. It is they who get the brunt of the message about the importance for Japan to internationalize. In many ways, English today in Japan is like embroidery or piano playing in Victorian times: something to indicate that a girl's parents have the financial wherewithal to support a child who wants to do those sorts of things. So it shouldn't have surprised me that the apparent majority of UC converts were women. I now wonder if the exposure to international ideas, which often encompass things like war guilt, ends up creating a sympathy for the ideas of UC and Japan's guilt.

This article points out how the breakdown of UC members reflects UC theology, with Japanese wives pledging obedience to their Korean husbands. There is a data problem, in that the article is based on people who have left the church, but in addition to identifying the female demographic, the description of a number of points is eye-opening
https://www.jstor.org/stable/41038704

This article, which is entitled ' a kaleidoscopic introduction' is also fascinating, giving a number of different facets of UC.

Some of the revelations that the reporting has brought up is that UC members have 'advised' politicians on "family education" ordinances which seem to have been designed by the UC. I'm now curious about the potential relationship between the vehement opposition against moves to allow women to retain their names after marriage and I suspect that UC support has stiffened the spine of the conservatives who refuse to change, despite the majority of Japanese not having a problem with it. This link here points out the gap.

Another thing, perhaps unrelated, was this story about a trans parent who, post transition, was denied recognition as the child's parent.

Ironically, though the Rev. Moon and his wife were, according to UC belief, examples of the perfect family, after Moon's death, his two sons created sects.

In January 2015, Sean publicly renounced his mother for hijacking the Unification Church and rewriting and editing his father’s religious texts. He has since taken to calling her the “whore of Babylon.” Last September, Sanctuary Church shunted Hak Ja Han aside, and a posthumous wedding was thrown for the Rev. Moon. He (well, his spirit) married 90-year-old Hyun Shil Kang, supposedly the first person to join his ministry in the early 1950s. She moved to Pennsylvania to live with Sean and his family.

So much for the perfect family. This hasn't been pointed out much in Japan, because, as was mentioned in the article, the new media has tread lightly on reporting about the church and some whataboutists are concerned about how determined reporting might impinge on religious freedom (many of them are quite fond of Abe's notion of making Japan a 'normal' nation that could send its troops overseas, coincidentally). While I think there is a grain of trut to that, I wish they would report how nutty the whole Moonie enterprise is. Though I'd point out that the whole process of posthumous weddings sounds vaguely like Mormon practices of baptizing ancestors. Which, if I had more energy, would be intersectionality bite #4. Anyway, hope that is enough to make a meal.

Comments

[wj]

Pelosi's district used to have a large Cantonese Chinese-American population (so Taiwan and Hong Kong), but demographic change has had immigrants with roots from the mainland supplant that group, so from an electoral standpoint, Pelosi might responding to a situation that no longer holds.

But immigrants with roots from the mainland likely left because they were not enchanted with the PRC government. So visiting Taiwan might be an electoral plus after all.

I've also been reading quite a bit about Confucianism (see bite #3) and I'm wondering if Taiwanese versus Mainland Chinese has different understandings of key points about gender.

Alternatively, different views regarding gender (and gender roles) may have less to do with communism vs Confucianism, and more to do with how much people, especially leaders, have been exposed to the wider world.

(This post is so long that I'm thinking I'll respond piecemeal.)

[liberal japonicus]

Yeah, it is a bit long, sorry about that.

I also didn't mean to suggest that Taiwan v the mainland differences might all stack up with Confucianism, I'm sure if there are differencs, it is due to a hodgepodge of reasons. It's quite interesting to me that Taiwan has a relatively benign view of Japan as it didn't have the same experience with Japanese occupation. I'm sure there are a lot of other differences that would factor in.

[wj]

One of our most upper class presidents would be FDR, perhaps this is going too far back, but it suggests to me that you can't really have a true candidate of the left, which is why it shouldn't really be a surprise that the person most identified with the left is an 80 year white guy from Vermont. A minority candidate is always going to be within that line and never pushing it.

Arguably, a minority candidate who gains high office, and is even slightly left of center (e.g. Obama), is advancing liberal goals just by being there. If he (or she) tries to be seriously left of center, he simply won't get elected. Whereas an OWG can be very liberal and remain electable.

It comes down to this. People generally have a limited tolerance for (perceived) change. To be successful, a candidate can be seriously liberal and white (and male), or minority or female and centerist or conservative. There can be local exceptions, but for anyone running for an office with a statewide or national demographic, those are the viable options. You may find this to be a bad thing, but for the moment that's the real world.

[liberal japonicus]

Another ObWi edition of Feature or Bug! lol

What you point out is 'the real world', and I'm not busting you for observing this, but this is what people talk about when they note the "invisibility" of white privilege. The minority candidate becomes just a place-holder. We see that a lot in discussions about Harris and if Biden doesn't go a second term, Harris is going to be savaged coming and going. I'm sure that there are tons of further examples and I feel like it handicaps the left in many ways.

So yes, I definitely think it is a bad thing and I wish everyone would realize that it is. I don't think there is anything anyone can do about it, but if more people realized the problem and its extent, they might have a more critical eye when stories that play up on this stuff come out.

[Kenneth Almquist]

I think that the difference between China's reaction to Gingrich visiting Taiwan in 1997 and Pelosi's recent visit is that China has changed in the interim. China wants to be a world power and sees itself as well on the way to getting there. The “belt and road” initiative is an example of that.

In 1997, China was weaker, so it complained about Gingrich's visit, but in terms that wouldn't risk damaging relations with the United States. Since then, China basically stood up to Trump, and doesn't feel that it has to be as deferential to the United States as it did 25 years ago.

Also, the fact that China got Hong Kong in 1997 might have made their lack of control over Taiwan less irksome for a time.

[wj]

What you point out is 'the real world', and I'm not busting you for observing this, but this is what people talk about when they note the "invisibility" of white privilege. The minority candidate becomes just a place-holder.

No offense taken. "White privilege" is invisible in many ways.

I do have a problem, however, with "just a placeholder" [emphasis added]. Being the first guy thru the glass ceiling does impose some restrictions along the way, especially when you have to get votes. But, in my experience anyway, once thru even the first movers are far from being placeholders.

And that's aside from their very real impact in reducing some of that invisible white privilege. For instance, Harris will doubtless get hammered by the bigots. But, thanks to Obama, far more people will notice that it is flat out bigotry, and discount it.

Still some white privilege going on. But no longer invisible. And significantly more space for someone notably more liberal. Not as liberal as Sen Sanders, but quite a bit more than Obama. And, note, Obama also made it conceivable that a black man could even be considered by an extremely conservative party.

[liberal japonicus]

Ken, good point. Though I wonder how gender plays into how China deals with things.

And wj, I guess that's the (weak) pun in the title, bite as a noun vs. bite as a verb. But that is in line with my definition of pioneer: the person you find lying on the trail with all the arrows in them...

[wj]

definition of pioneer: the person you find lying on the trail with all the arrows in them...

Those are (unsuccessful) travelers. The (unsuccessful) pioneers are the ones lying around their new cabin, or in their new fields, with all the arrows.... :-)

[liberal japonicus]

hmm, pioneer means first to explore, not first to settle. I'm sure some of those folks were just travelling to say they had gone to places that no one (white) had ever been before, but travellers sounds a bit anodyne.

Anyway, more grist for the mill

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/24/sanna-marin-finland-prime-minister-who-just-wants-to-be-herself

[wj]

I stand corrected on the word.

As for the Finnish PM, she demonstrates that it's possible to be "authentic" without it being a total sham/scam.

[Pro Bono]

A pioneer was originally a foot soldier who prepared a trail for an army to march on. cf peon, pawn.

[Girl from the North Country]

FWIW, and I have some relevant knowledge because of HK (historically - when loads of mainland Chinese were escaping from China in the 60s, and more recently from friends), I think there is a lot to what Kenneth Almquist says.

[Girl from the North Country]

Of course, and partly as KA says, although China was already feeling its oats in 97 because of the HK handover, its sense of weakness was still recent enough that the mindset was different regarding the US.

[GftNC]

You'd hardly know from reading this piece on Liz Truss in today's NYT that she is widely regarded by most people in the know about the political world as a complete lightweight, convictionless opportunist.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/25/world/europe/uk-liz-truss-prime-minister.html

This assessment by Matthew Parris, a columnist who used to be a Tory MP and was an aide to Margaret Thatcher, is much closer to most insiders' opinions, despite the opportunists swearing fealty in the hope of getting cabinet jobs. Again, I copy the column in case not all can read the original:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/theres-no-more-to-truss-than-meets-the-eye-k8f793397

More than six years ago I wrote on this page about an expanding star in the Tory sky. “Steadily,” I said, “almost imperceptibly, an absurd idea has crept upon us.” The idea, I said, was that Boris Johnson might prove fit to be prime minister. Laughable, I wrote, “. . . yet still the idea has grown: shrewdly, assiduously, flamboyantly puffed by its only conceivable beneficiary. Where else in politics can such self-validating, self-inflating nonsense be found?” My column teetered between indignation and incredulity. It described him as “a blustering, bantering hole in the air”. It drew embarrassed attention to his moral carelessness.

And it built towards a conclusion that was magnificently wrong. Surely, I argued, neither his colleagues nor the electorate would ever fall for this.

I well recall the response, and still keep some of the messages to prove it. Colleagues in political journalism, and former parliamentary colleagues too, agreed. Some were later to write in praise of him, others to serve in his government, even in his cabinet.

The mood changed as it became apparent the impossible was going to happen. There is in all of us a habit of which we are rarely conscious, impelling us towards the suspicion that if Destiny is taking someone or something seriously, then Destiny might be right.

Some genuinely forgot their earlier opinion; others concluded there was, after all, more to this man than met the eye. Commentators and colleagues willed him to be what they wanted him to be. He’d always been (many noted) a man of liberal instincts. Others opined that as a charming pragmatist he might steer Brexiteers away from the wilder shores of xenophobia. It became the conventional wisdom that, aware of his limitations, Johnson’s great talent had always been to pick a good, strong and sensible team to carry his leadership forward. There might be (it was felt by some wise heads) so much more to this man than surface charm, froth and bubble.

There never was. First impressions had been right all along. Save yourself the trouble of second thoughts. Margaret Thatcher turned out to be exactly what she at first seemed, for good or ill. Keir Starmer seems at first sight to be a man who knows what he should do but keeps losing his nerve. On the second, third and fourth glances too we’re unlikely to refine that judgment.

“Intelligence takes many forms,” wrote Michael Gove after interviewing Donald Trump early in 2017. We forget it now but there was a belief and argument that we had underestimated the then president. Our first impression had been that the man was an unhinged and ignorant egomaniac. The first impression was right.

And so to the choice facing Tory members now pondering whether to vote for Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak as — effectively — our next prime minister. Truss is reported to be the likely victor. We ringside commentators love struggles for power, and admire politicians who show flair in its accumulation. But ability to acquire power has never entailed an ability to exercise it.

In Times columns I’ve offered my first impressions of this candidate. They were that she was intellectually shallow, her convictions wafer-thin; that she was driven by ambition pure and simple; that her manner was wooden and her ability to communicate convincingly to an electorate wider than the narrow band of Tory activists was virtually non-existent; that she was dangerously impulsive and headstrong, with a self-belief unattended by precaution; and that her leadership of the Conservative Party and our country would be a tragedy for both. “There’s nothing there,” I wrote last December, “nothing beyond a leaping self-confidence that’s almost endearing in its wide-eyed disregard for the forces of political gravity.” I likened any decision to follow Johnson with Truss to the doner kebab which, after a night on the tiles, momentarily seems like a good idea — until you open the bread pouch.

If these, my first impressions, were expressed extravagantly, they nevertheless reflected a judgment expressed more soberly by most political commentators — and, I suggest, felt by the majority of her fellow Tory MPs, for whom Sunak was plainly the preferred candidate. There was incredulity as to how she had got to where she was.

I have noticed since that some are revising their first impressions. MPs and ministers are cleaving to her, some doubtless out of naked opportunism but others persuading themselves they’ve now spotted talents they perhaps missed when Truss was further from power. Journalists, meanwhile, some of them simply reaching for something new to say, but others seriously thinking again, are venturing the thought that there may be more to her than meets the eye: a resolute, “steely” strategist, perhaps? A woman with a quirky but shrewdly Trumpian eye for connecting with voters? A hard worker (unlike Boris) and someone who can be talked out of mistaken plans if an intelligent effort is made? Hell, she’s going to win so maybe she’s a winner? Shouldn’t we at least give her the benefit of the doubt?

No. Ignore those whispers of precaution. Stick to your first impressions. Liz Truss is a planet-sized mass of overconfidence and ambition teetering upon a pinhead of a political brain. It must all come crashing down. Her biggest job has been foreign secretary. Does she join her new best friend, Tom Tugendhat, in condemning the UN security council for its criticism of illegal Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory? Does she really want to “review” (as she’s suggested) Britain’s decision not to join the Americans in moving our embassy to Jerusalem? What did she mean by saying Britain’s civil service culture “strays into antisemitism”? These explosive hip shots are only indicative.

And now that she moves her attention to domestic politics, does she really believe that “freedom” and deregulation will help red-wall England? Mansfield isn’t being held back by big government; it’s being held together by it. What are her instincts — not the corrections she’s been forced to row back to, but her personal instincts — on help for the poor, on Theresa May’s “good that government can do”? I think we know.

I’ll wager that at the outset most readers thought Liz Truss a bit weird, curiously hollow and potentially dangerous. This summer a short period will see such rushes to judgment revised. Then government will descend into a huge effort to contain and defang an unstable prime minister; and we shall revert to our first impressions. Save yourself the detour and stick with them. She’s crackers. It isn’t going to work.

[Donald]

Nothing is more intersectional than Israel- Palestine. Examples too numerous to list, but here is one—

https://www.inquirer.com/news/agnes-irwin-fires-pro-palestine-employee-20220823.html#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=16612996430259&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.inquirer.com%2Fnews%2Fagnes-irwin-fires-pro-palestine-employee-20220823.html

[Girl from the North Country]

Gosh, I'm so sorry, I just realised I put my Liz Truss stuff on this thread, instead of the Open Thread. Apologies, lj!

[JanieM]

Gosh, I'm so sorry, I just realised I put my Liz Truss stuff on this thread, instead of the Open Thread. Apologies, lj!

What, a long piece on a race between a woman and a dark-skinned man? You don't think that's appropriate for a thread about intersectionality?

I thought it fit right in.

[Girl from the North Country]

LOL

[Nigel]

This is pretty well on topic, and interesting throughout (long read).

The Guru Who Said No

https://pipewrenchmag.com/pakistans-khwaja-sira-fight-for-the-right-to-be/
… The next hurdle took longer to clear. Exactly who, officials demanded, counted as khwaja sira? The court’s sympathies were predicated on an essentialist understanding — that they are all intersex — even though the khwaja sira describe themselves in more abstract terms, as people possessing feminine souls. Paying no heed, the government announced that if affirmative action in the form of, say, public-sector jobs was to accrue to the benefit of the community, imposters had to be weeded out. It announced mandatory medical examinations.

Outraged, Bindiya and medical student Sarah Gill petitioned the high court to scrap the policy. Always game for some drama, Bindiya drove her point home by confronting officers at the head office of NADRA, the authority in charge of national identification. “A team of doctors is on its way,” she proclaimed. “I have reason to believe there is a khwaja sira among you, so you must all undergo a medical check-up.” She smirked at the recollection. “When the sword dangles over your own head, when your own clothes are taken off, then you understand what another person goes through.”

This appeal to privacy proved surprisingly effective. In 2018, when Pakistani parliament began codifying the Supreme Court’s directives into anti-discrimination legislation, the definition of gender enshrined into law was, by any standard, a radical one: “gender identity means a person’s innermost and individual sense of self as male, female, or a blend of both or neither, that can correspond or not to the sex assigned at birth.” There was no more talk of medical examinations. Now, according to the state of Pakistan, your gender was what you said it was. …

[liberal japonicus]

Nigel, thanks for that. Doing linguistics has one bump into anthropology and there are several other cultures that have a cultural 3rd gender, (berdache for Native Americans, katoey in SE Asia) The 3rd gender for Hawaiian/Tahitian, mahu, were supposed to be healers, which brings to mind Patroculus being called a 'therapon' (where we get the word therapeutic) and both he and Achilles were supposed to have a connection to the centaur Chiron, who was also supposed to pass down the arts of healing to mankind.