Week #3, the horror continues

So here I am in class typing this up so as to keep it fresh in my mind.

I had steeled myself for another round of ignorance and invisibility and found my fellow students were for the most part very supportive. That was comforting, but as soon as the 3 instructors walked in and saw me, they were all over me. Mainly to talk to me, as if it was imperative to talk to me separately so to stem the flood before it got out of control. Which I wanted to do, but also ready to just smile and nod when ignorance reared its ugly head.

They pulled me into another classroom and then began a crit. Which I was surprised at, I thought we were going to address what happened, to talk about how things would change. But it was as if it was forgotten, another misunderstanding pushed to the side and they had to "deal" with the difficult one, the one who squealed. I felt like a stuck pig.

The crit went as I thought, Karen, who is well read and familiar with race theory was very helpful and understanding. Her insights were good for me to focus further with my topic. Michael sat silently and every now and then interjected an strange comment that I felt bordered on wanting to tell me not to generalize again. He mentioned, that the generalizations I was making was the point of misunderstanding with us last week. I just shook my head and sighed, saying that I never said those things. I never said that all white men have these fetishes, but I think he is having a hard time distancing himself from the larger "White male" race, power dynamic. It is the larger cultural race struggle I was talking about, but that point was just lost, ignored because it was not understood. Leslie tried to compare my ideas with all the other stereotypes of other races, as if to make a point that these stereotypes exist in all cultures. I tried to explain that Asian female stereotypes are distinct in that gender, sex, and race are all intertwined into this "harmless" depiction of what the West thinks of the Asian female body. Another point lost, ignored.

And so I presented ideas of what I wanted to tackle.
As film perhaps? Presenting found images of Asian female stereotype? The craze of media tie ins for the geishafication of the audience, seen at the release of Memoirs of a Geisha, when Fresh and Banana Republic decided that kimono shirts and sake shampoo were necessary to recreate the Orient. Or do I refuse to show stereotypical images at all? Can I do it without all that? It's an interesting problem.

So I embark on solving these problems. And it will be an explorations of all this.

But as I was leaving the crit, Karen pulled me aside and let me know that if another problem arises that I should deal with it within the class and not let it escalate by talking to the department head. So I asked her if she knew what happened last week and she just said that she was told there was a misunderstanding. I wasn't surprised the "misunderstanding" was cloaked, but angered by that as well. So I told her what went down last Friday and her eyes widened when I told her about the "white men are the real minority" statement. Ah, the power of words. I explained that Leslie had been there and said nothing, so I felt that I had no one left to talk to. Also, hiding this kind of incident makes me compliant in letting myself be the victim of racism.

Another thing lost, ignored, pushed aside.

Well, any ideas of stereotypes that you bristle at when confronted with it? Specifically with heteronormative ideas of desire and beauty of Asian women?