Every Malaysian is racist. Race is not a dirty language. Most Malaysians puzzle over the use of words like "ethnicity" or "origin" instead of the much richer and loaded language of race. Before any other form of self-identity, race comes first. then gender, or class, or sexuality, or brand affiliation, or anything else that needs to be named. Race as a marker is stitched so firmly into our psyche, our souls, our knowledge of the the self and our place in the universe, it's instinctive.

I learnt that I was one out of three chinese in my class when i was seven. Before that, I learnt that pig is dirty, just like Indians, except in a different way. I knew that there are differences in our way of life and theirs - theirs being a category that can always be interchanged as the familiar other. Racist jokes about politicians, nasi lemak, roti canai and chee cheong fun abound; lazy malays, money-faced chinese, stupid indians. And amidst the punch lines that carve our alienation from each other is the shadow of violence burning through the numbers, "May 13th 1969". Like the holy trinity, Malaysians are neatly cut up into a magical three that makes up the corners of a pyramid. With every other identity - Serani, Bengali, Orang Asli, Kadazan, Ang Mo, Indon and more - thrown into the darkness of corners, intermittently visible with a rare shift of light.

This morning, I chanced upon an abandoned Berita Harian at the next table during breakfast. Skimming through the headlines of Najib supporting Pak Lah and Hishamuddin abdicating his Pemuda UMNO leadership position, an advertisement caught my eye. Placed neatly across the bottom part of the front page, it enticed readers with a 70% discount on something. It took me awhile to figure out what the advert was about. Splashed in bold letters under the name of the company are the words, "100% dimiliki oleh bumiputera". Initially, I thought it was a property development project. The meta keywords "milik" and "bumiputera" immediately linked to make a cohesive picture of "satu lagi project bermutu oleh NEP".  Reading more closely, I realised that it was actually a sale of fabrics and cloth by a shop in Jalan Masjid India.

So why was it necessary to speak so directly to its potential market that their money will solely profit only bumiputeras? Berita Harian is a Malay-language newspaper. Their readership consists mainly of 20s to 40s, middle income Malays: 93% in 2007. We are freaking out silently at the moment. The recent elections results have thrown our pyramid into slight disarray. We're a little unsure what the masses want - as informed to us through a select and concentrated number of individuals easily identified through icons and colours.

Tony Pua, my crisp and newly elected Member of Parliament, scoffed at MCA when they tried to assure voters post their recent elections "defeat" that they will continue to protect Chinese rights. He said, "They just don't get it". DAP is all about "Malaysians first", the pyramid scheme just doesn't hold political resonance anymore. But then a few days later he sputtered at Pak Lah's statement about Chinese interests being in jeopardy if inadequate (race-based, read Chinese = MCA) representation is made in the Parliamentary Cabinet. So who is not getting what?

I think Malaysians are truly quite fed-up of being told that we can only have particular rights if we have particular kinds of race. The magic May 13th number is a little too far in time to properly evoke palpable terror. The terror of not being told the truth, of being somehow cheated of chances, of having narrow corridors to carefully sail speech bubbles - they are a lot more real somehow.

And it's also thanks to the development discourse that have been regurgitated to visceral levels to justify all kinds of wayang. Somehow, earning a living has become our primary inalienable equal right. Getting information and communicating it, scaffolded by our accidental and ignorant bliss of an unfettered internet access - also fueled by the language of economics - have become our collective seeds of desire. Race has become an irritating fence that we just want to dismantle.

We have all been struggling against our automatic racism. But we can't seem to let it go. Because it simply matters. It is the history and the land upon which we are now building our dreams of hope, freedom, justice, equality, etc. etc. etc. Before articulating any form of change, before cartographing our future, the raw materials we have for transformation is the bone black of our racist, nationalised beings.

So what should we do? What can someone like Tony Pua do? When he is also left with the Chinese-interest legacy of DAP. Now together with PAS and PKR attempting to shed their skins and slither anew from the ashes as Pakatan Rakyat, attempting to assuage real fears and tensions of racist Malaysians to similarly let go of this lucrative pyramid and form something new. Whichever angle you take, it still looks like a triangle albeit with a different constitution. Perhaps Hindraf will get fed up that cries of "Makkal Sakthi!" being drowned by cries of "Reformasi!" or "Allah huakhbar!" and form a separate party. Then we could have a trapezoid. Or perhaps in time, PSM will finally get registered and we could have a pentagon.

I want a multi-headed hydra or a border-ignorant paramecium. The sad fact is, we are constructed by identity-politics. We are raced, we are gendered, we are genitalised, we are monetised, we are limbed, limed and slimed with categories and cardboard boxes. We're just at this moment in time, trapped in the room of race, prying the door handle into the room of class or perhaps gender. Obfuscating our racism by substituting Indian/Malay/Chinese-rights with rights of poor people, rights of women, rights of people living in rural areas, in the rain forest, in the office, in cyberspace.

But some rooms are more fluid than others. It is so much harder to get rid of your skin than say, changing your home address, credit limit, religion or genitals. And maybe one day, when there are so many rooms that doors take up a lot more space than walls, they will cease to matter as much. We just need to be brave and lift our one foot firmly cemented in the race room and try something a little different. Exploration has to start somewhere, so it might as well start with a careless jump.

once there was a bunch of people scared of a lot of things. they could perceive that their bodies were soft, that it breaks, splits apart, and unknown liquids flow out of them. they were aware that their bodies were in fact, full of fissures. holes, where some things enter, and some things depart.

it did not matter before, when drawing lines were a little less important. and where morphing and moving were part of life. but when it became more urgent to stay in one place and make that work, lines began to take root. they began to have names, rituals, ceremonies, heroes, lores and processes. they became so fat that it was possible to have pockets of anarchy, sarcasm and despair pock-marked within them.

these people lived in such a time. a time of lines, and deferrence to difference. the hallowing of stories and tales was an important way to preserve the sanctity of lines, and contain the messiness that lines create.

the mermaid is one such story. she swims in acknowledgment of untamed female sexuality. her voice - the capacity to legible communication - is woven with seduction at its core, with power to destroy the communal respect for lines. her naked breasts glisten with wanton disregard for the convention of undergarments and metal corsets entombed by lace and needles. she thrives in a mysterious world, unknown to man and his land. the fantastic and phantasmagoric.

and appears when men are most vulnerable, most out of his safe and comfortable universe, where he consciously sail to seek the edges of lines currently known.

but the most fearful of what is female, the biggest monster to the impermeability of lines, is her vagina. it is constantly reproducing mysteries; wetness, blood, womb, human, decay, life, orgasms. in logic as yet unchoked by machinations.

so these people masked it in the form of a fish. instead of legs, she has a fish tail. she cannot walk, or gape her legs and visually demonstrate her puissance. there are some fears so large that you cannot give them a name, or a description. because even to utter would be to empower further.

the mermaid is a nod, begrudging, fearful and in awe, to a might that flows around life as they currently knew it. and how she transforms in time, is how the servants of lines learn how to tame her.


---
do you remember how it feels like
to lose concentration
in a phone conversation
that stretched so long
about nothing and everything?

such careless intimacy
is a great privilege.
---

had to make some phone calls today requesting information and help. it's been strange.

first, i rang the ministry of foreign affairs, and a malay woman picked up. sounded bored, and quickly pushed me to the immigration.

the number she gave me didn't work. so i checked the immigration department website and got a different number. rang and rang and rang and rang and rang and rang and rang......

no one picked up.

realised it was 12.30, i.e. lunch time. decided to try again at 2pm.

finally someone picked up the call and it was a malay man, informing me what i needed to know, and referred me back to the ministry of foreign affairs.

when i got through, another malay woman picked up the call, put me on hold, transferred me to someone else, who was a malay man, who gave me - hesitantly - the information i needed.

---

then i had to ring maxis customer service to set up something. and after going through several automated key ins, my phone call was immediately picked up by an indian guy speeding off a script.

asked me for my name, number, phone make etc. gave me some instructions, which i followed, and it didn't work. oh, and i was warned by the polite recorded message 'lady' that my conversation is recorded.

so i rang back again, went through the automated key-ins one more time, and got immediately put through to the customer service centre, and was answered by an indian woman.

explained my problem, she read through the same script at the same speed and i had to stop her to plead for her to listen - that obviously i know all this and went through all the steps and it didn't work, and can i please let you know what happened? she chuckled, and let me speak, and repeated the script.

alamak.

so i decided to just try again. and waited. but nothing happened. had to ring again for the third time. same thing. except this time, maxis didn't creepily remember the stuff i keyed in and i had to reselect language of choice etc.

lo and behold! it's another indian guy! this dude sounded like he was at least listening, told me contradicting information to the previous woman, and gave me an alternative method to achieve my goals.

and my phone is currently hanging. fuck.

----

in conclusion, if i were a hermit who operated purely through mediated communication paraphernalia, i would think that:

1) government agencies is a game where all enemies and friends are malays
2) the main aim of the game is to go through various mazes and misdirections to get to the key-keepers who can help me
3) time is not of the essence, and can bend both space and functions
4) i am an unnamed heroine with no superpowers that can assist me

whereas:
1) privately-owned telcos is a game where every key-keeper is an indian robot, even if they don't appear to be so
2) the main aim of the game is to cleverly extract what you need without giving up all of your soul
3) time is of the essence and the time bar is constantly shouting at you to stop playing
4) you still have to go through mazes and misdirections, but the technology paradigm creates a fantasy of efficiency

----

i think i am playing too many video games. and it's scary how much telephone life mimics racist stereotypes.

what an email:

It grieves my entire being but does it bother Pak Lah and Cabinet?

i wonder how many others feel the same? have had some conversations with activists who basically commit their entire working lives to changing the way things are, to some notion of a fairer nation, society etc. and yet, the question of leaving is always hanging over our heads like a bit white question mark.

some are. and i know, others will take their place. bringing in new visions, energy, and whatever else it takes.

i've thought about leaving too. when i went to UK to study, all i ever wanted was to live in a place where being anything other than Malay doesn't mean differential treatment in legal standing or a tired and familiar form of identification and classification. i could think in poetry, create music, befriend all kinds of people regardless of nationality or even age.

but then again, which space is free from our incessant need to compartmentalise meaning? from skin, to language, to hair, to age, to sexual organs, to clothes, to consumption and everything else under the sky.

at least here, i have the most power (i fervently hope); as a citizen and as someone intimately invested in knowing the histories and stories to tremble them into something entirely hope-rending. if i can't do it here, what chance have i got anywhere else?

truth is, i love this idea of 'malaysia'. the idea of a warm piece of land where fruits and trees grow to gigantic proportions because of excessive sun and water. where violence is still something that is not easily identifiable as our own. with the constant negotiation of marked differences towards something that is more digestible as 'right'. and it's still possible to clearly see, without too much difficulty, the idiocy of the ruling strata. where everything is still a little raw, a little soft, and a little full of possible shapes in the future.

no longer a cotyledon. i think my true leaves are emerging, with a little more rootedness taking place.

my skin in brown and
sometimes specked with welts
the shape of continents.

yesterday you gave me
a name printed
solid on a button badge.

the pin pierces through me
safely, like it should;
and so your name for me
hangs there, for awhile.

in time, these gifts grow fat
and wild like weed --
some intoxicate,
some suffocate,
some complicate,
some disintegrate
to dust
and fall off
like tacky edges of kitsch.

but two holes the breadth and distance
of a cobra bite
still show.

i grow like a map
of small button badge islands
and welts
and holes, old and new.
i wonder what it reads
from afar.

it's funny. a large part of what i do is communications strategising. especially through technology platforms. gadgets and gizmos and intertwining this and that.

then i have a friend. who in the past two days left me a little gobsmacked. nonplussed. huh? whooey whoo.

i wonder how much of it is around the failure of email as a medium of communication, and how much of it is my failure of saying what i mean, and how much of it is my friend typing when he's zoned off on lalang.

and i wonder how replacing emails with a phone call will help.

sigh.

it's been a long time since i interrogated my own position as an activist. i kinda settled on that term once i started freelancing since i dont have any formal job position to brand on myself. or an organisation that i'm *with*. the decision is a conscious one. i'm sick of institutions, and i'm sceptical of their capacity for change when it's repeating the same kinds of structures, subjects and power relations. but that was in 2005. i havent thought much about it since. but with that abandonment, i've become a free radical. hah. actually, maybe more like a lost atom. the problem with calling myself an activist is this is a little more 'sticky' than say, a job function or an organisation. i dont have the option of clean cuts. unless i quit activism. and what the hell does that mean anyway?

whenever someone asks me what i do, i struggle to be serious and push all the hysterical giggles down with reddening fingers.


i'm a otak-otak of activism. how do i draw a line between living my life, and doing the things that i do? thoughts and feelings about power, norms, money, sex, gender, race, disabilities, language, culture, fairness, relations, bladifuckingbla bleed into every act. from my dreams, to poetry, to doodles, to hanging out with my family, to random acts of rebellion, to serious writing, to organising actions, to bladifuckingbla.

my platypus. i'm in serious need of something pretty fucking drastic.

i used to think that art will un-choke me. but that tidy little cubicle betrayed me by bleeding all the same. so what am i left with now?

+++++++++++

she is sharing the boat shaped like an oversized teacup with me. i am careful with my bag. if our cup-boat capsizes, fabala will become wet. she seems oblivious to the tiger that just jumped into the ocean. it is causing ripples that swell into unruly waves, tipping us dangerously. she starts to shriek and panic. i asked her to sit down, and lean back into her side, so we can achieve some balance. for awhile, we swirled round and round on the waters' blades. fragments of the sea sloshes upon us. fabala is slightly wet. i am worried that the covers i crafted for her safety is inadequate. but there is no time to check for now. we need to stay afloat.

we arrive at the hut. bright purple mosquito nets cover the door. when it is opened, i see the backside of the sea. not the kind of beach anticipated. but still, it is beautiful in a rough kind of way. some are already making plans to sunbathe on its regular indented curves. i can see the sea sneaking across the sand dunes, breaking the barriers with quiet cunning. her lips are red and her hair is black. a familiar form is on the chair. but as i drew closer, the cat's head turns, and it is not the soul i hoped to embrace. instead, the pussy is sour and grumpy. i move away.

too sleepy blog much today. but digital stories have been added to the campaign website. powerful stuff. one thing that struck me was one of the storyteller's response:

"For the first few weeks after I made the story and shared it with some people, they mostly cried, or you could see it in their eyes that they were deeply touched and saddened. That turned me into a victim again, and I had to regain my survivor spirit."

i guess we have to be careful not to appropriate suffering as our own in the desire to connect, and in effect, making a victim out of survivors.

technorati tags: takebackthetech

the first time i heard of bosnia was in TI. when i was wearing a blue pinafore, just back from school. i watched with thousands of malaysians cut penises on trays in gritty grey colours on television. i had no idea what it was all about. shelled out buildings look the same after awhile. and television was all about wars and shelled out buildings in different places, at different times. but there was anger and outrage. this had something to do with muslims. i remember the claiming of the severed penises as an extension of our own. i wasn't sure how. i wasn't sure why. i just knew that the fuckers who did this were the Enemy. the serbs and the bosnians. my first encounter.

the second time i came across bosnia was in bangsar. i was working after college at one of the first few cyber cafes in the country. one of the guys working there was a bosnian. he had blond hair, light eyes. i was surprised. muslim didn't spell european to me. i still had no idea where bosnia was on the map. the other waitresses and bartenders were malaysian kids. chinese and indian. hired by a young manager who thought that operating a good business in bangsar meant hiring pretty faces who can shell out english. the bosnian kid was in many ways an outsider. he also worked in the kitchens, or maybe it was as a techie. i forget. either way, he didn't share our square of floor. after a few weeks, i heard rumours that he was a little pervert. soon after, he was fired. i don't remember why. i don't even remember his name. i remembered feeling confused, as he was supposed to have come from the land of bombed out buildings, severed penises and suffering. but he seems finer than fine. working in one of the most expensive spots in the capital. i wanted to protect him against the rumours, but dicking about with girls and touching where you're not supposed to, i couldn't stand by that. as a result, i closed my ears and i shut my mouth. i did nothing.

the third time bosnia walks past me is through joe sacco's comic, gorazde. i don't like his drawings, so it took me awhile to get into the book. but it says bosnia; bosnia had a strange familiar echo. i wanted to read it. and i had to put it down. and reread it. and put it down. and for the first time, i am learning about the war in bosnia and herzegovina. names of countries that i can pronounce without tripping, having heard it so many times over television. a multi-ethnic paradise quickly dissolving into an ethnic cleansing exercise. in sacco's eyes, gorazde was cut off from the world during the war. in 1992 to 1995. serbs against muslims. complexities of relationships transposed with a red line. dotted with willful forgetfulness. was it a simple thing he drew? i'm not sure. it complicated hell of a lot more than some unnamed monster against vicarious muslim cousins. i suppose what got me the most was the disbelief over neighbours who had names, and shared histories - even something as simple as coming over to do homework together, or as members of a giggling gaggle of girls, flirting with boys - suddenly turning into strangers. as though a slogan, gun and uniform could transform a person into an idea. neighbours who understood the day-to-day struggles of maintaining life and all its ordinary dreams became the very people who could burn your house, shit in your room, murder your family.

it reminded me of my mother telling me about her experiences during the prelude to may 13th. her same warnings and wariness of neighbours. my grandparents owned a small sundry shop in a one-street kampung. the only notable thing was a rice factory just past the abandoned shrine where i used to go fishing for cat fish with my cousins, every chinese new year before my grandmother passed away. she told me about the chinese family who lived opposite the shop. how they were stacked up: mother, father, son, daughter. and how they were skewered by another neighbour - a malay - who lived just down the road. how during the night, the neighbours would sharpen their parangs on the concrete seat where the main road bends, speaking about hate. amplifying fear through their slicing. how she teaches me, full of love for my survival, about being careful with neighbours. i do not know how much of the story is dramatised for moral effect, or coloured by my desire for dramatic memory. but her face of disillusionment is so clear in my head.

i became afraid reading joe sacco's comic. how he spelt out the aura of sarajevo before the war. a successful, harmonic multi-ethnic society, co-existing robustly. it sounds like the name of an old lover. a nation touted as an example of developed multi-culturalism. poster child of multi-billion ringgit tourism industry. iconic smiley-face of smugly sullied politicians. how shakey reality is. how thin the crust of discursive tanah merah between each other. one misplaced stilletto is enough to rip compassion out of passion, replacing with obfuscated obsession.

my deadline was an hour ago. i was scanning previous columns to see what topics have been covered in what way. i see in almost every edition, about identity-politics, the replacing of masks in the hurried jog towards shedding yet, another nickname. religion. god. men. power. control. taming. carefully placing. pulling away the string so quickly that the top begins to spin without going anywhere. i dont know what to say. should i say collective amnesia, from this moment on. or the taking away of sight, so we cannot see our own hands and the shadows between them. should i say look how the past weighs upon us another layer of someone else's lie? should i close my mind to this, and shut down my aorta, and speak of something else?

meanwhile, i met my fourth bosnian, who is a fantastic, articulate, intelligent, exciting feminist thinker that i can't wait to work with. i wonder what she thinks of these comics.

i finally got an astro subscription on tuesday. and one of the first few things i happened to watch was one tree hill. oh yes. i even have the box set on dvd. session 2 & 3. i'm not claiming to be an avid fan (i prefer OC actually), but i take what i can get. and semi-dramatic tv series about poor rich kids in the usa does wonders to massage away the stresses of actual life.

anyway, i am deviating. two things really struck me. first is advertisements. there are so many of them! including a particularly heart-wrenching one of a small malaysian girl talking about her penpal in africa, all so you can be assured what what you already bought (i.e. astro) is truly, a good buy. pat pat. i do like them. they pull you out of the make-believe one tree hill world into the now. and what better way than by hailing the viewer as "hey you! you're a consumer! you have options! you can go out right now and buy things! don't forget!" and so carefully crafted too. i love being subliminally brain-washed.

the next thing that struck me was the censorship. i mean, i know it happens. i have written several reports tracking different incidences of censorship. but since i've been deprived of regular tv for years, i havent 'lived through' the censorship as it were. so there i was, watching completely uncensored one tree hill episodes, never getting confused as to what the crisis was, could hear what everyone was saying and see everything that was shown, and suddenly, watching it over astro was a totally different experience.

this episode is where peyton gets harassed by some unknown person at school. her locker is sprayed with huge red letters a word that is obviously causing her a lot of distress. exactly what was sprayed is a mystery to the viewers, because it has been smudged to a blur. later on, as a demonstration of taking a stance, she sprays the same word on her t-shirt and braves the judging looks from her peers. the fact that the word is censored is very frustrating. viewers do get a glimpse of part of it at some point. presumably because it's too hard to blur out in the editing process. or maybe it's not the full word that is shown, so it's okay. only "K-E". as part of "D-Y-K-E". the weird thing is, she discusses about this harassment with other characters. she actually says out loud that she is not a lesbian, and that she is not gay. we know what the issue is. she is being accused of being a dyke, and is getting social censure from other kids in school. in fact, anna had to move out of town because she was facing the same kind of prejudices in her old school. they have a whole moment of quoting a song that says it's about standing up for marginalised sections of society. it doesn't mean that we have to embody the identity to stand up against it, because at the end of the day, it doesn't matter which identity it is since it is defined by who is currently the more powerful section. it can be the sick, the mad, the aged, the infirm, the disabled, the queers, the raced etc. and it shifts, and it can become larger and larger. so if no one stands up against the principle, then silence in this case means agreement. okay, very good point. all well and good. which makes it all the more ironic that the tv station feels compelled to blot out the word "dyke". no need to guess who is sitting fatly on their comfort zone. to add insult to injury, when peyton gets told off by a teacher for wearing a t-shirt with "inflammatory" words, she pulls it off and walks away in her red bra. this the broadcast station finds okay. no need to censor. only regular sexuality on display. woman, bra, breasts, okay. especially since she admitted earlier that she wasn't queer.

wow. my head was reeling slightly after that. what's the big deal about the word "dyke"? what is the difference between "dyke" and "lesbian" or "gay" or "queer"? who sits there and decides that one is more palatable over the other? i actually need to write an article about this. and time is running out. so i'm going to have to cut short that thought.

brb.

strange day indeed. i think i have gotten over my jet lag, after crashing out yesterday at a respectable 12am, and waking up at 7. god.. why aren't i ever this organised at home?

anyway. almost the entire team was present at breakfast. hugs hugs. big grins. tired and overpaid for half a bun and soggy cornflakes. marched off to palacio de mineria and set up our table at the community booth. freak out! forgot to bring genderIT brochures. i'm useless. but thankfully ms. effecient tornado brought a whole wheely suitcase of stuff. so at the end of it, it looked pretty decent. had to hang around in case the press who were at the opening poke their head in, and the organisers didn't want an empty table. since i wasn't really doing anything for the FOSS workshop, volunteered to hang around and look busy. i'm not sure if it worked.

so the FOSS workshop was a huge success i think. by the time i walked over, the session was in full swing. the room was full. and there were even some dudes who wandered into the wrong thing and decided to stay. the building where this was held is wonder-full enough. it's called palacio de autonomia, and it built like an accelerated evolution of civilisation with the middle bit missing. glass structures meet ancient inca ruins and an old church spire of uneven stone against concrete and metal. quite a mindfuck. almost too much to take in. and so far, all i have seen of mexico city is like that.

the popular protest against the elections result brought mexicans from all over the country (foreigners who are found participating in local politics will be instantly thrown out) come to the city and set up a camp site. tents are set up, tvs streaming with documentaries about how the election results were rigged against the protestor's favourite, andres manuel lopez obrador from the opposition party. lots of the usual dodgy things happened, and no one's buying it. i can't imagine something like this happening in KL. coming together, hiring cranes to put up speakers, wall sized caricatures, temporary beds, more and more people, sustaining such a protest into permanence in the imagination. it's just awesome.

while they chant in protest, one street away small traders are shouting their familiar slogans for this product or that for this peso or that. life goes on. walked into a church for a short while, and it's as though the chaos never existed. a lot of silences, scary jesuses bleeding in solidarity with his worshippers, organ, small gestures, muted rapid words of secret gossip shared with a kind creator. i'm not sure.

but i think i am digressing from the event. as usual.

what was most interesting i suppose are the conversations. the lunch with friends of the network was just a moment of sudden energetic unfolding of questions, of different people's projects and actions. spoke to margaret of FIRE, and she's did this amazing interview with a grrl blogger from lebanon and how she went from one of those 'let's keep each other connected about our lives through our blogs' into a seriously powerful writer. and she's not the only one. imagine friendster transforming into a community for socio-political writers who are completely engaged. speaking about the contradictions of online communication. the trust, where does it come from? why is it implied? why when it comes to certain relationships, it just disappears? speaking about VAW & shifting masculinities.

getting my yahoo account maybe phished, maybe hacked. who knows? i cant remember. having to spend the rest of the night changing all my accounts that used a similar password. speaking to another feminist communication rights activist about her recent experience of being harassed through intrusion and theft of her online communication activities. how privacy is disintegrated. and how she responds to this by organising a campaign on ending VAW on the internet with her group. it's just awesome.

while another prominent advocate feels the quandary of desiring to blog and wanting to say what she wants to say in her name, but feels that the association of her name and the group she belongs to can hardly be separated. what does this mean when what you do mean that you lose your right to your own name? it is inevitable in some ways. but what does it mean when you can find a new name, create your own name, through the anonymity provided by blogs? how is this authentic? how is this courageous? how is this not?

i'm tired. but there was so much i wanted to get into. tomorrow is the FIRE VAW Campaign launch. i'm supposed to speak about my paper for about 5-10 minutes. i cant even remember what i wrote about.

shits.