On Patriarchy, Foreignness and Womanhood
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- čas přidán 26. 06. 2024
- International girls and women exist in a patriarchal structure in which global mobility, cultural norms, as well as gender roles and stereotypes set restrictions to their freedom to exist in intercultural contexts.
The intersectionality of being a woman and an expat, immigrant, refugee, tourist, or any other type of foreigner, possibly of different religious and ethnic background, set the stage for all kinds of discrimination and societal expectations.
Disclaimer: This is my story, but I've heard similar stories from women from very different backgrounds to mine. If you truly listen to what I am saying, you'll know that I am criticising the structures which limit women's safety and freedom, no matter who is reinforcing them, including myself - and I've surely had to check myself. When women speak of men (*), they always mean men with an asterix - the predatory ones, not the ones we love and who protect us. There are also beautiful examples of women holding power, and ugly examples of foreigners' presence abroad, but those are stories for another video.
I love my fellow human beings regardless of their religion, ethnicity, passport, education level, or the thickness of their wallets, and demonstrate this with my everyday actions. Hope you do so as well.
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How to feel at home abroad (moving to Kenya): • How to Feel at Home Ab...
Mistakes we make in intercultural love: • Mistakes We Make in In...
What I learned living in Nairobi, Kenya: • 5 Things I Learned Liv...
What I learned living in Wuhan, China: • What I Learned Living ...
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0:00 being an international girl
1:24 home & disrespect towards "other women"
2:43 disrespect towards "other women"
3:48 direspect towards "own women"
5:09 control over "own women"
6:43 fetishization & safety
9:04 limiting women's freedom
10:17 women being a wolf to other women
11:28 the good men & gift of international life
#solotravel #livingabroad #patriarchy #solofemaletraveler #solofemaletravel #pickme #internationalstudents #immigration #expatlife #femaletravel #intercultural #international
I am a man but it is always interesting to hear the issues that women have to face. I have 4 sisters so I have a lot of skin in the game. But I hope I would have the same sensitivity towards the topic even if I didn't but can never say for sure.
My biggest pet peeve as a nomad is western men who go on and on about 'traditional women' in developing countries only to be surprised when local women have dreams of their own and don't exist solely to please men.
Thanks for your comment! I’m sure as a male nomad you’d come across these men a lot. I came across some sketchy characters in China, perhaps not your typical passport bros, but definitely a lot of fetishisation of Asian women there.
I’ve also encountered Kenyans who put down local more “traditionally” minded and looking women because they “get picked” by white men over “slay queens”. Lots of “” there cause I don’t like to put people in boxes like that.
This brings a few thoughts… Being picked by a white man is not an epitome of success, slay queens can have traditional ideas and make good wives (not that one has to be “traditional” to be a good wife) and not all “traditional” looking women are naive / hold only dreams of traditional lifestyles nor simply exist for men and children. People are more complex than these stereotypes, but people like to make sense of the world through labels.
@@ainoluo I met another nomad from the US recently who seemed fairly well educated and behaved. We decided to grab a few drinks and immediately upon entering the Uber he started on about how much he hates feminism and what it has done to 'his' women in the West and how his local fiance is not polluted by feminism. So I asked him to give me an example of a feminist behavior that exists back home that doesn't here to better understand his understanding of what feminism is. Want to know the examples this buffoon came up with? That when him and his fiance are in an Uber she stays quiet and doesn't utter a word to the driver because she respects his [fragile] masculinity. And that she doesn't make any decisions and he gets to make even the most basic decisions. The fact that his fiance has a young daughter from a previous relationship but is about to marry a neanderthal with that kind of mindset is really sad.
I cut local men in certain patriarchal countries some slack because that's all they've known - it is an opportunity for me to try to expose them to different views coming from another man. But I don't understand men who want to turn the clock back on rights that their mothers and grandmothers secured. They don't have the excuse of claiming that it is their 'culture' and it is the only thing they've known.
And I agree, marrying a foreigner is no prize. But I also can't fault anyone for trying to improve their financial situation. The economies of most developing countries are improving so I expect this to be less of a priority going forward.
Haha in China someone stopped me on my run and asked "Can I kiss you". And I was often called "kaifang" open.
My relationships there went well, but I got to know people slowly at university, or then men that had been abroad and saw foreign women as normal people.
Yep, so kaifang! 💃🏼 And that of course means they’d be entitled to have access to you. I interacted way too much with the type of men who only saw me as an exotic fantasy, thinking that they liked me. 🤡 Luckily I also had some amazing friends and also met some lovely men there. 💕 My mom still laughs at when a man ran after us in Shanghai marriage market. 😁
It is a sick world. Love hearing all your perspective. Stay safe.
And sorry for what you have been through. I can't imagine.
Thank you! 🌷 Things (also good ones) happen when you put yourself out there. Lessons, lessons :)
... what exactly was the point you were trying to get across ? Violence against women happens everywhere. Stereo typing happens everywhere. Sisterhood can be forgotten and turned against you seemed like it might be the underlying message ?
Also the comment : "hope you're not converting" - can it not also mean that " from the general western public conception that moslem women are oppressed ( which I personally believe to be untrue) that the person has your best interest at heart?
One super true statement was - cultural differences can easily obscure the red flags.
BTW I just noticed thay you have a very deep dark voice. You would make a superb David Attenborough programme maker together with your impressive video editing skills. BTW you are a beautiful personality. Stay SAFE!
I’ve noticed many people have no idea what women go through in general, let alone when you consider intersectionality - in my case what I have experience of is the foreignness. And how much worse experiences many other women than myself have had, but those are their stories to share if they wish.
So the point was to shed light on that intersection of womanhood and foreignness and the different struggles one may go through there, so that we can collectively do better. And as I say in the video, it’s not just men and foreigners, it has even sometimes been myself who has enforced those behaviours and I’ve had to learn to be better.
OK. Understood. Try making documentaries... You might surprise yourself..
@@nanlog4303 Actually used to be a dream of mine :)
@@nanlog4303 "moslem women are oppressed ( which I personally believe to be untrue)" Holy chicken wings, imagine being this lost. How are things in La La land this time of the year?
Hey friends! I can see some comments are not properly coming through, CZcams does it sometimes and usually gets it fixed. But I can see all of them on the backend, thank you all for support! 😊
Greetings!!!
Kindly please let me humbly encourage you!
A refined gold has to go through the fire before it becomes into a perfect conditions.
Yes we live in a world where most things are broken.
Life is so beautiful because there is beauty for ashes!
Once you start spreading love ,kindness and compassion around yourself because of what life has put you through you start to become strong spiritually ,mentally ,emotionally and physically and you become a new person in your awareness and you see the world differently and you start to devolop greatness in your inner being and your outer self shine with greatnesa
Thank you so much! I’ve recently started practicing approaching everything with and as love. Love is not only our romantic partnerships, or even other relationships, but we can approach every encounter, our work, our routines, and of course ourselves with love. And hopefully in the process make this world a little bit less broken.
Every human being is born with a great purpose on this earth.
Yes I agree with you we approach every aspect of our lives with love and the reason we do it is because we have experienced the brokeness in this world.
Once you become spiritually aware of this world you become empowered to share the healing process to those who are facing brokeness and it's always a joy to see people's life get transformed and that always make an impact to the next generation.
Some of us before we attain our purpose we always go through a transitioning period which is painful and the life experiences always shape us for something greater.
You are destined for greatness and a time is coming in your life where you will step fully into your purpose.
It's a great joy to see you are reading great books and working on your well being it's the most precious gift you can give to yourself and then to others
Kindly please I have also faced the brokeness in this world and I found ever lasting peace joy ,completing healing when I build the intimacy with the creator of my life and universe.
Kindly please allow me to humbly encourage you to read the teaching of Jesus Christ in the new testament.
Especially this verses John 4, Luke19 and John 8
I was so inspired by the way Jesus Christ show compassion ,kindness ,love and humility to the broken world even when the world and religious leaders showed envy and hatred His Love for the world didn't stop what he faced injustices and that's why many people emulate his ways especially those have faced the brokeness!
The creator of your life who's in charge of the breath you take in will do marvelous things in your life than what you ever dreamed.
Ephesians 3:20
Now to Him who is able to [carry out His purpose and] do superabundantly more than all that we dare ask or think [infinitely beyond our greatest prayers, hopes, or dreams], according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever Amen!!
Whoa, there is a lot of hurt here…! I wish you strength, good health and wisdom. You are you, and that’s all that matters!
Thank you! 🙏🏻 These are things I slowly remembered and jotted down in moments when something new happened. I’ve been processing things and hoped putting them all out there can help someone to notice things earlier and hopefully avoid spaces and people with such a low vibe. :)
@@ainoluo Get a few of your friends to form a big circle and collapse it to give you a biggg hug, without saying a word, for like 10 minutes! Stay well.
@@trukenyan haha aww, luckily I’ve had my friends do that in times of need - not for 10 minutes though, need to start asking more 😁
Aino from 2020 was unhinged by the statements 😅 I never heard that tension in your voice in your videos
I can only be thankful that there’s not much video material of me prior to 2020 😂 In that particular time, I had been called a “tolerant wh*re”, which was a trending term for Finnish women dating an immigrant man.
@@ainoluo That is wild! 😨😨😨
The correlation you made between
women increasingly leading their own lives by means of better education, work & resources
and society (almost as a result) simultaneously exerting increasing pressure on us to behave a certain way
really resonated with me. That’s so true!
If we don’t feel like a threat (i.e. stick to culturally-accepted expectations), we’re harmless. But if we’re persistently pushing the boundaries, we need to be subdued or worse suppressed 😓
@@thekaizengal Yeah, I made that assumption based on the hate I’ve received and as time went by, it started increasingly be focused on my age / looks, assumed income and full expenses (which I’ve never shared with even my mom 😅), and education. Quite interesting!
Interesting video-thank you for sharing your experiences as a female in a globalizing world, in the first quarter of the 21st century.
Do you think humanity, specifically intersexual relations, will fundamentally change during this century? I expect that I would enjoy
hearing your takes on this, given how you speak and think in the above video.
I can imagine that technology will continue to atomize human societies, making relationships, both platonic and intimate, more fraught,
that ectogenesis might emerge as a viable technology, and that race/ethnicity/culture boundaries will continue to erode.
[[You should marry and have children with a Finnish man]] is a belief I presently hold; I do understand that this belief exists
on tenuous ground. It subverts individual choice for a collective good, i.e. social cohesion and ethno-cultural preservation.
Also, the belief differs in its strength in my mind when I think in 25, 100, 1000, 10000, 100000 year timelines (e.g., this belief is stronger
on timelines for humanity of 25k years),
but cannot help but have it in the here and now, given how long I expect to live. I do also believe there is value in a belief such as
"No ethnically Finnish children = No future for ethnic Finnish".
For data on my perspective, I am an American and an atheist. I am married 1 year and dated for 3 years. My wife and I are both data scientists.
I've lived for around a quarter of a century. With respect to the above beliefs applied to the United States,
I hold it as "No European American children = No European American future".
I've subscribed and would be happy to listen to more of your videos.
I think, now perusing your other videos, I understand why this video, being that it is a reflective essay on civilizational properties (e.g., the treatment of women by men and vice versa), rather than other videos you've made, was recommended to me by CZcams.
I think you can already guess that I don’t share your belief. You mention social cohesion and ethno-cultural preservation as common good. For me the freedom to love and choose the people we share our lives with based on our values, as well as exchange of new ideas is more valuable and has nothing to do with skin tone or hair texture.
I actually do value social harmony a lot and it needs to be a special circumstance you’d see me trying to rock any boat, and this video is a result of such circumstance. Some people rock the boat themselves when they see and project on someone they assume to be different from themselves. :)
People have always established cities for trade of products, services and ideas. They’ve always explored, as well as looked for partners from other villages. Now we just live in a world where we can go further and faster. A fully ethnic Finnish family to me is just as beautiful as a mixed Finnish and Kenyan family. They’ve been through different, but often also very similar challenges and successes.
I would love to try out solo traveling in the nearby future....
It's worse for us, girls/ women who work in male dominated professions,, I personally got into arguments with men who make misogynistic comments...
And you definitely should! 💕 I have had so many wonderful experiences traveling solo and part of it was also being young and naive. My main lesson was to stop people pleasing myself into stupid situations.
I was lucky that when I was in such industry it was in Finland, so the professional misogyny tended to be only limited to the older men, and at least not visible in younger generation. Things do change! 💪🏻🌷
I'm also in a male dominated industry, in Finland it's ok, there are a few older men with problems but I just kick them out of the company and don't take them back 😂
@@thiacari 😅💪🏻
Suomi!
🇫🇮🙌🏻
If there were really a western patriachy keeping you down, would you actually be able to have this "international woman" lifestyle, or would you be stuck in a hijab?
No you don't get it, she is oppressed, the chicks in hijab are not. Makes perfect sense, what's your problem?
Have I said I’ve let anything keep me down? Did you miss it when I say there are women who experience things worse than me? Some of them may have a hijab, some won’t. By the way, half of the stuff here was not initiated by someone “Western”.
Thank you for sharing your perspective. I must say, however... The fact people prefer their own kind, so to say, surprised you? Or finding out that most women are not really "sisters" to each other, much less than they are representatives of their own people? Well, it's easily explainable if you are very young. Still, it troubles me that in the West this line of delusional thinking became mainstream that people are presented at a very tender age. I am Russian, and even though you separated "Russian and Western women" in your video, I must say, we are Western. Even though I probably would not want us to, culture is a given. Young women in Russia think pretty much like you. Not all at this moment, since Russia was separated from the "mainstream" Western culture for several decades, but we are steadily coming there, and that makes me worried. The Gods of Copybook Headings have no mercy, and I am afraid us Western people will soon learn it the hard way.
Actually, my intention was not to separate Russian and Western women. I have many Russian friends and through talking with them I know some Russians consider themselves “Western” and some don’t, so one can either take what I said as a separation or expansion, as in Russian as a sub-category of Western - however one prefers.
As mentioned in the video, these are my experiences from the past 15 years, so yes, I was very young when some of these things happened, and yes, it did come to me as a surprise how badly some people treat each other as I always had friendly curiosity towards anything or anyone foreign.
I wouldn’t say people prefer their own kind. Some do, but in my experience, as I also mention in the video, some rather like to talk down on their “own kind” and actively try to associate with someone different. For me my “own kind” has always meant people with same values as me, independent of ethnicity, passport, or religion.
Some of the party clips in the video were from Russia, by the way! I didn’t have a good phone camera back when I visited so didn’t have many clips to use from there although I visited some gorgeous spots.