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Excuse My Gangsta Ways Is Both Illuminating And Uplifting
NY Times Magazine Explores "The Daughter Deficit"

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RiloKilo
10/08/09

In reply to Excuse My Gangsta Ways Is Both Illuminating And Uplifting
Has anyone seen "Gran Torino"? Not about Asian American women in gangs, but kind of along the same lines (Asian American men). I liked it a lot, and it was about a whole subculture of people I barely knew anything about beforehand.
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thesciencegirl
10/08/09

@RiloKilo: That movie wrecked me. I can't say that I liked it though; I mostly found it really unsettling.
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RiloKilo
10/08/09

@thesciencegirl: Yes. It was very upsetting (and, at times, a little overdramatic), but it really effected me.
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Maulleigh
10/08/09

In reply to Excuse My Gangsta Ways Is Both Illuminating And Uplifting
Does anyone remember Margaret Seltzer?

I know I'm going to get yelled at for bringing her up, but, yeah...
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thesciencegirl
10/08/09

@Maulleigh: Why assume that this story is fake though?
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Ulookinatmyjunk, JOC
10/08/09

@Maulleigh: I sort of was thinking that same thing too until MzJenkins set me straight down below. More than anything, I think the idea is hard to embrace because of the person it's coming from. It's simply not expected that an Asian-American woman will lead such a socially-deviant, dangerous, gangster lifestyle. Still, it doesn't make it any less true. It's more of a re-shifting of our own belief systems. No one would say, "Hey, remember Margaret Seltzer?" if the story had been written by a black woman. But I do understand your initial reaction.
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MizJenkins
10/08/09

In reply to Excuse My Gangsta Ways Is Both Illuminating And Uplifting
It's amazing how much the "mainstream" doesn't know about HUGE and prominent subcultures right here in America. I'm sure there are some people reading this now going, "Asian women? 'Gangsta'? Really?"
You have no idea...
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Ulookinatmyjunk, JOC
10/08/09

@MizJenkins: I may be guilty of this, because I'm still like, man, it's going to come out in a few months that these "memoirs" are as fake as a $3 bill. Damn, that "model minority" stereotype has really affected my thinking, too. And here I was thinking that I was immune because I was black and more sensitive to stereotyping. Still, it's very hard for me to wrap my mind around a gangster Chinese-American.
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Edited by Ulookinatmyjunk, JOC at 10/08/09 7:04 PM

thesciencegirl
10/08/09

@MizJenkins: Yeah, that seriously doesn't surprise me.
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mipsy6
10/08/09

@MizJenkins: I think it probably depends on where you live. It's changed a little, but there are still large chunks of the country with barely any Asian-Americans living there. When I was growing up in South Texas, I knew 2 Vietnamese-American kids and 1 Chinese-American kid. That was it. And I know people who grew up in small Midwestern towns who never met an Asian-American until college. So all those people are relying on media portrayals of Asian-Americans. And we know how well that goes...
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commieginge
10/08/09

@mipsy6: I think you're right about this particular stereotype's influence depending on where one was raised. I grew up in a city where most of the gang violence was between Mexican and Fillipino gangs, and if you traveled a city or two North then you got into the Chinese gangs' territories. It would never have occurred to me to doubt the veracity of this woman's story based on her race.
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LatoyaPeterson
10/08/09

@commieginge: Cosign here. Where I grew up, there wasn't much gang activity for black kids. But Asian and Latino kids? They *stayed* involved.
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flexanimous
08/21/09

In reply to NY Times Magazine Explores "The Daughter Deficit"
What's crazy is that girls are devalued because they want boy-babies, but who's going to have those boy-babies if there aren't any women???
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Armed with Vitriol
08/21/09

In reply to NY Times Magazine Explores "The Daughter Deficit"
Unfortunately, I see this kind of thinking in the United States as well (though to a much less extreme extent). I can't tell you how many moms have told me how happy they are they had boys because girls are high maintenance and girls are this and girls are that. I really want to slap moms who say stupid shit like that. The only reason a girl would be more high maintenance than a boy is if you raise her to be some bitchy little prima donna, which so many parents do. It has nothing to do with sex, but how you raise the kid. And if you have a preconceived notion in your head that sons are better than daughters, you're probably going to find reasons to value a son more than a daughter. It's called self fulfilling propechy, dipshits.
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wtfox?! promoted this comment Edited by Armed with Vitriol at 08/21/09 2:12 PM Armed with Vitriol was starred

rah29
08/21/09

@Cherry Blossom Girl: I've heard things like that too and I can't get my head around it. You;re dead on about the self-fulfilling prophecy aspect too. Can you blame girls for acting out in homes where their brothers are doted on and they're treated--however subtly and unconsciously--as second best?

I guess I'm lucky; both my mum and my dad have said repeatedly they're so happy to have had two girls (my mother insists she should have started earlier and had two more). They both think of boys as more difficult. And maybe it's a cultural thing, but my mum always insists that family traditions and heritage are passed through daughters rather than sons. I can see where she comes from on that--in my experience too it's always daughters and mums on the phone to each other, visiting, raising each others' kids, dragging their husbands behind them.
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funzette
08/21/09

In reply to NY Times Magazine Explores "The Daughter Deficit"
rates of suicide in china and india for women are among the highest in the world.

i know that one doesn't cause the other, but it's heartbreaking and complicated and not unrelated.
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fallingstandards
08/21/09

In reply to NY Times Magazine Explores "The Daughter Deficit"
I can't say that I'm happy to see the word "foeticide" on a site that's typically so pro-choice. I'm certainly not supporting gender-selective abortions, but vilifying that as akin to murder seems...inconsistent with a lot of other editorial content on this site. I'm hoping this was just a term you carelessly pulled from one of the cited sources, or is being used to refer exclusively to those unfortunate women who are, against their will, injured in an attempt to induce abortion or fetal death.
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LatoyaPeterson
08/21/09

@fallingstandards: We were of two minds on that one. Yes, I agree, foeticide dances awfully close to the language of anti-choicers. On the other hand, the word is normally employed to express the enormity of the situation - we are talking about millions and millions of girls. I dropped the qualifier "gender-specific" in front of the term, but I'll discuss with Anna about the language to use when covering this issue in the future.
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queenjulie
08/21/09

@LatoyaPeterson: Latoya, thanks for replying to @falling standards! I love reading a news site (yes, I consider Jez a news site, and a better one by far then CNN.com or any of the other mainstream ones) where the writers actually think about what they're writing, think about the specific words they use and their connotations and denotations, and put actual effort into being clear, intelligent, original, and to the point. You guys are just truly awesome.
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fallingstandards
08/21/09

@LatoyaPeterson: I appreciate the response, and am glad to hear that you guys did think through the usage before including it in the post. As queenjulie and I both noted, there are connotations that would make us feel more comfortable with its use (e.g., indicating a lack of agency or true choice on the woman's part, or the intrusion of external forces), and I realize that there are some cultural distinctions in how the term has been used historically. I appreciate that you clarified the intent, but I do still have a very strong, visceral reaction to "foeticide." Then again (and perhaps more importantly), I also have a very strong, visceral reaction to the topic of the post on a whole. "Missing girls" is a very real issue with wide ranging societal and demographic repercussions, and a great one to post on this blog for discussion. Your guest blogging has been great.
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Edited by fallingstandards at 08/21/09 3:18 PM fallingstandards was starred fallingstandards was unstarred

rickinsthelens
08/21/09

In reply to NY Times Magazine Explores "The Daughter Deficit"
Don't worry. When all of these baby boys grow up and have now women to marry, they will be sent off to a war which will kill them off, thus equalizing the population balance. Oh, wait. . . maybe that's not the best answer either.
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charliekohler
08/21/09

@rickinsthelens: When China first passed the One Child rule (and women were aborting females to have males), my immediate thought was: who on earth are those guys going to marry? They're going to have to find a wife outside of China. At the time, I didn't know much about heteronormativity, but I'm still wondering.
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Hiroine Protagonist
08/21/09

@charliekohler: This was actually a serious discussion in my Security Studies class - the app. 300 000 Chinese men who will be coming of age with no prospect of a similarly aged Chinese wife. Large groups of young men with no chance of domestic bliss = major increase in martial behaviour and armies. They're a destabilizing force.
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judgingamy
08/21/09

In reply to NY Times Magazine Explores "The Daughter Deficit"
This may be a horrible way to look at the situation, but if any family is willing to kill a baby based on its gender, maybe it's good they aren't raising it. Just a thought.
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NefariousNewt
08/21/09

@judgingnora: Indeed.
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lola_in_the_dark
08/21/09

In reply to NY Times Magazine Explores "The Daughter Deficit"
I've always felt that these cultures favour boys but in a way, they create the circumstances that create males in the first place, such as having dowries or not allowing women to work.

In my dad's family, his older brother is treated like a king because not only is he a son but he was the first born son. It's ridiculous.
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wtfox?!
08/21/09

In reply to NY Times Magazine Explores "The Daughter Deficit"
Nor does a rise in a woman's autonomy or power in the family necessarily counteract prejudice against girls.

The issues here seem very much connected to the other articles we've been discussing over the past few days, notably the Kristof/DeWunn (sp?) piece, some of our conversations on female-targeted microfinance, and the "truck-stop girls" in Swaziland. I think one of the more salient points raised was that helping women toward autonomy was not, on its own, going to change things, broadly speaking; rather, interventions also had to include men, who not only hold power but are responsible for preserving cultural norms that disenfranchise women, and that give women incentive to disadvantage themselves. There's a whole web of tradition and values that exist independently of money and education, and it's those that need to be addressed.
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Bgirl_Hamster
08/21/09

@wtfox?!: It reminds me of women in the western world who succeed in the workplace and then refuse to help other women reach the same achievements.
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NefariousNewt
08/21/09

@Bgirl_Hamster: Which lead to the perpetuation of the "women are catty toward each other" stereotype.
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NefariousNewt
08/21/09

@wtfox?!: Exactly. I was going to post a comment to that effect yesterday, but felt it seemed disingenuous coming from a man. The problem is so much empowerment, as it is changing long-held social and cultural attitudes -- men have to buy into the fact that women can be powerful as well and it doesn't mean the end of manhood. I think men feel that putting women in power (in the worldly sense, not the sexual sense) emasculates them somehow, and they react very negatively to that.
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wtfox?!
08/21/09

@Bgirl_Hamster: Yeah, exactly; it may be empowering on an individual basis, but there's really no attempt to change the system to open it up to other women (i.e. other competitors).
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wtfox?!
08/21/09

@NefariousNewt: men have to buy into the fact that women can be powerful as well and it doesn't mean the end of manhood.

I think that's absolutely true, and I don't think it can be said any better than that.
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lermanzo
08/21/09

In reply to NY Times Magazine Explores "The Daughter Deficit"
some people perceive that gender selection is the reason my parents had 4 children. the youngest is the only boy. i've had people tell me such and argue that i, as the third girl, must have been a HUGE disappointment, especially to my father.

my parents talked about it before they got married. they wanted 4. they had 4. and i happen to be dad's favorite.
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anabacus
08/21/09

In reply to NY Times Magazine Explores "The Daughter Deficit"
I know in China when they implemented the one child policy it was absolutely brutal especially in the rural areas where families wanted boys in order to work on the family farms. They viewed having a girl as an awful thing because there was no one to do the farm work, so some would turn to infanticide until they got a boy.
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Pandorasvoicebox
08/21/09

@anabacus: I don't get it...can't girls do farmwork? Not all guys are virile young men. The average girl and the average boy are probably equally capable. I think much of the discrepancy is in people's heads.
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squeaky yet unclean
08/21/09

@Pandorasvoicebox: I understand the traditional family roles rather than just farmwork has had an impact on this: in rural China, when a daughter grows up, she is likely to marry and move away from home, leaving parents without anyone to support and care for them in old age. As there's hardly any social support for the elderly, the parents of a daughter face neglect in old age - a son, on the other hand, will hopefully bring home a wife and look after his parents. these circumstances are the reason they now allow two kids per family in rural areas: because noone would choose to raise a girl, if only one was allowed.
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Hiroine Protagonist promoted this comment Edited by squeaky yet unclean at 08/21/09 1:54 PM

Pandorasvoicebox
08/21/09

In reply to NY Times Magazine Explores "The Daughter Deficit"
I am sending this article/series to all my friends who don't take sexism or feminism seriously.
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NapalmKitty
08/21/09

In reply to NY Times Magazine Explores "The Daughter Deficit"
Kids are like Crackerjack prizes... ya never know what you're going to get.
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wtfox?!
08/21/09

@NapalmKitty: I don't know, I regularly ultrasound my boxes of Crackerjack to determine what prize is waiting for me inside.
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Edited by wtfox?! at 08/21/09 1:19 PM wtfox?! was starred wtfox?! was unstarred

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