{look upon my works, ye mighty}

Last night, I was talking with an friend of mine about what her definition of rape is versus harassment is, and one of the things she brought up is how much she hates it when girls don’t say no or don’t protest clearly but then claim it was rape the next day.

So I thought that since it’s Sexual Assault Awareness Month, I’d write about a case in my life when I wanted to say no, didn’t manage to, but I really wish I had.

This was going to be an entry about how when I was seventeen, I once failed to say no/clearly show that I didn't want a guy sexually touching me. Then I reread the journal entries that I'd written at the time and realized that I hadn't ever said the actual word 'no', but I had signified discomfort in a lot of ways and tried to get away from him.

Here's an excerpt from one of the journal entries in question. ( Cut for possible triggers. Typoes left in for the sake of accuracy. )

Originally, I had remembered this as him touching my breast and me backing away from him. I hadn't remembered that I had fought back. I didn't remember that I kicked him, and I didn't remember that he continued with his advances afterwards.

That's not what's important here. The question is, why didn't I just say no instead of trying to physically get away from him and discourage him without having to actually talk about what was happening?

The answer's in the question itself. I didn't want to talk about what was happening.

Part of the Asian culture that I was raised in involves victim-blaming. If I had told him to stop it, I would've had to admit that he was doing something wrong, and then I would've had to examine my own behavior to see how I had caused it. If I kick him, leave the room, and then quit art class? I'm still not actually addressing the fact that hey, he's touching me, he's doing things to my body that I don't want, he is behaving like a jerk.

The next day, I had my boyfriend come into the classroom with me and sit with me. While my boyfriend was in the room, the 'friend' slid his hand onto my thigh (I was wearing shorts) and tried to feel me up.

I didn't tell my boyfriend what was happening. I just stood up.

And then I quit art.

I couldn't tell my parents why because they would've blamed me. I was the one who had chosen to take special after-school lessons, and my mother honestly believes that short skirts cause rape. My mother was rubbed up against by a guy on a bus for the entire ride home when she was a teenager, and she remained absolutely quiet and made no fuss until she got home, and then she started crying.

The Sri Lankan culture does not hold with 'making scenes'. I couldn't tell him no, because then I'd have to acknowledge what was happening. I'd have to make a scene. And that's simply not done. Even though I grew up in Europe, I still grew up inside a Sri Lankan household where if a man is taking liberties with you, it's because you've somehow signified you're open to them.

Who knows? Maybe I didn't kick him hard enough. Maybe I should've kicked him in the balls to show that I meant no.

Or maybe I should've just swallowed down a lifetime of being told to be a good, quiet little Asian who doesn't make waves and called him on it.

I was too scared to. Apart from my indoctrination into silence, I didn't know what would happen next. What if he denied anything was happening? What if he told everyone else that I'd accused him of molesting me and then laughed at the idea that he'd do anything like that with me? What if my parents found out about it?

So I kicked him, I pushed him away, I brought my boyfriend to show him that I was taken and not interested, and finally, when none of that worked, I quit art class.

But I never actually voiced the word 'no', or faced up to what was happening to me.

Strange as it may seem to some of the Western readers on my flist, I'm using this post to promote Sexual Assault Awareness concerning yourself.

It is YOUR body. You have a right to decide what other people do with it. If someone is making you uncomfortable, tell them 'Stop'. They are the ones in the wrong, not you. Facing that something bad is happening to you is infinitely preferable to trying to dodge around it, because as long as you can't stand your ground, they're going to keep pushing until they've backed you into a corner.

The last time someone groped me, I yelled at them to 'FUCK OFF OR I'LL BREAK YOUR HAND'. The man in question quickly sloped away.

No matter how shy you might be, how uncertain and scared, or how tied to a culture that keeps you very firmly passive, your body is still yours. And you are never the bad guy for telling someone that what they're doing to you is wrong. Never.

Year divisions might be arbitrary but whatever, this is a fresh year. So far, I have:

• argued with my parents about whether dragging me to a dharna would be encroaching on my religious freedom. I won and therefore, they went with the maid and I have the house all to myself.
  
• been reminded that I have friends who love me and miss me.
  
• heard that New Zealand has beaches with black sand that I MUST visit
  
• been tempted to join that group of people who write fic for music videos. I kid you not, they're out there and they're prolific.
  
• found out I will need 3,315,000 NP in my bank account to get 1K of NP per day in interest.
  
• read Jason training Damian fic.
  
• listened to a song from Legally Blonde: The Musical on repeat.
  
• reaffirmed my commitment to living.
  
• made a ( New Year's Resoluion. )
  
  
  • found out that ego_chan wrote a third chapter of her Terry/Ryuuji fic, read it and squealed.
    
  • discovered via ceresi that Pretty Woman Bird House EXCEEDED its goal for donations.
    
    This year is off to an awesome start. ♥

First of all, thank you so much for signing up for one of my fandoms. And secondly, I'm sorry if any of my requests confused you, I know that I have a tendency to fall for the weirdest characters or pairings. XD

So, just a few basic things before I go into more detail -- I am definitely a fan of slash, I like fics that are dark and self-destructive or give you a really tight feel for what a particular character is like. I am definitely very hard to squick whether with sex, gore or violence.

( Now down to the details of my requests. )

In conclusion, if those details are confusing or difficult to deal with, please don't worry about them and write whatever you feel capable of doing. And thank you in advance!

Oh, and if you want examples of fics/author that I especially love, ceresi is especially awesome - there's a Tobias/Jake (Animorphs) that I cannot get enough of mostly for the writing style, and a Rachel drabble that breaks my heart every time. By other authors, this Regulus/Remus fic is a perfect example of the dark/twisted/conflicted/using themes that I love, and this Narcissa/Lily fic is gorgeously-written and dark as Black blood.

...Hopefully, that's enough recs and at least some of them fit whatever fandoms you're in!

I'm asexual.

Flat, simple statement that often gets a lot of debate. From my friends, it tends to be the well-meaning assumption that I just haven't really grown-up yet and that I'll get interested in sex later. Or that I'm dismissing sex as something I'm not interested in because I haven't tried it yet.

My parents think that I'm just trying to sound modest, and they tend to laugh. Or, well, my mother has. I haven't told my father yet, and I probably never will.

It's one thing to have people react with outrage/shock/denial to a declaration of homosexuality. It's another thing to have them just not believe that you can be twenty-one years old and genuinely not attracted to people in a sexual manner.

I can find people pretty. I frequently do. One of the phrases I use to describe characters that I like is 'lickable'. That doesn't mean that I would actually like to lick them, just that they look good enough to lick.

In Naomi Wolf's book, The Beauty Myth, she talked about the difference between looking sexy and being sexual, and how Western culture tends to compress the two into one. Asexuality, for me, means that you differentiate between the two quite clearly. You can look sexy. You can think someone else looks sexy. You can see photos of people in different clothes and be able to identify which outfits are cute, pretty, or sexy. You just don't want to do anything about it.

Most of the time, I'm okay with being asexual. I figure it means less heartache if I don't have random drunken hookups or get into friends-with-benefits relationships that turn into something more only on my side. Practically zero chance of STDs or pregnancy. No worries about morning-after pills, birth control or getting a partner to take an STD test pre-sex without causing offense. Being asexual cuts down on a lot of unnecessary stress in some ways.

...Of course, at the same time, I'm living in a society that's very geared towards sex. Magazine covers blare out that they have tips on having better orgasms, better sex, or better pleasing your man. Most people who I could date assume that sex is part of a normal romantic relationship and were we to get into a relationship with them not knowing that I'm asexual, they'd have to either be celibate or break it off. I'm lucky in that my boyfriend is also asexual, but that doesn't mean that I don't sometimes wish that I wasn't. Sex isn't my thing, but orgasms are something my friends rave about. A lot. I kind of would like to try that, but know that my dislike of being touched sexually would definitely get in the way. I can't even trick my brain with the argument that according to medical journals, orgasms good for your health and therefore, this is just like getting a check-up.

I'm pretty sure the benefits of not worrying about STDS and pregnancy outweigh orgasm-benefits, where health is concerned, but I still do end up thinking sometimes that it would be nice to have a different sexuality. Lesbian, bisexual, heterosexual -- I'm not picky. I'm not self-hating either. I've tried both heterosexual and lesbian relationships, and neither worked for me. I can safely say that I'm not attracted to either gender and it's really not as simple as me just not having found the right person.

I suppose that it doesn't really matter, in the end. I am what I am.

And what I am just happens to be asexual. I can live with that.

I'm in a white sari with a blue border and a turquoise blue blouse.

One of the things that I love most about the UN is that I can wake up in the morning, decide I feel like wearing a sari, and just go into work in a sari. That simple. Nobody's going to ask me if it's some sort of holiday or give me an odd look.

Can you imagine being in a normal corporate setting and walking into school in a sari or some other form of ethnic dress that isn't suit+tie official?

I can't. Not without it being Sri Lankan Independence setting or New Year's, one of those holidays that might justify the non-professional clothing.

Saris are a pain to wear, really. They're difficult to sit in, they get caught in the wheels of your chair, you have to pick it up to go down the stairs, they require a lot of safety pins and white ones especially need to be kept absolutely stain-free.

I love them anyway.

There's something so elegant and timeless about the way they drape. A sari is really just a blouse, a skirt and about six feet of cloth, but wearing a sari always makes me smile a little whenever I see myself in a mirror.

See, I'm not a good Sri Lankan girl (my hair is growing out of a red mohawk, it's red and black, I'm wearing a Nike watch on one wrist) but in a sari, I feel like maybe I'm the new type of Sri Lankan-American-European girl. Like growing up in Europe and attending college in America don't mean I'm less Sri Lankan, just that I'm more me and less culturally bound, but I can still choose to show off parts of my culture when I want to.

In conclusion? I like this sari. If I were capable of wearing saris on my own, I'd bring one back with me to uni and put it on every now and then.

So, shameful confession time.

I can't tell the difference between Chinese, South Korean, North Korean, Japanese, and Taiwanese just by looking at people. I know the difference if I'm looking at a map, obviously, but people? No.

Likewise, I don't really expect white people to be able to tell the difference between Bengali, Indian, and Sri Lankan people. Not unless they've spent a significant amount of time in one of those countries.

See, I have a friend from Bangladesh who was insulted when someone mistook her for being from India. I get asked if I'm from India all the time, and I usually just laugh and say "No, Sri Lanka" because hey, at least they were on the right continent and that's something. But when I think about it, I wonder if maybe I should take it a little more seriously because the sentence "Oh, but they all look alike" sounds so ignorant to me.

At the same time, though, I think the idea of thinking everyone of a particular ethnicity looks alike is more insulting if you're failing to distinguish between individuals as opposed to knowing what country they come from. Consider the two scenarios:

Person A: Hi, Chamithri!
Person B: ...I'm not Chamithri. I'm Dilkushi.
Person A: Oh, sorry. It's just that you all look alike to me.

versus

Person A: Hi! Listen, I was wondering, I was thinking about going to India for the summer and do you know any good places to visit?
Person B: No, sorry, never been there.
Person A: But aren't you Indian?
Person B: No, I'm from Pakistan.
Person A: Oh, I'm sorry. Everyone from thereabouts just looks alike to me.

To me, the second one is a lot less offensive because the differences are subtle enough that I wouldn't expect them to be able to judge people's origins by their faces or skin color. The first one, however, is just plain rude because it means that not only are you not paying attention to the people you meet but you're also trying to brush it off by lumping everyone into a big mass of brown or black or yellow or whatever color.

If anyone ever said "All white people look the same to me", they'd be considered an idiot. If they said that they can't tell the difference between people from France, Germany and Italy based on appearance, it would probably be allowed to slide.

Moral of the post? Appearances can be deceptive, and of everyone on my flist, I know the ethnicities of only very few of you. If you want me to try to guess yours, leave me a comment daring me to guess, and I'll have a try. No getting offended if I get it wrong! XD

According to my mother, I don't tan the same way that real Sri Lankans, who grew up in Sri Lanka, do. When it's summer and my skin starts to darken, it goes reddish-brown-golden. If I had grown up in Sri Lanka, my mother says that it would just go browner. Darker. The additional color boost of red wouldn't be in there, since the red is the brown-person version of white sunburn.

I'm also too pale for most Sri Lanka-raised Sri Lankans, mostly. I lived mostly in Austria, and now in America. Neither of those are countries that have the sort of year-round sunshine that Sri Lanka does.

But that's actually a good thing by Sri Lankan standards! See, pale is good. Fair is good. The maids call my sister "sudhu baba", which means "white baby". Or "sudhu manikay" which is "white darling". Calling someone white is a compliment. White means that you can stay inside and not work and that you look like the former ruling class. Dark means that you work outside, possibly in the rice fields, possibly selling stuff by the roadside, and that you're not attractive.

My aunts always hustle me in out of the sunshine if they see me hanging around outside, soaking it up. They don't want me getting dark. I wouldn't be pretty any longer in their eyes if I did.

It's not just them, though. It's the whole country. Sri Lanka sells whitening creams. They have actual creams that you can put on your skin that will peel off your skin and make you look fairer.

I think it's disgusting, but it's not like Bollywood or Hollywood are helping much either. Do an image search for 'Bollywood female stars' or 'Bollywood actresses' and take a look at what you see. Most of them are going to be relatively fair, with brownish hair instead of actual black hair. They might still have South Asian facial features and bone structure but their coloring will be light, possibly South European.

In fact, Aishwarya Rai, who won the Miss World contest in 1994 and is appearing in this year's American film, The Last Legion, is incredibly fair-skinned and could easily 'pass' for white or mixed. In Sri Lanka, the descendents of Sri Lankans and colonialists, the so-called Burghers, were given preferential treatment for ages because they looked white, and therefore more trustworthy/advanced than the darker-skinned Sri Lankans with no white blood in their ancestry.

I know that there was a lot of discussion about how Halle Berry is also fair-skinned, and the predominant trend of Hollywood to cast paler-skinned blacks in movies, but generally speaking, there aren't usually South Asian women in Hollywood films for me to look at critically. When there are Asians, it tends to be the Lucy Liu type from Charlie's Angels or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. East Asian, as opposed to South Asian, where shades of skintone aren't as varied. Bend Like Beckham is one of the exceptions to the rule and I must say, I loved that movie, but in general, there aren't many South Asian women having major roles in movies outside of Bollywood.

Now we finally have a South Asian woman acting in a popular film, but the actress is one of those that fit most closely the stereotype about white -- about non-Indian -- being beautiful.

Not much of a victory, I'd say.

Do not clean pierced ears with mint dental floss.

I realize that might sound obvious to some of you, but if you're a college student who recently got her ears pierced, thinks one of them is too swollen to use cotton swabs on and really wants to make sure it's clean, you might have the brainwave of using dental floss to try to clean behind the earring.

Take it from me, it's a bad idea. Your ear won't drop off, but it will sting like crazy. Though maybe cotton thread would work if you soak it in disinfectant first.

Aren't you glad I'm here to find out stuff the hard way so that you won't have to?

Think of this as a meme, if you like.

I want you to make me a song from phrases from my past entries. Just go back, pick out bits and pieces, and write me a set of lyrics. Do it for me and if you repost it, I promise that I'll do it for you. ♥

I did it for Savior over here if you want an example of how it goes.

Matt (daemonsadvocate) and I are officially together.

I'm probably going to be babbling about relationship stuff (along with a full explanation of how/what/when/where/why/WHO) in the future, so if you're interested in hearing that stuff, drop me a comment specifically saying you want to be on my r-life aka romance life filter. ♥