Angry Malay Woman

No one likes a female critic

Or rather, there are too few female critics to dislike. By ‘no one’ I mean the people who find strongly opinionated women intimidating, those who fall to their feet in worship at the altar of an equally opinionated male critic – the same idolised figure with whom a few would love to share a teh… Continue reading No one likes a female critic

Introducing Privilege-denying Malay guy. Patriarchy-apologists be damned!

UPDATE: PDMG has moved to a more inclusive space – Privilege-denying Malaysian guy In the spirit of the hugely popular Privilege-denying Dude meme that’s been circulating the feminist blogosphere, my fellow feminist compadres Tariq and Munira, have started the long overdue Privilege-denying Malay guy. Of course there is no denying that Malay privilege is enshrined… Continue reading Introducing Privilege-denying Malay guy. Patriarchy-apologists be damned!

Maryam & Manan: What Underage Marriages Say About Our Society

My first piece on the Malaysian legal blog, Loyar Burok: Underage marriages are not simply perversions of marital norms but an index of our unequal society. The news concerning the marriage of a 14-year old girl and 23-year old man reveals a thing or two about what can be expected of young women and of… Continue reading Maryam & Manan: What Underage Marriages Say About Our Society

2010 – the year in rape reports [Trigger warning]

Most annual retrospectives look at “big” stories that grabbed the year’s headlines: war, natural and environmental disasters, celebrity “news”, famous deaths, the busting of confidential US diplomatic cables, to name a few. Few however would chart both the shock and banality of sexual violence committed by men against women and girls in the year gone… Continue reading 2010 – the year in rape reports [Trigger warning]

What is Orientalism?

Because an elegant definition of Orientalism cannot go ignored in the academy: Orientalism, to David Said, is known as Eastern culture and is typically thought of as a combination of Asian, Japanese, Siamese, Chinese and other non-European cultures. The concept of Orientalism relates to music because it creates a stereotype for the different types of… Continue reading What is Orientalism?

An excerpt from my dissertation on ‘traditional’ same-sex eroticisms in Indonesian fiction – Part 2

First in the series of excerpts from my MA dissertation I looked at the tolerant attitudes toward homoerotic relations in Indonesian religious boarding schools as depicted in the novel Mairil. Below I explore the way the Indonesian tradition of the gemblak and warok relationship is framed in a novel by Enang Rokajat Asura. Unlike Mairil,… Continue reading An excerpt from my dissertation on ‘traditional’ same-sex eroticisms in Indonesian fiction – Part 2

On male public intellectuals of the Twitter age and gender

We can trust the public intellectual – the voice of the zeitgeist, so to speak – to be clever, witty, sometimes rather sexy (because they’re clever and witty), and male. Though it seems that lately being male is a crippling impediment to being the voice of the zeitgeist. Recently, Stephen Fry caused the chattering classes… Continue reading On male public intellectuals of the Twitter age and gender

Survey on feminism and women’s rights in Malaysia

Back in September, I conducted a survey on how Malaysians felt about women’s rights as well as their views on feminism. My interest in Malaysians’ perceptions about women’s rights and feminism grew out of seeing the complacent attitudes of the general populace with regards to the status of women in our society today. Simply put,… Continue reading Survey on feminism and women’s rights in Malaysia

Book review: The Rey Chow Reader

(Crossposted from Elevate Difference) Edited by Bowman, Columbia University Press Not many theorists would re-imagine Jane Eyre as a Maoist. However, postcolonial thinker Rey Chow does and with great aplomb. Furthermore, it’s not in the context of English literature in which Chow invokes the fictional heroine, but rather the issue of Orientalism in today’s academia.… Continue reading Book review: The Rey Chow Reader

By yet another fluke I am nominated for the Brass Crescent award again!

I was nominated for best Southeast Asian blog by the lovely Brass Crescent selection committee two years ago, and here I am again nominated for the same category this year! Yay, me. As much as I am thrilled and humbled, I am surprised. I was going through some life-changing events in the last two years… Continue reading By yet another fluke I am nominated for the Brass Crescent award again!