I thought, since I posted about Moscow Pride (or rather, the lack thereof in any official sense), that I should post something about Pride in other places as well. For Russia, Moscow and St. Petersburg are the only places large and cosmopolitan enough to be contenders for pride events in a relatively conservative country. Moscow we've already established had Pride planned and then shut down. Googling St. Petersburg Pride gave me lots of results for St. Petersburg, Florida (biggest Pride event in the Southeast, apparently), but none whatsoever for Russia. It's possible that I just didn't look hard enough. But for all intents and purposes, Russian Pride cannot be officially found.
What about Chinese Pride? As I left Beijing I found an article about the first ever set of gay pride events in China being planned in Shanghai. They were largely being organized by expats, and all advertisements for the events were circulated in English. It was thought that if the events were billed as entertainment for foreigners they would attract less government attention. Which was mostly right. When the time came to hold the festivities, some were indeed shut down. But most took place as scheduled. I find it ironic that between Russia and China, the country that's widely considered to have a much more repressive government was the one that allowed gay pride events to take place.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/15/world/asia/15shanghai.html?pagewanted=1
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/15/shanghai-pride-china-gay_n_215785.html
What about Mongolia? Since I've been there recently also I feel I shouldn't leave it out. To the best of my knowledge, Mongolia has no organized pride events, and any gay culture is very, very underground. But there were Mongolian participants at a pride event last January in Thailand. So clearly, some kind of scene exists.
http://www.fridae.com/newsfeatures/2008/01/30/2000.chiangmais-first-gay-pride-march
Monday, June 15, 2009
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Apparently in Moscow I Deserve to Be Killed
At least, this is what Moscow's mayor says. Seventy-two-year-old conservative mayor Yuri Luzhkov made a televised statement just before banning the attempted Moscow Pride Parade that "Our society has healthy morals and rejects all these queers. If you even imagine that they get permission to hold their parade and gather, they will simply be killed."
http://www.gayrussia.ru/en/news/detail.php?ID=13543
Good to know. On the one hand, I find it chilling that a political leader can get away with saying that people from any minority group can and should be killed. World history has shown that bad things usually follow these kinds of statements. On the other hand, I appreciate the honesty. There's something refreshing about knowing exactly where things stand. He thinks we're evil and deserve to die. Clean cut, black and white. None of that "love the sinner, hate the sin" thing that you get from the more tolerant members of the Christian Right back at home, which often comes accompanied by the two-faced, smiling assurance that you're going directly to hell. The overall sentiment in both cases may be similarly hostile, but somehow I have far less fear of being lynched in Moscow than I would in, say, rural Wyoming if I ever went there.
I haven't been in Russia long, but I've noticed a pattern to the way things work here. Rules are both convoluted and rampant. They are also largely ignored. Drinking in public is illegal, but people drink beer on the way to work, and a common evening pastime is to take a bottle of wine to a park with your friends. It's illegal to drink vodka on the trains, but most trains sell vodka in the dining cars. I've yet to be stopped for drinking vodka on trains with any of my groups so far, but I'm told that the appropriate course of action if it happens is to offer the policeman a drink.
Point being, as long as you stay out of general view of the authorities in Russia, you can do pretty much whatever you want. Moscow's mayor thinks gay people should not exist, but the gay scene is alive and well. Lonely Planet lists three or four locations, and there certainly must be more. Traditionally, the gay scene in most places has always been underground, and with good reason, since in almost every society gay and gender-variant people are seen with suspicion at best and outright hatred at worst. So we stick to the shadows, and most mainstream people don't even think about us or know we exist until and unless we try to make ourselves visible. Like with Pride.
I'm thinking about Pride, because my girlfriend reminded me the other night that once again I'm missing DC Pride, which I've heard is a sight to behold. I'm also missing Boston Pride, St. Pete (Florida) Pride, Paris Pride, and pretty much any other Pride you can think of in any of the places I used to live. I wasn't even in Moscow for the abortive attempt at the pride parade that got shut down by the riot police 30 seconds after it began. In general I think that Pride is great, because it's a fun way to get ourselves out of the closet and be completely out in the open, for once in a year. In countries like Russia, though, the idea of Pride itself is controversial. One person interviewed by Time said that he just wants to be treated like everyone else, and running around screaming that he's gay is not going to achieve that.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1899340,00.html
It's a valid point. Everyone might want more acceptance and more rights, but very few people want to be the ones to stick their necks out in the effort to achieve this. I'm no exception; for all that I technically work for a company with an inclusive non-discrimination clause, the fact that I work on the ground in countries like Russia and Morocco effectively means that coming out would be one of the stupidest things I could possibly do. I have no desire to make my life any more complicated than it really needs to be, and I don't want to be the "face of diversity" in my company or anywhere else. I just want to live my life and have that be okay. It's all anyone really wants. It's just difficult to be both visible and acceptable. In general, you have to choose.
http://www.gayrussia.ru/en/news/detail.php?ID=13543
Good to know. On the one hand, I find it chilling that a political leader can get away with saying that people from any minority group can and should be killed. World history has shown that bad things usually follow these kinds of statements. On the other hand, I appreciate the honesty. There's something refreshing about knowing exactly where things stand. He thinks we're evil and deserve to die. Clean cut, black and white. None of that "love the sinner, hate the sin" thing that you get from the more tolerant members of the Christian Right back at home, which often comes accompanied by the two-faced, smiling assurance that you're going directly to hell. The overall sentiment in both cases may be similarly hostile, but somehow I have far less fear of being lynched in Moscow than I would in, say, rural Wyoming if I ever went there.
I haven't been in Russia long, but I've noticed a pattern to the way things work here. Rules are both convoluted and rampant. They are also largely ignored. Drinking in public is illegal, but people drink beer on the way to work, and a common evening pastime is to take a bottle of wine to a park with your friends. It's illegal to drink vodka on the trains, but most trains sell vodka in the dining cars. I've yet to be stopped for drinking vodka on trains with any of my groups so far, but I'm told that the appropriate course of action if it happens is to offer the policeman a drink.
Point being, as long as you stay out of general view of the authorities in Russia, you can do pretty much whatever you want. Moscow's mayor thinks gay people should not exist, but the gay scene is alive and well. Lonely Planet lists three or four locations, and there certainly must be more. Traditionally, the gay scene in most places has always been underground, and with good reason, since in almost every society gay and gender-variant people are seen with suspicion at best and outright hatred at worst. So we stick to the shadows, and most mainstream people don't even think about us or know we exist until and unless we try to make ourselves visible. Like with Pride.
I'm thinking about Pride, because my girlfriend reminded me the other night that once again I'm missing DC Pride, which I've heard is a sight to behold. I'm also missing Boston Pride, St. Pete (Florida) Pride, Paris Pride, and pretty much any other Pride you can think of in any of the places I used to live. I wasn't even in Moscow for the abortive attempt at the pride parade that got shut down by the riot police 30 seconds after it began. In general I think that Pride is great, because it's a fun way to get ourselves out of the closet and be completely out in the open, for once in a year. In countries like Russia, though, the idea of Pride itself is controversial. One person interviewed by Time said that he just wants to be treated like everyone else, and running around screaming that he's gay is not going to achieve that.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1899340,00.html
It's a valid point. Everyone might want more acceptance and more rights, but very few people want to be the ones to stick their necks out in the effort to achieve this. I'm no exception; for all that I technically work for a company with an inclusive non-discrimination clause, the fact that I work on the ground in countries like Russia and Morocco effectively means that coming out would be one of the stupidest things I could possibly do. I have no desire to make my life any more complicated than it really needs to be, and I don't want to be the "face of diversity" in my company or anywhere else. I just want to live my life and have that be okay. It's all anyone really wants. It's just difficult to be both visible and acceptable. In general, you have to choose.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
The Word of the Day is "Androgyny"
The other day, my Russian housemate showed me a ballet video online.
It's a very interesting piece of modern choreography. I like it from a dance perspective, because they do some unusual things and the fast pointe work is incredible. But it's also interesting from a gender perspective, because it explores relationships. Different people dance together in different ways, and at one point, two female dancers are dressed as men. Before that point, though, during what I thought was a more conventional scene, my housemate asked me a strange question: "Is that dancer a man or a women?"
I told her it was a woman, because the likelihood of a man doing such intricate pointe work is almost nil. (I have seen men on pointe, in the "ballet trocadero," but I have to say that the pointe work was pretty blunt. In my experience, most male dancers don't pursue pointe training at all, so would not be able to perform it with such a high degree of skill). So I told her that the dancer was a woman, but the woman was androgynous.
"How you call this? An-dro-gyn-ous?"
"Yes. Androgynous."
It led me to think about dance in general, how girls from an early age are taught to move in an exceedingly light and delicate mannner, feminine to the extreme. They are also taught to starve their bodies, so that they don't develop a shape with many feminine attributes. Therefore...when a female dancer ceases to move in the typically stylized "feminine" manner traditional to ballet, if she begins to move with force and strength, she automatically becomes androgynous, because neither her movements nor her shape indicate "female." This phenomenon is completely unrelated to her own gender identity. It's simply a matter of gender presentation, which normally goes one way and confuses people when it goes another.
I also find it interesting that of all words I should be teaching people in Russia, "androgynous" is one of the first. I'm not out here and I'm not planning on coming out, but gender is something that seems to follow me. I'm one of the people who notices gender ambiguity in the world, and this means that I end up talking about it to unexpected people, even if I don't talk about its relevance to my personal life.
We didn't talk any more about androgyny, my housemate and I, we just watched the ballet. But I'm happy that one person in Russia now knows the English word for ambiguity in gender.
It's a very interesting piece of modern choreography. I like it from a dance perspective, because they do some unusual things and the fast pointe work is incredible. But it's also interesting from a gender perspective, because it explores relationships. Different people dance together in different ways, and at one point, two female dancers are dressed as men. Before that point, though, during what I thought was a more conventional scene, my housemate asked me a strange question: "Is that dancer a man or a women?"
I told her it was a woman, because the likelihood of a man doing such intricate pointe work is almost nil. (I have seen men on pointe, in the "ballet trocadero," but I have to say that the pointe work was pretty blunt. In my experience, most male dancers don't pursue pointe training at all, so would not be able to perform it with such a high degree of skill). So I told her that the dancer was a woman, but the woman was androgynous.
"How you call this? An-dro-gyn-ous?"
"Yes. Androgynous."
It led me to think about dance in general, how girls from an early age are taught to move in an exceedingly light and delicate mannner, feminine to the extreme. They are also taught to starve their bodies, so that they don't develop a shape with many feminine attributes. Therefore...when a female dancer ceases to move in the typically stylized "feminine" manner traditional to ballet, if she begins to move with force and strength, she automatically becomes androgynous, because neither her movements nor her shape indicate "female." This phenomenon is completely unrelated to her own gender identity. It's simply a matter of gender presentation, which normally goes one way and confuses people when it goes another.
I also find it interesting that of all words I should be teaching people in Russia, "androgynous" is one of the first. I'm not out here and I'm not planning on coming out, but gender is something that seems to follow me. I'm one of the people who notices gender ambiguity in the world, and this means that I end up talking about it to unexpected people, even if I don't talk about its relevance to my personal life.
We didn't talk any more about androgyny, my housemate and I, we just watched the ballet. But I'm happy that one person in Russia now knows the English word for ambiguity in gender.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
My inner awesome needs to come back now
Alright. It's been ages since I've posted here, largely because I've been on the road for six weeks and I've had more important things to do than let off personal rants. But starting today I have time off, so I'll rant and then I'll fix things, because that's what I need to do.
This whole year, I feel like I've been screwing up. I lost my job in Morocco. That was the economy, rather than me, but it started everything else. I got job offers with branches of my company in the US and in Russia. I unintentionally caused loads of confusion between the two because neither knew I was being recruited by the other and the US branch changed every piece of contact info I had for them right before I needed to get in touch and say I'd chosen Russia. My first trip through Russia, Mongolia, and China was rocky, and I just got some rather nasty feedbacks and a politely worded letter from my new boss saying that my next set of feedbacks should be significantly better or else. One of my bags was stolen on my latest trans-Siberian train ride. The IRS claims that I owe them money because they don't believe that I was legitimately working in a foreign country for most of last year. This is all in addition to personal shit. I'm wondering where the hell I went off track.
Time was, it was a given that I did everything and did everything well. When and where did that change? When did my competent, good-at-everything self turn into this person who keeps failing?
Part of the problem is that I try to be everything to everyone. I'm a natural introvert, and in many ways it's good for me to force myself to be normal and social, as I need to do in this job. But I seem to have mislaid an essential piece of myself in the process, and I need to get it back. First step is to get myself a new journal and pen. I haven't really written longhand in ages. I think I need to start doing it again. Second step is to meditate. I used to do it every day. Life worked better when I did. Third step is to figure out, well and truly, what it is I want out of life and how it is I need to get there. My current job is a stepping-stone, but it's not the place I really need to be. I'll finish out this tourist season, and I'll do it well even if only to prove a point. But then I need to move on.
I've started looking at grad schools, but only vaguely. I need to look more seriously now. I think I've finally settled on international development as the field I want to work in. I was thinking about fair trade before, but I think that development will give me broader scope. And having a more definite direction will be good for me. Two and a half years of constant travel should be enough to tide me over for a while. And when I travel next, it will be for my own self and my own projects. The service industry is no longer a place I want to be.
So that's the long-term plan. In the meantime, I need to learn everything about Russia that I didn't learn before, grovel to my boss, get a police report, and call the IRS. Because things may be screwed up, but it's in my power to fix them. And so I shall.
This whole year, I feel like I've been screwing up. I lost my job in Morocco. That was the economy, rather than me, but it started everything else. I got job offers with branches of my company in the US and in Russia. I unintentionally caused loads of confusion between the two because neither knew I was being recruited by the other and the US branch changed every piece of contact info I had for them right before I needed to get in touch and say I'd chosen Russia. My first trip through Russia, Mongolia, and China was rocky, and I just got some rather nasty feedbacks and a politely worded letter from my new boss saying that my next set of feedbacks should be significantly better or else. One of my bags was stolen on my latest trans-Siberian train ride. The IRS claims that I owe them money because they don't believe that I was legitimately working in a foreign country for most of last year. This is all in addition to personal shit. I'm wondering where the hell I went off track.
Time was, it was a given that I did everything and did everything well. When and where did that change? When did my competent, good-at-everything self turn into this person who keeps failing?
Part of the problem is that I try to be everything to everyone. I'm a natural introvert, and in many ways it's good for me to force myself to be normal and social, as I need to do in this job. But I seem to have mislaid an essential piece of myself in the process, and I need to get it back. First step is to get myself a new journal and pen. I haven't really written longhand in ages. I think I need to start doing it again. Second step is to meditate. I used to do it every day. Life worked better when I did. Third step is to figure out, well and truly, what it is I want out of life and how it is I need to get there. My current job is a stepping-stone, but it's not the place I really need to be. I'll finish out this tourist season, and I'll do it well even if only to prove a point. But then I need to move on.
I've started looking at grad schools, but only vaguely. I need to look more seriously now. I think I've finally settled on international development as the field I want to work in. I was thinking about fair trade before, but I think that development will give me broader scope. And having a more definite direction will be good for me. Two and a half years of constant travel should be enough to tide me over for a while. And when I travel next, it will be for my own self and my own projects. The service industry is no longer a place I want to be.
So that's the long-term plan. In the meantime, I need to learn everything about Russia that I didn't learn before, grovel to my boss, get a police report, and call the IRS. Because things may be screwed up, but it's in my power to fix them. And so I shall.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Much ado about almost something
Caution: Significant levels of late-night ruminations ahead, which may or may not make any sense at all. Read at your own risk. Feel free to turn back now.
I was tired hours ago, and I wanted to go to bed. But I kept thinking and forming phrases in my mind , and I knew that this evening would be my last night to myself for quite a while. So I'm here and I'm writing instead, about life, the universe, and everything, in a lengthy and possibly pointless reflection on several specific and nonspecific things.
Tomorrow I start my first trans-Siberian. I am, of course, nervous about this, because I'm always nervous about starting new trips. New trips in the sense of my job, of bits of organized travel that I haven't done yet, because obviously I want to do a good job and that comes in large part from knowing the territory beforehand. But also new trips in the sense of new journeys, a different part of the world for me and a new departure from the US and everything that forms part of my life there. I have to wander, this is a given. Exactly why, I'm not sure, but I know it's something fundamental that I have to do. Every time I leave, though, it makes me wonder a little more what my reception will be when I return. Will people still have a place for me in their lives, or will my place be filled with other things? Is it truly out of sight, out of mind? I can go months without seeing people I'm close to, but I still care about them just as much. I don't know if I inspire the same feelings or not. It's hard to maintain even friendships across long distances, to say nothing of romantic relationships. I try. Sometimes I fail miserably at both.
While in the US, I tried hard to see a lot of people. I managed to see almost everyone that I wanted to see, even if only briefly. But I always feel that I could have done more. People in DC I could have seen more often, as I was there for a while. People in Florida I scheduled so tightly that I sometimes missed them, or was horrifically late in seeing them, or saw them only far too briefly, or very occasionally missed them completely. I worry that many of my friends feel slighted, either because I was either constantly running around in Florida or constantly holed up in a computer cave in DC. I worry that my efforts, both here and in other areas, might have been counterproductive and in vain.
Sometimes I'm tempted to cut ties with everything. Start with a completely new slate somewhere, with neither past nor future to think about, no people to worry about. I want to go back to the Camino, when I felt completely free. I could easily do it, just disappear off the face of the earth for a while. The world is a big place, and I've only explored a small part of it. It's full of places that I could hide. But cutting ties with the life I've lived up to this point would hold its own set of problems. People I care about, people I love...I don't want to lose them. It's so hard for me to find people who are worth much of anything to me...most of the human race is entertaining, but very little more. People who are worth caring about are few and far between. People who aren't trying to own me in some way are even fewer.
For most of my life, there's been a constant struggle of trying to figure out where I stand in the world. Being strange made it hard for me to find friends as a child, though I could not for the life of me figure out what made me so different. I remember in elementary school wishing that I was pretty, because then maybe people might like me. Mostly, I wanted to be like everyone else. If being stupid and vapid meant that I might have friends, it seemed like a reasonable tradeoff. Impossible to make, but reasonable nonetheless. Later, I just wanted to leave the world. Possibly by meditating on top of a mountain somewhere. Possibly by doing something else.
I seem to have stopped at that thought there. Unsurprising, as it would have been a full stop in time.
But moving on. I'm still here, and I feel as though I need to justify my continued existence on this planet by doing something with it. I'm not a person who can just exist and be happy with a normal kind of life. Every time I try, I feel trapped. And I'm caught in a double bind, because in order to feel that I'm making any kind of progress I have to be moving around, but to finish and refine anything I need to be in one place. This is true of writing. This is true of photography. This is true of really almost everything. But I have trouble finding the balance. I would like to write something extraordinary. If this takes the form of fiction or creative nonfiction I don't care, but I need to write something that I'm proud of. I'm only inspired when I travel. I can only edit when I'm stationary. I would like to save the world in some manner. There are all sorts of things that need fixing. I'm still figuring out which Herculean task is mine, and how to go about doing it, and where I need to be. I would also like to have good people in my life. But I've always had the feeling that I was meant to walk alone. Now that I know what it's like to have friendships, I'm rather attached to them, but as I've said, relationships can be fragile and hard to maintain. Somehow I need to figure out what I'm doing here. And how to do it. And who to bring. Ideally, I'll have my girlfriend, my friends, a book or several, limitless opportunities to travel, and interesting projects that make a difference in the world. Inshallah that's what I'll be able to get.
So these are my disconnected thoughts for the evening. The questions swirling in the miasma of my mind. If you haven't followed this far I don't blame you; my mind takes circuitous paths and I haven't bothered to clear the underbrush. It's closing in on 3 in the morning now, and I have things to do tomorrow. continued preparations for work and life. Possibly, after writing all this, I'll be able to finally sleep. Or perchance, even to dream.
I was tired hours ago, and I wanted to go to bed. But I kept thinking and forming phrases in my mind , and I knew that this evening would be my last night to myself for quite a while. So I'm here and I'm writing instead, about life, the universe, and everything, in a lengthy and possibly pointless reflection on several specific and nonspecific things.
Tomorrow I start my first trans-Siberian. I am, of course, nervous about this, because I'm always nervous about starting new trips. New trips in the sense of my job, of bits of organized travel that I haven't done yet, because obviously I want to do a good job and that comes in large part from knowing the territory beforehand. But also new trips in the sense of new journeys, a different part of the world for me and a new departure from the US and everything that forms part of my life there. I have to wander, this is a given. Exactly why, I'm not sure, but I know it's something fundamental that I have to do. Every time I leave, though, it makes me wonder a little more what my reception will be when I return. Will people still have a place for me in their lives, or will my place be filled with other things? Is it truly out of sight, out of mind? I can go months without seeing people I'm close to, but I still care about them just as much. I don't know if I inspire the same feelings or not. It's hard to maintain even friendships across long distances, to say nothing of romantic relationships. I try. Sometimes I fail miserably at both.
While in the US, I tried hard to see a lot of people. I managed to see almost everyone that I wanted to see, even if only briefly. But I always feel that I could have done more. People in DC I could have seen more often, as I was there for a while. People in Florida I scheduled so tightly that I sometimes missed them, or was horrifically late in seeing them, or saw them only far too briefly, or very occasionally missed them completely. I worry that many of my friends feel slighted, either because I was either constantly running around in Florida or constantly holed up in a computer cave in DC. I worry that my efforts, both here and in other areas, might have been counterproductive and in vain.
Sometimes I'm tempted to cut ties with everything. Start with a completely new slate somewhere, with neither past nor future to think about, no people to worry about. I want to go back to the Camino, when I felt completely free. I could easily do it, just disappear off the face of the earth for a while. The world is a big place, and I've only explored a small part of it. It's full of places that I could hide. But cutting ties with the life I've lived up to this point would hold its own set of problems. People I care about, people I love...I don't want to lose them. It's so hard for me to find people who are worth much of anything to me...most of the human race is entertaining, but very little more. People who are worth caring about are few and far between. People who aren't trying to own me in some way are even fewer.
For most of my life, there's been a constant struggle of trying to figure out where I stand in the world. Being strange made it hard for me to find friends as a child, though I could not for the life of me figure out what made me so different. I remember in elementary school wishing that I was pretty, because then maybe people might like me. Mostly, I wanted to be like everyone else. If being stupid and vapid meant that I might have friends, it seemed like a reasonable tradeoff. Impossible to make, but reasonable nonetheless. Later, I just wanted to leave the world. Possibly by meditating on top of a mountain somewhere. Possibly by doing something else.
I seem to have stopped at that thought there. Unsurprising, as it would have been a full stop in time.
But moving on. I'm still here, and I feel as though I need to justify my continued existence on this planet by doing something with it. I'm not a person who can just exist and be happy with a normal kind of life. Every time I try, I feel trapped. And I'm caught in a double bind, because in order to feel that I'm making any kind of progress I have to be moving around, but to finish and refine anything I need to be in one place. This is true of writing. This is true of photography. This is true of really almost everything. But I have trouble finding the balance. I would like to write something extraordinary. If this takes the form of fiction or creative nonfiction I don't care, but I need to write something that I'm proud of. I'm only inspired when I travel. I can only edit when I'm stationary. I would like to save the world in some manner. There are all sorts of things that need fixing. I'm still figuring out which Herculean task is mine, and how to go about doing it, and where I need to be. I would also like to have good people in my life. But I've always had the feeling that I was meant to walk alone. Now that I know what it's like to have friendships, I'm rather attached to them, but as I've said, relationships can be fragile and hard to maintain. Somehow I need to figure out what I'm doing here. And how to do it. And who to bring. Ideally, I'll have my girlfriend, my friends, a book or several, limitless opportunities to travel, and interesting projects that make a difference in the world. Inshallah that's what I'll be able to get.
So these are my disconnected thoughts for the evening. The questions swirling in the miasma of my mind. If you haven't followed this far I don't blame you; my mind takes circuitous paths and I haven't bothered to clear the underbrush. It's closing in on 3 in the morning now, and I have things to do tomorrow. continued preparations for work and life. Possibly, after writing all this, I'll be able to finally sleep. Or perchance, even to dream.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Muslim =/=Arab=/=Muslim
All Muslims are not Arabs. All Arabs are not Muslims. Unfortunately, not everyone realizes this, including many Muslims. When I lived in Morocco, I discovered that it's not considered to be a "true" Arab country, and it took thirteen years for it to be admitted into the League of Arab States. Because half the population is Berber and has a different culture, and because Moroccan Arabic is so different from Classical and Modern Standard Arabic, it somehow lacks credentials within the Muslim world.
The problem lies with the fact that the prophet Mohammed was from Saudi Arabia. When a religion or philosophy is anchored in the time and place of its origin, it is certain that problems will arise as it's transplanted in time and space. It's fairly impossible for this not to occur, because nothing grows in a vacuum, and the culture in which an idea originates is bound to influence it. The choice lies in whether or not to adapt the idea to the time and place, or the time and place to the original idea. I generally think that the former works better than the latter, but the latter is a popular choice. Why do we have so many varieties of Christianity and Judaism if not for this very same conflict? Somewhere along the line, people had to choose. Do we follow Byzantium, or do we follow Rome? Do we follow the Pope or King Henry VII? What about following Luther? I don't know as much about Judaism, but I know that there are Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform sects, which meant that schisms had to take place at some point over questions of how to believe and behave. Islam is ripe for schism right now. But Islam is supposed to be unified and uniform. Which means that schism will be difficult if not impossible (even though there are already different schools of thought and different sects--Shia, Sunni, Sufi...).
This blog post came about because of reading another blog post on a similar topic. http://www.racialicious.com/2009/04/17/searching-for-my-pakistani-identity/
The author is Pakistani, and observes that other Muslim South Asians are flattered if people mistake them for Arabs and try to display an Arab cultural identity rather than their own. But they are still Muslims, regardless of their culture or race. Likewise in Morocco. Or Indonesia. Or the US.
The problem lies with the fact that the prophet Mohammed was from Saudi Arabia. When a religion or philosophy is anchored in the time and place of its origin, it is certain that problems will arise as it's transplanted in time and space. It's fairly impossible for this not to occur, because nothing grows in a vacuum, and the culture in which an idea originates is bound to influence it. The choice lies in whether or not to adapt the idea to the time and place, or the time and place to the original idea. I generally think that the former works better than the latter, but the latter is a popular choice. Why do we have so many varieties of Christianity and Judaism if not for this very same conflict? Somewhere along the line, people had to choose. Do we follow Byzantium, or do we follow Rome? Do we follow the Pope or King Henry VII? What about following Luther? I don't know as much about Judaism, but I know that there are Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform sects, which meant that schisms had to take place at some point over questions of how to believe and behave. Islam is ripe for schism right now. But Islam is supposed to be unified and uniform. Which means that schism will be difficult if not impossible (even though there are already different schools of thought and different sects--Shia, Sunni, Sufi...).
This blog post came about because of reading another blog post on a similar topic. http://www.racialicious.com/2009/04/17/searching-for-my-pakistani-identity/
The author is Pakistani, and observes that other Muslim South Asians are flattered if people mistake them for Arabs and try to display an Arab cultural identity rather than their own. But they are still Muslims, regardless of their culture or race. Likewise in Morocco. Or Indonesia. Or the US.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Same Same but Different
St. Petersburg and Moscow both have extensive metro systems, and one of the most common sights you'll see on the uberlong escalators is of young couples cuddling, kissing, or otherwise engaging in rather sickening public displays of affection. I generally ignore these couples, think sour thoughts at them and look away, because in general I a) think these activities are better done in private and b) would rather not be reminded that I'm several thousand miles away from the only person with whom I could engage in such activities. Last night on the metro I saw another one of these couples, and as they were right below me I found them hard to ignore. When they came up for air, though, my opinion of them changed drastically.
They were both female.
Living for a year in a country in which homosexuality is illegal, I developed a keen sense of Things You Do Not Do Or Say In Public. Clearly, these girls had no such sense. They were totally absorbed in each other, and they didn't care who saw it. Because whoever saw it didn't matter. No one paid them any attention at all. It's amazing to think that homosexuality could be such a nonissue. It's so politicized in the States, often needlessly so, and while there are places where it's a nonissue, there are more places where it's a Very Big Deal. I'm not so naive as to think that all of Russia will be like this, as it's even larger than the US and has far more rural areas. And I'm certainly not taking it as a sign that I should come out to my coworkers, because I like to keep my personal life private and separate from my public self. But still. It's nice to know that there are mainstream places where young queer couples don't have to worry overmuch about expressing who they are. It gladddens my queer-happy heart.
They were both female.
Living for a year in a country in which homosexuality is illegal, I developed a keen sense of Things You Do Not Do Or Say In Public. Clearly, these girls had no such sense. They were totally absorbed in each other, and they didn't care who saw it. Because whoever saw it didn't matter. No one paid them any attention at all. It's amazing to think that homosexuality could be such a nonissue. It's so politicized in the States, often needlessly so, and while there are places where it's a nonissue, there are more places where it's a Very Big Deal. I'm not so naive as to think that all of Russia will be like this, as it's even larger than the US and has far more rural areas. And I'm certainly not taking it as a sign that I should come out to my coworkers, because I like to keep my personal life private and separate from my public self. But still. It's nice to know that there are mainstream places where young queer couples don't have to worry overmuch about expressing who they are. It gladddens my queer-happy heart.
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