Hot Seat: On Gender Bias, Ethnocentrism And Xenoconfusion
Summer's not over -- yet. Just like the mercury in hotspots around the world, we're still fired up. Enduring and recently sparked provocations include gender bias in the business world...the fact that we continue to judge books by their cover (and people by their name!)...the nonsensical segregation of creative work (by makers, distributors, buyers) based on the creator or consumer's skin tone...plus, a controversial take on this summer's French burqa ban guaranteed to bring your own issues to a boil.
+++++ AT expat+HAREM
Our interview series with hybrid characters debuts with the real Canadian woman behind powerhouse web firm Men with Pens, and her career-enriching choice to let business associates assume she's male.
Another new feature: the Hybrid Ambassadors blog-ring. On their own blogs nine Dialogue2010 participants address a polarizing book promotion in an international writing community, taking on the xenoconfusion of an interconnected world, "the whitewashing of our differences", and the risks of committing strong opinions to a digital footprint.
Among the best blog-ring comments:
"it takes guts to empathize with people of different heritage";
interpreting others' meaning with an eye toward middle ground makes us "catalysts and alchemists rather than victims and bullies",
"we are all hybrids, of life and circumstance, of beliefs and ancestry."
+++++ AROUND THE WORLD & AROUND THE WEB
Here's a hot ticket for Pacific Northwest thinkers, entrepreneurs, artists and optimists on 10/10/10: TEDxRainier celebrates the intellectual soul of Seattle.
The one day event is curated by expat+HAREM pal global nomad and physician Nassim Assefi who "gets a kick out of saving lives and celebrating life" and organized by Phil Klein, who's known to tweet such profundities as "ethnocentrism overtrusts ingroup loyalty, cultivating arrogance; nurses outgroup hostility, encourages ignorance of outsiders."
And an Istanbul-based foreign correspondent tackles what may be the most burn-worthy topic of all: can civilization ban the burqa and survive?
Flaming East: How Do You Share Uncensored Awe About A Place?
The fresh perspective of an outsider-on-the-inside releases energy from all directions. What strikes us about a place — and may entice our fellow country-people – often does not resonate to the same degree with the average native.
I was pleased to meet an expat woman entrepreneur on LinkedIn last week who was once a director at the American-Malaysian Chamber of Commerce. She now advises the Malaysian Tourism Ministry, sourcing products developed by foreigners so I’ve been revisiting a feverish amusement from a decade ago when I lived in Kuala Lumpur.
To enjoy the Newly Industrialized Country where hand-woven palm frond baskets were fast being replaced by pink plastic bags, I conceived a signature line of Southeast Asian travel mementoes, and a database of purveyors of exotic experiences like this on the island of Langkawi, on the island of Penang, and outside Kuala Lumpur.
I called the venture first Cool Arts South Sea and then Flaming East.
Inspired by history but not tethered to it, my Flaming East concept embraced the original wonder of the region’s watery crossroads, from the Renaissance’s Age of Discovery (with its empire-building and search for trade-routes) to the steamer trunks-and-servants Golden Age of Travel. All spiked with the delirium only a good bout of malaria could provide....
By the 1990s we were missing the boat, I moaned in my business proposal:
“The part of the world that lies around the South China Sea,” as one European narrator so circuitously referred to it, was once immersed in an illustrious mystique. Pirates and monsoons held sway on the seas while headhunters and mosquitoes did their part in the interior. Yet for several centuries an international set of adventurers, traders, colonizing industrialists and pleasure travelers risked the tropical hazards. Along with Asiatic goods and unimaginable riches, fanciful tales filtered home: of ancient races, shining temples and blue, impenetrable jungle. Even the air was different here, the east wind apparently laden with the aroma of silks, sandalwood, spices and camphor. Well, no longer.”
To be honest, Southeast Asia’s enveloping assault on the senses continued. But colorful naiveté and uncensored awe were in short supply where I came from. Writing about the past of the place caused my politically-correct, Pacific Northwest spellchecker to protest. I was flaming the East! Didn’t I really mean “cinnamon” when I typed “Chinaman”?
Have you envisioned a tourism campaign, service or product for a locale where you're the outsider-on-the-inside? What does it show about the place, and you?