Trust

Our next meeting is in our new space!! Yay!!

Rethinkingourselves finally has its own clubhouse!

The new space is called "Three Circles", and the address is

和平東路一段177號4F之10 (Hoping East Road, Sec. 1, No. 177, 4F-10).

Our next meeting is this Sunday, 10/11 at 3pm. The moderator is Angela.

The article this week is from Shakesville. It's very long, so if you don't have time, just read the words in boldface. (I've also simplified it a bit from the original.) Oh, and hey, here's an excellent translator for individual words, and here's a good one for short phrases. Cut, paste, and understand! :) They're awesome, I use them all the time for reading and writing chinese.

Excerpts from A Terrible Bargain We Have Regretfully Struck:

I am not a man-hater.



If I played by misogynists' rules, specifically the one that dictates it only takes one woman doing one Mean or Duplicitous or Disrespectful or Unlawful or otherwise Bad Thing to justify hatred of all women, I would have plenty of justification for hating men, if I wanted to.

Next meeting is NEXT WEEK, 9/13!

It's a rethinkingourselves bonus meeting! Our next meeting is next sunday, September 13, at Catmints Cafe.
Angela is the moderator.

Actually, the reason we're doing the next meeting so soon is because it's a follow-up topic. We talked about privilege this week, and how not recognizing the privilege of being the race in power makes it difficult for white people to make the world a better place. We also talked about how not recognizing their own privilege makes it difficult for men to make the world a better place.

PLURK!!!

You can now follow our discussions and meeting announcements on Plurk!

I'm very excited about this, because I imagine that the conversations we begin in person can be continued online in the Plurk format, and we can keep chatting about new ideas that occur to us in the middle of the week.

Plurk is a social networking site. The rethinkingourselves discussion groups are registered under the name:
three_circles
You have to create your own account, but once you're signed in you can be a friend or a fan of 'three_circles' and follow our discussions in real time. See you there!

Privilege: Do you own some?

Our next class will be held in Catmints Cafe,on Sunday Sep 6, 3:00pm.
Address: Catmints Cafe Roosevelt Road, Sec. 2, Lane 101, No. 9 (02)8369-1271 MRT Kuting Station, exit 3..?

The moderator will be Stacy.

The following are the questions we are going to discuss in our next meeting. There are some quotes from the article. You can find the article from the links after the quotes. You don't need to read the whole article if you don't have time or if you don't want to.

1. Here is a test to see if you enjoy privilege.

2. What privilege do you think you have from belonging to a certain group in society?

How does culture make us who we are?

I've been doing some reading on privilege and racism, and what the cultural markers of being white are. I think that these articles could form the basis for an interesting discussion on how culture works to form individuals in society. It would be interesting to translate these ideas from an American context to a Taiwanese context.

Links below:


White Supremacy Culture
This is a list of characteristics of white supremacy culture that show up in our organizations. Culture is powerful precisely because it is so present and at the same time so very difficult to name or identify. The characteristics listed below are damaging because they are used as norms and standards without being pro-actively named or chosen by the group. They are damaging because they promote white supremacy thinking. Because we all live in a white supremacy culture, these characteristics show up in the attitudes and behaviors of all of us -- people of color and white people. Therefore, these attitudes and behaviors can show up in any group or organization, whether it is white-led or predominantly white or people of color-led or predominantly people of color.

Social class quiz
Do you have privilege? Several quizzes to help you understand your social class.

www.antiracistparent.com
Raising children to be aware of their white privilege is more than making them aware that there are other races in the world. It requires being a different kind of white person.

Typhoon Morakot / Pictures

The typoon Morakot has just posed massive damage on Taiwan.
Here's some pictures breaking my heart:
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/08/typhoon_morakot.html



I felt sorry and sad when I saw these pictures.
Only were we involved in the impaired area,
we could imagine how cruel the natural will be.

何謂女姓主義？ What is Feminism?

女性主義者的革命尚未發生，可是我們的世界需要這種大思考改革。 不人道的父權制度被全世界拒絕是時間早晚的問題。所謂的女性主義者應該叫做人道主義。父權制度上所指的「人」其實是男人，女人不包括在內。因此，父權制度所謂的「人道主義」不包括對待女性。 所以女性主義只能叫做女性主義，不能叫做人道主義。
大體上說，在父權制度上，女人被對待的方式相當於動物被對待的方式。換句話說，控制女人的觀點是從控制動物的觀點而來的。在歷史上，當男生控制起動物的生殖來，動物就成了他們的資產。在我們的文化上，到現在孩子還算是一種資產，這樣一來男生為了維持他們的資產，所以控制起女人的生育。因此，男性必須把女性與孩子們當成資產一樣，他們不可讓女人與孩子們成為有自由意志的「人」。
我們換一個方面來說，很多人說女性主義者的工作是讓男女平等。事實上並非如此。女性主義者不但不是要把機會平均分給男性與女性，這麼大規模的工作反而不是女性主義者的範圍。
女性主義者只是要所有人接受與承認「女人就是人」這個簡單的概念。所謂的人就是有自由意志、有完整身份、有真實存在的情況，而在自己的命運舞台上當演員。所謂的「女性主義者」就是「承認女人就是人」的主義。

This essay is one of my first ever composed in Chinese. (Yay to rockin’ that two-month intensive Chinese course this summer!) Here’s a sentence by sentence translation:


The feminist revolution has not yet happened, but the world badly needs a radical change in thinking. It’s really only a matter of time before the world rejects the inhumane system of patriarchy.
What’s called ‘feminism’ should actually be called ‘humanism’. In our patriarchal culture, what is called ‘human’ actually means ‘man’. Women aren’t really included in this term. So when we in this patriarchy talk about ‘humanism’ it doesn’t really include women. And so feminism can only be called ‘feminism’ and not ‘humanism’.
In general, under the patriarchy, women are considered to be in the same category as animals. It’s like this: the idea of controlling women comes from the original concept of controlling animals. When men first began controlling animals’ reproduction, animals became property. In our culture, even now children are still considered to be a kind of propery, and so in this way, men control women’s reproduction in order to protect their property. In doing so men turn women and children into a form of property, preventing them having the social status of free willed volitional humans.
Let’s look at this in a different way. A lot of people say that the aim of feminism is equality between men and women. Actually this is not the case. The work of feminism is not to give women and men equal opportunities, such a large scale work is outside feminism’s scope. Feminism just wants people to accept and simply recognize that women are human beings: human beings possessing free will and intelligent volition, who have complete identities, who live their own realities, and who are actors on the stage of their own destiny.
When we say ‘feminism’, what we mean is ‘recognizing that women are human beings.’