Are we in an age of Post-Feminism? Hardly!

The twenty-first century seems to have certified the death of all kinds of –isms. Last time I checked, we are now post-feminism, meaning moving towards a critical study in not just the female sex, but also other sexes and genders. I am not here to disagree with the validity of critical studies of sexuality as a discipline: I would fight and yell until I am out of breath to assert it as a legitimate field of study (theory) and action (practice). On the other hand, one ought to not yet certify the death of feminism: as much as some of us might not like it, we still need feminism, whatever that might entail.

And here we do not need to talk about all the fine details as to what “feminism” really is. I would like to take this idea as generally as possible: it is to assert the e-quality of females in our society that is saturated with the male gaze; it is to treat all sexes and genders with the same sense of respect. That, to me, is essentially what feminism is: let us not (yet) worry about the fine details, for it hardly makes a difference to the public outside of the academy. You see, disrespect for females within our culture is so prevalent that I don’t even think arguing within the different schools of feminism would help to turn the situation around.

I am inspired to write this brief article after reading a piece of news from Mingpao (the local Chinese newspaper). In Hong Kong, a certain lecturer spoke at a talk in front of 2000 high school students of tips to take the Hong Kong secondary school public examination. Among the many tips and clarifications that this lecturer gives, some of his examples are outrageously sexist. Here is an example (in translation):

“I once received from a female student an essay. Her essay is very beautifully written. She writes that the reason she is late for school is because she was pulled to a back lane and was raped; she then writes about how her clothes were ripped apart, showing her snow-white…[this is a blank to be filled in by the audience] But students should not write like that.”

Other examples include explaining a Chinese character in terms of how to pick up girls and one that puns on “balls”, which, in Cantonese, doubtlessly conjures up the imagine of boobs. I don’t know about you, but I was entirely disturbed by these examples. But apparently, according to at least one student, the lecturer “was not being over the line, since his expressions are closer to that of teenagers’; at least his lecturers are not as boring as our school teachers’.

What does this tell us about Hong Kong’s society? Feminism still has some work to do in order to make up for the lack of respect that mainstream seems to have in general for the other sex. For one thing, I don’t think it is funny to pun on picking up girls, as if picking up girls is just a joke. I don’t think that rape is funny either. Moreover, what is up with the boobs? I don’t think conjuring up the image of groping something is funny either. How can anyone with any sense of justice, decency and respect even conceive any of these lines as “not being over the line”?

But the fault is not in the student’s acceptance; nor is it really in the lecturer’s choice of words. The fault is on the system, on the society, of continuing to allow these things to happen, and for continuing to think the same, old, disrespectful ways about women.

And don’t think that this is strictly a Hong Kong problem. Canada is not really doing any better. All you have to do is look around you: at bus and TV advertisements, in the various kinds of mass media being mass produced and mass consumed. Outside the academy, I am not entire sure how far we have come to in terms of respecting females: the male gaze has always been there, and it is still there. If we do not do anything about it, it will continue on to be there.

The Morning Bus Ride: A Reflective Piece

Walking from my home to the bus stop for the morning 480 bus takes about 10 minutes. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning I would walk along Francis Road towards No. 3 Road, and every morning I would encounter the same middle-age Caucasian lady and her dog. I must confess I can never quite understand why anyone would walk their dog in the freezing cold of a January morning; perhaps it is for the morning freshness of a dream or quiet solitude of a still half-slumbering city.

At the bus stop. The usual people standing at their usual waiting spots. There is a strangeness in this kind of regularity: everyone seems to know their spot, and everyone is unwilling to move away from their spot, not as if they each own a particular location, but as if they are afraid to break the inaudible purse of morning life. The regularity, I suppose, is almost ritual: we are all priests performing the same deed hoping for the same result – the punctual arrival of the bus. And as I stand facing the on coming traffic, I search for those dim lights that gradually shine though my cloud of breathe: 480 UBC. A 98 B-line passes by, carrying those who are off to work. I look at my watch and find that it is 7:31. The bus should be within sight in the next 30 seconds. Others begin to shuffle their feet, take out their U-passes, turn on their ipods.

The bus opens the door and reveals a tired bus driver. Mechanically he mutters “good morning”, which nobody hears anyway. I slip my U-pass into the machine, making that awful “dud” sound, and make my way to the back to the bus. Eyes scan around, hoping to find a familiar face, but also to find that familiar place: an empty space. By the time the bus gets to my stop, the bus usually is almost full. Often there is one odd seat beside two napping students, and I go and join the slumbering party, each with their own stream of broken thoughts and dreams. The bus echoes nothing but the sound of the engine: human chatter is minimal, although the occasional conversation does flourish in the midst of a general fatigue: for those who can only pretend to sleep, eavesdropping is the next best activity on the bus. In the morning, topics of conversations can vary: from the weather and the exam, to the gossip and the news. The most interesting conversation I’ve heard is about elephants and the zoo; the most profound, the nature of death in our post-modern world; the most stupid, my own internal dialogue about what makes stupidity stupid (thank goodness no one can eavesdrop into that).

I pass by the same faces and the same streets every morning, yet upon recollection I do not believe I can recall any one of them (obviously except those whom I have already met before and are my friends). Yet if I am a brave sort of person, I would like to meet every one of them and get to know who they are, not just their names, ages and majors, but also what is their kind of pies, what they think of yoga and yogurt, or what would they do if they found out that a spider is crawling down their pants. Or these places along the route, the Starbucks and Macdonald’s, as well as that market on 41st in Kerisdale, or the bookstore at Dunbar: who is in there when the bus passes by, and what are they doing (that is, if the store is even opened!)? Sometimes, when miraculously I feel awake, I look around and see the occasional keener reading his economics textbook or reviewing her biology notes. If they are beside me, I like turn and look at their notes, to see the different kinds of handwritings: chicken scratches, artistic (which, according to my friend, are really the same thing), Victorian, or (rather dully) typed. Yet I have to say, by the end of the ride, half of the bus is asleep; the other half, falling asleep, and these curiosities fly away like the fleeting dream.

I think I have ridden the bus for many times that with my eyes closed I can predict the exact location of the bus. With the 480, northbound, starting from where I usually get onto the bus, there are one full right turn, 2 half right turns, 2 circular right turns and 3 full left turns; the engine sounds different right when it reaches the junction of 41st and Marine Drive. When people begin to rub clear of the window of the dew, I know the bus has made its second last left turn (onto Westbrook Mall), and that it has arrived proper on UBC land. And of course, before the arrival at the final station, there is always one or two people who cannot get off the bus and yells “back-door please!”. Whether they get off or not, that depends on the mood of the bus driver.

Nearing the last stop. Everyone slowly wakes up, packs their bags and wrap up the cords for their ipods. There is generally nothing to look at, so one looks at the advertisements. Here’s one with a girl and her legs – shoes; there’s one with a tree – colleges. Often times I see the fill in the blanks one for safe sex; and more touching is the one with the ragged doll – awareness of street-workers. Remember that one where a cell-phone shape is cut out of a girl’s chest, and you can see her cleavage? That one is no longer there, near the emergency exit on the roof at the back of the bus. I miss that ad: I wonder if her boobs are real.

But everyone else who is left will get out at the last stop. We have come together for a brief hour, and then we are each off doing our own things. Though we never speak to each other, or even dared to meet each other eye-to-eye, I must say, we are, however odd this seems, a kind of and a kind community.