#NotYourAsianSidekick

Sometime earlier today, writer/artist/organizer Suey Park started a trending topic on Twitter using the hashtag #NotYourAsianSidekick. As I understand it, the phrase originated in a discussion specific to the issues surrounding Asian/Asian-American women's lack of a voice in mainstream feminism; as the hashtag took off, the online conversation has expanded to general issues of oppression, misrepresentation, and microaggressions experienced by AAPIs (Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders). It's not an easy topic to discuss with any nuance in 140-character blocks, but it's provided an incredible opportunity for an ad-hoc community to form and, if nothing else, air shared grievances and receive support for them in the form of retweets and favorites. (The less Twitter-literate might not appreciate the significance of this, but suffice it to say that it's a lot like sharing an opinion and have someone nod along vigorously, or like getting a high-five from a friendly stranger.)

For 10+ hours now, it's been an affirming space for some of us -- and here, I'm claiming my membership in the community -- to feel that we aren't alone in facing any form of oppression based on the color of our skin, the size of our eyes, our ability or lack thereof to do math, etc. There are a lot of experiences that I now take for granted, among them being pressed for where I'm really from (is New Jersey not real enough?), being asked if a horrible mispronunciation of my last name is "good enough" (no, it's not, but you'll move on anyway), being complimented on my amaaazing tan (thanks; I was born with it). By seeing those aspects of my experience as an Asian-American woman reflected back at me from utter strangers on Twitter, I've been reminded, jarringly, that they're really not okay at all. To be reminded of your oppression isn't a pleasurable experience in the least, but the solidarity is cathartic.

Of course, as soon as people of color start having any semblance of fun or dare to feel comfortable, someone has to step in and ruin the party. Today's White Savior came in the form of a "Neo-Libertarian" with a fancy college degree who happens to know a LOT more about oppression than I do, and he didn't hesitate to tell me all about it. I shouldn't have responded, but I'm a sucker for a good argument with someone who needs to lose.

The header for the Storify doesn't appear here, but it should read: "The hashtag #NotYourAsianSidekick has been trending on Twitter for hours. It's mostly filled with expressions of everyday oppression/discrimination/misrepresentation experienced by Asians/Asian-Americans and corresponding messages of support -- and some jerks. This is what happened when I responded."

If anyone wants to use this as a case study in derailment and the willful blindness conferred by overwhelming privilege, please do. Make sure to note his condescending tone, his flaunting of questionable academic credentials (and implied assumption that I have none of my own that might equal or surpass his), and his refusal to respect my desire to end the conversation civilly. Note that he continued to tweet at me, at one point telling me to "Hahaha Go to school, before you rant about topics too sophisticated for you" -- like my own life, I guess? Good thing Twitter reinstated the block function, because what a gross white guy.

(Incidentally, if this is still not clear to any acquaintances/complete strangers reading this who don't know me well enough to give me the benefit of the doubt, I understand that there are non-gross white guys. I salute them.)

More than this kind of all-too-common ignorance, though, I want to highlight the positive responses that have come out of this. I've compiled some of my favorite responses here, with mine included -- not because they're the "best," but because they're mine and it seems only appropriate to share them here.

[Suggested listening: "Concrete Wall," or any other song, really, by Zee Avi, an incredible Malaysian singer-songwriter more people should know about because...just listen to her.]

Male and female brains wired differently, according to scientists who should be fired.

According to an article in The Guardian based on a recently published study in PNAS entitled Sex differences in the structural connectome of the human brain, "scientists have drawn on nearly 1,000 brain scans to confirm what many had surely concluded long ago: that stark differences exist in the wiring of male and female brains." As a woman having read just the eight-word headline ("Male and female brains wired differently, scans reveal"), my knee-jerk reaction is that this must be wrong, cannot possibly be good science; as a former cognitive psychology student having read the entire news article and as much of the journal article itself as are available to me, my more rational, analytic response is still that this is wrong, and is not good science.

But which is the lady brain? Neither is pink...
National Academy of Sciences

This is blatant intellectual dishonesty, and both this writer and the researchers themselves should be ashamed. As unthinkable as it is that an entire team of Princeton researchers could draw such wildly inappropriate conclusions from their research, it is even more disheartening to consider the reasons why they might have done so. They argue that patterns of neural connectivity divide along gender lines, where "men's brains apparently wired more for perception and co-ordinated actions, and women's for social skills and memory, making them better equipped for multitasking." For any Neuro/Psych students who are thinking, "Hang on, that's the opposite of everything we've learned about the development of the human brain, which is primarily influenced by its environment," you're right! This write-up and even the study's own abstract are bullshit. Here's the tip-off:

"Male and female brains showed few differences in connectivity up to the age of 13, but became more differentiated in 14- to 17-year-olds."

That is to say that pre-adolescent brains proved, in fact, to be more similar than different until a certain cultural/developmental turning point, which implies that differences in neural connectivity are a product of environmental influence, not based on any biological gendered difference. To be clear: that is exactly the opposite conclusion that this writer, and the researchers themselves are touting. They gloss over the obvious implications -- that these so-called "hard-wired" differences between men and women are the product of gendered roles being forced upon them and that, in turn, shapes their brain functioning --  and the difference between cause and effect in interpreting these results in order to serve lukewarm stereotypes that men are more X and women are more Y because they were made that way. This is not only an incorrect application of these kinds of research methods; it's irresponsible, incorrect, and absolutely disgraceful.

The science correspondent's bias is obvious in his lazy introduction about scientists confirming what the common-sense population "had surely concluded long ago" about women and men's inherently different ways of thinking -- nice universal generalization of your own opinions to society at large, way to go. Even more troubling is how readily one of the contributing researchers summarizes her findings in such complacently sexist terms:

"If you look at functional studies, the left of the brain is more for logical thinking, the right of the brain is for more intuitive thinking. So if there's a task that involves doing both of those things, it would seem that women are hardwired to do those better," Verma said. "Women are better at intuitive thinking. Women are better at remembering things. When you talk, women are more emotionally involved – they will listen more."

Even the official news release from UPenn piles on the hackneyed stereotypes:

"For instance, on average, men are more likely better at learning and performing a single task at hand, like cycling or navigating directions, whereas women have superior memory and social cognition skills, making them more equipped for multitasking and creating solutions that work for a group. They have a mentalistic approach, so to speak."

Women are more intuitive and better listeners, of course! Of course, of course. They are also better equipped to cook and clean because their brains are smaller in size, and thus cannot handle the cognitive load required for higher-order tasks like running a business, leading meetings, or being ordained into the Catholic Church. Men are better at learning -- all types of learning, all the time, no matter what. That's why they're so much smarter.

I had assumed this kind of thinking went out of fashion along with phrenology, but sometimes I can be wrong, too. I eagerly await follow-up brain scan studies confirming that white men are more likely to succeed in leadership positions, black women don't feel pain, and Asians are better than everyone else at math.

This is where my food budget goes.

There's a small grocery store around the corner from my house, close enough that I once debated walking over with just a coat thrown over my pajamas when I realized I didn't have milk for a bowl of cereal in the morning. (I didn't, because anxiety over adhering to social norms is maybe the only thing that can trump my laziness. Also, let's be real here: it was early afternoon.) Today, my groceries consisted of the following:

And I have nothing further to say on the matter.

Cake close-ups.

Yesterday was my brother's 20th (!) birthday. I did not make him a cake, because no amateur birthday cake I could manage to whip up would ever live up to a) boxed yellow cake mix or b) store-bought ice cream cake with those little chocolate crunchies, you know what I'm talking about. These are just facts of life.

Instead, I bought an ice cream cake with chocolate crunchies (duh). We watched Eddie Izzard's "Cake or Death?" sketch, and he had three slices (slabs?) of ice cream cake. Then, for completely unrelated reasons, I baked a loaf of bread and three different cakes. Here they are!

Sally Lunn bread, as seen from above:

Uhhh this is not fluorescent in real life. I don't know what happened here.

Deb Perlman of Smitten Kitchen is my #1 culinary role model. She posted this recipe, and I followed along without changing a single thing, which is unheard of. I trust her that much. She recommended pairing this slightly sweet, brioche-like bread with honey brown butter, and a warm slice of this spread with that is reason enough to believe in a higher power.

I swear, you could slather that all over a used sock and I'd have to think long and hard about how inadvisable it would be to lick it off. I tried to take a quick picture of my test slice, with the honey butter on it gleaming brighter than sunshine, but I ate it in about eight bites instead. (That doesn't sound that impressive, but I have a small mouth, so take my word for it.)

This is another Smitten Kitchen favorite:

This strawberry buttermilk cake delivers the biggest payoff for the least effort of any recipe I know. The original, which uses raspberries, is my personal favorite take on it, but the strawberries in the fridge were about three minutes away from spontaneously exploding into fuzzy mold, so in they went. The second cake was the same, but with semi-sweet chocolate chips, in case of any weirdos who wouldn't want the fruity, delicious first option. I didn't take a picture of that one because all the chips sank, leaving a perfectly smooth, perfectly dull surface with the chocolate lurking beneath. Surprise for whoever cuts the first slice!

I've been trying to find a suitable coffee cake recipe: the kind of coffee cake that contains no coffee but plenty of cinnamon, topped generously but not indecently with sugary streusel. It's harder than it sounds. I thought I'd managed it this time, but instead of beautiful brown sugar crumbles, I got this craggy alien landscape:

You know what, though? It's delicious. It's a keeper. Don't judge a cake by its nooks and crannies.

I wrapped everything up in foil and labeled it:

So don't anyone ever tell me that you can't "win" at church coffee-hour. I'm pretty sure I just did.

Long walks on the beach sense of humor chocolate friends.

I'm a pretty hip, with-it Millenial (with limited job prospects and cynicism disproportional to my age and advantages), but I still don't get online dating. Real-life dating is already such a bizarre, foreign concept to me, and I worry enough about my 160-character Twitter bio to even imagine what hell it would be like to pitch myself to potential cute strangers in a few paragraphs. Coupled with what I've just realized is my new status as a "professional writer" (in that I occasionally receive payment for verbal services rendered; not to be confused with being a particularly good writer) and the additional pressure to be witty and articulate that comes with that, I would rather perform a root canal on myself than write an online dating profile.

This knit cactus understands online better than I do.

Luckily, I don't have to figure out how to use SEO tactics to maximize traffic to my OKCupid/eHarmony/UniformDating.com ("for singles in uniform and those who like them!") profile. For one, I'm un-single at the moment, with no plans to change my Facebook relationship status anytime in the future. For another, there's a way to cheat now: this random text generator that pulls keywords from actual dating profiles to cobble together whole paragraphs of phrases like "playing my guitar Woody Allen dogs everything but country music." It's like Frankenstein's Monster all over again, except with dating clichés. It's amazing. Here's what I got:

Exploring the city I'm pretty laid-back playing my guitar Woody Allen. Going to shows hiking art school outdoorsy the simple things in life, foreign films self-deprecating humor Indian food coffee really hoppy beers. Tattoos feminism Oxford comma outdoor activities fitness local sports teams. 

My cats honest and direct happy hour making people laugh. I hate lists new friends having a few beers outdoor activities Vampire Weekend, Netflix The Daily Show grilling honest and direct my beard. Amazing women I've met feminism I enjoy fascinates me I don't really like talking about myself glass half-full.

 It's fascinating and a little disheartening how relevant that is to my tastes and interests. I'm passionate about feminism, the Oxford comma, Netflix, and The Daily Show, I really am; it's just that the entire online dating community seems to be as well. Then again, the random text is more inaccurate than it is accurate, and it's only thanks to the Barnum effect that I think it's so spot-on. Like horoscopes, another form of basically randomly generated text (sorry, astrology-believers, but not really that sorry), the fake dating profile is broad and vague enough that I and everyone else are all willing to claim that it sounds just like us. So much for individualism, and best of luck to anyone trying to sound unique and special to prospective hotties online.

But seriously, try this thing out. Who wouldn't want to date someone who's into outdoor activities tattoos Doctor Who strong and confident? No pressure, they're only looking to have some fun not too complicated joking around glass half-full honest and direct. You could grab coffee or a drink bikes fixing up my house hiking together! Let me know how the date goes.

[Shout-out to The Hairpin for inspiration!]