Hurt. Heard. Herd.
It began with my routine visit to Mrbrown's blog. I was looking forward to another tongue-in-cheek blog on the IRs (integrated resorts). But before I could get down to reading his latest column, I found his latest posting - "Help Steve find more mature blogs than this one."The part-time Universally lecherer, and essentially the entire Sg blogosphere audience, had just been conveniently labelled "infantile" by Mr Steven McDermott.
Mr Steven McDermott also pointed to xiaxue's blog as a sign of the apocalypse. Ok, well, he didn't. He did however, name-drop it beside mrbrown's blog as he lamented the lack of intellectual musings and discourse in the Sg blogosphere.
Angered by this ignoRANT Singabloodypore blogger, I decided to show him the way to BOX REPUBLIC, where the Hurt Herd can be Heard.
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Comment No. 60, on "Singabloodypore: The Infantile Blogosphere"
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So along came a man, with his head in a small box.
He brought with him, a box labelled "Infantilism." It was a very small box...smaller than the box around his head.
There are bigger, more beautiful boxes here on this beautiful island! But I guess when your head is locked inside a small box, you hold the tail of an elephant, and say, "SNAKE!!" Infantile? How about looking at Xiaxue's blog through the prisms and precepts of Third Wave Feminism before sticking on that label?
The man with his head in a small box, was clearly lost. I wasn't sure where he was going, but I knew of a place where he could find many boxes ---- "Box Republic."
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After giving Steven directions to Box Republic, I decided to return to my blog, and validate my comments on why it is wrong to label xiaxue's blog "infantile."
To those of you who need big labels (like Steven....), just so you can understand stuff, you can say xiaxue is in many ways, a "Lipstick Third Waver."
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To the “Lipstick Third Wavers”, the potency of their sexuality and femininity was to be embraced. Instead of running away from typecasts by the mainstream media phallus, lipstick feminists wielded stereotyped female imagery as tools of power.
Second Wavers had to propel the feminist movement in a very different social and cultural climate back in the 1960s. They shunned the power of sexuality because they had to fight out of the box that circumscribed them as sex objects. To be taken seriously in their war on social and economic injustices, Second Wavers burnt their bras instead of adorning them with pride.
Decades later however, “Lipstick Third Wavers” are making bras a part of their arsenal. To them, “Slut” is merely “a girl with libido” and it is time to reclaim similar words of hostilities used against women and eradicate their stigmas.
Third Wave feminists from the “lipstick school of thought” celebrated their sexual liberation, bras and mini-skirts with vigor. They rejected the Second Wavers' trivialization of their sexy dresses and other “girlie” items. They did not define their appearances narrowly and simplistically as projections of male sexual objectification.
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What I'm trying to say, in a laboured, "intellectual" way, is that Xiaxue's blog, the media attention she has garnered from it, and the social influence she wields as a result, combine to showcase "lipstick power" success.
Xiaxue and her blog can stay as pink and pretty as she wants and it would be endorsed by Third Wave Feminism.
Just because she doesn't quote highhorse academic sources , or spew forth lengthy Westerncentric-chomsky-dodosky rhetoric, it doesn't mean she's "infantile."
It simply implies that SHE IS LESS NERDY THAN YOU (STEVEN MCDERMOTT) AND ME (Meekia).
Truth is, the way xiaxue looked upon the male models from the fashion shows she attended at Sg Fashion Week as sex objects, and blogged about them as such, serves as an example of how her direct, personal writing reverses the conceptions of gender stereotypes more efficiently than a 300-page thick feminist publication.
Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, two self-proclaimed advocates of the Third Wave (who co-wrote “Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future"), identified with the “lipstick feminists" and celebrated what they termed “girlie culture.”
Whether Xiaxue identifies herself as a "lipstick feminist," I don't know, and it doesn't matter.
But what I do know is that she certainly revels in the celebration of "girlie culture." And one other culture she celebrates, like me, and mrbrown, and many other Singaporean bloggers, is "local Singaporean culture." We use our "lahs," "lohs" and "gahmen" and many other unique Singlish misspellings with verve and relish. Many of us do not give a hoot about foreign readers' inability to culturally decode our blogs' content. But there are some of us, who are considerate/delusional/free enough to add a link to the Coxford Singlish Dicktionary.
Even with references however, the process of decoding a culture and its artefacts takes time. So does gathering empirical data, and coming up with intelligent conclusions.
huh?? Simi?? Like that your blog end liao ah! You haben say why MY BLOG is NOT INFANTILE LEH! WA LAU!!
aiya, SHADDUP LAH!! You not as cute as me mah! Plus, you are UNIVERSALLY LECHERER HOR, always invited to speak to
WHAT DODO-sky quote?? What talking you....? oohhh, you mean DOSTOYEVSKY.
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Shower him with all earthly blessings, plunge him so deep into happiness that nothing is visible but the bubbles rising to the surface of his happiness, as if it were water; give him such economic prosperity that he will have nothing left to do but sleep, eat gingerbread, and worry about the continuance of world history.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground
--------------------------------------Technorati Tags: Singapore, Blogosphere
posted by audaciousjoy @ 3:34 AM
4 Comments:
IS that actually a link to Chomsky, as in the Noam Chomsky.
Yups. That's an actual link to the actual N.Chomsky blog. Or do I need new contact lenses....is that Char Siewsky?
Everything on this earth can be linked back to theories and philosphies...even a piece of waste can be a treasure in the eyes of avant garde artists...
it is all about standards and perceptions...
Meat and Poison...
To vegetarians, meat IS poison.
Waste or taste...
Let's all seek grace.
My blog post "Hurt. Herd. Heard." was a theory-veiled emotional response to McDermott's opinions, no doubt about it.
Speaking of standards and perceptions,
McDermott needs to be held to high standards because of his academic background.
It is disappointing to see him distribute labels and formulate a bias when by his own admission, he had not gathered sufficient empirical data.
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