Michelle Obama 2022? We can dream. Painful though the primary was, even from a distance, it was heartening to have such a discourse about misogeny v. feminism. In my circle, it has led a lot of previously intimidated women to identify as feminists.
However, a lot of that got lost or negated in the stupid fighting over who “owns” capital-F Feminism, as a theory and a movement.

I have been a proud Feminist since I first heard the word at age eight. I have friends and second cousins who are the prototype of the wealthy white older women who love love love Madame Clinton and who are vowing a revenge vote for McCain, for whom abortion rights are THE issue, who dealt with a lot of discrimination for being “career women” in their generation. I can respect and admire but not relate to them, but I feel they don’t return the favor, and brand me an Uncle Tom of the Cunthood for supporting Obama. If people prefer to focus their stands on specific issues, I totally support them, but they shouldn’t bash those of us with more multifaceted agendas. I think the reactions of that demographic rather expresses their own personal demons, ie “well-intentioned white liberals” who are kinda racist but feel guilty yet defensive about it.

Carmen, nong lai Sanghei hai you ning hui gang Naguning! Naguning! It’s Shanghai, they love whities and hunxies, it’s a compliment.

Naguning/Laowai/Foreigner is less insulting than “Expat” – and I was disappointed that you used it. “Expatriate” verus “Immigrant” has very racist, classist baggage. In Asia, at least, it references someone sent for a few years by their company on a “hardship package”. If someone from a poor brown country migrates to a wealthy white country, they must be escaping a horrible existence and planning to stay, thus are “immigrants”. If someone from a wealthy white country migrates to a poor brown country, they must be on a youthful lark or sent for a job, since it’s soooo difficult living in them poor brown countries, so we’re “Expatriates”. Sucks for those second, third, fourth generation “expats”.

You don’t see racist whities railing against the “illegal expats” in the US. Until then, the term will continue to annoy me even more than the people who get in my face and screetch the reverse ching-chong of “Haaaa Loooo!!!” The two are, in my opinion and experience, related.