Jakarta trip with my Secret Indonesian Lover

"How hard it is, sometimes, to trust the evidence of one's senses! How reluctantly the mind consents to reality." - Norman Douglas

***

Jakarta trip with my Secret Indonesian Lover
Day 1 - ???

At some point in the past this year, I was in Jakarta for a short trip to see my Secret Indonesian Lover. Obviously, since my Lover is Secret, I can't give away too many details for fear of compromising his/her identity.

One of the few good things about Jakarta (besides my Secret Indonesian Lover) is A&W. Unfortunately, the A&W outlet at the airport that I patronised didn't seem to have Curly Fries, but only the Root Beer Float. Later I discovered that the outlet outside did, but the staff member who served me hadn't managed to communicate this to me (he just pointed in a vague direction). Grr.

We had dinner at a restaurant where there wasn't a menu - the staff just brought all the dishes round and we said what we wanted.




Our food selection - 2 chicken and 2 vegetable dishes. One of the latter was Chinese style and the other was probably bamboo - sayur something.


This keropok was not like keropok in appearance or taste. Instead it reminded me of something else:


Pork Rinds


Area with all the food


Dessert


"Enzyplex, Koran Tempo" - I wouldn't want to consume such a health supplement

Some younger Indonesians like to walk around in zipup hoodies. Maybe the air-conditioning in the malls is too cold for them.


Pharmacy: "Intimate Care" (notice the condoms). "Feminine Care" is already an annoying-enough euphemism for sanitary products, but this one makes no sense.


I didn't know what salt crystals in the toilet were for. Someone told me it was to throw into the bath water.

Day 2 - ???


I was very gratified to see, at breakfast, that they had PORK Bacon (in a separate corner). Nothing but the best!

There were very much fewer women in tudungs than Singapore - and even somewhat less than Jogjakarta. This was probably because it was a bigger city.


McDonalds Motorsikal-thru


I can't remember why I took this - perhaps because they didn't bother redoing the ad campaign using local actors (like they would in insecure Malaysia)


"Creambath + Blow Variasi"
It's one thing to advertise a Creambath, and another to advertise a Blow Variasi, but both at the same time...


"I ♥ Indonesia"
A T-shirt I will never buy, let alone wear

There seemed to be a lot of A&Ws. My impression was that each mall had one.


Street Food


Half of the overhead bridge was filled with hawkers

A lot of places advertised that they had hair extensions, then I saw a girl with hair until halfway down her thigh - maybe she'd gone for it.


Haram carving


This was either a haram dress or a huge apron


CMI lightup crooked arrows - I've never seen crooked lightup arrows, let alone such crooked ones.

Before going I had noted down the locations of the 3 Krispy Kremes in Jakarta (and Indonesia as a whole) so we went to Plasa Senayan in order to hunt for its outlet.


Notice one flag is upside down.


Risoles. Inside was potato salad and chicken strips.


Nasi Goreng Java


Indonesian versions of famous European foods: "Fried Calamary & Tar Tar Sauce", "Gordon Blue Parmigiana" , "Turkey ConFunghi". Too bad there was no "Weiner Snitzel".


There was a Din Tai Fung in the shopping centre. Although I dreaded what I knew I would probably find, I took a closer look:


"Xiao Long Bao isi Ayam, Xiao Long Bao isi Kepiting & Ayam, Shao Mai isi Udang & Ayam, Jiao Ze isi Udang & Ayam, Jiao Ze isi Sayuran & Ayam, Jiao Ze isi Sayuran"
What a disgrace


Spectacle in Shopping Centre - witness the (pointless and ugly) ostentation


The symbol for the female toilet looks like a man wearing a skirt - maybe it's a toilet for crossdressers.

When we got to where the Krispy Kreme outlet was supposed to be, I found nothing, and was told it had closed down a few months ago. Grr.

There was a Breadtalk in the shopping centre near where the Krispy Kreme used to be. I thought of asking about their meat floss, but I'd had enough shocks for the day.

We then walked around the atas (and expensive) supermarket. From the prices and the selection, we knew it catered to Indonesian Chinese. Indeed, we saw many more Chinese in the mall than the rest of Jakarta.


Delicatessen. The pork section was bigger than both the non-pork deli and the raw beef section.


"UHT & Adult Milk"
Maybe grown Indonesians don't drink UHT milk.


Notice the amount of soy milk - the people who come here are very rich.


Oregon Fruit Products - we don't even have this in Singapore


They didn't segregate the Babi from the non-Babi cans - as I'd seen in Jogja


"Fascinating, Awesome, Breath-taking and Inspiring... This is The World Heritage"


Trees in Bitumen plots sunk into the road


Ang Moh in tudung promoting some telecoms card. Hah.


I was amused by this contraption to prevent the marble being scratched.


I went out to buy some supper after returning to my lodgings. I asked them for Indomee Goreng but I got it non-goreng. Grr. But it was still nice, with the Teh Botol. And I even got vegetables!


Usually they sell cocktails, but here the only alcohol was wine by the glass. The gaping hole in the menu was filled by Shaved Ice drinks. Hah.

Jakarta trip with my Secret Indonesian Lover
Day 3 - ???

This day I got to fly back to Singapore. I was very happy - even though I had to say goodbye to my Secret Indonesian Lover.


"Parfum Center. Prices Less Than Down Town Market. What to Think More? Buy Here NOW !!!"
Apparently super hard sell works on Indonesians.


Gamelan Orchestra. Notice the security guard playing. The woman was singing Bengawan Solo, ugh.

At the airport, I also finally got to have my A&W.


Menu


A&W Counter


This cost me 41,000 Rupiah. !@#$. The fries alone were 18,000 (I bought more to takeaway - just before a new batch came out).

There was an airport souvenir shop which amused me to no end because:

1) The prices were in US Dollars
2) They advertised that they had Imported Condoms. Maybe Indonesian ones break easily (which is why they are the 4th most populous country in the world)
3) They had these products in a special cabinet:


"女人催情劑
壯陽"
Only in Traditional Chinese characters, to boot.

[Translation: sex stimulant used by females
testerone booster]

I asked the shop girl and she just said they were for ladies. I don't know why there's always such a taboo about items or activities involving the female bits (there's a similar taboo about sanitary pads and tampons). In any case, US$25 Cialis does not sound like a good deal to me.


"Buy any 5 get 1 free. Any combination of chocolates, candies, cookies, puddings, dried fruits or nuts (Except European brands)"
You can get anything free - except kualiti. IIRC there weren't any Japanese brands either.


Buddha


CIMB's Epic Fail: "A common element in the flags of Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand: red stripes. No one knows Southeast Asia like we do"
This seems to be an imitation of HSBC's "the world's local bank" ad campaign, but whereas you need to do token research online to find out the facts that HSBC prides itself on knowing (that the number 888 is lucky in China, while 4 and 13 are unlucky in Japan and the UK respectively, and that "Football" means different things in the US, UK and Australia), anyone who isn't blind can match CIMB.


"Disable person lift". I don't want to ride in this.

"A great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices." - William James

***

On argument:

The Meming of Life » The Joy of Giving Up

"At this point I have some choices.

Do I challenge his assertion...? Do I challenge [his implicit argument]? Do I point out that [his alternative proposal is as bad, possibly even worse]? Correct his spelling of Napoleon? Tell him [he is misquoting someone and misattributing the quote]? Do I point out that [his premise is totally wrong]

To answer these, answer this: What result am I after?

Ten years ago I would have started with, “Oh Aaron, Aaron. Where do I even begin?”—then gone after every single one of those points in as superior a voice as possible. In the end, I’d imagine him lying in a pool of cyber-blood.

But most of us eventually notice that winning an argument requires that the vanquished recognize his defeat. Sure enough, time after time, I would be amazed and incensed when the other person — apparently unaware of his demise — came back with more nonsense.

I came to realize that these exchanges accomplish precisely nothing but lost time and gained blood pressure. He comes back, I reply, again and again. We consult our mutually-exclusive rulebooks to see who’s winning. And oh how the pretty painted ponies go round and round.

I want those hours back.

... I didn’t unleash a deafening point-by-point but chose a third option: the (potentially) hearable reply.

The hearable reply includes two elements: at least one point of agreement, and ONLY ONE solid, well-supported point of difference"


My tack is slightly different:

As long as you don't get emotional or (often and) irrational (like the people you're arguing with), such exchanges do help to convince bystanders of the truth of your argument (as long as they aren't already irrevocably convinced, like the person you are arguing with, of the truth of *his*).

Even if there is no audience, like tempered steel arguments emerge from fire stronger - and you occasionally even learn something new.

Of course, the down side is, as the writer points out, less time and more blood pressure.

So the question is where the optimum point lies - but generally as these exchanges grow longer (and either or both parties becomes more and more irrational and/or emotional), the benefits go down and the costs go up.

"The government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." - Ronald Reagan

***

The Beerbelly - "Sneak your choice of beverage into: the movies, concerts, ballgames, just about anywhere"
I prefer the Wine Rack

Addicted To Being Good? The Psychopathology of Heroism - "People whom we consider to be heroes (or X-altruists, as I am referring to them here), while among some of the most admired individuals, they possess many of the same traits as the sociopath... the X-altruistic person is anything but passive or meek. They are often feisty, argumentative, independent, idealistic risk-takers and convention-breakers. Sound sort of like the sociopathic personality?"

Smart PC Utilities - Vista Services Optimizer - "Vista Services Optimizer is an open source Windows tweaking utility that can improve your Windows Vista and Windows 7 performance and security with a simple mouse click, by tweaking Windows services in an automatic and very safe way according to the way you use your computer and which software and hardware you use"

Singapore refuses to renew foreign journalist’s visa - "“The refusal to renew freelance journalist Benjamin Bland’s press credentials again shows the Singapore government’s intolerance of independent and critical reporting,” said Shawn W. Crispin, CPJ’s Southeast Asia representative"

SpecGram—Letter to the Editor - "In 1922, on the occasion of their 10^th wedding anniversary, my mother attempted to recreate the famous Rôti Sans Pareil (“roast without equal”) of an early 19^th century French royal feast. It consisted of seventeen nested birds: a bustard, a turkey, a goose, a pheasant, a chicken, a duck, a guinea fowl, a teal, a woodcock, a partridge, a plover, a lapwing, a quail, a thrush, a lark, an Ortolan Bunting, and a Garden Warbler, the last stuffed with a single olive. By all accounts, her recreation was a success, and my grandfather declared it the greatest meal of his life... Leftovers from the casserole were injected into sausage casing for use as part of the usual sausage stuffing of the next turducken... Careful analysis, including detailed modeling of the Nearly Catastrophic Thanksgiving, when Hungry Uncle Hank almost ate the last slice of the turducken, has lead to the conclusion that that there are at least 6.0221415 x 1022 molecules (one tenth of a mole) of the original Turducken"

Depressed woman loses benefits over Facebook photos - "She said her insurance agent described several pictures Blanchard posted on the popular social networking site, including ones showing her having a good time at a Chippendales bar show, at her birthday party and on a sun holiday — evidence that she is no longer depressed, Manulife said... Blanchard said that on her doctor's advice, she tried to have fun"

Schoolgirl arrested for refusing to study with non-English pupils - "The five - four boys and a girl - then began talking in a language she didn't understand, thought to be Urdu, so she went to speak to the teacher. "I said 'I'm not being funny, but can I change groups because I can't understand them?' But she started shouting and screaming, saying 'It's racist, you're going to get done by the police'... a ten-year-old boy was hauled before a court for allegedly calling an 11-year-old mixed race pupil a 'Paki' and 'Bin Laden' in a playground argument at a primary school in Irlam. When the case came before District Judge Jonathan Finestein he said the decision to prosecute showed "how stupid the whole system is getting"... "A lot of these arrests don't result in prosecutions - they aim is to frighten us into self-censorship until we watch everything we say""

Climate Emails Stoke Debate - "The scientific community is buzzing over thousands of emails and documents -- posted on the Internet last week after being hacked from a prominent climate-change research center... A partial review of the hacked material suggests there was an effort at East Anglia, which houses an important center of global climate research, to shut out dissenters and their points of view"

American Airlines worker fired for replying to web user complaint - "Mr Curtis, an American web designer, was unimpressed by his experience using the the AA.com website, and made that clear in a lengthy open letter to the company on his blog... Mr X, a web designer, responded to the letter... after bosses at American Airlines became aware of Mr X's response, they searched through their email database, found his identity and fired him for a breach of the NDA... "AA fired Mr X because he cared. They fired him because he cared enough to reach out to a dissatisfied customer and help clear the company's name in the best way he could""

Stupid Travel Arguments (And Why We Should Stop Having Them) - "'People say that travel broadens the mind, so you might expect to find a tad more tolerance between fellow travellers. Instead, I find myself constantly up against different types of travel snob, people who consider themselves superior for a wealth of bizarre reasons'...
i) Backpack vs. Roller Bag
ii) Guided Tour vs. Independent Travel
iii) High-Tech Travel vs. Low-Tech Travel
iv) Tourist vs. Traveler
It’s just as easy to bury your head in a good old-fashioned book or lose hours writing in your journal as it is to go cross-eyed sending constant text updates to Twitter from your mobile phone... all the arguing over semantics and ignoring commonalities does little to promote travel to anyone who’s on the fringes, either. If we as travelers want this to be some kind of exclusive club where only the people who agree with us get to join, we’ll keep having these arguments"

How To Quickly Fix A Phone or MP3 Player With Water Damage - "From my own experience and those of my family, you stand a pretty good chance of fixing your phone this way. I’d say there is a success rate of around 75%."

Obsessed with 'ugly' women - ""Unattractive" women use their sexual wiles to take advantage of lonely or desperate men... men, especially if they are middle aged, drop their guard when they encounter younger women "who are not beautiful." In contrast, an attractive woman who shows interest in such a man automatically sends up a red flag in his mind: This woman must be up to something... Women, whose beauty, he says, is "transient." Ugliness, however, is "eternal," as illustrated by the old Japanese saying, "In three days you get tired of a beautiful woman while in the same period of time you get used to an ugly one""

Disney Princesses, Deconstructed » Sociological Images - "The evolution of the Disney princess:
Snow White (1937): Her burgeoning sexuality is a threat to another woman, so she's killed. Her only asset, physical beauty, is what saves her in the end
Sleeping Beauty (1959): Betrothed at birth to solidify a political position, she is killed by another woman out of spite. Her owner...ahem...fiance, saves her with a kiss. Again, sex is her only salvation.
Belle (1991): Saves a prince's life. With her only asset, her sexuality.
What Disney princes teach men about attracting women:
Prince Charming (x4): Be rich, charming, famous and good looking.
Aladdin: Be charming, good looking and appear to be rich and famous."

Don't Judge My Hair: Epic Hairstyles

YouTube - Disney templates fail! - "Ressemblance dans les films Disney"
I wonder if the Nine Old Men realised what they were doing

Japanese Doggy Style Reloaded - "This particular challenge was called ‘Tamanade Matsuri’ (玉なで祭り), or ‘touching the testicles festival’ (for a loose translation), where men seemingly let themselves be violated by the Japanese fighting dog, the tosa dog."
Damn Japs.

The UN and corruption: Extracting teeth, and other things | The Economist - "In many ways, says Robert Palmer of Global Witness, an NGO, a toothless treaty is worse than none. Politicians can point to their signatures as evidence of virtue, and continue to steal unimpeded"

A child does not fail, but defers success - "Failure, says Liz Beattie, a retired primary school teacher, is a word that should be deleted from the classroom dictionary, because it can put children off learning... At the conference of the Professional Association of Teachers. The motion reads: "Conference believes it is time to delete the word 'fail' from the educational vocabulary, to be replaced with the concept of 'deferred success'."... "Everyone fails at some time in their lives and it is often in those circumstances that we learn the most""
Elsewhere - "God forbid that children should receive an honest evaluation of their work; building up their fragile self-image is FAR more important than preparing them to be thinking, employable adults one day."

City sorry for Miss Universe snub - "Natalie Glebova, 23, who won the global beauty competition in May, was told she would be allowed in [Toronto] only if she removed her Miss Universe sash and crown. City officials cited a by-law which prohibits activities encouraging sexual stereotyping and degradation... a 1990 by-law forbids any events on the square that "exploit the bodies of men, women, boys or girls solely for the purposes of attracting attention," the Globe and Mail reported. The law adds, "specifically, beauty pageants will be prohibited""

Security Fix - PC Invader Costs Ky. County $415,000 - "The criminals stole the money using a custom variant of a keystroke logging Trojan known as "Zeus" (a.k.a. "Zbot") that included two new features. The first is that stolen credentials are sent immediately via instant message to the attackers. But the second, more interesting feature of this malware, the investigator said, is that it creates a direct connection between the infected Microsoft Windows system and the attackers, allowing the bad guys to log in to the victim's bank account using the victim's own Internet connection"

Apple’s Snow Leopard Is Less Secure Than Windows, But Safer - "Like previous versions of the Mac OS, Snow Leopard lacks security features that are built in to Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7, such as full Address Space Layout Randomization to thwart attacks from malicious code. That makes Macs more vulnerable to attack, explained Charlie Miller, a security researcher and author of the book The Mac Hacker’s Handbook. But despite its weaknesses, Mac users have no reason to panic — yet. Apple’s PC market share is still roughly only about 10 percent, giving hackers and malicious software coders very little economic incentive to target the Mac. In short, Mac users are ducking behind a short wall — but as long as the enemy is firing in another direction, they’re not in grave danger... Two years ago there were zero pieces of malware targeting the Mac platform, and in the past year, there were a few hundred"

'Cats and dogs use more energy than cars' - "In their book Time to Eat the Dog: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living, New Zealand-based architects Robert and Brenda Vale say keeping a medium-sized dog has the same ecological impact as driving 10,000 km a year in a 4.6 liter Land Cruiser... they recommend keeping "greener", smaller, and more sustainable pets, such as goldfish, chickens or rabbits"

Qian Xuesen - "[He] was the father of China's missile and space programmes, transforming the country from a primitive technological backwater to a nuclear power. Qian made his contribution to China's development, however, only after being arrested and then deported from the United States at the height of the McCarthy anti-communist witch hunt. "It was the stupidest thing this country ever did," said the former US Navy secretary Dan Kimball. "He was no more a communist than I was, and we forced him to go""

Ice-skating bear kills circus head
One comment: "When Ice-skating bears are outlawed, only outlaws will have ice-skating bears."

Double-check Your Antivirus Program - "I found two sites that will take your file and scan it very (and I mean very) thoroughly. Virustotal runs the file by 29 antivirus programs, all in about two minutes"
Uhh...

Co-ed college housing ups sex - "more than 41 per cent of students in co-ed housing said they binged on a weekly basis compared to less than 18 per cent of those in single-sex dorms. While 63 per cent of students in single-sex housing said they'd had no sexual partners in the past year, this was true of only 44 per cent of students in co-ed dorms. Among students in co-ed housing, almost 13 per cent said they had had three or more sexual partners in the past year, compared with 5 per cent of students in single-sex dorms"
I'm surprised it's so low.

Bay Area faces holidays without little silver balls on baked goods - "Store shelves are almost bare of the beloved, tooth-crunching decorations called dragees -- better known as "those little silver balls.'' Because of a Napa lawyer's lawsuit alleging that the shimmery mini-orbs are toxic... "He's the Grinch that stole Christmas this year"... Once again, California is on the cutting edge, the only place on the planet where using dragees could land you in court... Pollock says his motivation wasn't that someone had been hurt by eating dragees -- he doesn't know that anyone has. But he says dragees have the potential to put consumers, especially children, at risk... State health and toxic waste authorities said dragees weren't a concern as long as they were labeled properly. "We are not aware of any health problems associated with this product"... Distributors and retailers said they've settled with Pollock not because they believe their dragees are toxic but because a trial would cost far more than settling. But, like Beryl Loveland of Beryl's Cake Decorating and Pastry Supplies of Virginia, they're angry and think a trial would have proven that there's nothing wrong with a few dragees now and then."

"The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism." - Sir William Osler

***

Someone was blaming Disney for propagating the princess mindset in women, so I dug and transcribed this gem up from my archive:


Bratz Dolls May Give Young Girls Unrealistic Expectations Of Head Size

"If you have a daughter, it's likely you're familiar with Bratz, the must-have doll for the under-10 set.

But could these toys be promoting an unhealthy body image among young girls due to their unrealistically large heads?

Here's Jean Anne Whorton to take us - Beyond The Facts.

Since their launch in 2001, Bratz dolls have been flying off the shelves. They're fun, they're fashionable - and their heads are enormous.

*Dangerous Heads: Facing The Bratz Ideal*

According to gender equality advocate Melissa Waters, even though these dolls can't talk, they're sending young girls a message about their bodies.

'What girls are taking away from this is that in order to be beautiful, you need to have a head that's twice the size of your torso'

*Pediatric Analysis: Head Size Perception in Females Age 7-14*

Melissa isn't alone in her concerns. Yvonne Gray gave her daughter Shayla her first Bratz for Christmas last year.

Now, she wishes she hadn't.

'I want to be a good parent. I want her to feel good about herself, about her head. I mean, we all want to be the woman with the head out to here *gestures*, but at some point, you have to say that you're okay with your little head, and be okay with having a nose'

Shayla says nearly everyone her age owns a Bratz doll.

'So Shayla, tell me, what do you and your friends like about Bratz dolls'
'Well. we think that they have really cool clothes and that they're pretty'
'And do you think that you're as pretty as them?'
'No I don't, because I have a really small head'

The Bratz are depicted as having fun lives. Shopping, dancing and playing sports. But what isn't shown is how difficult it would be to do any of those things with an enormous cranium.

'If you make a Bratz doll a human height, the circumference of her skull would be 5 1/2 feet. She wouldn't be able to lift her head, and the sheer weight of it would crush her spine, rendering this so-called 'cool girl' bed-ridden for life'

*Poster: 'All head sizes are beautiful!'*

Waters' organisation is spreading their message through school programs and a national ad campaign.

*Poster: 'Beauty comes in all head sizes'*

*Pamphlet: No Such Thing as the Perfect Head Size*

Their goal is to reach pre-teen girls now and avoid dangerous consequences later

*Pamphlet: Bigger Head or Dead? Dangers of *something*hy Head Size *something*ntion*

'We really have to teach girls that any size head is beautiful. Otherwise they're going to be in a plastic surgeon's office at 23, asking for cranial implants or collagen injections in their scalps'

Regardless of Waters' warning, the demand for Bratz Dolls continues to grow, along with parents' concerns.

'I've actually seen Shayla trying things. Just the other day I saw her hitting herself in the face with a book to try to try to get her head to swell. Am I going to walk into her room and find her with a hammer to her head? I just don't know anymore. A doll shouldn't make a girl feel bad about herself.'

But for millions of girls like Shayla, that message isn't getting through.

From Beyond The Facts, I'm Jean Anne Wharton.

Thank you Jean Anne, for that. Sad, how our society is so focused on the size of - women's heads."

"A taste for irony has kept more hearts from breaking than a sense of humor, for it takes irony to appreciate the joke which is on oneself." - Jessamyn West

***

Why I shall [try to] wear a Black Ribbon on Wednesday (25th November) - on a Campaign against Male-on-Female Violence

The White Ribbon Campaign



November 25th is "The International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women". In conjunction with this, AWARE is promoting the "White Ribbon Campaign" (WHC; started by some Candians) which is about "Men working to end men's violence against women". Men are asked to make "a personal pledge to never commit, condone or remain silent about violence against women and girls", and asked to proclaim that "our future has no violence against women".

While on the surface of it this is a worthy cause, it does not take deep analysis to realise that this campaign is deeply problematic.

With the emphasis on men's violence against women, this campaign discursively reinforces the stereotype of men as iniquitous aggressors and women as helpless victims and threatens to replace the complex picture violence between and within genders with a simplistic view.

Of course, it is true that probably the majority of violence suffered by women is inflicted by men, but then the primary victims of male violence are other men. This is to say nothing of female-female and female-male violence - especially since the WHC's definition of "violence" is more than meets the eye. Indeed, it has been suggested that "Men create more damage, but women hit more than men do".

Even if it were true that the bulk of violence was directed at women by men, one is put in mind of the objections raised to this line of Singapore's Constitution: "Except as expressly authorized by this Constitution, there shall be no discrimination against citizens of Singapore on the ground only of religion, race, descent or place of birth in any law". The phrasing of this line, as well as the word "only" is very important as some implications seem to be that:

i) One can discriminate against non-citizens
ii) One can discriminate based on other factors like sexual orientation, language and political affiliation.
iii) If the Constitution authorizes it, you can discriminate against - in law - citizens based on religion, race, descent or place of birth.

Similar principles apply for the WHC; if you think that stereotypes in general are necessarily bad (as the people behind and supporting the WHC surely do), surely you should also think that a campaign that encourages stereotypes (even if unwittingly) is also bad.

Physical Violence

The WHC says that "violence against women takes many forms", including "Physical violence against spouses and girlfriends - from hitting right up to murder".

I'm sure that we can all agree that murdering another person (even if your target is not a female, and you are not a male) is wrong, and so too is anything that might constitute cruel and unusual punishment. Yet, "hitting" is a potentially broad term that could encompass many forms of physical activity, from bashing with a cudgel to punching with fists to slapping with the palm.



Now, there're many people who will say that a man should never hurt a woman - but most of these would cheerfully go on to endorse women slapping men, or perhaps even hitting them in the groin (many of them while mocking the man's sexuality). Indeed, when women engage in physical violence against men, most people assume the man must've done something wrong and thus deserves it. This view probably comes about from men being seen as subjects and aggressors, and women as objects and victims. If an aggressor is the victim of his erstwhile victim's aggression, he must have deserved it as he was violent himself, and for an object to turn on its subject would be like an ass mounting a lion.



Furthermore, hitting can also be playful, low-intensity and/or not unwarranted. Sometimes you can see girls pulling their (presumed) significant others around by the ears - this potentially falls into some or all of these categories, yet if all forms of hitting are considered undesirable forms of "physical violence", this behavior would surely qualify too.

Consider too that many parents hit children to discipline them. Going after your child with a hot iron is definitely child abuse, but mild slapping or hitting is probably not.



A definition of unacceptable hitting thus has to include criteria of intensity, duration, regularity and provocation; in short, you shouldn't hit people hard, many times, often and when they've done nothing wrong.

Sexual Violence

The second category is "Sexual violence - usually committed by a boyfriend, husband, trusted adult, or family member". I don't have too much to say on this aspect in particular, at least based on the poster, except that it has been reported that reports of women carrying out sex attacks on children have soared in the last five years, and it is clear that this is because men are pigeonholed as sexual aggressors whereas women are sexual victims. I will also note that date rape is another problematic concept.

Emotional Violence Abuse

Although the WHC calls this "Emotional Abuse", the fact that this is a campaign about Violence leaves us in no doubt over what "Emotional Abuse" is considered.

The WHC defines "Emotional Abuse" as "sexual harassment at work or on the street, stalking, jokes that demean women, and controlling behaviour". While stalking and sexual harassment (once flirting has clearly been made unwelcome) should be unreservedly condemned, controlling behaviour is very much more contestable a term. The fact is that we control other people's behavior all the time. For example, a woman might refuse to cook her boyfriend his favourite dish until he fixes the plumbing. Again, similar to hitting, a working definition of "controlling behaviour" has to include criteria of intensity, regularity, complicity and reasonableness. In other words, in the example above, we would not sensibly call this "controlling behaviour" if the woman did not lock her boyfriend out of the house, it only happened occasionally, the man sighed and went "yes, dear" with a half-smile and the damaged plumbing was causing the bathtub to leak.

"Jokes that demean women" is an even more contentious category. Presumably any joke which made women its butt would qualify (i.e. a sexist joke - or at least one with women as the object of humour).

Yet, to proscribe an entire genre of jokes would reduce the possibilities for human interaction - even with and between women (just as Malays do tell Malay jokes and Christians do tell Christian jokes, women do tell sexist jokes - and not just those excoriating men). Extending this principle, most jokes would have to be canned, since I cannot think of a joke that is not a pun that won't offend -somebody-.

This is not to mention the evils of censorship (if harm was a sufficient criterion for censorship, the first idea to be censored for hurting women would be... feminism). Furthermore, humor is always based on a modicum of truth. For example, have you ever heard a joke about a father-in-law? And no, blaming patriarchy doesn't cut it.

Even if you wanted to say that sexist jokes (against women) were not very nice, it would be a stretch to call them "emotional abuse" and thus "violence". It makes as much sense as calling all abortion murder, and legalised abortion a genocide. As a friend of mine commented, "i am a woman. I crack jokes about myself and other women. Does that fall under self-harm?"

One might also point out the double standard that people hardly bat an eye at jokes (or statements) that demean men. As a common T-shirt reads, "Men are like lava lamps. Nice to look at, but not very bright". Also, statements that are often thrown around to encourage women usually do it at the expense of denigrating men. Some classics of the genre:

- "A woman has to work twice as hard as a man to be thought of as half as good. Luckily this is not difficult"
- "Anything boys can do, girls can do better"
- "Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them!"



As Warren Farrell notes, "in the past quarter century, we exposed biases against other races and called it racism, and we exposed biases against women and called it sexism. Biases against men we call humor". The point not being that we cannot make any jokes, but that we should lighten up and stop getting offended over every little thing.

Furthermore, sexist jokes are the least of women's problems. A man asking a woman to lose weight would piss her off/"emotionally 'abuse' her" more than if he told her a sexist joke. Yet, if you want to look at "emotional abuse", the top perpetrators of emotional abuse against women... are other women - who are more socially aggressive than men; "evaluations of the promiscuity of other women" are certainly extremely hurtful to women (seeing as how no woman wants to be called a "slut"). Slimming ads could similarly be seen as structuralised gender-based violence. Does it really make sense, then, fingering men for this? As H. L. Mencken observed, a misogynist is "A man who hates women as much as women hate one another".



With regard to "jokes that demean women", the proverbial case of the boy who cried about a splinter in his finger while his house burnt down comes to mind.

I might perhaps be accused of being uncharitable in interpreting the WHC's intentions in an unreasonable way. Yet, in a world full of double-speak where racial discrimination against certain races is not considered racism (in the same way that killing Jews was not considered genocide because they were sub-human) and where "not sending girls to school" is considered "gender-based violence". And with the classification of sexist jokes as "emotional abuse" which, in turn, is called "violence", this is surely not an invalid concern.

Female genital mutilation/sex trafficking

Here, I will just note that not all forms of female genital mutilation (female circumcision) are created equal - the reality is more complex. I will also note that male genital mutilation, on the other hand, is ignored - nay, socially sanctioned, and even celebrated in many quarters.

In all...

I'm sure I would find a lot more disturbing material if I looked at the The White Ribbon Campaign's website, but time (and the attention span of readers) is limited, so the above should suffice.

One wonders if a campaign targeting men and focusing on male-on-female violence has many more merits than a campaign targeting anybody condemning violence against anyone. I would be less uncomfortable with an effort by the world of men to end violence (period), or an effort (period) to end violence (period) against women, but the combination narrows the scope far too much.

In some cases, a targeted approach might make more sense than a general one. For example, "working with Malay and Muslim organisations to spread the anti-drugs message to Malay youths" seems to have been very effective in reducing drug abuse in the Malay community in Singapore (but do note that this was against the backdrop of a strong anti-drug message targetted at the entire population). Yet, I do not see how this might apply with the WHC.

In short, a much better campaign would be about "people working to end violence against other people", with people being asked to make "a personal pledge to never commit, condone or remain silent about violence against anyone", and asked to proclaim that "our future has no violence against other human beings".

I will thus look for a black ribbon to wear tomorrow, to express my condemning of violence against people, and disapproval of sexist, unreasonable campaigns.

"There are no such things as applied sciences, only applications of science." - Louis Pasteur

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