the internet has turned me into a one-click activist. all i need is connectivity, a kind of name, an email address. i don't have to leave my room, i don't even have to get up from my chair, i don't have to experience or touch or smell. all i need to do is see through an interface, read and have a split second think. then insert my name and click.

today, i received an email that called for a petition to boycott an artist - Guillermo Vargas "Habacuc"- from representing his country at the Bienal Centroamericana Honduras 2008. I'm not sure what the event is, apart from being some kind of art exhibition.

he definitely caught a stray dog from the streets, leashed it with a rope inside a gallery in nicaragua last year as his art piece for an exhibition entitled 'Eres Lo Que Lees' - 'You Are What You Read'. The title is written on the wall with dog biscuits while the stray dog walks nearby, just out of reach, tied with a rope around his neck.

it caused outrage, understandably, and pictures were released and sent over the internet that showed the dog gradually starving to death. the gallery owner insists that the dog escaped and it was only tied for 3 hours during the exhibition, before which the artist fed the dog with food he brought himself. other petition sites pulled quotes from him here and there and concluded that he admitted to starve the dog to death.

whichever way the truth, there are currently more than 2 million signatures in support of the move to boycott this "animal-hating" artist.

on the flipside, the “One Million Signatures" campaign organised by Iranian women's rights activists since 2006, demanding for changes in laws that discriminate against women has to date only managed to get slightly more than 7 thousand signatures.

so let's see. artist drags stray dog to be exhibited as art, disputed intentions and conclusion of actual death, 2 million supporters. whole populations of women and men in a country facing clearly documented discrimination, violence and suppression, 7 thousand odd supporters.

so the one-click activist is not only lazy in terms of activism, but also lazy in terms of analysis.

give me some pictures, clear visuals of a starving dog, easy to understand terms, and i'll give you my name.

give me an actual complex reality of shit happening in the world, where i have to actually do some search because even information is clamped down, campaign sites filtered and blocked, people struggling to get some small measure of truth out in the open, i just can't be bothered.

too difficult. time is passing on too fast. hyperlinks are waiting, and only those dished out ready to be served with cute buttons and easy navigation.

give me a story, full of drama, heart-rending pictures, moral outrage and digestible ethics. i'll give you my name.

*click*

I just got my own handphone phone. It was quite an exciting period. Mobile phones weren't super cheap then, or subscription rates affordable. Pre-paid was only starting to be introduced. But I had a number to my name, and a device that meant anyone could get in touch with me, and me back, without having to go through 'gatekeepers'. I grew up in a pretty dense household. Grandparents, god parents, another aunt, 5 cousins, 1 brother, kids that my grandma and godma used to take care of for extra income, neighbours... there was always people around and simultaneous conversations making a kind of comforting background noise.

The only telephone in the house was next to the television, and the television was right next to the main door in the living room. There was almost zero-chance of having a private conversation.

So now, with my very own handphone, I could have a heart-to-heart with a friend even when I was having a pee. It felt really liberating. My own space carved through a rectangular, flip-cover, plastic black Ericsson.

I got an SMS one day. By a number I didn't recognise.


How strange. Who is this person? What does s/he mean? A friend I forgot to key into my phone?



What the fuck? I'm starting to feel a little creeped out. Who is this person? How the hell did he (no mistake now) get my phone number? Heard from where? From who? Suddenly, I didn't feel alone anymore, safe to shape my world, my space. Everyone I could have encountered became instantly dangerous, carrying a risk of ripping apart the skin I have made between myself and people I trust. I couldn't take it. I needed to know who this person was. I needed to establish some kind of knowledge, identity, name, space, context, something i can identify and remember. My handphone became a strange object, rattling with quiet fear. It took me some time, but I finally decided to reply.


Now I am angry. Pissed off beyond belief. How dare you intrude my phone, intrude my space, intrude my life, insinuate all kinds of shit, solicit me for sex, hide behind the cowardice of anonymity, spoil my beautiful day, my awesome week!! 

It was the first time anyone I knew had ever encountered this. I didn't know how to respond to it. I didn't know what I could do. How palpable is the danger? Is this person stalking me? Is it someone I know? Is someone watching me when I am not looking? Am I going to be raped? What is happening?

I was working in a domestic violence shelter at that time. I answered counselling calls, and I knew the law. There were no laws against sexual harassment or stalking, and there still isn't. Even if there was a law, it doesn't mean I will be protected. I know how toothless laws can be. How full of gaps and decay. But I'm still not taking this. I refuse to have one fuckwit spoil my experience and what having a handphone has meant to me. And if there is one thing I can't stand, it's assholes who choose to exert their power through sex. I spent 2 years of my life in primary school terrified of this guy who was threatening to rape my best friend - and me by proxy - for some unknown reason. Hanging out near our school, coming to the canteen when no one was around and saying the same disgusting things over and over. I had nightmares about him for years, dreaming of his death so the threat would end. I still remember his face. I'm not a child anymore. I should have told someone, made a report, kicked his balls. Done something. Anything. No more. I refuse to be paralysed by fear and shrink my already small space any smaller.

And they simply stopped. I still have his number, and phone numbers of all other similar stalkers who have made dodgy sms to my friends. I'm saving them up for a class action suit one day!

technorati tags: takebackthetech

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.

haven't blogged in awhile, and i think i've forgotten how to write.

spent tuesday night at a vigil, held in protest against continued detention of revathi masoosai aka siti. checked the definition of vigil, and it basically means a period of deliberate wakefulness and watching over something.

i guess in this context, it makes sense. making a public statement that the whole politicisation of religion is being watched. and crowding at merdeka square locates the issue as something related to our freedom to shape the idea of nation and citizenship.

but standing there, holding a candle, watching the TV and news crews catching quick soundbytes, preferably passionate and full of dramatic tension, it was strange. the affair was peaceful, and peaceful protests are wonderful. but i can't help thinking...

who died? why so few of us? who is this dude passing around a neat flyer interpellating everyone as greedy christians? is this more of a social networking event for people to catch up? why isn't there a buzz about the issue? how am i supposed to know what the issue is unless i subscribe to malaysiakini or msian-ngo? is that why the cops just hang about, no choppers above our heads trying to drown out speeches or freak out tourists? is it because it's 8pm on a tuesday night at a street where few people go to unless there's siti or football on the giant screen?

a little hungry for more.

---
a really good friend asked me to join facebook last week, so i did.

i have been resisting all these social networking platforms cause they freak me out. everyone being connected, voluntarily giving out personal data, able to be surveilled and tracked down to the smallest detail, happy heaven for advertisers and other corporations who can save money on market research...

it just makes me want to scream privacy is a sacred thing!!!! which makes me check their privacy policy.

in short, if you want an account, you have to give:

• your full name
  can be masked - just give a silly name, although it kinda defeats the purpose cause no one can find you unless you go around using a silly name, which means you're track-able anyway
• your email address
  can create a dummy by using gmail, yahoo mail, or any other free webmail services. but also means you'll end up with 1 email account per sign up of any of these things, which means you'll be spending a lot of time checking multiple emails!
• your birthday
  can be masked - just give any random date as long as it makes you more than the legal age as understood by the service provider. which makes me wonder about the intended security (it covers their ass, as in the kid lied, we didn't know, we did everything we could. but is there another way?). which also means you'll have to jot it down somewhere in case password is lost at some future date and you need verification (like yahoo!). 
  
• your school
  can just select none of the above.
  

and so on. but the whole point of joining these things is to put down an identity to yourself that is real, and connectable to real people who have encountered you in the past no? i found some uni friends in the space, and it did make me quite happy. but then... i dont forsee myself spending lots of time hanging out with them over facebook. or is this usually the case? i have no idea. what is the pleasure of these things? the number of friends or fanny-tastic testimonies in the www?

i should stop thinking. or writing. it hurts like crazy.

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.

Alert

There are some poets who can capture
the impossible distance of
carelessness
in a carefully weighed sentence;
But I find myself lacking
in necessary silence or
language
to describe the restlessness I feel
receiving your
broken ribs and
fractured knees
through the stoic glance
of an email.

I try to patch strings of flesh upon the naked letters
that have swum across cables to reach me;
Engorge my ears so they can hear
the texture of your scathing mutiny;
I wet my lips to better taste
the iron, salty grime of time
passed between the crack of skull from metal
and hasty punctuations.
But I can't.

My fingers tap impatiently on plastic buttons
willing change through a few clicks and
searing hope
so my heart could travel
and intensify
by electrical currents to somehow
graze against you.

But I can't.
The pallor of my skin is cast
from a failure of my machine.

--

Crisis in Zimbabwe - state abuse worsens
Zimbabweans fight while SADC Watches in Silence: A Call to Action
Zimbabwean women demand real rights for international women's day

there are private jeepneys with rolls royce heads and rickety van tails. i saw a beautiful specimen on the way to makati. someone told me that one large jeepney manufacturing company was shut down a couple of years ago due to the popularity of vans, with air conditioners and the class markers they suggest. now it's back to the zinc-walled mechanics to create as they see beautiful. there is something romantic about it. paint and metal and clockwork. a distant flirtation with the industrial revolution.

---

having read the MOU and the plans, i getting quite excited about the working meeting tomorrow. if ONI-Asia is seriously planning to implement a country-by-country in-depth research on censorship and surveillance practices and frameworks in asia, i think that would be fucking awesome. a little unsure about their anxiousness to retain copyright and jealousy over shared information, but i guess it will depend what happens tomorrow. academics are a fucking pain the butt sometimes.

so it's almost midnight and i still have no clue what to present on the censorship and surveillance practice bit. had a chat with chat (heh), and i guess i'll just talk about stuff i know.

1) i have not done any intensive research on the kinds of censorship/surveillance practice in the region. i have bits of information that can be shared, and others will have more to add, but this may be more on details rather than frameworks.
2) first fact is that asia is incoherent as a region. the languages alone is enough to tumble babel several times over. so censorship can also be seen through the lens of access, and this links to question of content creation by whom, for whom, and legible to whom (intentional or not). this complicates the actors involved in censorship -- not just state, but content creators through an assumption of audience, and the perpetuation of privileged subjects through this interpellation. state enters when the audience or content creator is sufficiently powerful as a group to destabilise status quo, especially in relation to political and economic power. therefore, marginalised subjects rarely enter into the debate as equal partners invested in the shaping or outcome of any content regulation concerns, except, as in the case of pornography, to be mobilised as objects under the discourse of protection.
3) this is something that WNSP has been working on. engagement on global policy platforms on ICT is quite lonely for gender advocates. to provoke greater participation and political investment in larger women's movements, we attempted to make linkages with more 'mainstream' women's issues with technology. violence against women was seen as an effective entry point. several research papers were published to identify the connections between VAW & ICTs. one on trafficking of women and girls, another on different aspects of VAW (domestic violence, women in situations of conflict, sexual assault and violence etc) and then one directly engaging with pornography. a campaign was created to popularise the discourse, and to enrich existing knowledge through enabling specific and multiple standpoints.
4) the issue was reclaimed and the usual framework of patriarchal protection is rejected (safe from harm). instead, the language of rights is re-inserted. right to safety, right to self-determination, right to mobility, right to communicate, right to expression and information, right to privacy, right to participate in democratic governance. here, the 'enemy' is not automatically assumed as the state, but also as private individuals.
5) the question of stakeholders and actors is thickened to include the state, private sector (who stands to benefit from the discourse of protection), private individuals and civil society groups. the intervention on several discourses around right to information and expression is seen through a feminist lens.  for example, when a freedom of information bill is advocated for in parallel to calls for more freedom of expression, this is linked to questions of accountability, transparency and good governance. how is this complicated when gender is revealed as an illuminating dimension? a concrete example from malaysia. the internet has been guaranteed several times over to be a space that is free from state censorship through the communications and multimedia act. but speech is still governed through other laws, whatever space they appear in. defamation suits is a growing favourite, with two prominent bloggers recently sued by a major english language newspaper. printed media also called for the government to place similar content regulation mechanisms onto bloggers as they do for publications through the printing and publications act. this cracked the stronghold of FOE that has been comfortably assumed by internet users in the country. a naive assumption since ISPs have supplied the government with emailers of stuff that have been considered as a threat to national security. so we have here, a very serious issue, where the players are all big boys. the state, politicians, celebrity bloggers, mainstream newspapers. the people who continue to self-proclaim as having a stake in this issue are more celebrity dissident bloggers, MPs (that do not include the national women's machinery), hard-news journalists etc., with more ostentatiously political language that has no patience with whiny women claiming for their rights to write inane diaries about their sexual life on blogspot. the value set and reset recreates a dominant masculinist environment. the political worth of multiple discourses around sexuality, particularly female sexual agency, is again, deprioritised as irrelevant to the question of FOE, FOI, democracy, governance. this gives the state licence to create huge billboards that cautions citizens against visiting pornographic sites, raise censorship as an important issue to be debated in WSIS II Prep Comm 3  in tandem with a regional partner, indonesia, who contingently shares the same moral concerns by having a similar dominant social construction based on Islam, and legitimises the use of surveillance software in state funded computer centres, as well as surreptitious installation by private companies to track employee's internet use. in other words, both civil society actors and the state are responsible for the omission of feminist perspectives and concerns by benefiting through its circulation through exclusion. how would a research into censorship and surveillance on the internet be framed so as to not commit the same politically unaccountable error? the connection between discursive mobilisation of gender concerns, its diverse impact on affected parties, attention towards relevant socially-constructed identities that are assumed and excluded, and strategies that directly intervenes into this reality will make a difference.
6) APC has materials around internet rights that places prominence on security issues, such as privacy, censorship & surveillance, through its internet rights campaign and the campaign for communication rights through information society. this material might be useful for the research at hand.
7) APC members such as Jinbonet, FMA etc also conducted national campaigns and research around this issue, and this research can invite their participation.
8) At the recent IGF, WNSP organised a panel on content regulations from gender and development perspectives. the gendered impact of content regulation frameworks can be explored deeper through this research. some interesting outcomes included the contentious definition of "harmful content", usually dispatched as the rationale for content regulation and the processes involved in negotiating this act of defining, self-regulation frameworks and how guiding principles that do not omit gender dimensions and capacity building strategies can be integrated, problematising content classification over the internet and the role of network operators in content regulation, and interrogating internet safety software solutions on political and economic terms. the panel was a good start to locate gender into the centre of these debates, but more information needs to be gleaned for deeper analysis towards more effective interventions.

fucking sleepy now. hope my dreams will inspire more things.

doing a search on the number of women contributors vs male contributors to wikipedia. couldn't find anything concrete, but a few interesting posts caught my attention. first is the definition of "woman" vs "man". as caught by scibble pad in jan this year, the subsections of "woman" includes things like "slang" & "vulgar terms". of course there isn't a matching set for "man".

isn't it interesting that derogatory naming constitutes as an integral part of defining woman as a social subject? isn't it even more so when wikipedia is supposed to be a collaborative, community, thousands-of-unknown-ordinary-web-user platform that enables the 'masses' to (re)write reality according to less power-concentrated perspectives?

doesn't it make you wonder whether these 'masses' have vaginas or a penises?

the more i dug, the more i found similar critiques against web 2.0 tools. web 2.0 is a term coined to explain a new 'version' of web-based applications that have been developed since maybe, 2000 onwards. basically instead of installing softwares and stuff onto your computer before you can use them, you're able to do stuff straight with just a web-browser. the development of these tools and applications focuses on 'participatory architectures'. which means collaborative, community, bla bla.. the usual buzzwords of today. it gets its value from the number of users, and it shifts the power dynamics from being about the developer to the user. a lot of ICTs for social justice groups have hailed themselves as web 2.0 people. who wouldn't? makes logical sense in a anti-neo-liberal/capitalistic world.

but then it just seems to be like old boys clubs reforming themselves with new uniforms, passwords and lingo. indymedia, wikipedia, la la la... all have been subjected to the same kinds of critique. it's basically still the middle class, english speaking, white dudes that get to define what is valuable, what constitutes rigor, what is true knowledge, and so on.

what's the problem here? the main one being my utter naïveté for thinking that wikipedia is not gender-biased. how numb was my feminist lens?

in every ICT space i have encountered, even the most well-meaning and generally nice guys can't think of everyone's needs and perspectives. but they still have the diachronically sedimented privileges which enables them to occupy spaces that can define things. whether or not these spaces are divine, mainstream or underground (just think about the majority gender of graffiti artists, and the stuff they write on walls).

so why aren't women there? cause the spaces are not constructed with them in mind. cause the people who built them are, yup, the boys.

and then what? to gatecrash or not? there are always already a few women there. but they're also privileged women (yes, me too: i can speak english, i'm educated, i'm not hardcore poor, i'm not married, or a mother, or need to juggle many responsibilities apart from not fucking up my own life. and it doesn't matter how i got here, the point is, i'm here). much as they/we try, we can't claim to represent what everyone needs and wants. we haven't even said hello to 99.99% of the world's population.

to make alternative grrly spaces? like funky linuxchix? but how long and how often must we continue to slice up the world and make sacred spaces to be counted?

it boggles my mind. wish i had an answer.

  haiku
 
  digital spaces
  question marks are floating
  i try not to drown




p/s: i owe ka-BLOG 5 posts... backtracking not an option since i have to be in different frames of mind 5 times in a row. i'll try and make it up by continuing to post around VAW and tech until i've "done my time"... there's lots to rant about. just little time left to think through them.

technorati tags: takebackthetech

just got this from a mailing list. if i don't note it somewhere, it'll be lost in the sea of neatly stashed away emails. here's a (slightly skewed to 'chinese' tastes i think) list of Klang Valley's best makanan; complete with double exclaimation marks and temptations so delightful it threatens life and sundry:

1. Chow Koay Tiew - Jalan Imbi : the corner restaurant which is on the same row with Sakura, and opposite of Honda Kah Motor.

2. Wan Tan Mee/Kari Mee - End of old Subang airport road, in the Subang New Village Town Centre.

3. Tapioca Noodles & Vegetables - Old Klang Road : a shack which isnestled behind a Chinese primary school, after the market and the post office(which would be on your left).

4. Kari Mee (Lemak) - SS1, PJ : Alisan Restaurant (2nd shop from corner),facing the Lorenzo Furniture Shop.

...

14. Nasi Kandar - Kayu Nasi Kandar Restaurant in Taipan, Subang with abranch in SS2 a coffee shop formerly known as Cheow Yang

15. Teh Tarik & Roti - Taman Desa next to the water tank

( more )

tried any yet?

in a strange place again, and looking at snippets of life through the dirty lens of a taxi window. 'foreign' framed by a slow moving window in rush hour.

a young man carefully combs his hair, slicked back like jazzy tails of flashy ducks. he looks at his motorcycle mirror and straightens his red chequered shirt.

he is looking at the traffic, with a small contented smile on shadowing his lips. it feels like he has sat on the back seat of that bicycle for much of his life. the man who is cycling embroiders the traffic jam with his ease.

her pink kurta flaps in the night dust as she hurries on. we are nearing a 'trendy' heart of delhi and people are everywhere. she flows past like a stranger.

gajraj points out a lorry slowing next to us. it is packed tightly with vegetables. small green trees pointing up to the sky in uniform. he tells me the name of the plant. but its name is tolen by the rush of traffic.

"horn ok please" is painted in bright colours on the back of the truck in front of us. everyone obeys. gajraj uses his "dipper" more than his horn. we drive by "blow horn", "beep please", "sound horn please", "use dipper" and other instructions hugged by floral designs. an ochestra blares around me in intermittent harmonics.

pleeepoopleepoopleepoop
phaaaarm phaaarm
beeep beeep
phooooooooooooooon
preepeepreepeepree

a conversation catches in my ear and swings around before leaking into another swoosh. as unintelligible as my mother tongue.

three mini wheels curve diagonally under their green shell. the driver has parked it on the side of a roundabout. he stands facing the sidewalk. the arc of his urine glitters in our headlights as we drive around him.

"when you have to go, you have to go."

in the next fifteen minutes, we pass by five more men with similar compulsions. four stand in a row, aiming their penises against the fence of lodhi park. night dew mingles unexpectedly with warm urea.

the man with a small moustache stops us. his serious look amplified to cover his age, maybe, face smooth like a baby. i imagine him pulling out his willy and peeing in a street corner.

"when you have to go, you have to go."

his authority crumbles into an escaping giggle.

we are almost there. gajraj zips along. counting the numbers. 186, 189, 190, 193. i climb out and wonder if i should take a short walk in the park. a small rectangular field almost exactly the same as the other two we passed. a party is happening on 186. black, pink and white gauze drapes the house like scaffolding. three young men stand around flashy cars with their short-sleeved shirts tucked. one of them bends down and ties the laces of his shiny black shoes.

i turn around and walk into the guest house. there is wifi here. it doesn't feel like contradictions standing side by side. it feels like a marble statue fenced off on a hill away from what is real.