Am I the only one more angry at the media than herself? She’s a privileged, culturally ignorant person and pretty much acts accordingly. She isn’t defying expectations. What I’m a bit upset about is how several mainstream news sources have picked up her ‘story’ without ANY attempt whatsoever to verify the story, seek other sources beside the author (actual Kenyans and Maasai) or put the described ‘achievement’ in its broader context.
That, I have a beef with. I know it’s downright silly to expect actual journalism form most media at this point, but it still used to be their job description. And I do think it is harmful for (so-called) news media to regurgitate every and any sensational or ‘sexy’ little story gratuitously, solely to generate a buzz, especially if the report contributes to spread yet more confusion and ignorance about the real world and other cultures. It’s garbage.
Are you familiar with the phenomenon of White Women’s Tears?
If so, what do you make of it? And do you see it’s relevance to this situation, and to what you’re saying about people being “mean” to this privileged white woman?
If not, you’ve got some thinking through of your own to do.
As mentioned, she’s a harmless human being who none of us know. Perhaps she’s a fan of Boingboing, perhaps she has friends who are.
To an actual human being, being the subject of this thread would most likely be emotionally devastating. She’s quite lucky she’s oblivious to it (one hopes)
Where’d we ever get the idea that it SHOULD be socially acceptable to mock harmless strangers?
What I’m wondering is, why do you still cling to the idea, after presumably reading this whole thread, that what she did and is doing is “harmless”? I guess if you still can’t see that, then you’re like those white people James Baldwin talked about – hopeless.
Are you refusing to see her as a human being and are content with the risk?
How would you feel if somebody you knew, some goofy, harmless, but occasionally naive sort ended up getting a lot of publicity for something they did that maybe was a little embarrassing to you? How would you feel if you read a thread like this about THEM?
You KNOW people are more complicated than that. There aren’t cartoon people, the are only cartoons.
This is a MEDIA problem. Just because they say it’s okay to act this uncivilized doesn’t mean we’re supposed to.
You know, the really sad thing here is that you’re more concerned about the feelings of an oblivious, entitled woman who has declared herself a “warrior,” and about how she might crumble to pieces if she read the “mean” stuff that people here have written about her, than you are about the extant, broader, imperialist/colonialist mindset that her words and actions reiterate and help to solidify all too well.
Of course I “see her as a human being” – an oblivious one who’s done some stupid and harmful things that bloody well deserve ridicule. And the harsher the better, really, since if she ever did happen to stumble over here somehow, reading the ridicule might cause her to stop and think a bit before she commits even more imperialist fuckery.
Sounds like you’re creating this problem yourself then.
I can’t entirely blame you, this is such an anonymous way to interact with the world, and with the media serving up bite sized pieces of horror every day it’s hard not to get worked up. So many awful things are considered ‘acceptable’ that I suppose it could be even worse.
Still, if not you, perhaps somebody else learned an obvious lesson that I took a while to learn myself.
It is sad though, you’d think ‘civilized’ and ‘reasonable’ behavior should be the norm in an actual civilization, rather than treasured exceptions.
Wrong. What’s happening here is that you’re actively ignoring this problem.
And, ironically enough, you’re the one who’s creating another problem, the supposed one of what it would do to this woman were she ever to read the negative comments here about her actions and words.
@milliefink Just a FYI, but you are responding to the same guy who was really really concerned about people saying “good riddance” to Ariel Castro (the Cleveland guy who kidnapped, raped, and tortured three women) after he died. He also argued that Castro could have done all these amazing things if only “he just never got to be alone around kids or have secret places to hide people anymore”. Only the people “impacted directly by what [Castro] did” should be allowed to feel anything about the situation. I assume he feels similarly about this situation and that only the Masai people (or perhaps the specific tribe that this lady was involved with) should comment. I guess we are not allowed to view it as part of a bigger problem.
I think you’re ignoring the fact that this “harmless white lady” is making a mockery of other people, for her own benefit. She is assuming that the Masai are basically cartoons, not real people. Are white, rich people the only people who matter? Really?
No, as someone else pointed out, the media is embracing this by and large, and not at all pointing out the real problems of this woman’s “journey of 1000 imperialists”… they are presenting her mostly as a empowered woman who is showing the natives how to be in this world. They ignore the racist and imperialist implications of this and celebrate her cultural appropriation.
It’s not her, it’s her actions regarding other people, that’s the problem. I’m saying that we should very much point out when the privileged do destructive things in this world, because even things like this has consequences. While on the scale of it, this is not huge as say drone bombing children and arming possibly problematic actors in the Middle East, it does matter. It is not either/or, it’s all a part of the whole. The point Mille, I, and many others in this thread are making is that this is in no way “harmless”. Period. I agree that media is part of the problem, but largely because they assume this is empowering stuff, as if feminism is only for empowering white women to be more like white men, not destructiv of themselvses, enabling imperial interventions. Should I sit down and shut up when I see some obviously racist, sexist, or classist thing that doesn’t directly involve me? Am I not part of this world, and do my actions and inactions matter or not? If I don’t stand up and point out when things are wrong, both locally and globally, whose job is it to say that something is wrong. Who gets to decide what is destructive and hurtful? Only rich white people? Many well off white people have a long history of only acting in their own interests, not in the interests of the whole.
If not for them, she’d be living a tiny, harmless life just like millions of other people with stupid ideas, just like most of us.
We wouldn’t know about her, this thread wouldn’t exist, there’d be no risk of anybody getting traumatized by some people behaving like an uncivilized mob.
It happens ALL THE TIME, people just don’t see it when they’re the mob.
We wouldn’t be discussing this or much of anything else, via this MEDIA, either. This lady is benefiting from the media and not being scrutinized for her actions, by the media.
You, yourself, are participating in the use of the media so, I don’t’ really understand why you are on your high horse pointing out how we’re acting like rabble by pointing out the harm this women is doing by her actions–which she undertook without the “help of the media” in the first place. This is just another layer on the shit cake of modernism that promoted particular ideas about “non-western, primitive, people without a history” that helped to justify imperialism in the first place. Does media help promote that still–you bet. We get deeply problematic images from the mid-East, which shows us just why “we need to intervene, to save them from themselves”, which of course, leaves out the complicit role of the media.
The point is that this woman’s actions are not “harmless” as you like to think. That’s the point. This would be just as true if we didn’t have the media.
