Showing posts with label downsides_of_expat_life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label downsides_of_expat_life. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 27, 2023

A Thin Comfort

Taiwan's eternal light


When I'm extremely stressed, I engage in a practice that is likely very common: curling up on my bed and covering myself completely in a blanket. Phone nearby but not within perfect reach, lights off. In the US, that blanket would probably be a thick afghan or quilt. In Taiwan it's usually some thin linen drape. It doesn't matter; I just need to be covered. I don't even take away the throw pillows on the bed. Yes, I'm the sort of person who keeps throw pillows on her bed. 

I've found myself curling up this way more often in the past few months, as I've dealt with a fair bout of career anxiety. It's not just that I'd be making a lot more money if I lived in a number of other countries, but that I'd likely get to take my work in the direction I truly want it to go. 

Since 2011, I've been more or less consistently enrolled in some sort of teacher training program. First CELTA, then Delta, then a Master's program, plus a few short courses here and there. That first CELTA course changed the direction of my life; I didn't just go from someone who was teaching English "as a job" to someone who wanted to lead classrooms of adults as a career. I also became a full-throated convert to the power of good teacher training

Obviously, I wanted to be a better teacher myself. As good as I could possibly be -- which, as it turns out, is not perfect. I mess up too. But I also wanted to help other teachers develop their skills. I felt I could make a bigger impact on the world, or at least the education world, by doing so. I haven't loved every teacher training course I've led, but the direction, in general, has always felt right. 

And yet I've realized over the past year or so that there are limitations to this career path in Taiwan. There simply are not enough teacher training opportunities. Those that exist often get outsourced to international firms based in places like the UK. This is a direct result of people who have the power to decide whether to take a training contract choosing not to take one, and the organization needing the training looking elsewhere. 

This is exactly the sort of thing I was hoping to avoid by taking the freelance route. I struggle a lot with the idea that decisions might be out of my hands. I can work with a team but I am not a natural follower. I wanted quite specifically to be in charge of what classes I take and when I'm free to take them. I never want to be told by anything other than my bank account that I can't take this or that trip.

Instead, I've found that I'm too far removed from those decision-makers to be heard, and it probably wouldn't matter if I was heard. After all, it's not as if they aren't aware that teacher training in Taiwan should be sourced as locally as possible, to people who know the local context. 

Please don't misunderstand: I'm grateful for every teacher training opportunity that comes my way. I find most of them meaningful, impactful, intellectually challenging to plan and execute and personally satisfying. As with a great deal of impactful work, whether it improves the world in some tiny way has become more important to me than whether or not I enjoyed leading it. And yet, I do generally enjoy them.

Friends have recommended I start my own local training business. I don't want to do that -- first, I'd be in direct competition with people who've been in the field longer, whom I like, respect and have perhaps even acted as mentors. Second, I want to be a teacher, not a business owner. Running a business is its own job and skill set; a job I don't want to do, and a skill set I lack and am not terribly interested in acquiring. Reading books about Taiwan or studying two unrelated languages at the same time -- one of them through Mandarin -- are more attractive than learning to balance books or engage in marketing. 

In other words, as a teacher (or teacher trainer) I have the time and energy to learn Armenian and Taiwanese. As a business owner, I'd spend that time figuring out how to make and keep my business profitable. No thanks! 

It is a thin comfort that I know I'm usually very good at my job, and I learn from whatever mistakes I make. It's not enough of a comfort, though, when I think about what I could be doing if I weren't committed to Taiwan.

I have found other career outlets that satisfy me. This is another thin comfort. I've been doing a lot of work in language learning content development and online materials design recently. It scratches the same itch of being meaningful, impactful (one hopes -- it's not live yet) and intellectually challenging. In my own training I found that leading other teachers and creating materials were two strengths. I've also been doing a lot more paid writing, some of which you'll hear about soon. 

These frustrations and their associated comforts have caused me to consider moving in a new direction, out of the classroom and into full time materials development. I haven't found the right job in Taiwan, and most jobs abroad are no longer fully remote, but it's an idea on the horizon if I can't make a full career of teacher training -- and it looks increasingly like I can't.

I had a choice: Taiwan or my career, and I chose Taiwan. Potentially leaving the classroom for something different feels like leaving a religion, but here we are. It bothers me quite a bit that my complaint isn't about pay exactly, or finding a specific full-time job, but about being able to explore a career direction at all. 

This leads me to my final thin comfort, which I alluded to in my last post about staying in Taiwan. It may seem tangential to this post, but in my mind, it isn't. To take that kind of personal and professional hit, there must be a damn good reason. It can't all be night markets and 711! 

As I explored in that last post, despite its problems, Taiwan's fundamentals are solid -- democracy, a push for equality and open-mindedness, crucial services like public transit and national health insurance. Society moves generally in the right direction, and that makes it worthwhile to stay. 

What I realized from writing that post, however, isn't just that Taiwan has a lot of great things going for it. It's that what Taiwan gets right are also benefits that Taiwanese citizens enjoy. They matter because they're not just good for me -- they impact everyone positively. 

So many of those "best countries for expats" type articles talk about superficial benefits that really only apply to white foreigners. You know, how much an expat can make relative to the cost of living, what great homes they can rent or buy on the cheap, job and life opportunities that locals mostly cannot access.

I hear the same from the occasional older foreigner in Taiwan, waxing nostalgic about the "good old days" when Taiwan was "exciting" or opportunities where "everywhere". Usually, they're talking about the late 1980s or perhaps early 1990s. 

Okay, but a lot of my Taiwanese friends were children or young teenagers then, and were still being told by their parents not to even have, let alone express, an opinion lest they end up in prison or worse. A student once told me he was warned by his family not to say too much or even speak Taiwanese outside the family, or a "white truck would come in the night." Yikes. 

Who gives a shit about excitement or opportunities for foreigners when that's the local situation?

Of course, many Taiwanese look back with maudlin candor on the Chiang Ching-kuo era. Taipei elected a whole mayor based on it, and that's bullshit. Such an opinion does not cancel out what my local friends have said they experienced.

That's what Taiwan offers -- a better society than the one it had. For everyone, not just expats. Would my life as a white American be "better" in these ways in most of Southeast Asia? Yes, absolutely. But it would be a superficial improvement; it would make only my life better. 

In Taiwan, perhaps I cannot always feel the impact of things like "democracy" and "same-sex marriage" directly on my own life. After all, I could probably have the career I want in, say, Vietnam -- but Vietnam is not a democracy and does not have marriage equality. I might make more as a corporate rat racer in the US, but much of the US no longer recognizes my bodily autonomy and in some states, it's straight-up illegal for some of my friends to exist. 

In fact, if I hear Westerners talking about a country that's great to live in because you can make so much money, or it's a lot of fun for them or they can score more women than they could back home, it's a good sign that I shouldn't live there -- I'm not interested in a fever dream for white people.

If long-term foreigners are talking about the problems they and the country face and how life isn't always perfect for them, then it likely means their lives are at least a bit more like those of locals. It will never fully be the same, but it means the advantages that country offers are probably accessible beyond expat enclaves.

The benefits Taiwan offers are good for society, and it's better for everyone if everyone benefits. Even if I can't vote, it's better for me, for society and for those I care about that my Taiwanese friends can. My opinion might not matter, but again, it's better for everyone that my Taiwanese friends can protest and not disappear.

That's not to say Taiwan is perfect, but again, the fundamentals are good. 

Is that worth what I consider a major career sacrifice thanks to one of Taiwan's many imperfections? Is that blanket sufficient to comfort one in times of distress? 

It has to be. It has to be.

Thursday, November 23, 2023

Humble Pie, and Ko's Hypocrisy

IMG_7494

Some people have fantastic housing!


This is a bit of a frankenpost, but we've had a frankenweek in Taiwanese politics.

First, yes, I was wrong about the KMT/TPP dalliance. There's no way Ko was promised the top spot on the ticket if negotiations could fall apart that quickly. Before it turned into a massive clownshow, my  Taiwanese teacher's pet theory was that the CCP gave Ma dirt on Ko: there's a reasonably popular notion that Ko was involved in organ harvesting in China. I thought this was unlikely because it has the ring of disinformation, but thought, it doesn't have to be that to still be dirt. 

Anyway, I was wrong, and the blackmail theory is probably wrong too. If one of us had been correct, Ko wouldn't have reneged like this.

Frozen Garlic has a fantastic post discussing how it all went down. He's absolutely right, of course. I'm still hung up, however, on why it went down. I don't have good answers, but it might be helpful to explore that thought for a bit. 

I didn't necessarily expect the KMT and TPP to form a formidable alliance; at best, I thought they'd dominate the polls for a time, but eventually it would all turn into a clownshow. How could it not, between the guy who does whatever he wants, the guy who expects everyone to do as he says, and Hou You-yih?

So really, the clownshow just happened earlier than I'd predicted! Yet something still feels...off.  For the initial agreement to happen, I expected either a carrot or a stick -- to either entice or threaten Ko into agreeing to this obviously bad deal. And yet, there appears to have been none.

Neither Ma Ying-jeou nor Ko Wen-je strike me as particularly smart in the way statesmen should be. Eric Chu is smarter than he lets on, but hardly brain trust material. I've already explored this in some detail, so I won't repeat myself. Yet, how could three men who are maybe not the brightest but also not acutely wanting in the brains department, plus Hou You-yih, all be so incredibly, astoundingly, clownishly dumb?

I have trouble buying the idea that the lot of 'em simply blundered into this clown show. Certainly, I tend not to be impressed by men who have power, and men who want power. But this? This is on another level. Perhaps Ma really was done in by his own 'thou shalt obey' arrogance, and Ko was done in by his own 'I do what I want!" version of the same. Also, Hou You-yih was there.

Maybe the CCP threw a lot of resources into forcing this alliance, and it blew up in their faces, too. In which case, ha ha!  Or maybe I'm overthinking it. 

I'd say that at least I'm not one of the chumps who thought Ko and Hou would make a formidable, hard-to-beat alliance, treating them as de facto the presumed future leaders of Taiwan. I always assumed they'd fall apart, I was just surprised that it took a few days, not a month. And yet, I was wrong too. I'm also kind of a chump. It's okay. 


But why does Ko have support at all?

As Ko might well cease to be relevant given the way he's just embarrassed himself, I wanted to take a brief and admittedly tad superficial look at why exactly he has (had?) a strong youth support base. I had trouble finding anything; a general sense of the KMT and DPP have both failed us, why not try this new guy who isn't afraid to say what he thinks? was about as deep as it seemed to get. 

Because I don't want this to turn into a 10,000 word rant, I'm going to end up talking about just one thing -- housing.

Ko is big on housing as a policy area, so there's a lot to analyze there. In fact, the housing issue might be all we need to discuss: the measure of him as a candidate can be taken from the way he talks about it. He's not better in any other area. His other big platforms on education and industry contain similar levels of flim-flam.

It can be hard to find real positions held by Ko. The media certainly doesn't have a lot to say. There's a lot of what in this article, for example, but no real why beyond, again, a dissatisfaction with 8 years of DPP administration, as well as an antipathy to the KMT's views on China. 

"All the DPP has to offer is resist China and protect Taiwan", it says, but then what does Ko have to offer that's any better? They decline to elaborate.

To be clear, I don't actually agree that the DPP has nothing else to offer. They're hardly perfect, but they've raised the minimum wage more than their opponents, passed a (likely ineffective) housing subsidy and a rental subsidy which many renters are unable to access, as their landlords often terminate rental agreements when they try -- the reasons why are a bit complex to get into here. They tend not to clarify these policies well, and it often comes down to the government making something available, but a person in power -- your boss or landlord -- blocking access. For that, they haven't offered a reasonable solution. Lai Ching-te was even critically quoted as saying renters should "talk to their landlords" in order to access the subsidy. Ha. Fat chance. 

And yet, again, it's not nothing, and this will be important in a moment.

Another piece from deep-green media SETN (三立) breaks down three reasons for Ko's support, but none of them are any more substantive than this. They offer three reasons, but two of them boil down to not liking the establishment parties, thinking Ko 'resists the system'  and a lack of ability to evaluate political discourse, which they also point out as an issue among voters working in tech. Only the middle one offers something new -- "appealingly packaged" ideas -- but what are these ideas?

Ko does talk a lot about housing prices. He's not wrong when he agrees with young voters regarding their "four nos": they can't find a good job, can't afford a home, which means they can't get married and can't have children. These lead to the final "no" -- no hope. He points to his record in Taipei of "promoting social housing" and his support of rental subsidies to help solve this issue. 

Rent subsidies? Isn't that exactly the policy that the DPP has been trying to expand and promote, however poorly they package it?

Social housing is affordable housing units built or otherwise made available so that young and economically disadvantaged people can meet their housing needs. Over on Bluesky, there was a discussion about his purported 'success' with social housing in Taipei. I'm not sure I see that success, as the rental market in Taipei is absolutely in the crapper, but that's not the most important point. 

Rather, while housing is indeed the purview of mayors, social housing receives a great deal of assistance and funding from the central government. Here's an old MOI press release about it, and here's a discussion of how little social housing Ko and Hou have actually built during their respective tenures as Taipei and New Taipei mayors, respectively. It clarifies that cities do receive subsidies for social housing, and that it's an initiative at the national level as well. 

That second article points out that Ko wasn't always a big supporter of social housing, considering social welfare projects a 'bottomless pit' and insisting that housing should be paid for entirely by residents (that is, at one point he had an anti-rent subsidy position). He certainly hasn't built as much social housing as he implies.

Because he's a flip-flopper, however, let's assume he's actually changed his views on this.

I can understand that housing is a key pain point for young voters. Buying a home anywhere you'd want to actually live in Taiwan, especially in Greater Taipei, is an anxiety-inducing, eye-watering joke. Taipei is famed for its excellent transportation network, but good luck affording a mortgage anywhere near that network. People are complaining that suburb (exurb?) Linkou is too expensive. And Linkou sucks! 

Even renting in Taipei is torturous. I'm terrified of what will happen when the inevitable day comes that we have to move. I check the Taipei rental market every few months just to see what it's like, and there's nothing in my initial searches that clears the threshold of acceptability. 

So, I can understand thinking that the guy who sounds innovative and talks up social housing in a way the major parties don't might be a good bet. He'll even tell you how much effort he put into social housing and rent subsidies as mayor of Taipei! 

But, again, who funded those subsidies? Who assisted with social housing projects? Where did the social housing and rent subsidy policies of the last 8 years even come from? Where did assistance in acquiring land to build social housing come from? The national government, which has been run by the DPP for the past 8 years. 

I can't say the DPP has done an amazing job at this. "Talk to your landlord about getting rent subsidies" is a terrible thing to say on the campaign trail. Housing costs continue to skyrocket, and every year even the once-reasonable Taipei rental market constricts a little more, leaving mostly overpriced garbage on offer. 

So, I suppose it's understandable that some young voters would decide that housing is their key issue, and of the three (oh wait, four) candidates, Ko appears to talk the most sense. He is able to package it in a more appealing, "straight-talking" way that makes "discuss it with your landlord" Lai Ching-te look like a fumbling old git. 

Underneath that, however, he's concealing quite a bit -- from his early anti-welfare stances to his use of central government funds that he then took credit for obtaining. He got all of that money and help because the DPP helped him, and how he's acting like they don't care about housing issues, but he does. 

Thursday, November 9, 2023

Why stay in Taiwan?

Untitled

It's the little things...or is it?


You probably don’t care about my life, but here’s the deal. I’ve had a somewhat tumultuous week professionally, although nothing that ended up being terribly deleterious. I don’t want to say too much about it, but I’ve been feeling frustrated about the limitations of teacher training opportunities in Taiwan for residents like me, despite how much we can help in the face of Taiwan’s push for internationalization.
 

I have no desire to discuss the details behind this; it’s insider beef that you really don’t need, and might be wrong of me (or at least harmful to me) to divulge. 

I've also been feeling more frustrated than usual about Taiwan's naturalization laws. Nothing has changed since the 2007 reforms, opening up a pathway for magical stardusted special and senior foreign professionals, basically saying most foreigners who call Taiwan home -- whether they're white collar like me or blue collar like most immigrants here -- are garbage. Not worth caring about. 

Yes, the road to dual nationality may be narrow now, but there's room for it to expand. But I fear it will happen when I'm too old for it to matter. I'm not sure exactly how I will grow old in Taiwan as planned, because I can't get a mortgage and don't have local family, but landlords don't like to rent to the elderly. What am I supposed to do when I'm 80? If the law changes when I'm 60, that's a little too late to fix the problem. 

There's something to be said for fighting for something so that the next generation can enjoy fairer access. And yet, recently I've been wondering if this is enough. Wondering why I bother. 


With all this in the background, I’ve been trying to blog about politics to get my mind off it. Nothing comes out right, though. I have a few half-finished posts that I might wrap up and publish anyway, or perhaps not. We’ll see. Maybe I just need to not with the politics right now. 

Instead, I thought I'd examine something else. I know perfectly well that I'm not actually going to leave Taiwan (which, to be honest, is part of the problem. Maybe I should be more open to doing so). So rather than stewing in my own angry juices over this, perhaps I should talk a bit about why I stay. 

People love to ask why I moved to Taiwan. That story isn't very interesting. Studying in India made me want to learn more about Asia in general. I spent a year in China and didn't love it. And yet, I still felt there was a lot for me to learn, and I like the general feel and pace of life in large Asian cities. So, I came to Taipei mostly out of curiosity. I certainly didn't know much about it. 

Why I stay, though? Maybe that's worth discussing. I've been here for 18 years now. The pay isn't that good. Career opportunities are middling at best. I do have a fantastic local network, but most of my close family live on the other side of the world. Nobody loves Taipei's weather. My apartment is nice, but apartments in Taiwan generally aren't. There's the ever-looming China threat (though I imitate local residents in living my life as though that's not a thing). 

And yet here I am. Still. I've been thinking about this for awhile -- it's easy to rattle off reasons to leave. Any article about the "ghost island" can do that. The more fruitful area to examine is why I stay.

I've identified five very generalized reasons why, despite its faults, Taiwan is the country I chose to call home. These are five things that I think are important for any country I might live in long-term, and Taiwan happens to excel at them.

For my own reflection as much as yours, here they are: 

1.) Generally good infrastructure, including (most especially) public transit

Not all of Taiwan has good public transportation, but Taipei does, and it's fairly easy to get to any other town you might want to visit. Getting around that town might be a challenge, but you can always get there. I live in Taipei, though, and this city has some of the best public transit in the world. In general, I appreciate infrastructure that works. That includes buses that run on time, a clean metro system, convenient trains.

Compare that to the US, where the only city that has public transit that comes close to meeting my standards is New York. That also happens to be a city where I couldn't possibly afford to live. I tried living in Washington DC for seven years without a car. People say transit there is good. I say it's a nightmare. 

Still, assuming I'd never move back to the US, I could enjoy good public transit in Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore. If we're talking inter-city, even Vietnam. Europe, too, but there aren't really good jobs for me there. China, generally, has reasonable public transit. What could knock some of those countries off the list?

2.) An open and democratic government

Well, there goes Singapore, Vietnam and Hong Kong. China is an obvious no-go. I once considered moving to IstanbuI, but I can't get past the importance of a reasonable system of government. I might not have the right to vote, but it's important to me that my local friends do; I would find it very hard to exist as an admittedly privileged American in a country where I could send my ballot back every few years, but locals I knew wouldn't have access to human rights that I consider fundamental. 

For myself, well, I like to opinionate. It's important to me to live in a country where I can do so without fear of government retribution.

Beyond that, there's just something depressing about living in an unfree society. You may or may not have access to good journalism. Random bullshit things may be banned. Your friends can't say what they really think; you may not even know what they really think, depending on how severe the repression is. 

Being in Taiwan for two -- soon to be three -- presidential handovers, countless protests, a legislative occupation, and all manner of public debates? That may seem unimportant or ineffable to some, but it matters to me. Taiwan's democratic society is a big draw. 

South Korea and Japan are democracies too, though. Why not move to one of those?


3.) An acceptable level of gender equality


I'm not saying Taiwan doesn't have sexism and misogyny. Of course it does. The gender pay gap is still above 15%. But, compared to the rest of Asia, I daresay it's doing fairly well. 

Brendan has told me stories about Korea, where he would see job ads that openly offered men and women disparate pay for the same work. 


I know someone in Japan who once detailed many little ways in which women face discrimination; she once saw a pregnant woman stand up on the train for a salaryman! Discussing why that would happen, locals told her that the pregnant woman has an easier, more restful life while the salaryman is tired from hard work, so of course he should get the seat. I don't know that this happens frequently in Japan, but that it happened at all tells me that it may be a fine country to visit, but it's not a place where I think I'd be very happy living. 

Everything from work culture to beauty standards feels so much harsher in those countries. The fact that women make up such a small percentage of the workforce in Japan and are deeply underrepresented in politics are other strikes against it. I'll take the country that elected a woman twice, thanks. 

Korea is similar; the gender wage gap there is astounding (Japan is almost as bad). I've enjoyed visiting both countries. As a woman, I want to live somewhere with more equality. 

That brings me to my next point. 


4.) A high level of public safety

It's not just pay, work, politics and beauty standards. All three countries have very high levels of public safety, including for women. As an American, this matters to me. It wasn't fun growing up in a country where it wasn't safe to be outside alone at night. But Taiwan manages the high public safety with a whole lot less of the ridiculous discrimination.

This matters not just for me, but for my LGBTQ+ friends. South Korea, for instance, is not a very safe place for many people dear to me. Public safety isn't just about whether or not you're likely to get mugged or pick-pocketed. It is also deeply related to who you are. I wouldn't want to live in a country where I might be targeted because I'm a woman, or where my friends might be targeted for being gay, nonbinary or trans. 

This, of course, knocks many countries off the list -- including the United States. 

I considered adding "a high level of overall development" to this list, because so many of my points are oriented around that. Advanced economies are more likely to have good public transit and safety, higher levels of gender equality and functional democratic governments. 

But not always -- the United States fails on most of these counts. Plenty of countries that aren't rich do have democratic governments. Besides, I don't think anyone wants a middle class white lady to prattle on about how she wants to live in an advanced economy. In fact, it's not actually one of the key criteria.

Instead, my fifth point is more specific but is still related to overall development markers. 

5.) National! Health! Insurance!

As an American, I cannot express how much this matters to me. I spent the first half of my twenties kinda miserable because I needed to see some doctors, but couldn't afford any of them. My lack of access to affordable health care in the US is directly responsible for the back surgery I needed during my first year in Taiwan. 

This really matters! Health insurance alone is enough to make me forsake the US forever. 

That said, this point has been bugging me recently, because I'm in the middle of a tooth implant that isn't covered by Taiwan's NHI. All told, it will cost me about NT$87,000. The dentist has been clear that for me, it's a necessity (another one of my crowns is in danger if I don't get a tooth put in next to it). And yet, it's entirely out of pocket. 

I think NHI should cover it. After all, it's an absolute necessity for me unless I want to literally be toothless in a few years. 

But, all of that aside, I'm grateful that the many times I've needed to see a doctor in this country, that I could actually afford to do so. 

I'm still not feeling entirely all right about the state of my life in Taiwan these days. It hurts to want to commit to a place, without seeing a clear future there, especially in old age.

There is another reason I stay, but it's intensely personal: I truly believe in what Taiwan stands for. To me, Taiwan means standing up to a dictatorship that landed on your soil and tried to force you to submit, turning the country instead into a functioning and peaceful democracy. It means refusing to shatter under the constant threats from yet another dictatorship that wants to annex you by any means necessary. It means building one of the more advanced and liberal societies in Asia -- if not the most liberal -- on the back of a tragic and bitter history of colonialism and oppression.

That, to me, is worth fighting for. It's worth staying for. It's not on the list because it's not a specific thing Taiwan has, it's more of a narrative that Taiwan embodies.

It does help, however, to think through the reasons why I've stayed, and run through the possibilities of other countries where I might relocate. None quite hit the five criteria -- gender equality, health insurance, democracy, public transit and public safety -- that Taiwan does. Most countries can be exciting, interesting, historically noteworthy, or absolutely lovely. 

But I can't think of another one that actually meets these five benchmarks, all of which are crucial to me. Can you?

Monday, September 4, 2023

Renunciation


Squid in the air, still tied to something 


“Do you have a plan if things go sideways in Taiwan?” 

One of my oldest friends asks us this as he zips us to the BART station from his home in central Oakland. A pair of committed northeasterners settled permanently in Taipei, we’re properly visiting the West Coast for the first time as part of a trip for my brother-in-law’s wedding. 


It’s not the first time I’ve been asked this, and it will be far from the last. Most people assume we’ll leave if things get sketchy; this friend knows me well enough to know that’s not necessarily the case, and thus asks a more open-ended question. 


It’s hard to put this into words, though. I stumble around an insufficient lexicon, muttering about planning to stay — I’m not much of a fighter but I guess I could grow sweet potatoes — and reassuring him that if we were ever forced to leave, really truly forced, we have options. They're not very good options, but it remains that we have them.

It doesn’t need to be said that many in Taiwan would not. 


I slide sideways into a summary of my thought process over the past few years: you know how there are foreigners willing to fight for Ukraine? Well, Taiwan is my home, I’m willing to fight for it. Besides, if I don’t stand up for what’s right in the place I call home, can I claim to stand for anything at all? Certainly I can’t seriously talk about democracy and human rights if I won’t fight for them where I actually live. 


And yet, do I owe my life to a country that won’t give me a passport? That feels weird, too. 


There’s no end to this spirograph of questions, it just whips you around into some complicated, unending holding pattern. 


He’d asked earlier if we were citizens yet. I said no, we’re permanent residents (“like a green card, though we get privileges, not rights exactly, we can’t vote and its very hard to get approved for a mortgage or even a line of credit”). 


It’s not bad, I clarified. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful. But it still feels off — a Chinese-American whose grandparents were ROC citizens who never set foot in Taiwan and have only a tenuous relationship to Taiwanese history and none to Taiwanese culture is considered a dual national by default. We’ve invested most of our adult lives in Taiwan and are considered more foreign than that. I know, I know, not every country has birthright citizenship. I wouldn’t call it unfair exactly, except you know what? It feels unfair. 


“I actually have considered renouncing,” I say over coffee by Lake Merritt. “We don’t plan to move back, and even if we did, with my diabetes I don’t see how we could. I could not possibly afford my medication without a corporate-type job and I am deeply unsuited to exactly that.” 


The truth is, I can’t renounce. Brendan theoretically could; he was lucky enough to have been born in Canada and has that sweet sweet dual birthright citizenship. 


The reasons are simple: I’m too filial. What if my Dad needs help? My in-laws? Being allowed to visit for set periods but not work would be insufficient. I won’t give up my ability to potentially care for aging relatives; something you’d think the Taiwanese government would understand (but apparently doesn’t). 


What’s more, if China invaded and actually won, renouncers like us — well, me — would have no citizenship at all. I can’t think of much that would be as bad or worse than being a citizen of the PRC, but being stateless is quite undesirable. Even if I wanted to be a PRC citizen (I absolutely don’t), it’s doubtful I’d be allowed to do so. 


I did not say: this confluence of events has altered the course of my life in ways I could not have easily predicted. 

It's difficult to fully explain, so I avoid the discussion with anyone who seems to have overly binary thinking. 


I hadn’t known when I moved to Taiwan that I would want to stay. It certainly had not occurred to me that I’d care enough to consider fighting if China did ever start a war. But more than that, the slender exceptions that have opened for dual nationality have done nothing but throw into sharp focus how weird the whole situation is. 


Sat squarely in the middle of my thought process is this strait gait and narrow path, and how I might get on it. As an educator with an advanced degree who primarily works with Taiwanese teachers and their professional development, you’d think I’d qualify. I don’t. 


Educators not only have to be associate professors and prove some specific contribution to Taiwan, but also get their university to do the required paperwork to recommend them. Some succeed; I’ve heard stories of others who don’t simply because their university doesn’t care to support them. 


For awhile, I thought I’d just get my PhD and pursue that path. Getting accepted to a program wouldn’t be particularly hard — the director of my MEd program all but assured me I’d have a seat if I applied — but funding would be. 


Soon after, I had the opportunity to travel around Taiwan and talk to many university lecturers, professors and second language acquisition specialists. Almost all of them bore ill news: the only people doing anything remotely like what I do at the university level who also have tenure-track positions are actually professors of Linguistics or English Literature. If you have a background specifically in Education — not to mention Applied Foreign Languages — the best you’re likely to do is an annual contract, if not adjunct work. I met two exceptions; they prove the rule.


Forget that neither of those paths offer enough in terms of benefits and remuneration for the work required, or for me to give up my freelance career in which I never have to confront my deep-seated issues with authority. 


Neither of them are sufficient to qualify for dual nationality, so what exactly would be the point of doing a PhD if I want to stay in Taiwan? It wouldn’t get me the job I need to attain dual nationality, which under the current law I will never qualify for. It isn’t necessary for what I do now. I don't really want the jobs it could get me.

So why do it, putting in all that blood, sweat, toil, tears — not to mention money I don’t really have and don’t think I should have to spend? (To me, any PhD worth doing is a PhD someone else pays for.) 


I can’t think of a reason, so I haven’t applied. I likely never will. 


Who knew that deciding on Taiwan as our home would have repercussions not just regarding work and citizenship, but education? 


None of these issues has an endpoint. None of the questions has answers. It’s not quite tragic enough to merit sustained media coverage, not quite common enough to be a society-wide problem. It affects me and a small group of otherwise-privileged, mostly Western immigrants in Taiwan. It’s easy to be dismissive — you’d never have to fight, you’ll never be Taiwanese, you’re just here for your own benefit — and I won’t even say that these are entirely untrue. I wouldn’t have to fight, if I didn’t want to. I’ll never be culturally Taiwanese. As much as I want my being in Taiwan to be something good for Taiwan, living here does benefit me as well. It’s a tad specious to pretend none of it matters because a white lady like me will be alright no matter what, but it’s also not quite wrong. 

Yet wondering whether I’ll ever have access to something people with even less exposure to Taiwanese culture are entitled to, realizing that I can’t imagine a world where I ran away from Taiwan at the moment of her greatest crisis, and knowing that it will still never be enough no matter how impossible renunciation is for me? 

To stay in Taiwan, I've renounced quite a bit. Perhaps nothing tragic; can I really whine about career paths I did not take when I'm more or less happy in the one I've chosen? Who cares that I'll never be an academic simply because a reasonable version of that job, for me, does not exist here? I am salty about renouncing my chances for ever being a full citizen of the country I live in, though I'm not sure I have a right to be. Even though I couldn't really live in the US again, I did choose this. 


Whatever, y'know? All I can do is renounce the whole damn debate. I don't really care about anyone's silly opinion on whether or not I will or should fight in any potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan. It doesn't matter how I should feel, or what makes me one of the "good" immigrants, or whether I'm happy or grateful enough. I feel how I feel, I made the choices I made, I am where I am, and I don't have any answers beyond that.

Tuesday, July 18, 2023

The online teaching cloister

I moved to Taipei to enjoy the city, not to be stuck in my apartment all day



A few weeks ago, I began my first face-to-face foundational TESOL training course since COVID hit Taiwan. We'd gone online at some point and were struggling to resume in-person learning. 

It had truly been so long that in the fog of the late pandemic I no longer remember when it happened, only that trying to teach that course online presented a host of problems. I couldn't really demonstrate various in-person interaction patterns, for instance. Nor could we discuss classroom management components such as boardwork and layout in an impactful way. A practicum (demo) is a vital component of this course, but it's harder for inexperienced teachers to lead interactive demos online. Everything takes longer online, too, and it was a challenge to cover the course requirements. 

When we finally opened a face-to-face course, on day three someone tested positive for COVID. Within a week, about half the class was infected, and I was teaching face-to-face with four students and a computer running an online meeting with the other three. I then tested positive, and it was back online for all of us.

My heart sank when I realized how it would go: back to my home office, back behind a screen. Yes, it's an incredible privilege to have a spare room for a home office at all, but it is draining to be stuck in there for days on end, without many chances to go out while Brendan left everyday for in-person work.

Gently put, it's a cloister. More critically, it's a prison.

While I've transitioned back somewhat to in-person teaching and teacher training, enough of it remains online that my latest stint at home prompted me to reflect anew on teaching and teacher training as a profession now that someone like me is just as likely to be working at a screen as in a room with their students or trainees.

To be blunt, I don't like teaching or teacher training online. At all. I've become accustomed to it, and of course I can do it. And yet, while some say online teaching brings people together -- it's possible to take classes you never dreamed possible if teachers and students can meet remotely -- I feel as though the screen divides me from the learners. It causes a rupture, a block. 

Everything takes longer, everything requires more planning. It's more difficult to develop rapport, especially when I have to put my foot down about cameras being left on if at all possible. Some never do, and there are situations where I can't (or shouldn't) force the issue. Imagine having students whose faces you've never seen, whom you'd never recognize on the street. I didn't become a teacher to interact with black squares all day, and I find it very hard to develop rapport this way.

Even with cameras on, I find it difficult to build the same connections with learners and trainees. To "make eye contact" I have to look at the camera, not the face on the screen. It's the same for the learner. I can toggle between these and create a simulacrum of actual, in-person, we-see-each-other eye contact, but it's not actually the same. The effect is ineffable, but definitely there, and entirely negative. 

One-on-one classes aren't so bad, as you only have to do this back-and-forth with one face. The effect is deeply felt in groups, however, especially if one of us is presenting.

I had an office job in the US all those years ago; lots of screen time, very little face-to-face contact. I hated it, and became a teacher because this is exactly what I don't want. It's kind of like attending meetings all day (something which can be tiring if you're working remotely), and you are the coordinator and host of every single meeting. I'm good at this in person. Online? Honestly, not so much -- because I don't want to be at a computer, period.

Pre-pandemic, my various jobs required me to jet all over Taipei and beyond for work. I explored parts of the city I'd rarely or never set foot in otherwise. 

Again, I realize this is a privilege. I understand that most people take the same route to the same office every day if they’re not working remotely, so “going in” isn’t particularly desirable. I get bored easily with routine, which is why I chose a career path through which I’d frequently find myself in different places. It got me out of the house, and I was able to see different parts of the city. My schedule changed often enough that there was always something at least a little new in this; it never got monotonous and I didn’t resent the extra time it took. I like to be on the move. 


You know what I don’t like? Being stuck at home most of the day, unable to leave my neighborhood or even my apartment, sometimes for entire days. If I have a training course in the morning, then an afternoon and evening class, the furthest I’m likely to go that day is the nearby 7-11. If I’m really lucky I might get to go to the ‘everything store’ down the street! 


I hate this. Plenty of people like working from home as it frees them from tiring commutes and allows them to be comfortable in their work setup. That’s great for them. It’s not for me. Mental health walks are uninspiring; I’m not good at walking with no destination. I’ve found myself making up reasons to go outside, which usually involve coffee or shopping, but they rarely take me anywhere new. No new cafes, little local restaurants or novel bus routes. No “hey there’s an Indian restaurant near Sanmin Road!” 


There is nothing worse for an extrovert than being at home all day, usually alone as Brendan still teaches face-to-face, and not feeling the rapport bump from work, either.

I have had more in-person opportunities recently, having started a new part-time gig that I'm enjoying quite a bit and pays very well. It's partly face-to-face, and that helps -- but they also underscore that being mostly online is a problem.


In fact, let's talk a bit about boredom and big career questions.

It’s easy to say I’m transitioning from teaching to more teacher training because it pays much better (to be clear, it does), but I’m also motivated by the level of challenge. It seems as though it should be easy to coast at the sort of work I’ve been doing forever, but I tend to get distracted and stuck if I do the same thing for too long. I know stagnation affects my performance, so it’s time to reach. This means more work overall, but that's the fundamental truth of what it means to seek challenge.


If all of this sounds vague, it’s because I don’t want to give too many specifics about work for all the obvious reasons. Besides, I genuinely like the people I work with. Most of them run their businesses well, or at least well enough that I don’t walk. I don’t want to hop on my blog to gossip about good people. 


Yet internally, I’ve been fighting…something. Distractedness? Demotivation? The delicate balance of work with my sub-optimal health? It could be any or all of these, and 

one of the leading causes is the pivot to online teaching.

Of course it's not the only reason. Working in Taiwan can be tough in certain ways: raises are rare, there’s no such thing as a paid holiday, it’s a battle just to get employers to do basic things like contribute to labor insurance and pension. In general I do not feel that teaching in Taiwan pays enough at the higher levels of ability and experience; I stay in Taiwan because I love Taiwan, but the honest truth is I could make more money in just about any other Asian country. 


Teacher training is a lot fairer in terms of compensation, and I won't lie: that's another reason why I gravitate towards it.


Every day I fight the notion that I’m good at my job simply because I’m a white native speaker. I think I am indeed good at my job, but that’s not the reason! 


None of those are the core of it, though. I’m used to the lack of benefits, and beyond wanting to be comfortable I’m not particularly motivated by money. (I'm only somewhat money-driven.) I didn't start to feel this distractedness until work mostly went online. Period, end of story, that's it: everything else is manageable but remote teaching is not what I want, and never will be. 

What's worse, because I don't actually want to be teaching online, I'm not as good at it. I'm less careful; teacher talking time shoots up; interactions don't vary as much as would be optimal; I'm less innovative. I'm less motivated online, full stop.

Online teacher training is even harder to pull off, but at least the level of challenge keeps it interesting.


Just to clarify, I’ve been forthright about this at work. Nobody reading this who knows me in real life would be surprised to hear it. It doesn’t really change the current situation, though — how could it? 


There are benefits to being online, however, that almost negate this (almost). Collaborative documents, chat boxes, interactive whiteboards: all things made possible by an online interface. It would be harder to schedule my own Taiwanese lessons if we met face-to-face, and I will probably start Armenian lessons online in the near future -- something that would have been impossible not that long ago. Trainees who can't attend my sessions in person are able to log in for the online ones; they get a benefit they wouldn't have been able to access in the Before Times.


That said, all this new technology never runs quite as smoothly as it should to be considered a true advantage. There’s always that one learner who can’t figure out how to access the materials on Google Docs (or can’t access it at all if they’re in China or have some sort of work-related block to that function). Zoom’s interactive whiteboard is clumsy and annoying. My noise-canceling computer is fantastic when my cleaner is vacuuming, but not great when we need to use audio recordings, as they don’t tend to play clearly. Getting everyone to mute themselves to listen on their own takes — you guessed it! — more time


Teaching online doesn’t even come with the only real benefit of remote work, which is freedom to travel and do your work elsewhere for awhile. I can’t go to a cafe — it’s a class! I suppose I could head south or east, but I can’t, say, fly to Europe or the US and work from there unless I want to keep some very weird hours. I’ve tried (ask me about 6am classes at my sister's old apartment in Hoboken someday) and it never really works out. 

It's caused me to ask some Big Career Questions. I love teacher training and don't want to give that up, but if I took on less teaching work and picked up, say, an editing or materials development job, at least I could go to a cafe for a change of scenery instead of spending the entire day in my little office cloister. I won't turn down online teacher training because I enjoy it too much, but I have considered refusing online language teaching to do this. I haven't pulled the plug on that yet, but we'll see. 


There’s no clear solution here; this is just my life now. If I had a different sort of job where I was desperate to escape the fluorescent horror and greige cubicle walls of an office, I’d probably welcome remote work. I became a teacher in part to avoid that! One of the reasons I’ve sought out more work is for those face-to-face hours; it will make the online portions of my job more bearable. At least I’ll have more chances to go somewhere! 

Friday, March 10, 2023

The Day After

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I don't have a good cover photo, so here's a relaxing picture I took of a beach in the Maldives. 


A pretty strong content warning on this. I'll be talking about hate speech by transphobes on the right and left. Suicide comes up. If that's not something you want to be around right now, I will never know and never care if you choose to skip this post. In fact, I'll respect you for your choices regarding your own wellbeing.

I also want to clarify that I know I'm not saying anything new. Trans activists have been talking about these issues for ages; it's just that I still see transphobia popping up around me, so maybe someone will read this and re-think. All I can really do is speak from a cis woman's perspective, so I try to keep to that. If you want to hear trans perspectives, I thoroughly enjoy the podcast Cancel Me, Daddy.


* * *

International Women's Day was this past Wednesday, and I really want to have cared.

I remember a time when Lao Ren Cha was specifically aimed at foreign women -- especially, but not exclusively, Western women in Taiwan. The experiences of that demographic most closely matched my own; it was an easy and frankly needed angle to take. At that time I would have written up something from that angle for something like International Women's Day without hesitation. 

At times I think about going back to that narrower focus. But, over the last decade-plus, as life in Taiwan has become simply life, not some exciting new immigrant or expat journey, what I have to say isn't always categorizable by gender. I'm also no longer sure that my experiences are similar enough to the average foreign female newcomer.

Of course I remain an ardent feminist even as my blogging focus has shifted: there isn't much about my personality that is reducible to my gender, and I believe as any reasonable person does that everyone should be considered as individuals, not an agglomeration of stereotypes about how "men" or "women" should think or act. 

When I came here as a starry-eyed twentysomething who believed that women, who bear so much sexism from society, could all come together in solidarity to end it. I believed then that valuable and meaningful discussions are possible with those I don't always agree with or like.

I still want to believe that's true. To some extent, I do: the idea that everyone is set in every belief is too simplistic. People can and do say things in the moment that, on further reflection, they realize are problematic, don't reflect their core values, or that they don't truly believe. I've certainly done it! Some people aren't open to new ideas, but many are.

And yet, there I sat two days ago -- a feminist blogger simply unable to write a single thing on International Women's Day. I don't generally attach great importance to specific days, but at the very least I believe that day should be one of raising each other up, not woman-on-woman conflict.

That does feel like women's rights discourse has become, however. We've always had to deal with reactionaries shouting down the concept of women having full human rights (like, say, the right to all forms of health care, including abortion), or treating women like human beings rather than some gaggle of mysterious sirens whose primary role is ornamental.

Now, however, it's clearer than ever that some of the misogyny has always come from inside the house. It feels impossible to simply engage with other feminists without having to listen to some trash talk about who is and isn't a woman (according to them), portraying some women as enemies or worse, predators, based on zero evidence -- simply because they were not assigned 'female' at birth. 

In short, I'm sick of transphobes shouting about how feminism is necessarily transphobic. This is a perspective I thoroughly reject. In fact, I find that ideology embarrassing in its hatefulness, and I hope everyone clinging to it is thoroughly abashed just like so many anti-gay folks who sure panicked a few years ago, but now realize they sounded like particularly bigoted turnips. (Not all of them have repented, but there has been a change in the overall discourse.) 

On International Women's Day, I seethed about it. I can really only speak from a cis perspective, but I felt genuine anger at the idea of women celebrating that day, but including only the women they deem "acceptable". I tweeted, but I didn't really write. The day after that, I started to question whether I could still truly justify that lofty ideal of solidarity. 

The day after, I decided that perhaps it was time to be clear about the fact that Taiwan, at least among Western women, has a TERF problem. 

I don't just mean transphobia, but specifically women who think of themselves as feminists, but exclude trans women from any discussion of women. To me, that's not feminist at all. It's not empowering; it's just exclusionary. The problem isn't limited to Taiwan expat communities: if you've listened to any of the rhetoric coming out of the West, it's everywhere. But it exists here too, and I live here, and I do not like it one bit. 

Certainly, transphobia also exists in local society as well. I don't think one post can really address that, nor do I think I'm the best person to do so. Perhaps it's because my primary language of communication is English, but when I go online most of the Taiwan-based anti-trans vitriol I see being spewed is from other Westerners. There are more of them than I would have guessed, and they're difficult to avoid if one wants to participate in feminist spaces.

Transphobic cis women will insist that women's spaces should segregate on the basis of...I'm not sure really. Genitals? Chromosomes? All sorts of things that are not always clear at birth? Something. They seem to truly believe that cis women are in general consensus on this, and "women's spaces" should therefore be for cis women only. 

I reject this. As a cis woman, let me be clear: there is no such consensus.

I as a cis woman refuse to be a part of any "women's space" that excludes trans women. If a group, event, meeting, club, activity, discussion or anything else is meant for only cis women, the creators might think it's for women like me, but it's not. I will not dignify the existence of spaces that claim to be for all women, but exclude some women regardless.

At that point, you don't have a "women's space" or a "feminist space", you have a transphobe space. Cis women like me who believe in inclusion for all women want nothing to do with you, so it's really just the TERFs who remain. 

And why would I want to be a part of any space that claims it must exist as it does to keep women "safe", as though trans women are inherently dangerous? (They are not.) Why would I want to be around people who talk big about that safety, but don't care at all about the safety of an entire demographic of women -- the ones they seek to exclude?

I won't awkwardly smile and try to make the best of it. I won't check my disgust at the door. I won't legitimize it with my presence. I won't pretend that these are just "differences of opinion" when the TERFs sound indistinguishable from the right-wingers and their ideology does real harm. 

It positions trans people as criminals when they're more likely to be the victims of crimes. It results in bullying, harassment and assaults on trans people. That, in turn, drives attempted suicide among trans people. It allows for the dissemination of disinformation targeted as "they're trying to trans your kids!", which can lead to the restriction of age-appropriate affirming care due to incorrect beliefs about such care. It allows essential care for women to deny access to some women.

All of it is in service to exactly one belief: that the problem is the penis and women with vaginas are therefore justified in excluding women with penises. 

Although penises are hilarious (have you seen them? What the hell?) I just don't think a body part is the problem. Patriarchal systems are the problem, and patriarchal systems are inherently anti-trans. They are cruel to trans people, as they are cruel to cis women. Perhaps the details differ, but the cruelty remains the point. So, hey, if you want to support the patriarchy, by all means continue to be a transphobe! 


That's not a difference of opinion. These are human lives. Trans people are more likely to die because of the way society treats them. I think beliefs that perpetuate this treatment are, in a word, sick.

I won't pretend that harm is acceptable in any feminist space I participate in. I will never agree that to be safe for me, a "women's space" must include only cis women. No, I don't feel unsafe in restrooms, because I have no reason to. In fact, being committed to inclusive women's spaces, I'm more interested in keeping them transphobe-free. At least then, we're telling people they're not welcome based on their ideology, not their fundamental personhood. 

I'm a liberal because I care about all people, even those who aren't like me. I'm a feminist because I care about equal opportunity for all women. I'm not interested in so-called liberal or feminist ideas that sound exactly like the right-wing reactionaries with whom I so profoundly disagree. 

Are you really a feminist if you sound just like the guy at CPAC who called for transgender people to be "eradicated from public life entirely"? Because the end goals are the same: restrict gender-affirming care, make it unacceptable to be publicly trans (especially a trans woman), make it very acceptable to demonize and bully trans people.

You can tell because the same "they're trying to steal our kids!" panic is prevalent in both the conservative and "feminist" forms of this ideology. And you can tell because even when the reactionaries say something that even the TERFs know is truly ridiculous ("trans people have no hobbies") or post memes alluding to trans suicide, the "feminists" never call it out. They're too busy screaming at trans people to stop for a moment and say "hey that meme is shitty and cruel". 

Why would I want to be included in "feminist" discourse or spaces where they sound exactly like Michael Fucking Knowles talking to Republicans?

And where does that leave me, a cis woman in Taiwan?

Well, it's hard to know where to find that coveted solidarity. I want no solidarity with bullies. I can't just assume something billed as "for women" will necessarily include and support all women; it's important carefully check every women's group, meetup or event to confirm. I've lost "friends" over it; that's fine, I broker no peace with disinformation-spewing transphobes posting cherry-picked predator memes. It's extremely hard to know when a transphobe-y comment is some thoughtless crap that can be challenged with some hope of success, or indicative of a deeper worldview that legitimizes exclusion and promotes bullying.

I also watch out for transphobes welcomed into otherwise inclusive spaces. I understand the impulse to welcome everyone, and I do think it's possible to change some minds with interaction. However, they are part of an effort to push transphobia into feminist spaces in Taiwan, and I just can't countenance that. I only participate if I think my presence as a cis woman trying to be a trans ally will turn that tide. 

It's important as well to keep an eye on the guys. Every once in awhile I hear a well-meaning dude in the Taiwan foreignersphere say or retweet some anti-trans garbage thinking he's being supportive of "women" because transphobic women he respects have told him so. The only way to counter that is to push back and be clear that not every cis woman agrees; some of us believe that respecting women means respecting all women.

As the moderator of an inclusive Facebook women's group, I have had no issues with trans women causing problems, but I must always keep an eye out for transphobes spewing hate against our very welcome trans members.

And finally, as the author of a long-running blog that once focused on women in Taiwan and now focuses on whatever I please, I feel that there is not enough trans-affirming discourse among Western residents of Taiwan. 

Certainly, the wider media landscape seems to be pushing an anti-trans narrative: you hear a lot about controversy over what transphobes say -- they seem to love interviewing transphobes all het up that kids are being dipped in hormone tanks without counseling, or whatever moral panic tropes they're buying into this week -- but not much at all on what it's like to just be a normal trans person living one's life. The exposure to the idea of trans individuals just being seems so rare. You hear a lot of "ARE THEY SALIVATING OVER MY KIDS???" talk, presented as Just Asking Questions but clearly seeking to terrify, and not nearly enough "oh hey I met her at a party, she was cool". 

I'm small potatoes media. Lao Ren Cha is literally just my blog that I do for free and for fun, on Blogspot of all godforsaken places because I'm too lazy to move to a better platform. So sure, this is like a warm, friendly piss in an ocean of ice-cold hate. 

But I can try, so here it is: as a cis woman, I reject anti-trans bigotry and discrimination. I reject right-wing talking points presented as somehow revolutionary and left-wing. They are not. I reject transphobe-welcoming spaces. This may mean I reject solidarity. This is unfortunate, but acceptable: I may not know how to bridge the divide, but I do know what my feminism stands for, and it stands for inclusion.

One final plug: if you are a woman or nonbinary (basically, not a man) and want to be part of an inclusive women's group that leans explicitly feminist and trans-welcoming, check out Super Awesome Taiwan Women. There is also the Feminist Study Group Meetup (I'm not in this, but I have it on good authority that they are inclusive). 


Sunday, February 19, 2023

Blood Sugar Hex Magic

                       Untitled


Yes, it's a punny title, but I won't change it. 

It felt like magic when I began losing weight without trying. Several months out from COVID recovery, I'd changed exactly one habit: I was drinking an average of two liters of water per day. Before COVID I had a small water bottle for going out; by the time I'd sipped it dry I could usually find a place ot refill it. Now, I could down that thing in three gulps, and was instead bringing a full liter everywhere I went. I'd have to refill that as well. I assumed that my wholesome new drinking habit was the driver of the weight loss. 

I had to have pants taken in and shirts re-tailored. I bought a belt. Even my shoes fit a little looser. From July to November, I lost a dress size. By January, it was a size and a half. As of now, it might be two.

I won't lie: it felt great. I didn't have any other issues or symptoms, so I just kept on assuming it was all that water. It's no secret that I'm -- what are we calling it these days? Curvy? -- and it was thrilling to be dropping pounds. Who wouldn't want that, especially with very little effort? 

Most cultures these days seem to be weight-conscious. People will say it's about health but it's really not. It's straight-up "NO FATTIES" judgmentalism. If you're fat and healthy that's still insufficient. If you're thin and sick, you should handle that, but it's ultimately better than being fat. There are people who will argue with the idea that this is totally fucked up, and that's fucked up too. 

Taiwan is no different. Taiwanese society's obsession with weight isn't even unique: you'll find pills and horrible diets and people -- mostly women -- taking on unhealthy habits and getting surgery in every other Asian country and many, if not most, places beyond. Although the country of my birth is somewhat fatter on average, all of these things exist there too. If you needed any evidence that none of it works, there it is: the United States has the juice cleanses, the disgusting powders, the gross teas and the weird contraptions too, and Americans aren't getting any thinner. 

The main difference I've found is that Taiwanese standards for being thin are far stricter: you have to be a stick to even fit into the clothing sizes available. Large-size stores exist, but they don't work for me as I'm too tall for the hemlines and the cuts don't take curves into account.

People (usually women) who are average or even slender have told me that they're regularly called fat. One told me a guy walked away because he believed he should be able to wrap his hands around her waist and have his fingers touch, which is some eating-disorder level bullshit.  I've heard far too many people commenting on weight as though it's a moral failing in an infuriatingly matter-of-fact way, and include people who are simply not fat in that definition (not that it would be any more acceptable if they didn't). 

If you're a foreign woman, it's unlikely that you'll meet these size standards. Even thin Western women I know have said they feel like giants here. Trust me, it's even harder when you're a Big Foreign Sasquatch. In addition to local messaging, there's a big community of misogynist Western dudes who have the "no fatties!" mindset. Fortunately, they mostly ignore expat women they deem overweight. They don't seem to realize they're handing us a gift.

It's to the point that seeing a doctor can be an exercise in stress, when medical professionals ought to focus on treatment. It felt like being cursed, or hexed: presenting for care, being told to lose weight and possibly receiving substandard care from a doctor who assumed weight loss was the only possible treatment, feeling like trash about it, and avoiding seeking further care. People say being overweight can lead to lower life expectancy, but I wonder if seeking medical treatment less often, and receiving insufficient treatment when one does, might lead to medical conditions spinning out of control that didn't need to be life-threatening in the first place.

Although I don't really want to speak Mandarin when there's a contraption that looks like a wine key stuck up my vagina, I quit one English-speaking OB-GYN and sought out another, because her only suggestion for treating my cystic ovaries was to lose weight. Of course, the cystic ovaries probably contribute to the weight in the first place. 

When I got COVID, I asked for Paxlovid as I was feeling weird in the general heart area, which is generally not considered to be a good thing. I have a family history of heart problems (though as far as I know, I'm fine), but that wasn't enough. The telemedicine doctor said it didn't qualify. So I said "oh, but I'm fat!" and got the drugs: having a likely predisposition to vascular issues was insufficient, but weight was. The doctor also said that heart problems were associated with obesity, and I didn't have it in me to reply my family members with heart issues were not fat, with no exceptions. 

I don't want to single out Taiwan, though. Fat people are treated like crap by society and medical professionals around the world. A doctor in the US whom I saw because I tested positive for tuberculosis exposure (I never developed the disease) exhorted me to lose weight, in college, when I wasn't fat. The main difference is that in the US people will talk about "fatties" (or "fat chicks", because this is mostly aimed at women) in derogatory ways to no-one in particular. In Taiwan they'll be more straightforward about it, but are more likely to say it to your face. 

In Taiwan, my tailor and one doctor congratulated me on my weight loss. Foreign friends said I should get checked out as my water consumption was atypical, others didn't see a concern: drinking that much of a calorie-free substance is a common weight-loss tactic!

Here's the truly unhealthy part: I didn't want this to be a problem. Of course no one does, but specifically I was quite happy to continue slimming down. A tiny voice in the back of my head kept prodding me -- you know they're right. Water or not, my rate of weight loss wasn't normal or healthy. And yet, as much work as I've done to simply love myself and focus on being a person rather than a number on a scale, I wanted to keep losing it. Going to the gym hadn't worked. Eating better never worked either. Why not take this gift being handed to me?

It gets worse: walking around in my slimmer body, I didn't just feel better about myself, I felt healthy. After all, losing weight is healthy, right? Slimmer people are healthier, no?

This was in fact extremely dangerous. I was not healthy. But when society tells you that dropping a size or two is good for you, it's extremely hard to break away and say no, something's wrong.

I visited the US recently, and it took an old college friend to really hammer it home: I needed to see a doctor. Excessive water consumption and unexplained weight loss were the most common symptoms of high blood sugar and diabetes. Even then, thinking back on years in Taiwan being matter-of-factly told I was fat, with insane diets and life-consuming exercise regimes suggested as a "cure", I secretly hoped that I would be able to "keep" the weight loss.

And yes, I did find the anti-fat messaging in Taiwan more damaging. That could just be me: it's easy to ignore Internet chuds in the US screeching about "fat chicks", usually with some assumption that said fat chicks would be single forever. Who cares? I'm not single!

It's harder to not let oneself be affected by a straight-up proclamation that you are fat and that is bad. The advertising affected me more too. It's harmful enough that the US has re-vamped all its weight-loss marketing as "wellness" or "health" (I'm sorry but nasty drinks and no food are not healthy, period). In Taiwan, well, you are fat and that is bad.

For someone who's worked hard to break free of mindsets like these, it really shows how deeply this societal messaging runs, and how damaging it can be. I came very close to not seeking care because I thought of weight loss as an unequivocal good! 

I should have known better. You know who else lost a lot of weight because she was sick? My mother, just before the cancer came back. She's no longer with us.

I did make an appointment with an endocrinologist after returning to Taiwan. You know what it took to do that? A friend treating my new body as a warning sign rather than something to be congratulated. I should not have needed that hard a push. I also massively cut down my sugar intake and reduced my carbohydrate intake, although it's hard to sustain that with no clear diagnosis. It was especially hard as my first week doing this was in Mexico, where the chocolate and the churros are delicious. 

You know what? Even then, I fretted about it the day before and morning of, simply because I wasn't in a good mental place to be told yet again that I am fat and that is bad, with the implied message that I'm a moral failure, or lazy, or a bad person because I am fat, which is what I suspect a lot of people truly believe. 

Nobody should have to feel that way when doing something as normal as going to the doctor. Everybody, in every country, should feel empowered to present for care without judgment. 

This story has no ending, as I'm still waiting for my blood sugar results. I can't imagine I'll be told I'm fine. 

There is one happy conclusion, however: unlike so many doctors before her, the endocrinologist didn't say a word about my weight. I told her I'd had COVID about six months ago, and the symptoms began immediately after. I'd had my blood sugar checked before I got sick, and there was no issue. She pointed out that there is some evidence that COVID can actually cause diabetes in rare cases, so I was right to be spooked. She asked me if I had a family history of diabetes, which I do.

She did not exhort me to exercise or eat less. That's a good thing. There is no overweight person in the world who is unaware of it, who hasn't already been told this, who doesn't know. It's never new information. It's not helpful. 

She did her job: ordered the necessary blood tests and told me how to fast and eat before each one. We'll discuss the results next week. 

I only wish every other doctor in my life had approached it that way.

If I had to offer any general advice, it would be the same for Taiwan as for the US: stop. Just stop. Leave people alone. You don't know their lives, you don't know their health, and the "I'm just concerned about your health" concern trolling is actively harmful -- but you knew that. Treat health issues as health issues in and of themselves, and don't tie moral rectitude or assumptions about health to weight. Every single thing you want to say, everyone already knows, and it does not help. Listen to Maintenance Phase and just...stop.