Open thread closed

With the possibility of being completely inundated with complaints, diatribe, and vitriol, I declare the Dummy Mummy open thread closed, until I return to the subject with a more in depth analysis of the subject.
I completely understand that parents can be particularly sensitive about their role and their children, and that having a childless critic [...]

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Who has the right to ‘Allah’?

Good news just in. The Herald is now allowed to use ‘Allah’ in its Malay-language publication. Well, as long as the newspaper makes it clear that its material is not for Muslims, The Star reports. Hhmm. Fair enough.
There was a brouhaha some months ago when “The [Malaysian] government argued that Allah is an Islamic word [...]

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Album review: Stereotomy by The Alan Parsons Project

My not so glowing review of The Alan Parsons Project’s album, Stereotomy is now up on Feminist Review:

“Where’s the walrus?” was the question posed by an old friend of band members Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson about the lack of Beatles-esque verve in the band’s previous albums, Ammonia Avenue and Vulture Culture. The question later [...]

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Books from my pre-feminist days

The past is a foreign country: people read different things there.
While currently surrounded by books of a feminist nature, I would revisit from time to time my old books from salad days, and think about how much (or little) I’ve matured in my reading taste. As a teenager approaching early adulthood, I had an affinity [...]

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Confronting Malay privilege

It is true that whenever I write about the state of feminism in Malaysia, I write from a point of view of a privileged Malay whose ethnicity is a dividing force in Malaysia. While I write about the challenges of Muslim women with a global view in mind, my own Malayness oppresses every one else [...]

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Notes on the Anti-capitalist Feminist Event, London, Valentine’s Day 2009

Spending the day talking about Bangladeshi garment worker’s working conditions and sex-trafficking may not be everybody’s idea of celebrating Valentine’s Day. But there I was, rather than getting loved-up by candlelight with Whitney Houston bursting her lungs in the background, I was brushing shoulders with left-wing trade unionists, sex workers’ rights activists, and a rainbow [...]

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Tips on smashing conformity

The following is excerpted from an article by Malaysian academic, activist, and feminist, Rohana Ariffin. (Translation by Cycads):
Bagaimana untuk membebaskan diri daripada menjadi “pak turut” atau “mak turut”? Bagi saya ada dua cara.
Satu, menerapkan sikap ingin tahu terhadap segala ideologi, isu dan masalah masyarakat. Bukan menerima sahaja bulat-bulat pandangan orang lain tetapi mengkaji dengan [...]

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Foreign bodies as sexual playgrounds

This post was featured in the first Asian Women Blog Carnival at ciderpress’s blog.

So there was this American guy, Jake, who sat with Gareth and me at lunch last Saturday and was telling us how much he wanted to go to Malaysia because it’s apparently a great place to meet women, and claimed that the [...]

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Weekend round-up of favourite reads 7/2

It’s been a whirlwind of a week: got stranded in Amsterdam on account of deadly snow, got an article rejected by a magazine (oh, the pain!), baked cupcakes on an industrial scale for charity, and received more support for my film and sexuality discussion project.
But it has also been a really good week for online [...]

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Malaysian mail-order brides: what fairy tale?

Excerpted from The New Straits Times:
Once upon a time, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella had to battle witches and overcome spells to find Prince Charming. Now, young women are discovering that the road leading to “happily-ever-after” is wider, shorter and much less of an obstacle course.
In recent years, a large number of the fairer [...]

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