Why the Pu**y grab won't budge Trump Supporters

Was there ever any doubt in your mind that Donald Trump is a misogynist?
Do you think his supporters don't know that the modern term for the way he thinks about women is deemed by what they call 'liberals' as misogyny?

Do you think that Trump supporters and Trump himself see misogyny as a bad thing? Male and female?

One of the things that shocked me in my early twenties while working on women's rights was that the greatest opposition for gender development came from the marginalized group themselves - women.

Women raised in misogynistic communities are taught early on to live vicariously through the men. Instead of wanting to become leaders, they are taught it is their achievement to be on the arm of a leader, or better still the mother of one. Instead of being free to make whatever choice they please about their bodies they are encouraged to isolate women who do yet value men who explore. Instead of being taught that men are responsible for their actions and women are responsible for their actions they are taught that woman are responsible for their actions and women are sometimes responsible for the actions of men. So it's hardly surprising that men raised in such societies end up genuinely believing they are superior. They respect no woman, except their mother. An exception I still can't quite figure out the reason for.

And so it comes as no shock that Donald Trump's version of 'Locker Room Talk' is the rest of the planets definition of sexual exploitation and harassment.

Yet, a statement so bold, so revealing, so telling, is dismissed by both men and women in the Trump camp not because they don't think its wrong; but because for so long they've been taught that men think this way, and women should just get over it.

When it comes to discrimination in America, the closer you are being a white, Christian and male, the less you will experience - but when you are a white Christian male, there comes the element of positive discrimination, where not only are all your behaviours excused and tolerated far more than anyone else who does the same, your behaviour is actually tolerated far more than what is socially accepted as being reasonable. After this antic I wondered, what if Trump wanted to be kicked off the race? Is there really anything he could do? Besides step down, there really is nothing a while Christian male American can do that will get him kicked out ...

Along with the anti-Hillary rhetoric, Trump supporters also feel that the mainstream media is oppressing Trump, with YouTube ads encouraging youth to vote including virtually not republican representatives. It is fair to say that the media overwhelmingly disapproves of Trumps antics, which works to his favour while he plays the oppressed card.

There is a way to stop Trump, but its not by exposing his misogyny, racism, discrimination or political inexperience (which in itself is very telling). It is by simply revealing the truths about the correlations his supporters are so loyal to him by.

'Trump is a successful business man, he will fix the economy'
'Trump will get rid of Obama Care'
'Trump knows what he's doing, he's gonna get the Muslims out until we know what to do'

Successful business man? a man who was loaned one million dollars by his father, yet still couldn't sustain a business? You want to trust him with the economy?
A man who hires foreign labour and materials because its cheaper? You want to trust him with providing jobs for you?
A man who filed for bankruptcy numerous times?

A man who has exploited the system because he is the typical demographic that benefits from the system - and now you want him to lead you?

Trump supporters are the very people stepped on by people like Trump, on his way to the top, yet they genuinely believe that he will make them somehow richer, safer and healthier?

Rich men don't get richer by giving you their money.

Trump looks out for Trump. He has no clue how others think or feel and cares not for it. You vote him in, you better learn to live vicariously, because you can guarantee he won't do anything for the countries gain that might be to his detriment.

In the words of my good friend, should Trump become president, America will have it's most powerful vice to date.

'Smiling' - Are you flirting? How Smiling is Considered across cultures

There's this huge parallel between the UK and Sudan when it comes to smiling.

Smiling can be considered as a professional gesture in the UK. You smile when you meet a potential employer as a way of communicating that you are happy to be there. You are also reassuring them that you are a nice person which is essential when job seeking. You smile at children, some people walking past you on the street and when you meet someone for the first time.

Smiling professionally in the UK can sometimes signify resilience; you can smile when you're needed to, regardless of how you're feeling and this is an essential skill. It shows that you are able to distinguish between your personal feelings and the feelings you need to display for the job/person/situation.

I laugh at the memory of myself smiling at potential employers in Sudan. Smiling is always informal here (with the exception of those influenced by the west), but Interestingly, Ethiopians and Eritrean's understand smiling very much like westerners, yet the Sudanese (perhaps it is the Arab influence) understand smiling as flirting.

When a man smiles outside of a correct Sudanese social cue, it can be seen as the beginning of flirting/harassment, or alternatively it is in response to some sort of signal from the other party. When a woman does the same she is seen as sexually inviting. In a culture where nearly all aspects of individual freedoms are limited by the needs of the group, some people have come up with their own secret non-verbal language which policy makers selectively ignore, so long as the participants never challenge the status quo.

In Sudan, social taboo is far stronger than law and order. What the neighbours say about you holds far more weight than what the police or government say about you. This is because it is general consensus that freedom of speech is heavily monitored and government critique can have serious consequences. This often denotes that verdicts reached by the government and civil service are not taken seriously by the public. The reputations of those in question remain privately untarnished as they are given a social forfeit in which they are assumed to have stood up to the government in some way.

The neighbours however are a different story. What they see and what they say will be detrimental to your family name. It will be the reason your children marry or don't marry (a highly regarded social status in Sudan), it will dictate who accepts you for work and it will most certainly dictate your position in social society. The higher your position is social society (your social capital), the more restrictive you're likely to be with your wife, and children, particularly your daughters as hearsay weighs heavily on your status.

By the unreasonable and outdated logic that dictates 'women entice and men follow'. Modern Sudanese society places heavy responsibility on women and their 'moral' behaviours. A woman's choice has the power to destroy the entire social capital that a family has worked centuries to build in a split second, while a man's actions are nearly always excused; with the assumption being women hold all the power and men, are, in this regard, helplessly submissive.

Not only is there a cultural difference in how we perceive smiles, but the weight of a smile is significantly different depending on the gender of the person smiling.

Impressions of America - Week One

Hi Blogger

Last time I updated you I was going to a Death Cafe, but unfortunately, due to a series of events, I had to cancel. I am still determined to go, so i'll keep you posted.

I'm currently in the United States for a six week fellowship program called the Mandela Washington Fellowship... and it is a very intensive program... my original thoughts were that I could write about it on a daily basis but that turned out to be nearly impossible. We have very long days and compulsory fun days which is rather ironic, but overall we return very exhausted and with lots of readings to complete for the next day.

Americans are extremely different from europeans, so different that I've often found myself taken aback by them. The most interesting thing I've found is that no two Americans are alike, it difficult to make a general statement about them because they're all so different from one state to the next.

In Europe, particularly Great Britain it's general consensus that communicating irritation is a far greater offence than feeling it. We collectively believe that when someone is rude, the right thing to do is to be baffled by his/her behaviour and not communicate our perceived notions of their rudeness, as this would make us rude. In America, this concept doesn't exist.

During my flight from Paris to Chicago, I was seated next to a very old American women of european decent. The lady in front of her decided to push her seat back and what the lady next to me did in response was something I couldn't quite fathom.

She shrieked in what sounded like a wounded retaliation to pain, before the leaning chair in front had even touched her. Her shriek was so loud it made the hairs on my arms rise. The women in front immediately retreated her chair and turned to apologise, to which she received a scolding.

After a couple of hours, the woman in front turned to ask if it would be OK for her to now push her seat back... another bizarre behaviour I did not understand to which the woman seated next to me responded

'No, I'd rather not have you in my face like that!'

I found this very strange, but what baffled me more was that within just two minutes of her great irritation at the woman in front, this old lady turned to me, opened up her right hand to reveal two small chocolate bars,

'Would you like some chocolate dear?'

She asked in a way only a loving grandmother would. I didn't know if I found this hilarious or scary but either way, it was a very interesting first impression of America!

After arriving at Chicago airport we were picked up by a bus and driven to Champaign-Urbana where the University of illinois is. I noticed that when compared with europeans, Americans had larger roads, larger vehicles, larger portion sizes and much larger smiles.

My first encounter with an ignorant American was soon to follow, and ironically, it was our program leader. During his briefing of our team (which is made up of young leaders from all over Africa) he decided to tell us to make sure we 'shower' ... and that the plumbing in the united states was much better than the plumbing in 'Africa' so when we use the bathroom, we should put our tissues in the toilet and not the bin.

I was so taken aback by his ignorance that I couldn't hide it on my face. The sad part for me was that this course is supposed to teach us about 'American democracy' yet none of the other members of staff present said anything. This was the first impression we received of America, and I didn't realise until my fellows and I discussed it later on in the week that some of them were baffled by his behaviour and didn't know if he was rude or if this was the American way and therefore they needed to tolerate it.

During the rest of the week we had the opportunity to meet with some incredible people, none of which displayed any arrogance or ignorance and were very keen to speak with us openly about their work, both the negatives and positives of the American system.

You can follow my adventures here:

http://hindsyaliexperience.blogspot.com

Cheating Death at a "Death Cafe"

I'm going to a Death Cafe and I'm actually quite scared.

There, I said it!

I have no idea why, but I find my feelings fascinating. We will never escape death, yet across the cultures that I've experienced in my lifetime the topic has never been brought up without a hint of fear. No one outside of a religious context has ever come back from death to tell us what happens. And of course religion requires 'faith' and 'belief' as its non-falsiable.

I'm not sure what to expect, but I'm guessing we will discuss what we think happens when we die and although no one can be sure of their theories, what I do know is that there are multiple things we do, to reassure ourselves of the inevitable.

The first example I heard growing up was that when we die, we are judged. Depending on how good/bad we were (in accordance with the specific religious content we followed) we either go to heaven, which is basically like earth but we just never die (the apparent ideal human experience) or we go to hell where we burn. Another option is that all of our memories are deleted and we are re-incarnated as a better human being (subjective to what 'better means' could be richer, more influential, more humble etc) or we become an animal, as punishment for our bad deeds.

It's ironic that in one theory the ideal is to be on earth and never die, and the other theory, that is the punishment.

To say the least, we are very confused about what happens after we die, and for that reason, there are things that we do to 'cheat death' during our lifetime.

Have you ever thought about why most people desire children in the future before they're even adults? Why is it a natural desire to want to bring a life into the world? Some people believe that children are an implicit subconscious connection to the world, that through our children we remain immortal - through them, a part of us that remains in the world after we die. It is for the same reason that we donate organs and wish to have memorials instead of funerals...

It is for the same reason that we obsess over maintaining healthy lifestyles and crave approval from other humans, as a way of maintaining a long and happy life... But why do we fear the unknown so much?

Did we fear life before we were born? Why do some people wish to take their own lives? And more importantly, why is it that after so many years and so many cycles of life, we still don't know a single thing about death?

I'll keep you posted after the event.

When your 'home' Culture clashes with your Western Identity

I know, I say this a lot.

And I really can't say its the last time lol.

But!!!

I was so busy working on establishing a youtube channel that blogger kind of slipped my mind a little...

So Youtube is going quite well... although I do have a story to tell you about when it didn't go so well...

As a British Sudanese there is so much that I get wrong in Sudanese culture and I have a lot to learn, but being fluent in Arabic and of a Sudanese ethnicity makes my mistakes far less forgivable to Sudanese people.

Following strong requests from my youtube comments to produce videos in Arabic I decided to try it out... and two videos received a very negative response from the non-english speaking community. One addressed harassment and the other was a story about a vet I met briefly who told me she refused to treat a dog because well... it was a dog.

As you can imagine, a vet refusing to treat an animal puzzled me... I didn't really understand why someone would choose this particular career if they had a prejudice towards animals... It turned out that in Sudan, people use animals for their livelihood and not for any sort of emotional attachment - having a dog was a sign of wealth and the vet saw bringing a dog as a 'show off' gesture. She was accustomed to treating cows and sheep which people use for their livelihoods.

Harassment was also an issue that proved to be very sensitive in the Sudanese community, although many of the comments resorted to insults (very common in any youtube community) there was an underlying belief that addressing the issue was somehow worse than the issue itself. I was called 'galeelat adab' which translates to 'badly mannered' and I decided to investigate the issue further.

After carefully analysing the comments I realised that the issue wasn't so much me, or how I was addressing the issue, it was more the issue itself. In a country where people are starving, earning very little, pressured from every aspect to partake in corruption - harassment is something little see as a real issue. It is a 'rich people problem'. The public was outraged that an issue like this is even being addressed meanwhile other issues like the government and the state of the country were left unspoken about.

As it isn't really possible to speak about the social and economic climate in the country due to the lack of freedom of expression, I decided to stick to English videos for the time being... but these issues highlighted the struggle of growing up between cultures - my western friends wouldn't be able to fathom a vet who refuses to treat a dog, whereas my eastern ones wouldn't fathom a patient bringing in a dog in the first place...

Why do Whites Hate Talking about White Privilege?

 Imagine a conversation that always ends with you being the bad guy.

Always.

When I moved to Sudan, it was the first time I'd ever experienced racial privilege. I am in the ‘right’ race, I am of the ‘right’ complexion I am from the ‘right’ tribe and I have access to everything.

In a nutshell, this is essentially the same thing as ‘White Privilege’, which is identified exclusively to whites because they receive it everywhere in the world, not just in ‘their’ countries.

In reality, privilege is not about the colour of your skin – it’s more related to your people’s ability to market themselves in the best way possible - to as many parts of the world.  The British conquered the world we live in, they won wars against supposed ‘equals’ and then colonized the rest of the known world. They spread their people to lands as far as Australia, New Zealand, America and Canada and built some of the greatest civilizations in recorded history.

History, which they recorded.

Interestingly, colonizing makes the offspring of colonies think highly of you, even though essentially it is just a fancy word for being a bossy, powerful hegemonic immigrant. A person who moves from their land, occupies another with the agenda of taking over and inserting their way of governing (ironically this is what Britain and America fear ‘Muslims’ will do in the west, but they call them terrorists)

And if anyone other than them had written history that is exactly how they would have been remembered – terrorists. To make things a little clearer, I am pro British secular values and anti the current fundamental Sharia Law interpretations, but that doesn't give me the right to force my beliefs on to others because I think my beliefs are ‘superior’.

The colonization allowed these people to have access to unlimited world resources, knowledge, money and power and due to this, whites are able to project any image they like about themselves on a global scale. The entire world sees when whites do good deeds, when the world sees the white house, they don’t see barbaric white history whereby they forced slaves to build it – they see some of the finest white leaders in the world making some of the most powerful and influential decisions – because this is the narrative whites project, and everyone absorbs it.

What people don’t realize is that every race does this, every race talks about the good things in their countries and when a murderer or a thug is broadcast on the news, everyone knows its an exception – the majority of the race isn’t like this and there is always a bad apple. The difference between other races and the white race however – the rest of the world only watches their media, and white media – nothing else.

Arabs watch Arabic news, and White (Western) News

Asians watch Asian news, and White (Western) News

Africans watch African news, and White (Western) News

And Whites, watch White (Western) News

So when whites talk about a ‘black thug’ – all non blacks now see blacks as thugs. When whites talk about ‘extremist Muslims terrorists’ all non Muslims see muslims as terrorists and when whites talk about fanatic church killers – not all whites are seen as racial extremists because they will need to explain to the white public why this happened, so they dig deeper into the story (lone wolf, crazy, psychopath etc.)

The world understands other ethnicities from bias white institutions – institutions that were set by racists who made it impossible for non-whites to ever speak up or be seen as humans with rights.  However when things changed and tolerance became a sign of progression and not weakness – the structures of the media didn't. Non-racists whites and other ethnicities decided that pretending race doesn't exist was the best way to deal with race issues – but pretending not to see the race without amending the structures of the racist institutions doesn’t work, it in fact marginalizes more – just in a new justifiable way. It’s the reason you are so much more likely to get stopped if you’re black driving a fancy car than if you are of any other racial background (the structure of society teaches you implicitly that this achievement is not expected of blacks unless they are thieves or rappers)

The same thing goes in Sudan, I don’t have to worry about not being accepted for jobs because my name indicates my racial/religious origin, I don’t have to worry about renting houses/cars because people assume I will always pay (because of my racial privilege). I don’t have to worry about my children in school being marginalized not just by students but by teachers because they are from the ‘right’ race. I don’t have to concern myself about my ‘race’ being the reason for injustice happening to me – it's a hassle I don't have to deal with.

But what I do have to deal with, are those who hate me because of it. Marginalized minorities who have to work twice as hard to get half of what I have. They will never understand that I see this as unfair too – they will never believe that I see them as equal to me and they will never truly believe that I deserve all that I have… unless I stop enjoying the privileges my racist ancestors provided when they built the blueprint for the way we live today.

The problem with addressing white privilege is that the motive is unclear – do you want whites to suffer like everyone else? Or do you want the privilege too?

We need to take responsibility for the global lengths that  ‘white’ western news travels – and for this reason, western media needs to represent all aspects of everyone living in the west, and not just the whites in the west.

Outside of Britain people find it difficult to accept that you can be anything other than white and British – this needs to change. Everyone deserves to be treated without suspicion, not just whites.  And in order to do this, minorities need to stop assuming that whites who enjoy privilege and hate talking about it are doing so because they think they deserve it and you don’t – and whites need to stop assuming that anyone who talks about white privilege thinks they are racist – we know you are not, but your ancestors were, and they built the blueprint for the world we live in today!

The 'Migrant Crisis' - Why is it a Crisis?

The Refugee crisis in Syria and Afghanistan is now mainstream.

In other words, the refugees are trying to reach countries with a powerful media presence.

Countries in the West.

Refugees have been fleeing Syria for a long time now, with many now residing here in Sudan, nearly fully integrated – married to Sudanese and settled.  Of course the right wing Sudanese newspapers made a little frenzy about this, the same way they did/do with the South Sudanese, (even when we were one country) – right wing will always be right wing, and racists always target the weak to maintain their positions of power.

There is not much of a welfare system here, but the Syrians who moved here got something they didn’t get in Syria – safety. Most of the Syrian refugees I’ve come across that came to Sudan now own businesses running accessory shops or restaurants…  They were clearly doing well in Syria, before the war. 

The war that claimed 250,000 lives and left half of the pre-war population displaced and fleeing.

It was absolutely not the choice of the Syrian people to be in this situation, the same way that it was not the choice of Iraqi’s or Afghans – or if we scratch a little further in history the displaced millions after World War II. This is why they are refugees and not migrants.

Many people ask – why don't they go to Lebanon or Turkey or countries closer to them? (The underlying assumption being that they want Europe because they are lazy ‘cockroaches’ who want to benefit from welfare they don’t deserve)

The short answer is they did, many of them are there – however outside of your own country you are always treated as a second class citizen, and Europe is much more subtle in its discrimination than the Middle East and North Africa and much more compassionate towards those in need. Compassion it can afford – take this example, when the bank crisis happened in the UK, The government gave the banks an amount that would total the GDP of Spain. That was just to bail out the banks. Although you may think that Middle Eastern countries such as Saudi-Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE are wealthy (rich with oil), the GDP of Spain is no where near the amount that these countries make – it exceeds them massively.

Europe is extremely wealthy, to the point where when you take the total income of the world – you can see that Europe and North America are the only two continents where the total world population is exceeded (disproportionally) by the wealth. Take a look at this graph.

This was in the year 2000, this year the UN published a report stating that the richest 1% of the world owns 40% of the world’s wealth.

In terms of wealth, we can absolutely afford to take in and help out these refugees and in terms of helping out – it is very unlikely that Europeans don’t want to help out.

I think the driving force behind most of the media’s frenzies is clear - the fear of lack of integration. 

The fear of investing in a foreign force that will later turn against you. We have seen in many European countries media stories about communities of people who simply refuse to integrate - but why is this? And is this as big a problem as we think it is?

TBC.