"Speaking in a loud tone with excessive gestures is considered rude, especially when done by women."

according to a guide for medical practitioners to deal with Vietnamese-American patients in Seattle.

I can attest to that, having grown up in a Vietnamese household. Actually it seems that speaking in any tone at all, especially to state an opinion or contribute factual information to a discussion on politics, is considered rude if you are female. But not if you are male.

While the statement was part of a "cultural primer" regarding Vietnamese patients, I've actually found that it is true in social situations involving Americans as well. I've found that people often react negatively to a woman speaking and having an opinion, especially if she states her opinion or recites facts clearly and confidently. She doesn't actually have to be yelling or speaking loudly, but there's something about her speaking at all that threatens people. They get defensive and start patronizing her, asking her to calm down, and maybe apologizing to her for "offending" her. They brace themselves expecting her to cry. Then they talk about how "intimidating" and "angry" she is. A man talking in the exact same tone doesn't get any of that crap.

I stumbled across the "cultural primer" while searching for articles about gender roles in Vietnamese society. After skimming a few other cultural primers and some sociology research papers about Vietnamese gender roles, I've concluded that:

1) Some sociology research papers are very poorly done. For example, one paper examined the effects of migration to the United States on gender roles in a subpopulation of Vietnamese American households. The authors expected that in the States, the women would be able to negotiate more power in the patriarchal system because of increased economic opportunities. They concluded that surprisingly, women still ceded to the patriarchal system (which the authors attribute only to the traditional Vietnamese system) in order to enjoy economic security, social status within the Vietnamese-American comunity, and the ability to discipline their children. The authors should have researched the "starting" dynamics rather than assume that women in Vietnam have fewer rights than their American counterparts. If they had, they *might* have concluded that the women actually lost ground when they migrated to the States, and the researchers might have attributed at least some of the patriarchal system to the situation in the United States.

(This cross-cultural comparison of women's statuses is actually rather complicated, so I may go into a more detailed discussion in a different post. But many Americans touring Vietnam have been surprised to see mostly women doing the work outside the house, while men sit around taking care of the kids. And Vietnamese women since ancient times have actually enjoyed property rights well before European women began to own property.)

2) You can't learn much about a culture by surfing the net and reading "cultural primers." The people who write these cultural primers don't necessarily know what they're talking about. I found a lot of statements that certainly fit the stereotypical image that most non-Asians have of Asian cultures, yet have not matched any of my personal experiences and knowledge about Vietnamese culture. One such statement is the astonishing "women are expected to bear male children, and the inability to have male children is a source of shame to the entire family." I am unaware of the shame that several Vietnamese families fitting this description are supposed to experience.

3) A lot of what people describe as being a facet of another culture is found in their own culture, but they may have trouble recognizing it. For example, I found the surprising claim that "it is acceptable for men to beat their wives in Vietnamese culture." It is my impression that it is about acceptable in Vietnam as it is in the States. (I.e. men who do that are poo-pooed, but generally women still end up dead because there isn't much meaningful protection of women with abusive husbands... in the States as well as in Vietnam.)

Making cross-cultural comparisons is generally a complicated business. I wish people who made grand sweeping statements comparing one culture to another would delve into the cultures they are comparing. Vietnam, like probably most countries, is culturally diverse, as is the United States. Also, studying a select population of immigrants won't necessarily give you an idea of how things work in the country of origin.

Where is this huge rock?

Where is this huge rock under which so many Americans appear to live? I have not seen it, but I can feel it. I feel it whenever I hear comments like "America went to help Iraq, and those crazy ungrateful Iraqis can do nothing but kill each other and kidnap foreigners." I wrote an earlier post quoting William Blum, in which he suggests that many US citizens are actually proud of being ignorant. (I would argue that they are not aware of the extent to which they are ignorant, and thus cannot be as proud as they would like to be.)

I have been racking my brain to find a way to connect with other people and have a fruitful dialogue about US foreign policy and its numerous "humanitarian interventions." I have not succeeded in doing that. I have succeeded in garnering some unsolicited and patronizing advice along the lines of "when you get a job and join the real world, you'll stop being so idealistic." I have also succeeded in getting some vituperative and condescending hate mail.

Would it even be worth it trying to connect with other people? Of the voters who chose Bush in the last election, Blum wrote:

"There is now discussion amongst progressives about reaching such people, trying to win large numbers of them over. This is certainly an understandable goal, but I suggest that we not waste our time, energy, and resources. Certainly, with any one individual amongst them, if we secluded that person on a farm with a dozen articulate progressive activists for a few months, and with a plethora of moving audio-visual materials, something would probably click in that individual's head. But we haven't got enough activists, time, or farms to make even a crease in the target population of "Valueites".

(excerpted from his essay, Some Thoughts on that Election Thing," November 2004.)

Funny but depressing and likely true.

On the other hand, the best suggestion I've heard for making anything click in someone else's head about US foreign policy was also suggested by Blum. I quote here from the introduction to a collection of his essays, "Freeing the world to death: essays on the American empire:"

""What would the United States have to do in its foreign policy that would cause you to forsake your basic belief and support of it? In other words, what for you would be too much?" Most likely, whatever dreadfulness they might think of, the United States has already done it. More than once. Probably in their own lifetime. And well documented in an easily available publication."

So that's the new angle I'm going to try, when I'm ready to try again.

Vietnamese for "you;" Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone

Pimsleur is an audio-only foreign language learning program. Its website offers the first lesson free of each language it carries. The idea is to avoid developing an accent by learning by ear only. I was initially skeptical of this method. You still go through an English translation step to understand what is being said, which to me is not as good as an immersion method. Also, you don't learn to read or write.

Despite those reservations, after frantically trying their free online Korean lesson to prepare for a phone call to Seoul, I was hooked on Pimsleur. I tried several different free introductory lessons, mostly lessons for languages that I already knew. I was trying to judge how well Pimsleur did it. I was surprised to discover that my very limited previous exposure to Italian (a few rudimentary lessons on the BBC website) helped me understand the material in Pimsleur Italian, lesson 1 more quickly. It was also easy to guess the meanings of Italian words through my knowledge of French. But even for languages that I didn't know at all, the Pimsleur lesson is very easy to follow. Also, you can learn a lesson while doing other things, like folding your laundry.

I was quite impressed with Pimsleur's first lesson in Vietnamese, my native language. I've always thought that Vietnamese would be a tough language to learn as a foreigner, especially if you don't already speak a tonal language. Besides the problem of having to learn tones, there's the complication of there being 20 different ways to say "you" depending on the person being addressed. (Actually, there are also 20 different ways to say "I" and there is a whole system that governs how people address each other and refer to themselves.)

It is very important in Vietnamese to address people appropriately depending on their relationship to you. For example, I would address a male friend who is older than me with the Vietnamese word for "older brother." (Younger siblings get a gender-neutral word.) Even a stranger on the street should be addressed according to these rules. Sometimes the first few lines in a conversation with a new person is to figure out how to address each other properly. I've seen signs and pamphlets solve the "you" problem by using the word for "friend."

The only pronoun that actually approximates "you" in Vietnamese is extremely informal and it is usually considered rude to use it. I have only heard my dad addressing some of his kids and very close buddies by that pronoun. It still sounds so rude to me, compared to the loving word for "child" that parents usually use to address their children. At five, I angrily told him not to call me by the Vietnamese "you" pronoun. After all, he only used that word with me when he was angry at me, and calling me "you" rather than "child" was a way of disavowing any relationship we had.

Pimsleur's first Vietnamese lesson, based on a conversation between a foreign man touring Hanoi and a Vietnamese woman, handled this problem well. In this lesson you naturally learn to address women and men differently. I imagine / hope you get to the finer distinctions of "you" in Vietnamese in later lessons. On the other hand, I'm sure no Vietnamese would be offended by the generic female and male "you"s that Pimsleur offered, if it were spoken by a foreigner. As for learning tones, I think someone learning with the Pimsleur method would pick it up after a while.

In order to learn to read and write in a language as well, I would recommend supplementing Pimsleur lessons with books or programs like the Rosetta Stone. (This is all, of course, if you can't actually take a class.) The Rosetta Stone is a completely different system than Pimsleur. You are presented with images and words, and you learn to associate words with images without going through English, which is good. I wouldn't recommend Rosetta Stone by itself either though, because you don't (so far as I can tell) learn simple conversations, at least not until very far in the program. The Rosetta Stone at least offers a reading and writing section, but I don't find it sufficient. For me, the program is good for reviewing and expanding vocabulary, and in the case of French, remembering word genders and verb conjugations. I don't think I would find it useful if I hadn't already had two years of French. I also wouldn't use the Rosetta Stone to learn a language that doesn't have a romanized alphabet - you just won't learn how to read and write in the language by word-picture associations alone.

Proud of being ignorant

I have been reading some of William Blum's writings. Blum authored the books "Killing Hope" and "Rogue State," which I think ought to be required reading in any US history course and for anyone who wants to agitate for US "intervention" elsewhere in the world. (Or for people, like someone I knew, who declared in 2002 that the US has not invaded any country since Vietnam.)

One of Blum's comments from his Anti-Empire report of 2003 reminded me of my post on apoliticalness being heralded as a virtue:

Blum:

"Many US citizens, whether consciously or unconsciously, actually pride themselves on their ignorance. It reflects their break with the overly complicated intellectual tradition of "old Europe." It's also a source of satisfaction that they have a president who's no smarter than they are."

Technology as a Social Isolater

I have been thinking about how technology can enable or encourage social isolation. One example is the use of an iPod or cell phone to avoid interaction with others. I have used my iPod many times in order to avoid conversations with random strangers while I'm using public transportation. I also use this at work to avoid conversations with labmates, especially when I'm trying to finish my experiments and get out of the lab as quickly as possible.

In the pre-iPod era, I made do with a geeky science book. The book doesn't always deter strangers on the subway, especially the creepy stalker types, from striking up conversations with me. The advantage of the iPod is that there is an audio-blockout component. You can always pretend you didn't hear someone talking to you. So far I've found the best random-conversation-deterrent method to be a combination of iPod plus reading material... plus scowl, if necessary.

But there is another way I think technology enables social isolation. This isolation is not deliberate, at least not on my part. E-mail lists and online fora allow discussions between people who have never met each other, on any topic ranging from the best language software to politics in Iran. While I participate in many online discussions, I don't like that I start to form strong ideas about people I've never met, and vice versa. I don't like that there are people who dislike me, yet actually know very little about me. (It bothers me less if they've actually met me. Usually people who don't like me are people I also don't like. Then I'm glad they don't like me.) I am affected much more than I should be by incoherent text that is directed to me from strangers, even though I realize that often the text has less to do with me than with the sender's projections and personal issues.

In this way, I feel that the additional means of communication provided by the internet limits social interactions. Because you "meet" online persona that you might not like, you may end up never engaging meaningfully with the actual person. If you by chance ever meet this person, you've deprived yourself and that person of a true three-dimensional first impression. I am not bemoaning the fact that I can't get along with everyone, absolutely not. I just don't like the idea of blocking out people I don't even know, though it's my fault just as much as anyone's that I allow this to happen.

Hitchens needs a dose of Cho

Margaret Cho has a blog, which will add to my overall blog-reading time. This woman is absolutely amazing. She hosted the MIT Fierce Forever drag show this year, and I was taken away by how witty, funny, and politically astute she is. I wonder if Cho is one of the few female comics that Christopher Hitchens would grudgingly admit is "funny." Hitchens, not a man I consider to be intentionally funny, soaked up several pages in a recent issue of Vanity Fair, claiming that women aren't as funny as men and explaining the putative "humor gap."

Apoliticalness is not a virtue

I don't find it a fault, either, though it would bother me to be in a long-term relationship with someone who is generally not conscious of the world around him.

I've had several conversations with people who seem to think it a virtue that they never engage in political conversations, ever. They seemed proud of the fact that they don't ever talk about anything with which someone else might disagree. The concept of that being a virtue is odd to me.

I think I understand part of what they're saying. Avoiding political discussions is one way to avoid ruffling feathers. When you start talking about politics, you have to accept that the person you're talking to may get upset at you and personally attack you. You have to understand that people can misunderstand you, or deliberately take what you say and twist it around, or "label" you in a way to shut you up.

But ruffling feathers now and then isn't a bad thing to me, and being a perfect people pleaser isn't something in which I'd pride myself.

"You Silly Pagan"

It's possible that was what she was thinking. She asked me what book I was reading, and I told her it was an introduction to the field of astrobiology, which is the study of the origin of life in the universe. I told her that I am looking into this field of research for myself. Then as I was talking, I realized that I was talking to someone who is living in a devoted Catholic household where they have framed pictures of the current and ex-Popes, where church is a place they visit more than once a week, and where the Bible is not to be questioned.

So then I wondered if, while I was blathering on and on about how I'd like to study how life began, she was thinking in her head, "you silly pagan, it says in the Bible that God created the universe and he made Adam. End of story."

The Price of Connectedness

Repair of broken connection to Airport Extreme Wireless Card by local Apple Store: $500 and 3-5 business days without computer

Repair by Apple Central Repair Facility: up to $1000 and 7-10 business days without computer

Mac-compatible USB wireless adapter by Addlogix: $40 and 0 day(s) without computer

Keeping the Apple Rip-off Team's grubby hands away from computer: PRICELESS

Is this a soldering iron? Oh no, I meant to buy a curling iron.

I went to Radio Shack recently and decided to buy a soldering iron while I was there. This decision was motivated in part by my having broken the wire in my laptop that connects to the internal wireless card, and partly by my owning other broken items that could be fixed with some solder. In any case, owning a soldering iron to me is like owning a hammer. It's extremely useful and not difficult to use.

Since my mother is an electrical engineer, I grew up with a house equipped with a soldering iron and many other gadgets (like a voltmeter). One of the mother-daughter bonding moments I had growing up was a joint PC upgrading session, which included going together to the PC components store and then soldering some circuits together. (Having had no background in electronics, I was scolded for forgetting to ground myself before unscrewing something.) I also soldered in seventh grade in stained glass art class. Thus, a soldering iron is not an exotic object to me, and using one is not particularly complicated.

Apparently the guys who work at the Radio Shack think otherwise. While I was browsing the soldering tools, one Radio Shack dude approached me, appearing confused or offended by the sight of me in that aisle, and asked why I needed a soldering iron.

"Do you need it for a project or something?" he asked.
"Um, not in particular.., just to fix some things," I answered.

He went away.

Then I went to the cash register with my selections and another Radio Shack dude started lecturing me about how to use a soldering iron. He asked a series of questions with the format "and do you know that you need a tinner?" etc. He made it sound like soldering was a complicated science, only to be done in the hands of extremely skilled people with advanced degrees in Soldering Science.

He also asked me if I were buying it for a project, and then finally asked me if I'd taken soldering classes. I was unaware that such classes existed, and I just answered that I had soldered before with my mother, who's an electrical engineer. I wasn't in the mood to be combative, but I felt like I should have said something like "Listen, you dork, soldering is not complicated and you don't need to take a class to learn how to solder." After I left the store, I wished I'd said something like "Oh wait, is this a soldering iron? Oh no, I meant to buy a curling iron. Silly me. Math is hard! Tee-hee."

My current most-favored hypothesis is that I got this "Have you ever soldered before? Because it's complicated, oh so complicated!" treatment from the Radio Shack dudes because I'm a woman. An alternative hypothesis is that the Radio Shack dudes feared that I would use the soldering iron as a lethal weapon, thus feeling the need to question me to see if I had legitimate reasons for purchasing a $7.99 soldering iron. Perhaps Homeland Security has added soldering irons to the list of dangerous items and have requested that all Radio Shack employees interrogate people who buy soldering irons and report them to Homeland Security. Maybe I'm on the "She Bought a Soldering Iron" Watch List right now.

A third hypothesis is that the Radio Shack dudes are really dumb and they really do think that soldering is super-complicated, maybe because they themselves don't know how to solder. Or maybe they just learned, it took them a long time, and they have the burn marks to prove it.

Actually, on second thought, my most-favored hypothesis is the Radio Shack Dudes are Really Dumb one.

Grammoronity

If you ever find yourself in a position to read and comment on the draft of someone's research paper (or thesis or whatnot) please, oh please, do everyone a favor. Do everyone a favor and read a copy of Strunk and White's "Elements of Style," or at least look up the proper usages of certain words, before "correcting" someone else's grammar. It is driving me crazy dealing with the "corrections" of my paper from someone who doesn't like the verb form of the word "effect" and thinks it more appropriate to leave prepositions dangling than not.

Somehow I have a feeling I have to accept what I am calling "grammoronity" unless I want to deal with long arguments and more delays in graduating. This sort of the thing is the source of inspiration for chapter three in my book proposal.