This is somewhat late, but in a mercifully brief moment of vanity, I’d like to post a summary of Dove Grey Matter’s blog health in the past year, based on hits, number of comments, and overall awesomeness. This is what WordPress found out: The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads WOW. Yes, that’s a ‘Wow’, and thanks mainly to… Continue reading How did DGM do last year?
Research and publications
Judge a book by its cover?: Women and sex on retro Malay book covers
They say you can’t judge a book by its cover. But you might well be able to sell a book based on its cover. The world of Malay book jackets of the past (circa 1960’s to mid 1970’s) was a different place then, where nude women as decorative elements were apparently no big deal. Nowadays,… Continue reading Judge a book by its cover?: Women and sex on retro Malay book covers
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
Alicia Izharuddin 