“Modern Australians of global origins who are proud of where they came from and proud of who they are. Modern Australians. Yet, some of these designers are ignored by the Australian fashion industry, and what’s worse, some Indigenous Australian designers are not even acknowledged. It is disappointing that Australian Indigenous Fashion Week was a separate event from Australian Fashion Week.”
Quote and photo: http://buff.ly/2jkxNCc [Photo: Fijian-Australian model and author Dusk Devi Nand modelling in a magazine]
The despicable practice of trophy hunting has unique social practices that sanitise the language and images of animals killed for sport.
Ulrich Seidl, the director of “Safari,” a film that documents trophy hunting, says the language used by trophy hunters:
“‘create[s] this certain emotional distance between the act of hunting and the animals.’ ‘Piece’ becomes a byword for animal; ‘sweat’ for blood. Blood, Seidl says, is of particular significance: ‘They remove the blood from the photos so no one can see … It’s an indication for me that blood is very much a taboo in our society.'”
This is not the best way to deal with an ageing population. Barcodes and similar types of identification have been exploited throughout history.
“A company in Iruma, north of Tokyo, developed tiny nail stickers, each of which carries a unique identity number to help concerned families find missing loved ones, according to the city’s social welfare office.”
“The problem of unsafe plastic surgeries also has not been taken seriously because Colombian society divides victims into ‘good’ and ‘bad.’ It has a serious lack of empathy with the victims of unsafe cosmetic surgeries… The surgeries that society rejects are those that have to do with women’s sexualisation. And in Colombia, for women, there is only one thing worse than being a sexual object: not being one.”
Beauty ideals and their consequences are not immutable, natural or unavoidable. They are socially constructed. This means that what people take to be normal and fixed facts about the world are actually determined by social norms, culture and social interaction. Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann have established this theory, showing how individuals’ knowledge and perception about social reality are shaped by their social position within a given society, otherwise known as their social status. While there are positive and negative social outcomes that flow on from beauty hierarchies, these are not the logical result of natural selection and biological drive. Renditions of beauty found in art and pop culture reflect the way in which broader narratives about beauty are socially constructed.
In 2014, Karlesha Thurman, a young Black mother in California, faced vicious trolling after she shared a photo of herself breastfeeding to a Black mother’s group on Facebook. Conversely, Jacci Sharkey, a young White Australian mother, was commended after posting a photo of herself breastfeeding to the University of the Sunshine Coast Facebook page. Both are of similar age, both are students and similarly smiling with pride in their graduation cap and gown, while carrying out a natural act of feeding their child. Neither mother deserves to be exposed to abuse. But racism ensures that the same act of motherly care led to the hypersexualisation of a Black mother.
‘And so the hypersexualistion of the Black woman was born.
‘Colonial Australia was no better. Because Indigenous sexual relations differed to that of Whites, Indigenous women were all considered prostitutes and fair game for White men with a fetish for “black velvet.” In a classic case of self-fulfilling prophecy, many Aboriginal women were forced into prostitution to survive. Even those in “respectable” employment such as domestic servants were expected to sexually satisfy their bosses and co-workers as part of the job requirements…
‘But the fact remains, when two photos were stacked side by side, only one of the women was able transcend the sexualisation of the act of breastfeeding. Only one woman was called “adorable” by the media and portrayed with girlish innocence, and it wasn’t the Black one. It never is.” – Ruby Hamad on Daily Life.
The sexualisation of Black women’s bodies is enshrined in law, with the Australian government making Aboriginal women and children ‘wards of the state.‘ Insitutions aim to disempower Black/ Indigenous women in a multitude of ways. This includes how Hollywood perpetuates images and narratives of Indigneous women and other racial minorities.
In Hollywood films, the Indigenous or minority ‘manic pixie dream girl,’ is either a disposable sex object or a colonialist conquest. In fact, women of colour who play opposite a white man are almost uniformly constructed as exotically sexual, usually because they are feisty, head-strong “free spirits” who won’t be tamed by any man… except by our white hero. The magical pixie provides sex and a beguiling love of nature, but she needs to be taught English first and foremost and then she needs to be imbued with civilisation. The epitome of this trope is found in Westerns. Such Hollywood films usually portray Mexican or Native American women as independent souls who haven’t wanted to partner with a man from their own communities. Yet after some sexy, passionate resistance, they succumb to the rogue charm of the white protagonist who waltzes into town.
You can also see “Asian” variations, of a beautiful, mostly silent but strong-willed Lotus Flower Woman who eventually takes care of the wounded American man and submits to him.
Becoming aware of and deconstructing such discourses in film and popular culture is a useful step in overcoming our collective tacit acceptance of romanticised colonial fantasies.
A United Nations Official says the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar are facing ethnic cleansing. Following years of violence that increasingly escalates, 30,000 Rohingya are now displaced.
“The Rohingya are viewed as illegal immigrants by many in Buddhist-majority Myanmar who call them ‘Bengali,’ even though many have lived there for generations. Most live in the impoverished western Rakhine state, but are denied citizenship and smothered by restrictions on movement and work.”
Gender stereotypes are perpetuated through the stories we tell children as soon as they’re born. For example, little kids have few preconceived ideas about what a scientist looks like until they start going to pre-school. In Prep and Grade 1 they still draw scientists in gender-neutral ways, but by Grade 2 onwards, they start drawing White men in lab coats. By Grade 5 the stereotype that only White men are scientists has taken hold. The stereotype is both gendered and racial, as research shows that even minorities tend to draw White men, thus affecting diversity in science on multiple levels.This stereotype is used in other ways by teachers, parents, the media and other figures of authority to force girls to consider that maybe they’re not fit to do science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). It turns into a phenomenon known as stereotype threat which affects women’s memory recall, decision-making and resilience.
The stereotype is repeated in high school, in the way women scientists and people of colour are missing from the science curriculum, to university, where women role models are largely absent from the syllabus. At every step of girls’ progression from education through to their careers, gender stereotypes are used to discourage women both in tacit and overt ways. This is known as the leaky pipeline, with studies showing how girls and women leave STEM at various stages due to the cultural pressures and institutional obstacles they face.
Image: quote overlaid over photograph of night sky: ‘Young girls know that stars, dinosaurs, bugs and volcanoes are magic. The problem is that day-to-day life in a patriarchal culture makes it hard for women to study them. – Shannon Palus’ on Quartz.
Google+’s strong message of support for #BlackLivesMatter is significant given that many other big companies have not addressed the topic.
Along with the message below, Google tweeted:
“#AltonSterling and #PhilandoCastile’s lives mattered. Black lives matter. We need racial justice now.”
This statement is in contrast to Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook post that also addressed the death of Philando Castile – which was supportive, but did not mention his race, racism or the Black Lives Matter movement.
“My heart goes out to the Castile family and all the other families who have experienced this kind of tragedy. My thoughts are also with all members of the Facebook community who are deeply troubled by these events. The images we’ve seen this week are graphic and heartbreaking, and they shine a light on the fear that millions of members of our community live with every day. While I hope we never have to see another video like Diamond’s, it reminds us why coming together to build a more open and connected world is so important — and how far we still have to go.“
It is good to have leaders like Zuckerberg addressing Castile’s death, but White people, and companies dominated by White people, need to be more explicit in talking about, and addressing, structural racism.
Leaders with social privileges have an elevated status and they should use their power and influence constructively. For the rest of us who are ordinary folk, we need to speak up against racism all the same and look after our Black colleagues who are suffering. Continue reading Googlers: We Need Racial Justice Now
Writer Joanita Wibowo has published a thoughtful profile on three second-generation migrant-Australian women, featuring this quote from Sabina, a Lenanese-Muslim Australian:
“She went on to study sociology at university, which turned out to be ‘a really empowering experience’ for her. Sociological theories and language, she says, helped her understand her ordeals. ‘My trajectory as an academic was influenced very much by the experiences of how I’m feeling like an outsider as a child,’ says Sabina. ‘The only thing that gave me control over those experiences was being able to explain them.’ (Source: Junkee)
Sociology also gave me the tools to understand my ‘otherness,’ and advocate for migrant women and other marganised people who are made to feel like outsiders and denied social justice.
Ever since I could speak, before I even learned to write properly, I remember clearly wanting to be a story-teller. I went to university thinking I would pursue literature, but I found I did not enjoy the course. Instead I followed my early love of social studies. I enrolled in sociology in my first semester of university in 1997. This was supposed to be an elective. Two decades later, here I am: a passionate sociologist.
I would eventually go on to write both my Honours and PhD theses on themes of multiculturalism, racism, and social inclusion. I studied how young migrant-Australian women managed their identities, gender inequality, and other issues such as sexuality and culture.
Dr Shane Ingrey, Dunghutti/Dharawal man from the La Perouse Aboriginal community in Sydney, has a PhD in microbiology. He research focuses on the medical potential of native plants, continuing the knowledge of his grandmother.
“She’d say, ‘go and put this plant on it, this plant will suck all the stuff out for you.’ So we would always go out and do what she said, and that would be [the end of] that.”
Sociology also gave me the tools to understand my ‘
The Other Sociologist 