Separate is not the same as equal

I just wanted to share a few photos from Monday's gathering outside the Legislative Yuan, as that (heh) august body debates the same-sex marriage bills before it. I also wanted to make sure anybody reading this who doesn't know already knows about and is encouraged to attend another pro-marriage-equality gathering at Ketagalan Boulevard (in front of the Presidential Office) on 12/10.

I don't know what the lineup is for that event, but this one included several well-known Taiwanese activists, including Jennifer Lu, Lin Fei-fan, Miao Boya (at least I saw her near the stage but am not clear on whether she spoke) and others.

I don't have a lot to say that hasn't already been said by better-informed commentators than me, other than to reiterate my strong and vocal support for marriage equality in Taiwan. Taiwan has been struggling for years to be noticed internationally -for many who have never visited the country, it's like it doesn't exist. Many assume it's already a part of China. Others assume it is not a democracy (I had a family member make this mistake. They were corrected) or that it's a third-world backwater rather than a developed tech, artistic and industrial hub in the heart of Asia.

Being the first Asian country to make marriage equality a reality will not only help further separate Taiwan from the claws of China by creating an easily recognizable and irreconcilable cultural distinction between the two nations - which I fully support - and is not only simply the right thing to do. Being a pioneer in Asia in terms of human rights - yes, marriage is a human right, so if you want to withhold that from some people based on who they love, you do not support basic human rights and I have a few choice words for you and am not interested in your illogical arguments - but would also raise Taiwan's international image and recognition. It is not only the right thing to do, it is the right thing for a nation whose people desperately want it recognized as such.



As most of you know, the Tsai administration on a few occasions has indicated a desire to back down from full marriage equality and push instead for "civil partnerships" (which would not necessarily confer the same rights to same-sex couples). For obvious reasons, I do not support this: as one protester noted with his wonderfully misspelled sign (which I did not have the heart to point out to him), separate is not equal. The people want real equality, not an empty gesture. Real equality means all marriages are equal. Nothing less is acceptable.



You likely also know that the Taiwanese public, in a clear majority, supports marriage equality. This is not the 'conservative Asian country' you thought it was, or the sort of country you imagine when you imagine Asian culture, if you are working mostly off general impressions and stereotypes. Not only that, but beyond clear majority support, a huge percentage of people are indifferent, meaning it's a rather small minority indeed who are opposed to taking this step.

Indeed, the near 100% support of the youth of Taiwan for marriage equality is well-documented, but I can honestly say I've also heard it from grandparents, working-class folks in small towns, and middle-aged taxi drivers. On the way to an appointment in a taxi, the last rally, which I was unable to attend, was being discussed on the radio. I made a passing comment indicating my support and the septuagenarian taxi driver replied with "obviously. It's a human right. It's very simple. Of course everyone should have human rights."

Yes, exactly. 



So why is it taking so long? Again, it is well-documented that the main opponents to equality are the influential Christian churches - most of them preaching ultra-conservative, post-truth, fundamentalist/evangelical ideologies. So, basically, the worst kind of fake "Christians" who don't really understand what following Christ means (here I am, an atheist, feeling this way about them. If my disdain is palpable, there's a reason. But please don't think it extends to all Christians. Only these kinds of hateful people who simply want an angry patriarchal sky daddy to rubber-stamp their bigotry rather than a cohesive philosophy of inclusion, kindness and forgiveness). These churches and their "Christians" have deep ties to both major political parties, the KMT possibly moreso than the DPP, though it's not clear.

Most Taiwanese, however, are not Christian. I've heard that only approximately 4.5% are (a quick googling confirms this).

The game of influence and power is easy to point out. What I'm wondering is, with politicians with ties to these churches going against the will of the people - and the will is pretty damn clear - how long until it starts to really cost them votes?



Hear me out here. Taiwan has never been the ultra-conservative culture people think it is, at least not in any way we'd define as typical Western conservatism. To quote a friend, the Taiwanese have always had a rebellious, liberal streak, perhaps moreso than is apparent in other Asian nations, or at least it's a stronger cultural undercurrent. Being a strong ally and supporter of the US, with an openness to Western values and liberal democracy, has helped this undercurrent come more to the surface to be sure. However, it hasn't been until recently that the general hold of Chinese/Han chauvinism (and possibly also its more organically Taiwanese counterpart, Hoklo ethnocentrism) has been shouted down in a majority of society in favor of more liberal voices gaining strength.

To put it simply, it was perhaps easier for political parties to hide the extent to which their actions were influenced by churches in Taiwan under a veneer of conservative Chinese chauvinism, because it is not at all clear where Christian chauvinism ends and Chinese chauvinism begins regarding quite a few social issues (I've written about this before, by the way).





Now that the young and liberal voices (not necessarily one and the same) are starting to influence both policy and culture, however, there is an expiration date on how much longer either party can hide that they are influenced by groups that, by and large, do not represent the Taiwanese electorate.

This is perhaps a bigger issue for the DPP than the KMT. The KMT's core is  more likely to hold conservative views. So the KMT continuing to more or less be the bigger obstacle to equality won't necessarily affect their decision to stay in the blue camp and the party has long since lost the youth vote. All the Jason Hsus in the world aren't going to fix that.

The DPP, however, still has a shot at those younger, liberal votes. Many have defected to the NPP and other small leftie parties, but many are still willing to vote if not for their local DPP candidate, than for a DPP president. Continuing to stall on marriage equality will eventually cost the DPP the youth vote, because they're just not going to stand for being dicked around much longer on issues that are important to them.



So, as influential as those churches and their members may be in Taiwanese politics - an influence well outsize their proportion of society, at least one party is likely - in my view anyway - to start losing votes over it. If the DPP wants to capture and keep the youth vote, they're going to have to jettison the Christians who have their hands on the buttons of Taiwanese social issues in favor of the more progressive approach their party's name implies. 



Anyway, I don't have much more to say except I am happy that Taiwanese are finally taking to the streets beyond the well-established Pride parade to show the government that the people do, in fact, want equality. Anti-equality bigots have their demonstration game down. The ethically and morally correct pro-equality, pro-human rights left needs to respond in kind and, while keeping it friendly and love-oriented, fight back and show the government how big their numbers are. 



So, enjoy a few more pictures!




I didn't have the heart to tell this poor guy he spelled every English work on his sign wrong :(



Can you tell I hadn't slept well the night before? 

Fighting to keep Chiang Kai-shek's birthday holiday? Really?

Just checking in - I'm still working quite hard collecting stories of immigration troubles, and a few of them are truly tragic. But, I've got to fact-check and figure out how I'm going to structure this post, so it's looking like it will be something of a longer-term project. Bear with me, and I'll keep people updated. I have a few more people to interview, some folks to call, some visits to make etc. before I even start writing. This is on top of preparing to go to grad school and doing a TEFL professional development project involving action research. Oh, and working too.

I also have a really nice long post on Yunlin County coming up, so keep an eye out for that.

In the meantime, I just have to say I'm not sure what to make of the whole 'seven holidays' snafu. It took awhile to even figure out which holidays are being cut (turns out it's the 7 extra days we randomly got this year and not some other holidays). This stands to reason, but was not immediately obvious and I needed to be sure before I commented.

So...I dunno. On one hand, I am all for more holidays. Taiwanese work far too long, and laws limiting employers from forcing them to work too much overtime are not very effective; at least, they are not enforced well at all. In such a pro-boss hierarchical culture I am not sure they ever will be, though Taiwan has surprised me before. And I certainly do not think the "one day off, one flexible rest day" is a good idea. Everybody knows they'll have to work on that day and probably get cheated out of overtime pay (even if they don't, some people would rather have that day off anyway). This is a country where bosses regularly force workers to ignore typhoon days to come in, which is deeply illegal! It's just window dressing on the real goal of re-instituting the six-day work week, and it's bullshit.

I honestly think we should have more holidays, and days off on Friday/Monday for holidays that fall on a weekend. But I can't really wrap my head around the protests to the cuts of these particular holidays.

Some of them are fine - Teacher's Day, Constitution Day (created so Chiang Kai-shek's wife, Soong Mei-ling, who was a Christian, could have Christmas off). But some of them are totally batshit - who in their right mind wants Retrocession Day or Chiang Kai-shek's birthday, or even Sun Yat-sen's birthday (less offensive but equally a KMT import rather than a reason for an authentic Taiwanese celebration)? It's really odd to see a bunch of Taiwan-identifying civic activists and labor rights protestors rallying around the Legislative Yuan - the same sort of people who fought against CSSTA and are generally strongly pro-Taiwan and pro-independence - to save the holiday reserved for a murderous dictator, the worst person Taiwan has ever known.

(Side note: I find it hilarious that Chiang Kai-shek's birthday falls on Halloween, because his ghost truly haunts Taiwan still).

All this means I'm not sure which side to take here. I want holidays but not those holidays - an angle I don't see reported in the press at all. I fear my views might be closest to those of the KMT and that is really terrifying and not okay.

I also want 5-day work weeks, and I want holiday make-up days for those that land on a weekend. Basically, I want the government to tell the Boss Class to shove it, that they have to give their workers adequate time off whether they like it or not.

So I think I'll abstain from this protest and instead rally quietly for, I dunno, Formosa Day (commemorating the Kaohsiung Incident), Nylon Cheng Day, Declaration of the Republic of Formosa Day (for the date in 1895 when Taiwan declared independence and held onto it for several months following the departure of the Qing), Sunflower Day (haha, probably not going to happen), White Lily Day, Democracy Day.

As much as I want more holidays for the working people of Taiwan, I just can't bring myself to insist that we should keep stupid buttclown Chiang Kai-shek's stupid birthday, and it will never stop being weird to me to see pro-Taiwan activists demanding it.

The China Airlines strike and outdated expat narratives: Confucian values are REALLY not the problem

Something I've learned: I often have thoughts kicking around in my head for awhile, and I try to write blog posts about them, only to find that they come out ponderous, aimless and full of questionable or dull tangents. An important element of focusing my thoughts is to have some sort of catalyst, some it's-happening-now event to bring it all together into what I really want to say.

That bit of navel-gazing aside, for the past month or so a pushback against the conventional expat narrative of Taiwan being bogged down by "Confucian values" has been kicking around in my head - ever since I wrote about how, while bad management is a problem in Taiwan, "Confucian values" aren't what's keeping Taiwanese workers from taking the initiative at work rather than saving their best ideas for their own start-up small businesses. Long work hours and low salaries are because only a fool would share their best ideas with someone who exploits them through overwork and substandard pay. Taiwanese are no more fools than anyone else, so it makes sense that they wouldn't give their best work to bosses who are effectively narcissistic, self-serving nitwits at best and figurative slave masters at worst. (Obviously #notallbosses blah blah blah).

Well, it's taken the China Airlines zeitgeist to prod me into finally posting about it.

If you think "Confucian values" are Taiwan's biggest problem, you haven't been paying attention and your narrative is outdated. The same old story of "Taiwanese workers are passive, they endure long working hours for low pay and don't complain because Confucius or something" simply isn't the case anymore, and if you've been watching the country change, you'd know it hasn't been the case for awhile (if it ever was, though I'd argue the Ma years were notably turgid).

First and foremost, strikes like the China Airlines one in terms of rhetoric and scale don't just pop up out of a society that is passive, supplicant to authority or not actively looking to improve their own and their country's lot. They don't spring fully formed from a "poor exploited Taiwanese who don't even know they're exploited or if they do, they don't fight back" pile of bullshit. They spring from a long-running activist movement that has bracingly modern values at its core (as I have argued), modern enough that we Westerners, who often think we've got the market on progressivism cornered, ought to sit up and pay attention.

This isn't just a big deal because of one strike, this is a big deal because it's been coming for awhile, reveals Taiwanese society to not be some caricature of a cliched 2500-year-old philosophical system, and because it has implications across every industry where laborers are exploited (which is basically every industry, including English teaching. Yes, that too).

By the way, if you read any one thing on the strike, make it the link above.

This has been brewing for awhile - if you stop and talk to any given group of Taiwanese labor, you'll find that they are well aware that they have been exploited for awhile, and society has been collectively, often tacitly, but perceptibly, working on a solution-cum-backlash. You can see it in the increased rhetoric around worker-led (as opposed to "official") unions, in the New Power Party's pro-labor platforms (well, pro-labor for citizens, apparently we foreign workers don't rate and I'm still pissed about that), in the annual demonstrations on Labor Day, in the economic concerns of the student movement, in the very common desire to quit one's exploitative job and strike out on one's own.

Where out-of-touch pontificating expats come up with these tableaux of beaten-down workers who don't know what's best for them, kowtowing to boss, family and religion, I see a country full of people dreaming of something better and knowing full well, in 21st century terms, what that means.

Simply put, people who gather at midnight to announce a pre-meditated strike that almost reminds one of siege warfare (or maybe I've just been watching too much Game of Thrones) and who talk of improving the condition of labor across Taiwan, freeing workers from onerous hours and unacceptably low pay are not only not victims of "Confucian values", they prove that "Confucian values" never were the problem (or never were enough of a problem to put up much of a barrier to the new tide of activism). People who dream of quitting and opening their own businesses, whether they are smaller versions of the businesses they already work for or a total departure down a culinary or artistic road, but are toughing it out for now, are not victims of "Confucian values".

The electorate's increasing willingness to listen to the youth - a concept somewhat (but not entirely) non-Confucian, and the newly-elected political elite's willingness to do the same, even dropping charges against the Executive Yuan occupiers saying that the "values of the Sunflowers have become widely accepted across the country", are further proof. It's such a deep and long-coming sea change that even the newly-minted opposition are trying to co-opt these values in the weirdest, most discordant and least appealing ways. KMT gonna KMT I guess.

The citizenry's increasing willingness to occupy, to demand, to escalate, to take the fight to social media - none of this screams "Confucian values"...the key being that that's not only the case right now, but it proves that it hasn't been the case for awhile, because these sorts of sea changes don't sweep in like tsunamis. They slowly build like earthquake pressure. The only difference is you can't predict earthquakes, but this could be seen coming since the run-up to the Sunflower occupation.

In sort, this is 2016 AD, not 500 BC (and it's kind of insulting to imply that a culture has not sufficiently evolved in those two and a half millenia). The Taiwanese aren't getting their modern values by looking to the West, but by looking within themselves. And they're not chained to a 2500 year-old-philosophy because they are so clearly willing to fight back. I know I'm repeating myself here, but I want to drive that message home.

To go back even further, I'd like to add that if the main problems in Taiwan could really be traced back to "Confucian values", you not only wouldn't have China Airlines workers striking now, the Sunflowers in 2016, and employees who dream of quitting and starting their own companies, you also wouldn't have had several of the pro-democracy and national identity incidents that have defined modern Taiwanese history. There was nothing Confucian about the uprising that led to 228, the Kaohsiung Incident, Nylon Cheng's self-immolation, the dangwai or the White Lilies, either. The willingness to think, talk, plan and finally fight back in spectacular fashion - non-Confucian but wonderfully modern things all - is truly not new to Taiwan.

Because I like to ramble, two more things before I release your eyeballs, if you are still reading.

The first is that if you think Confucianism is all about the big boss beating down the little guy and hierarchical systems of tyranny, whether it's civil or private, you have a cliched and inaccurate view of Confucian thought. I'm no fan of Confucius, I'm more of a "hey guys just chill" Daoist type myself even though I am personally not very chill, but this is absolutely not what Confucius espoused.

He was all about those in power exercising restraint, openmindedness and responsibility. In not just being leaders because they felt entitled to be leaders, but actually leading. Not beating down their underlings because they could, but nurturing them and getting their best work from them. I suspect if he were alive today he'd be a policymaker at best, a self-proclaimed management guru at worst (I strongly dislike management gurus and business cliches).

I mean, take a look at some of his actual "Confucius Says" proverbs. "A tyrannical government is worse than a tiger" (課徵猛於虎) - that could apply not only to an actual government but a figurative management structure. "Bend down thine ear" (Chinese coming when I have access to my hilariously outdated book of Chinese idioms again) - he affirmed the right of leaders to exercise authority, but admonished them to listen to their underlings. His whole philosophy boiled down not to kings beating up subjects or managers beating up workers, but to society moving together in harmony, as if dancing in sync to music (I think he actually said something like that at one point).

I'm still not a fan, but that Confucianism - *actual* Confucianism - is not necessarily a problem in society, if understood and applied correctly. The West doesn't actually have all the answers.

The second is that I just want to say I am blown away by the maturity and adroitness of the activist movement (all of it, from the workers to the students). They remind me not of hippies - though there's a touch of Bob Dylan in them for sure - and not of union strikes or populists but of Gandhi-style nonviolent resistance (and as Gandhi said, there is nothing passive about nonviolent resistance - in that way too they are not held back by "Confucian values" in the more cliched, or even the true, sense. Even in true Confucianism it's on the leaders to do the right thing, there isn't much room for subjects to resist, even nonviolently). Someone has read up on the Indian independence movement, the Civil Rights movement, the LGBT rights movement, the women's suffrage movement, even as the impetus comes from within the strikers and activists themselves.

They are facing their problems with the only route available to them - the only route that has ever actually worked (look at history - it's rare that violence settles things well, though I can think of a few exceptions. Usually, the only way to get something done and build after you tear down the old order is nonviolent resistance). And they know it. I truly admire them for it.

There is absolutely nothing at all Confucian about that.