Here Is Some Sexist Bullshit For You

So I take a lot of taxis. Some of these taxis are nicer than others - on any given day, I might get Old Chen's taxi, which has one chair hanging at an odd angle on rusty hinges, has so many amulets and charms hanging off the rearview mirror that I'm surprised they don't all swing forward in one aggregate whoosh to crack the windshield when he stops too hard, his ID card photo was taken in the 70s and he's totally got Han Solo Hair, I can practice my Taiwanese listening skills by paying attention to some radio show where someone is yet again saying that Ma Ying-jiu sucks (I agree with these people, by the way, he does suck, it's just that that's all they ever talk about), and the whole taxi smells like the darkest recesses of Old Chen's armpit.

On any other given day, I might get into Little Luo's taxi (Little Luo being six feet tall), which smells pleasantly of synthetic vanilla and has some stargazer lilies up front, and his taxi has a little TV embedded into the back passenger's seat. The passenger can then watch, at low volume, models skulking down catwalks wearing hideous outfits, a commercial for something having to do with penises (I don't know if it's health related or just phalloplasty, but it includes a pun on the Chinese word for "blue bird", which in Taiwanese means, well, "johnson". Package. Junior. Eggs&Sausage. It's definitely got to do with schlongs or something), repeated entreaties to touch a Happy Face, Neutral Face or Angry Face to thereby rate your driver, commercials for blenders that blend whole fish, commercials for fitness "exercise machines" that don't work (a hula hoop that you hold in place while you sway your body? And it looks totally dirty when you do, especially when the camera pans over women doing that motion? No thanks) and commercials for HTC that involve some pop star I've never heard of.

And then there's this one commercial that makes me want to go all OH NO HULK ANGRY HULK SMASH!!

I can't find a video online of the commercial in question (because I don't know the name of the product), nor have I had the chance to take a video of it myself, but I've got my camera at the ready now every time I hop into a taxi with one of those annoying TVs at the back.

But, basically, it goes like this.

Attractive woman has adorkable boyfriend. Woman is at work and has her head cradled in her hands. She then finishes work (while the sun is still up so you know it's not Taiwan) but having her head in her hands has - oh noes! - caused temporary reddish indentations in her face. Quel horreur! Adorkable Boyfriend looks at her and his expression changes from adoration to disgust. Ewwww, what's wrong with your skin? Rather than doing the sensible thing and punching him in the face, she looks ashamed for some reason.

Then she's at work again, or surfing the Internet (same thing, really, at least it was for me), and she's wearing a scarf or something. The scarf leaves more creases on her neck. Or maybe she's just Creaseface McWeirdo. I dunno. She's all excited for her sweet date with Adorkable Boyfriend! Yay! She can't wait!

So she goes out to meet him, and his big adorkable nose crinkles up. Ew! Your face again! What's wrong with you, having human skin that reacts when stuff touches it? Rather than doing the sensible thing and punching him in the taint, she looks like she's going to cry.

But then - oh good! - she gets some makeup! So she can cover her terrible imperfections and look perfect for her Adorkable Boyfriend, because of course how could he possibly love her when EW GROSS HER SKIN HAS TEMPORARY CREASES FROM TOUCHING FABRIC THAT WILL TOTALLY GO AWAY IN FIVE MINUTES? Even if her problem weren't so transient in nature - perhaps a weeklong zit, or - heaven forfend! - a birthmark - Adorkable Boyfriend simply cannot be physically attracted to a woman whose skin isn't rendered so flawless by makeup that it glitters slightly.

So ladies. I SAID LADIES. Your job is to be physically perfect in every way for your Adorkable Boyfriend (he can be imperfect, that's OK, the looks that matter are yours, he's probably got something else going for him, like he's smart or earns money or something) or HE WON'T LIKE YOU. This is your job, ladies. Take it seriously. And if he crinkles up his nose at you because you have a crease imprint on your skin? That's your fault and don't you forget it!

And now that you feel terrible about yourself and really insecure that your boyfriend won't like your human skin, spend your money on this makeup! Look! A concealing foundation so you can hide yourself!

This girl used it, and now her skin is perfect and glittery and Adorkable Boyfriend is gazing at her adoringly! BUY IT NOW.

Ugh.

Seriously.

I realize that makeup commercials are of a kind, and that a lot of advertising (especially advertising aimed at women) relies on making someone feel inferior or subpar before convincing them that their flaws can be healed if they buy this Shiny New Thing, but this particular commercial makes me so much angrier than the usual bullshit. At least other bullshit tries for a veneer of being about "empowering women (with makeup you can buy!)" or "maybe she's born with it" or "be a new sexy you with plumper eyelashes (because your current eyelashes are hideou - - I mean because you deserve to be sexy, it's all about what some guy thinks of yo - - I mean GIRL POWER!)".

But this commercial is really the worst - it just goes straight for the jugular of insecurity. It doesn't even put up a pretense of "this is for you, to look your best" or "our product is really high quality" - it dives right into "if your skin is imperfect in any way, your boyfriend will gasp in horror at the sight of you!" It's straight-up telling women that it's their job to hide imperfections and look perfect for men (not for themselves - you never see this girl crinkling up her own nose in the mirror - it's so male gazey it physically hurts to watch), not men's job to understand that women are real human people and sometimes look imperfect, and that they're just going to have to deal with that fact or be very, very lonely.

And it's struck a chord with me, and made me think about how I could complain about sexism in Taiwan after seeing this steaming heap of crap on taxi TV (seriously, bring back HTC pop singer guy or something, or the penis guy in his shiny blue suit whistling his bluebird song), but really, I can't.

I can only think that this is still a problem worldwide. Back in the USA I still see similar commercials. In any given country - including Taiwan, which is otherwise not a bad place in Asia to live if you're female, compared to the rest of Asia anyway - and any given culture, it's still seen as women's responsibility to look good, and those they're expected to look good for are the other half of the population, not themselves. I could imagine seeing such a commercial on TV in the USA. Even though I know that there is a greater pressure on women in Taiwan to take care of their appearance, or a greater feeling of responsibility for maintaining their looks.

Complaining about it - even directly to the sexist marketing folks who scripted this utter tripe - isn't going to do much. I can only hope that I'm not the only person annoyed by this fistful of garbage, and that prospective customers just don't buy the product in question.

So, do I have a Taiwan State of Mind, or am I the weirdo here?

This seems to be making it big across the blogz and Facebook.

I'll admit, I liked it. Especially the first half. It was cute, well-done, fun, didn't take itself too seriously, and didn't shy away from political truths.

"You should know I bleed green, but I ain't that D-double-P though...Chinese Taipei? Fuck that, you got it all wrong. Taiwan Independence, yo, I'm from Taichung!"

Down with it!

But they lost me at the second half, which was basically a verse and a chorus all about Taiwanese women. 

I'm down with appreciating Taiwanese women. Nothing wrong with liking them. Nothing wrong with including them in a song. But did it have to be half the song? Half a verse would have been better. And of that, all of it was about their appearance (long legs, "city of skin", fake eyelashes). The parts that weren't were about them shopping and using smartphones out in public (I liked the part about the betelnut girls - they're such a part of the culture here that I don't have it in me to get a stick up my butt about them). Seems to me there's more to Taiwanese women than their appearance.

And anyway, what about Taiwanese men? I appreciate them in an "I'm married, so even though they can be good looking I'm not interested" way (I blog about 'em a lot because they don't seem to get enough positive press). You couldn't have half a verse about them?

And finally, they couldn't find anything else to say about Taiwan that could have taken up a bit more song space, so you had to devote half the song to Taiwanese women, their looks and their phones?

I guess, as a woman whose Taiwanese female friends are mostly very smart, independent, fun women whose whole selves total far more than their looks, and who didn't come here for the women (I'm straight), devoting half the song to dating Taiwanese girls (and how good Taiwanese girls look) just lost me. I don't relate. The first half of the verse was fun, but by the end I felt it was a bit objectifying. And I do feel at times the (mostly male) expat community tends to objectify Taiwanese women. Not everyone does this, and certainly not every expat man with a Taiwanese girlfriend or wife does it (I'd never imply that), but it happens enough that this made me a bit uncomfortable.

In some ways I guess my Taiwan experience hasn't mirrored the typical bullet list - if you asked me to write a song about it, first I'd laugh at you, but once I stopped laughing it would include little shout outs to festivals, more about food, Hakka culture, men's Japanese hairdos, weird-ass t-shirts, aboriginal culture and hanging out in mountain towns like Lishan with old people. This is a country in which some people get possessed by deities and beat themselves with spiked clubs, and they couldn't find anything else to rap about for the second half of the song?

It's not totally related to the topic, but close enough that I'll say it here: I do feel like a bit of an outlier in the "international" scene in Taiwan (I don't just mean expats, plenty of locals are in it too, for a variety of reasons). It does feel like it's kind of city-centric and party-centric - hopping between the major west coast points and occasionally visiting the touristy rural areas, without venturing far into the non-touristy ones. Where the main events in life are Ladies' Night, Friday nights out, partying in Kending in the summer, a couple of well-known bars, dating Taiwanese women, restaurants and clubs aaaand...that's about it. It's all "yeah, tonight it's On Tap, maybe I'll see you tomorrow. Girlfriend wants to go to Barcode, maybe before that we can grab some tai-pis at 7-11...naw bro, next week I'm in Taichung, you know how it is, then it's Kending, that'll be awesome, my girlfriend's calling, talk to you later bro". In the interest of not sounding like a total loser, I won't dwell on how "I'm not anti-party! I go out too!" and stick with "...that's fun to a point, but it doesn't do it for me as a lifestyle". And the video, while fun and well-done, did sort of portray Taiwan through "international culture" rather than local eyes.

So maybe that's why I was all in toward the first half of the video and toward the second half my  usual feeling of not fitting in with that culture came back.

Dunno. Maybe I'm just boring.

Just A Few Delightful Things

Eat here: 台灣原味滷味， 新北市中和區景平路493－5號 / 捷運景安站

Original Taiwan Flavor Lu Wei (braised & boiled things) Zhonghe, Jinping Road #493-5, MRT Jing'an, fastest to grab a 262 next to Sushi Express and take it to Zhonghe District Office (中和區公所) and it's across the street and up a short walk further next to Five Flower Horse (五花馬), which is also pretty good.

First, I have finally discovered the joy of eating pig's feet. I never liked it when I got a big bowl of nothin' but pig foot - kinda gross, actually, it just looks visually unappealing - but I have found when it's sliced up into tender pieces of meat and trotter, that mixed in with rice it's really quite delicious.

I discovered I liked it, after all these years of being too unimpressed with the look of the stuff to take a bite, when I passed the place listed above and this unholy delicious smell enveloped me and I had to try their food that very instant. So I pointed to what some other people were eating, not aware that it was pig's foot with rice (豬腳飯), and ordered that. It comes with tender bamboo shoots, a piece of braised tofu and a braised hard-boiled egg. I also got Taiwanese tempura (甜不辣) - their tempura sauce is also delicious. So good I poured the remainder on my rice.

So that was a good discovery.

Also, this News In Brief feature is just full of gems:

Taiwan News Quick Take

I mean, first there's "Canada Warning Issued", which is the best headline ever. We all should be warned about Canada more often.

Then there's the entire paragraph detailing the state of President Ma Ying-jiu's butthole. It's really more than I ever needed to know about President Ma's ass, but there ya go.

I guess he needs to keep it in good condition so it can be reamed by China. (BAM!)

Finally, there's this website:科技心，醫師情.

It seems on the surface to be just a dating/matchmaking website for Taiwanese professionals, and in a sense that's exactly what it is. The application page (no, I'm not going to apply, obviously, I was just curious) says that not only are engineers and doctors welcome, but that all sorts of professionals, from teachers to entrepreneurs ("anyone with a proper job", to quote it, but I think that comes across a little less offensively in Chinese, more like "any employed professional") may apply.

A student of mine (female, doctor, married) said, however, that their real market niche is setting up single male engineers, who are often (not always!) too overworked, too shy and too socially awkward to go out and date easily, with female doctors, who are too overworked and not in a good place in society* to find a life partner if they didn't marry a classmate (apparently male doctors who didn't marry a classmate are more interested in nurses, and both these women and men generally prefer that a man be on an equal footing, career-wise, to his wife**). Another student, who is a fairly high profile person (tech industry, male, married), said that they called him to ask if he'd be interested in signing up (me: "you could've said 'just a second, let me ask my wife. Hey honey, am I available to sign up for this dating website?'").

I personally think it's brilliant. If female doctors really want men who are at approximately their level professionally (although some engineers in Taiwan might disagree that they are) or acceptably close enough, engineers fit the bill. And while the older generation of Taiwanese men, including engineers, might have preferred a stay-at-home wife (or a wife to help run the family business), the younger crop of single thirtysomething male engineers, observed from my interaction with them as a teacher, seem far more willing to have a wife with a demanding career and the high level of education that goes with it. They wouldn't necessarily be scared off by a female doctor (some would, but I'm speaking in generalities).

Two segments of society that often have a hard time dating, being specifically matched up because they wouldn't have many chances to meet each other normally (it's not like all the single female doctors and all the single male engineers go to the same bars after work) is pure genius. I wish I'd thought of it.

*which is totally sexist bullshit, I know, as it is in any society, but this is a legitimate issue single female doctors face in Taiwan

**I don't care for that opinion either. In the US I'd call it sexist bullshit so I'll call it sexist bullshit in Taiwan, too.

Of Leftovers

An interesting comic strip for you to peruse as it unfurls:

Super Leftover Girl!

It's Simplified but readable enough - the basic idea being challenging the idea that "leftover women" (剩女) are to be pitied because they are single at the ripe old age of 30 (so ancient!!!11!!!!1), that they are unfortunate, unwanted, too demanding, too picky, too "modern", and should be ashamed of the fact that they're not yet married. As if marriage is the only important accomplishment in a woman's life. Sigh.

It's becoming less of an issue in Taiwan - yes, there are a lot of awesome single thirtysomething women, but you'd be surprised how many of them want to be single, or are at least at peace with their singleness. For every thirtysomething Taiwanese female friend of mine who wishes she was married, I can name about three who are either OK with being single, are in a relationship that's as strong as a marriage or who have actively sought to stay that way.

I think this is great - it means more women are realizing that while marriage may be fine (I happen to be quite pro-marriage, as it's been pretty great for us), it's not the only good thing a woman can accomplish in life - a husband and children are not deigned by her fate as a woman to be the best thing she'll ever achieve or have, nor are they they only things she should want. And it means more men might wake up and smell the feminism, and start accepting things like equal partnership in housework and child-rearing, and an equal say in family decisions. It's happening slowly, but it is happening. There's been a change I've noticed even in the last five years, and I'll write about it later.

But really, what I feel about "leftover women" is this: if I were one, I'd be proud to be one. I wouldn't feel any less than I do as a married woman. I'd think of it like Thanksgiving. There's the big meal, the turkey, all the pomp and tradition, people doing what's expected of them regardless of what they actually want, and lots of family issues and generational change issues being forced into the forefront over dinner's invariably cacophonous conversation (well, at least in my family). You don't really get to decide what you want - tradition decides it for you. You're basically a trussed-up turkey, especially if you're a woman (at least men, historically, have had more choice in terms of career and travel, even if they haven't had total choice).

But if you're a leftover, that means you're the turkey sandwich. You're absolutely tasty, you're very satisfying, and you're what's chosen because it is what's wanted. You are food that's desired, not food that has been predetermined by a set menu. You are ultimately more personal, more content, and more satiating. There's no friction, no collective social trauma, over a Black Friday turkey-and-cranberry-sauce sandwich. You make what you want and you get what you want. You choose. You are chosen.

And I'd much rather be the turkey sandwich than the trussed-up turkey!

Asian Women Aren't The Problem

This is totally worth a read -

Asian women are not "too tempting" for your husband or boyfriend.

Exactly. Ex-actly.

Are there women in Asia who will try to get into your partner's pants, even knowing he's attached? Sure, but that's true around the world. There are also women in America, Europe, Burkina Faso or wherever who will try to get into your husband's pants knowing he's attached. There are also men who will try to get into yours, knowing you are attached. That has nothing to do with being Asian, either racially or culturally.

Are there Western men who seem like stand-up guys, who go to Asia and suddenly turn into philanderers with a fetish?

Sure...

...but the problem is not the women. It's him.

I don't know where this tendency to blame other women when a man turns out to be a prick came from, but I sure wish it'd stop. I've seen it back home, where race or culture aren't blamed along with the Other Woman, and I've seen it in Asia, where they are. I do realize that plenty of people also lay blame on the cheating man, but so often that's either minimized or, before any cheating has taken place, fear of infidelity is placed on the shoulders of "those women" rather than the truth: either you trust the man you're with, or you don't. And if you don't, then don't go blaming "those women".

Sa jiao sa jiao la

Here's an interesting article - note I did not say I agreed with it, merely that it was an interesting read - on 撒嬌 or the idea of womanly coquettishness. 

I am way too busy to write a typically long post, so here's my immediate reaction:

This runs so counter to the personality pretty much every Taiwanese friend I have that I don't believe it's as common anymore as the article says it is (although I *have* seen it in action among strangers). My female friends don't do this - and my male friends don't like it. While they are interesting and intelligent people, I wouldn't say they're weird, quirky or "the exception rather than the rule" - I think they're one subset of people from a younger generation that is slowly eschewing this sort of gender role...gender role...gender role what? Well, I hesitate to say bullshit but my instincts scream it, because I have zero tolerance for "gender roles". Individual roles, sure, but gender roles can suck it.

There are other things I don't like about the article - no mention at all of foreign women dating Chinese or Taiwanese men and how they might be affected by this cultural issue, the *(non-threatening)* in parentheses to denote women's careers (how condescending!), the somewhat
outdated assumptions that I've found don't ring as true in Taiwan...even if they used to, and even if they still exist to some extent. I also find it funny that the article notes the "strong, manly presence" of the male partner in these relationships as though it is the only thing, or the best thing, the man brings to the table. As if.

If the widespread acceptance of 小三 or "mistresses" in China and Taiwan is anything to go by, sa jiao doesn't even really do what the author of this piece claims it does, which is enable a woman to test and ensure her partner's devotion, love, and putting of her needs above his own. Which, anyway, since when is either partner's needs "above" the other's, and since when is a healthy relationship one in which love needs to be "tested" or "proven"? 

I also think that a lot of Taiwanese women who date Western men generally do it because they don't want to sa jiao...and plenty of Western men pretend to be exasperated by it but secretly love it. They whine, but deep down they don't want a woman who doesn't appear to need them in this way. I don't really care for that sort of attitude, but hey, those guys can like what they like and I can keep my distance (honestly, I don't even want friends who view women in that way), and we're all happy.

As a Western woman, I do have to admit that while I see the cultural aspects of sa jiao and can basically tolerate it from that perspective, I do have biases and one of my biases is anti-sa jiao: I do lose a bit of respect for men who like it (Asian or Western) and for women who engage in it (Asian or Western). I should probably be more openminded, but you know, the first step is admitting your biases.

There is an obvious answer here: my female friends in Taiwan don't engage in sa jiao because I do gravitate toward women who don't act that way, and my male Taiwanese friends wouldn't be my friends if they liked coquettish women (even in friendship) or were with a woman who was jealous of their female friends (even though I am zero threat, in fact, if it were possible to be a negative-number threat I would be).

The article mentions that needing a man and not being too independent are considered "positives" in Chinese culture - although again, I am around so many women in Taiwan who are not needy but are independent, and they've been doing just fine in the dating world - I'd like to see sa jiao die a natural death not because it's considered "wrong" to be coquettish, but because it stops being considered a good thing for a woman to act (or be) needy, clingy or dependent...because it's not a good thing.

If my friends are anything to go by,  already dying.

The Eyes Have It

This photo has been making the Facebook rounds today - I got it from here:

For those not in Taiwan, the look on the left is the fake-lashes-and-heavy-eyeliner look that is popular among many Taiwanese women now. 

Most of the comments in the thread below are along the lines of "too exaggerated!" and "looks scary" - but I doubt they'd say that if both her eyes were done up that way. It's only jarring because just one of them is done. One person said "ah, makeup can give us self-confidence". What I wonder is how we can get self-confidence without having to wear makeup, so that makeup is an expression of confidence rather than a means to finding it.

These before/after, half/half makeover projects are fairly popular in Taiwan (as in the rest of the world) - this one is just more surprising because of the way it's portrayed.

I found myself feeling similarly about this picture as I do about other makeover photos, though, including those from my home country.

My comment in the thread of that photo (basically, the makeuped side looks like a Fembot) is harsher than it perhaps needed to be, but honestly, I do like the makeup-free side more. I do think it's more natural, and therefore, to my eyes, prettier. I don't think the fake eyelash, eye-enlarging contacts and black eyeliner look popular now actually makes girls look better. I do not think it is objectively more beautiful. To my taste, it does look kind of Fembotty - although I like what they did with her eyebrow. By my aesthetics (which I admit are just mine), she went from no makeup (fine!) to needing a makeunder.

But that's my taste - other than the health concerns surrounding those contact lenses, if that's how a girl wants to look, well, OK. Good for her, she can do what she wants, and I too occasionally wear makeup (although I don't wear it to try to alter my appearance so much as I use it as color art for my face, and occasionally cover zits if my acne is really out of control).

On the other hand, wouldn't it be great to live in a society with a beauty standard that did elevate natural beauty, where this woman's right side, with no makeup, would be considered the prettier one because it was the one that looked most like her real face? And if she wanted to do something fun, crazy or different she could do that, too? And wearing makeup for fun didn't help perpetuate beauty standards that pretty, average women couldn't possibly meet without makeup? So that wearing makeup was, you know, a choice rather than a social imperative?

I mean, whether or not any given woman decides to try to look like that (the makeuped side), that is the beauty standard currently making the rounds in Taiwan. That's what's held up as "pretty". That's what women - whether or not they go in for it - are being encouraged to emulate. I'll always be something of an outsider in Taiwan, and I don't mean to judge the local beauty standards too harshly - really, it isn't my decision - but I do feel that as a woman who is also subject to beauty ideals, I have the right to an opinion on this and a right to be bothered by it, and a right to wish that around the world, beauty was set less by makeup and more by nature.

Success and Having Children in Taiwan

Go read this now.

Why Women Still Can't Have It All

This is really a USA-based article, but still worth a read, very thorough and very articulate. A lot of it holds for Taiwan, too, but then I also think a lot of women in Taiwan choosing not to have children are doing so not for work related reasons (most jobs, let's face it, are not really worth the sacrifice, and those include a lot of low-to-mid-level Office Lady positions - although I fully recognize that a job that may not be "worth it" to me might well be very much worth it to another woman, so take my words with a Himalayan salt lamp-sized grain of salt).

I touched on this a bit the last time I wrote about the low birth rate in Taiwan - on how the main reasons are a feeling that they can't afford to have children, that they want to enjoy now-possible freedoms and comforts their parents didn't have, and gender-based expectations of who is going to take on more work raising kids is still a huge issue. It's huge in the USA, too, but, err, huger here. If that's a word. I also mentioned that the working world, if you work for a larger or international company, is actually friendlier to women, with guaranteed maternity leave and a culture where grandparents are more likely to provide free childcare (the same does not hold for smaller companies, where women are routinely kept back because of a fear they'll have kids and stop being useful to the company).

I didn't touch on what this article covers - women at the absolute top and their decisions on choosing to have kids...or not to.

In the course of my daily work I'm exposed to a lot of women at the top of their careers. CFOs, heads of departments, Taiwan CEOs, legal counsel, physicians and researchers, general managers. While I'd say it's 50-50 regarding whether those women have children, it's also far more likely that you'll find unmarried women and married women without children in those positions.

I'd say that of these - speaking only from my experience - about half don't have children, and of those about a quarter are unmarried. The unmarried women at the top that I know of seem to have no desire to tie the knot (good for them - marriage is not the be-all and end-all of a woman's life or the most important of her accomplishments): I can't come up with any examples of very successful Taiwanese women who are unmarried but have a desire to be. Far more common is marrying and not having children. One woman, who was at the top but has recently resigned from a very high-level job in finance (it even made the United Daily News), is unmarried with a child. Not notable in and of itself, but worth noting in a reflection on high-ranking women in Taiwan and the family decisions they make, especially as her departure was big enough to be reported on (I've met her - she is a very decisive woman).

The striking thing is that you'd expect, if you were so minded, to hear these women say "I would have liked to have had children, but I put my career first", or "I had always intended to have children, but then when I was finally ready it was too late" (something you do hear in the USA - at least in online comments: women who had always thought they'd have kids and then woke up one day and realized they'd never actually done so and it was either too late or almost to that point).

But they don't - most of them will very matter-of-factly tell you, if they are so inclined to tell you anything, that they had never really wanted children, or had decided early on not to have them.

I can't speak for the husbands of these high-powered women I know who do have children; I don't know them. I've been told that they're not that different from the sort of (stereo)typical "allows gendered expectations of child-rearing to continue" man you'd expect, but I don't have that on first-hand knowledge.

That's something - and seems to me to be a strong difference in attitude. A lot less ambivalence, and a lot more decisiveness. I guess if you live in a society where it's more expected that you'll have children (and a son at that! Gah!), you are more likely to be more decisive if you decide not to have them. This may have influenced a decisiveness in my own tone regarding not having children - had I stayed in the USA I might have continued to be a bit more ambivalent, because I would have had the social room to do so.

This leads me to believe that women in Taiwan who reach the top of their fields who don't have children are choosing not to not because being at the top of your field requires so much sacrifice that they forgo this kind of family life, but because they're the sorts of women who wouldn't have wanted children regardless. It's just who they are. I can relate to that - I don't want children, but it's not because of my career. I could realistically have both. It's just who I am (I might write more about that in a future post, or not).

In that way, they may be more like Peggy on Mad Men (bear with me - I've barely seen the show - please do correct me if I'm wrong and Peggy's wanted children all along) than the all-too-common-on-Internet-comment-threads American women who wanted children but wanted a career more, or who had intended to had children but ran out of time while chasing a career. My experience has shown that Taiwanese office culture is not nearly as much like America in the '60s (ie, Mad Men) as a lot of people assume it is, but still, this says something. It says something about the pressures and expectations women face in Taiwan and, as a result, who gets to the top and who doesn't.

In the end, this is true for women in Taiwan, the USA and elsewhere:

We currently live in a world where men make more money for equal work. This means that it's all too common that the parent who stays home or takes a hit to their career is the wife - because, hey, you've gotta earn a good wage for the family.

We also live in a world where, in order to get to the top (at least in the corporate world), you have to basically sacrifice yourself to your company. This is true everywhere. In Taiwan, I feel that many people have to do that anyway, even if they don't get to the top - in the USA you have more of a choice to work reasonable hours (but if you want to be "successful" in the typically expected sense, you'd better make the sacrifice). This means that the parent or parents who take that path will be giving up something - you can't have a real commitment to family and work those hours.

The difference? Women might be more likely to cut back as a result. It's not true that the working men of yore could have a career and a family - he could, but unless he was truly 9-to-5, he probably didn't get to spend as much time with that family as he would have liked. They couldn't have it then, and they certainly can't have it now, with working hours what they are.

So "making it" in the traditional sense, where you have to give up time with your family, isn't going to work if we want a truly equal world.

And we can't change things until we admit that and create a working culture where you can succeed and still have enough control over your schedule to spend real time with your family, and get rid of gender-based expectations of who will do the brunt of the child-rearing and who will take the hit to their career to make that happen.

Then, we need to create a world where a woman who wants children can discuss how it will work with her husband without the lingering expectation that she'll make the sacrifices. She'll be able to enter that discussion knowing that they'll work something out together and he's just as likely to take the hit as she is, and that the hit, importantly, won't be that bad, or that career-damaging.

Then, and only then, will we have equality, or something like it.

Computer Xiaojie CTRL+ALT+DELETE

Worth reading not just for general interest, but for the super classy tweet from ASUS at Computex 2012.


As Jezebel says...stay classy, ASUS.


So for every Cher Wang (HTC's chairperson, although it's not like she built an empire from nothing) we have some of these wankers.


The link to the original tweet no longer works - the tweet, as best I can determine, was removed. Still, the underlying thought process that led someone to believe it was an acceptable thing to say publicly makes me sad, and proves how sexist the industry really is. Most industries, in fact.


I mean, I do have the occasional uncomfortable laugh at the whole "Computer Xiaojie" thing that goes on at Computex and similar expos, but deep down I do wish it would stop. Not that I think it's going to - it's widely gossiped that Computex's revenues are pushed up a fair amount by all the attendees who come to gawk at the Computer Xiaojies and might only incidentally actually buy something, and it's notoriously hard to get rid of this kind of objectification. If you even say you'd like it to end, you get labeled a screaming sexless harridan when really, you'd like to see a world where women were worth more than their bodies, and women were seen as potential engineers, not potential sex objects that can push the goods (their own or whatever they're modeling for). Oh, perish the thought!


I'd like to see a world where it's more attractive to a woman to sign up for programming class than a stunt as a Computer Xiaojie (because, yes, these women do sign up for the gig and nobody's forcing them), because she values her brain more than her sexuality - because she lives in a society that does the same. Even if she is gorgeous.


There's an interesting comment-and-response about this on the article linked to above:

I know this is a woman's blog, but are you really complaining about booth babes? It's not like they were forced to do it. Haven't we always sexualized the opposite gender to sell things? It's not like the entertainment and clothing industry never does that with men.

promoted by ad infinitum

And the response:

A) Men's bodies are not, nor have they ever been, commodified anywhere the same degree women's are. That's a ridiculous assertion that doesn't pass the sniff test.

B) The use of booth babes is sexist and othering to women in tech (emphasis mine), which is the kind of thing Jezebel talks about. I realize that since that has no effect on you, it's very hard for you to see how it could matter to anyone, but that's actually why blogs like Jezebel are important--there aren't a lot of places, online or off, where problems that primarily or purely affect women are taken seriously. In most places, they're just mocked and discounted exactly as you did here. If you'd prefer to see women's issues mocked and discounted, you have almost the entire internet for that. Bitching because you choose to hang out at one of the few sites where that doesn't automatically happen is some seriously childish bullshit.

One of my students as at Computex right now, staffing his company's exhibition booth. I wanted to Facebook back "haha, hope you're enjoying the xiaojies" before thinking "wait, no, it seems innocent and all in good fun but actually that's totally buying into the patriarchy, oh noes". So I said nothing.


And that's just it - I'm not anti-enjoyment of looks. I'm not against men admiring beautiful women. Heck, I admire attractive men. It's more that this sort of commodification of cute sends a message to the men in the industry: that women are objects, that their main asset is looks, and therefore that they aren't to be taken seriously as colleagues and innovators. Then, less women get hired because women aren't encouraged to be the innovators, and the men spend less time around successful women (while still spending time around the Computer Xiaojies), and that's the view of women that they get, and the cycle repeats.

I have the same issue with entertaining for business by going out to special service KTV, hostess bars or places where women wear skimpy clothes (or no clothes) or are "for hire" - it creates an environment where that's how the men there see all women, and therefore it's harder to take female colleagues seriously - and harder for female colleagues to get ahead because they can't entertain clients in the same way.


That's what I have a problem with - not with the admiration of good looks or women using them to some degree. If I had good looks I'd use 'em too. I don't - I have brains, so I use those - but even if I were gorgeous I wouldn't be a Computer Xiaojie.


Working in the science park as often as I do, I can attest to the huge gender imbalance in the tech industry here - there are women who work in the park, but they tend to be office girls and HR, not techies (although those do exist). In the many classes I've taught at major companies there and in the Hukou Industrial Park, as well as Wugu, Huaya, Tainan (don't recall the official name of that one) and Tucheng parks, I can say that most of them are 100% male, and the few that have women have one woman out of 4, 6, 10, 12 or 16 students. In just one class do I notably have two women. That's remarkable enough that I took notice.


The upside is that the women I've taught, as few as they are, have all been engineers of some stripe. The downside is not only that there are so few of them, but that when I do take on these classes, the HR reps and office workers I deal with in the initial stages are usually women, working long hours for less pay (with far less technical expertise, though). Those women aren't 'worth' the salaries that the engineers earn, which one could argue is fair (what's not fair is pushing women into these lower-value careers - and by "lower value" I mean "not as valued by society"). They don't generally get to take English classes; it's not seen as a priority (or they're expected to already speak English well, but it's clearly not seen as important enough a skill to pay them better for it).


So, what would I like to see? A world that values women in tech as more than HR support and Computer Xiaojies, and women who value themselves enough to both shoot for the moon and demand credit, and a world where my classes full of engineers have a roughly equal ratio of men and women, because the women don't feel "othered" by the whole industry. Both in the USA and here in Taiwan.


Or maybe this issue is just really close to my heart right now because I have a meeting later to day about how I'm not getting as many of the "best" seminars (the 16-hour presentation ones) as I really should, as a senior instructor and - not to brag, but it's true - one of the best instructors. I have noticed that I helped train some of the men who do get these seminars, and that there are no women doing them. I intend to say that I can't help but wonder why this is happening when they know perfectly well I am capable - and in some respects better - than the men who are getting these gigs (not going straight for the "it's sexism" jugular, heavily implying is enough), that women who take these seminars are being shortchanged by never seeing female role models in presenting, and that with permanent residency coming up soon, they can do what they want and stay on course if they like, but I have noticed, I'm not stupid, and this will be one of the major factors that will influence my decision on where my best opportunities lie. Again, I don't need to say "stop the bullshit or your most senior instructor who consistently gets the best feedback and the highest renewal volume is going to quit". It merely needs to be implied.


So, anyway, that's my dirty lens. Down with the patriarchy.

Oh Jesus

I don't even think I need to expand on this. WTF

"The New Good Woman", according to the government of the ROC

Breadwinning The Future

A few months ago I taught a unit to a group of students, all of whom happened to be female. The unit focused on idioms dealing with careers, work and ambition: things like “bring home the bacon”, “burn the candle at both ends”, “hit the glass ceiling” and “be a breadwinner”.

I did a survey in that class – eight idioms in total, one question per idiom that a student had to ask all of her classmates. One of these questions was “Is it OK for a wife to be the primary breadwinner?”

I was really surprised by the results – 4 in favor and 4 against. The “against” responders later clarified that they meant that they personally did not want to be breadwinners, but that it would be fine with them if another woman was one. A personal choice, not a view on what society should be. Those four women all expanded on their ideas, with responses along the lines of “I feel it’s not fulfilling to have to work hard and be responsible for earning most of the money” to “I like to feel that my husband can take care of me” to “honestly speaking, I don’t like my job and when I get married I hope I can quit” to “most Taiwanese men can’t accept a wife who makes more than he does, so it is easier if I don’t”.

OK, fair enough in that these are personal choices, and earning the bulk of the family income doesn’t have to be a life goal, nor is it necessarily fulfilling, so I can respect that as a choice. The final answer, though, that it’s “just easier” because “Taiwanese men can’t accept a wife who is a breadwinner” really irked me. Yet another example women giving in to pander to the egos of men, because it’s easier than standing up, fighting back, and telling a guy like that to **** off, and slowly, one by one, pushing the culture in a more progressive direction. It sucks when you feel you’re the only one doing it, but a culmination of women who do is the only way to change things.

Of course, in class I have to be careful not to ever show even the appearance of passing judgment on a student’s opinion, so my response was more measured.

I was planning to do the same unit in another class, and the other day that finally happened. Interestingly, this time, in a class of 4 women and 4 men, all 8 (plus me, for a total of 9) said it was fine for a wife to be a breadwinner.

Hooray! I thought! Progress! Taiwan can haz it!

People’s elaboration was more along the lines of “well why wouldn’t that be OK? Of course it’s OK”.

Again, yay, progress!

Then one of the female students said “I wonder if these 4 guys would be OK if their wives earned more.”

And, sadly, all four said something along the lines of “No way!” “No, I’m not comfortable with that!” or “I’m not a – how do you say – 小白臉! 我不吃軟飯！”

That translates literally into “I’m not a little white face”, but it’s more like “I’m not a little b****!”, although perhaps slightly less profane. The second phrase translates into “I don’t eat soft rice”, which is idiomatic.

Face, meet palm. Progress? Progress? Where did you go, O Progress? But not in class. Inwardly, I was all HULK ANGRY! HULK SMASH! but I had to present a professional face. 

All I could do was point out the logic problem: “so it’s OK for other women to be breadwinners, but not for your wives?”

“Yes, I know, it is wrong, but we are old guys!” one said. “I think the young generation won’t have this opinion.”

Well, at least he knows it’s wrong. It’s about as sexist as “I don’t mind gay people but my son better not be gay” (also a common refrain in Taiwan) is homophobic. That is, very. 

This isn’t exactly news in Taiwan, but it’s worth noting even as I blog about all the awesome, successful women I work with: general managers, regional CEOs, executives, vice presidents. I earn good money, but these women could trample me salary-wise. It’s worth noting again even as we move on from the aftermath of an election that came very close to giving Taiwan its first female president.

As usual, the problem isn’t that women aren’t capable, willing or ambitious. It isn’t the law holding them back – although the laws are not perfect. The system is stacked against them, still, but not nearly as much as in other Asian countries.

The problem, as it always seems to, boils down to men with idiotic, outdated, sexist and egotistical attitudes. Not all men, obviously, but enough that this is really the main issue (as it is in the USA, where other than our reproductive rights and access being eroded frighteningly quickly, legally we’ve reached a place better than previously achieved in history – and yet those attitudes linger on).

There are Taiwanese women who will agree with those men – the first example I gave had a few, but even they will be quick to note that theirs is a personal choice and not an edict for society. You won’t meet many Taiwanese women who will say that all women should earn less than their husbands, or that it’s a man’s right, pride and face to be a breadwinner. You will, however, meet men in Taiwan who will say that – even though the men in my second example did technically word their opinions as a personal choice, not a social ideal (in that sense it wasn’t a very good example).

But, that aside, you will hear men and women alike say that Taiwanese men generally prefer to out-earn their wives. Hell, you can meet American men who would say something similar.

This is what really needs to change – men’s attitudes generally toward breadwinning wives. I have no issue if a traditionally-minded man and a similarly traditional woman get together and do their traditional thing, but I do have an issue with this attitude as a social construct, and I’d like to, overall, see a steep decline in the number of people who adhere to it – consciously or not. I’d like to see high wage-earning women have more romantic options and not feel that their salaries pose an obstacle when it comes to finding a partner (if a partner is what they want). I’d like them to know, confidently, that there are men out there – enough men - who won’t be scared off by the idea of them being breadwinners.

This may be one of the reasons why so few foreign women seem to date Taiwanese men (although, generally, I’m seeing more dating in that direction which I think is great). There are progressive ones out there, but a lot of them are still pretty traditional. I wouldn’t date a guy who felt he had to make more than me, simply because he was the Big Manly Man, regardless of how our salaries actually matched up. It’s an issue of principle.

And I do feel that this change needs to come from the men: their desire to always be breadwinners is based on face, not reality or sensibility – and I’m sorry but this is just something that needs to stop being a “face” issue. I know, it’s rich of me to say that, when I don’t have a Taiwanese cultural background, but c’mon. Taiwanese culture has managed to make having a female boss not such a big issue of face. They managed to make having a working wife at all to be not an issue of face. Taiwan is a fairly progressive country when compared to the rest of Asia – I see no reason why this can’t be changed with time and perseverance as well.

Although, as usual, it’ll be women doing all the cultural heavy lifting and then the men who finally need to make the change in their attitudes. Ah, history. Don’t you love it when it repeats?

I’ll end with an anecdote I’m sure I’ve told before on this blog. Almost a year ago, just before we left for Turkey, we had dinner with some local friends of mine. My husband was facing visa issues – basically, our company was being a giant ass – and it had all gotten really bad just that day. Because we’re friends, we shared the Our Company is a Giant Ass and is Screwing With My Husband’s Visa story. At one point I said, “honey, if it’s that bad, and you really feel you need to do it for your own dignity, quit. Just quit. I make enough to support us. Do what you need to do and we’ll make it work.”

The guy friend looked shocked but said nothing. Later, he told me that it was really surprising to hear that – a lot of women would not just tell their husbands it was OK to quit and she’d support them in the meantime. I was worried he thought I was some sort of scary feminist ogre (not because I’d be ashamed to be that, but because I’d be disappointed in a friend who thought that), but no. He thought it was awesome, and that I was a “woman with guts”. Taiwan is a great country with fantastic people, but let’s be honest – you won’t get too many Taiwanese men thinking that.

This is what I hope for. This is what I want to see more of. It can be done.