Elitist Coelacanth

Washington DC, Queerness, Grad School, Coelacanths, Teddy-Wan Kenobi and Totoro

Watch me as I make everything Queer, about DC and my 'enjoyable' life in Grad School along with some coelacanth cameos and my Teddy-Wan!

And when we frame all women as being someone’s wife, mother or daughter, what are we teaching young girls?

We are teaching them that in order to have the law on their side, they need to be loved by men. That they need to make themselves attractive and appealing to men in order to be worthy of protection. That their lives and their bodily integrity are valueless except for how they relate to the men they know.

The truth is that I am someone’s wife. I am also someone’s mother. I am someone’s daughter, and someone’s sister. But those are not the things that define me, or make me valuable in this world. Those are not the reasons that I should be able to live a life free from rape, sexual assault or any kind of violent crime.

I have value because I am a person. Full stop. End of argument. This isn’t even a discussion that we should be having.

So please, let’s start teaching that fact to the young women in our lives. Teach them that you love, honour and value them because of who they are. Teach them that they should expect to be treated with integrity because it’s a basic human right. Teach them that they do not deserve to be raped because no one ever, ever, ever deserves to be raped.

Above all, teach them that they are people, too.

—

I Am Not Your Wife, Sister, or Daughter. I Am a Person

This post is soooo good at articulating why it’s so harmful to have to relate women to men through their relationships with men

(via wretchedoftheearth)

(via natisparanoia)

I’m not saying that my Mom and I had the BEST RELATIONSHIP EVAH. We didn’t. Two people that are practically the same never really do. But, as I look back on my life, I realize that my Mom did the absolute best that she could with what she was given, and although I was a good girl, I wasn’t the easiest girl to mother. I don’t like tooting my own horn, but I’m smart. My mother is too, don’t ever let her tell you any different, but just in a different kind of way. When I was wanting her to tell me the secrets of calculus, she was wanting me to learn how to cook. Now, as I have my own children, I realize that it was an issue of her not knowing how to deal with me, how to come to my level of thinking. I often struggle with having to do this with my own children; when I have to slow down my thinking process and find some sort of common ground in order to get my point across. And, the only way that I know how to do this is because of Star Trek.


I bet when you asked for these testimonials you weren’t expecting to get an answer that says that I am a better mother because of Star Trek. It isn’t just that, though. Star Trek, specifically the friendship between Spock and Captain Kirk taught me that just because I was intelligent and thought in ways that no one else around me did, it didn’t mean that I couldn’t have a meaningful relationship with the people around me.

When I was a kid, you know I immigrated to the States in 1978, and I’m six years old and watching TV and I didn’t see any Asians on television. And you turn on Star Trek and there’s this Asian guy not chopping anybody up. He’s honorable, a helmsman of a spaceship, and it was a big, big deal for me to see that and have a role model.

—

John Cho (x)

The only Asians I remember seeing on mainstream TV when I was a kid were Sulu on Star Trek, nameless Asians loading trucks in the background or dying on MASH (which was all about funny lovable white US Americans waging war on Asians), and the “ancient Chinese secret” Calgon laundry detergent commercial.

(via zuky)

Was the same when I was a kid. That moment of seeing George Takei not being overly-stereotyped when I was a kid was a powerful one. I think the only place I had really seen other Asians on the screen was finding the rare (because I was a kid in mountains, far from the rest of the community) movie that had Asians in it. Unfortunately, a lot of those were the “white guy learns martial arts, beats up Asians because ‘Merika” type movies. Which, of course was not TV. They were still the “Asian other” just as in MASH backdrops. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that Sulu always has a special place in my heart. Star Trek helped me get through some bad emotional spaces as a kid, and I think part of what made it welcoming was having POC, especially George Takei ( since I’m JA too, and the other Asian American actors who came later), represented on screen in positive and whole characters, with names instead of “Solider #1, Henchman #4, Ninja #18”.

(via reallifedocumentarian)

(Proper) representation matters. 

(via angryasiangirlsunited)

(Source: divorcedreality, via racebending)

Queer/Gay

De todas las cosas que me pueden tomar pena, por favor no lo hagan porque no soy heterosexual. Soy un hombre queer/gay, y esa es una de las cosas que realmente me traen felicidad. Imagínense levantarse todos los días y sentirse cómodo y seguro, ya que tu identidad es congruente con tus actos, tu cuerpo, tu forma de pensar, y con las personas de las que te enamoras. Eso es felicidad.

Años de represión e incomodidad, fueron el producto de una doctrina religiosa que me culpó por nacer de esta forma. En ningún momento yo decidí que mi identidad sexual estaba dirigida hacia personas de mi mismo sexo. En ningún momento decidí que los sentimientos que tuve con mis ex novias/novios eran verdaderos; sólo los sentí.

En fin, yo soy feliz. Así que apreciaría que no me llamaras aberración. Si aún así sientes la necesidad de decirlo, sepa que no me afectará. Porque sé que no soy una aberración; si no un ser humano que es muy feliz, que está ayudando a otras personas de muchas maneras, y que muchas otras me valoran como soy y no creen que tales calificativos son apropiados para describir como soy. 

On Behalf Of [BLANK] People Everywhere ... : Code Switch : NPR

When Cleveland officials announced charges against Ariel Castro — the suspected kidnapper of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight — prosecutor Victor Perez wanted to make sure people knew where the city’s “Puerto Rican community” stood.

—Read more at link

I got my reviews back from my grant proposal

I don’t think I’ll be able to flesh this out in the most coherent way possible, but here it goes anyway.

Two of my NSF reviewers criticized my ‘monolithic’ use of the word Latino in regards to my study population. They mentioned that defining it in such narrow terms was appropriate for a grant to the NIH, but not for NSF. Finally, they mentioned that by defining it the way I did, I erased and minimized individual differences from people that come from different backgrounds, countries, and ethnicities from Latin America and the Caribbean. They actually were not that eloquent when saying all of that, but I translated it as such from my own reading of their feedback.

As an anthropologist, I understand this concern; as a Latin American queer person of color, I LIVE THIS! One of the things that we often do in anthropology is unpack and deconstruct terms such as Latin@. Yet, lately I’ve been thinking about what does that mean for the participants and others who identify as such. I agree that not everyone means (and internalizes) the same thing when they say Latin@, but such a social construct exists. We might not agree with it, but as anthropologists we can’t will it out of existence just because it seems to simple for our messy and complex theories.

How do we expect to engage the public, and the people that we collaborate with in our studies, if we believe ourselves to be so above their colloquial use of a term. I am aware of the political implications of the word Latin@, yet, what do we make of the people in my research community that actually use that word to describe themselves as a dyasporic community in the US? What do we make of the use of media like Univisión and Telemundo, trying to craft pan-Latin American identities in their shows and telenovelas? Is that not part of the world that we study?

So thanks, but no thanks NSF reviewers and your high horse definition of Latin@. I prefer to engage with the community; my community. I prefer to do research that actually helps. it would’ve been nice to get a bit of money, but I learned a lesson here.

#nofilter light! :) Working on Campus (at Theodore R. McKeldin Library)

#nofilter light! :) Working on Campus (at Theodore R. McKeldin Library)

Faint #rainbow (at Health Center - University of Maryland)

Faint #rainbow (at Health Center - University of Maryland)

ithemedic: For all you Harry Potter losers Get in loser, we’re going quidditching

ithemedic:

For all you Harry Potter losers

Get in loser, we’re going quidditching

First interview with a scientist

So I just conducted my first interview with a scientist for my dissertation research.

It was a trainwreck from the beginning.:

  1. Forgot to attach consent form in email. Scientist didn’t read the second email sent 10 seconds after letting me know that there was no attachment.
  2. When I was going over the consent form, scientist informed me in a very curt manner that scientist was busy, and scientist’s time was valuable. “So get on with it” (exact quote).
  3. At one point, scientist got defensive and said: “those people have invalid claims”. I asked what people (as I didn’t know what he was talking about)? Scientist answered, “those against circumcision”. I replied that I was sorry, and did not meant to present myself as anti-circumcision in my research. This was a very uncomfortable moment. While I am personally against the procedure, my research is not about my personal beliefs. My interview questions are framed in a neutral manner, yet trying to be critical in regards to the science and policy being done; critical meaning in an analytical manner regarding pros and cons. I need to think more about this, because scientist might be right about the framing of my questions.
  4. Scientist was being arrogant; scientist was trying to teach me, not inform me or share information. Scientist let me know that my questions were wrong and too broad regarding sexual and reproductive services. I disagree because scientist confirmed what other anthropologists have talked about, which is that framing reproductive and sexual in a broader context makes sense; as opposed to separate them into discrete categories.
  5. I didn’t feel that scientist was taking me seriously.