Regressivism Among Foreigners in Taiwan

Regressivism among foreigners in Taiwan

Persimmons drying in the sun in Xinpu

Expats in Taiwan are, as a group, overwhelmingly left-leaning. This is not surprising nor is it new, as it’s no secret that many westerners come to Asia to put otherwise useless liberal arts degrees to use. Anyone familiar with western universities knows that Arts and Social Science departments tend to engender liberal perspectives in their students. This on its own does not bother me. Moderates on either side of the political center, I find, can be reasonable people.

We're not all Archie Bunker, after all

What does bother me, however, is rampant political correctness and extremes of group identitarianism. Even when I left it, my country was already becoming enamored with PC. When I arrived in Taiwan, it was actually a breath of fresh air, especially coming from the sometimes-confining climate of the west. People here just speak their minds without the “avoid offense” filters we’ve come to adopt. Students of mine would simply call me old or tell me I’ve put on weight. This took some getting used to, but I came to find the honesty refreshing. After all, they are merely observing and noticing. PC, it has been said, is a war on noticing things.

In recent years, though, I’ve noticed an increased prevalence in a particular kind of PC among some younger, mostly American expats, as well as some changes in the sort of things they advocate. We’re long past advocating the removal of ‘man’ from ‘postman’ or ‘mailman,’ or the ubiquitous discovery of the “problematic” Darlie “Black Man” toothpaste.

It's a rite of passage for expats in Taiwan to notice something's up with the toothpaste!

Millennial expats increasingly believe in group privilege and oppression, the idea that you’re born with either privilege or membership in an oppressed group. Who you are as an individual no longer matters. If you are white, you have privilege. If you are non-white, you are oppressed, regardless of any other individual circumstances. The same applies to gender. Men are oppressors and women are oppressed. Again, anything else about you does not matter. If you are a man, you are responsible for “rape culture” or whatever other narrative pushed by adherents to this belief. If you are Caucasian, you owe black people reparations for slavery. It does not matter that neither you nor any of your ancestors have ever owned slaves. Don’t bother mentioning that all races have been enslaved. Details don’t matter. Narrative does.

I could go into a lot of detail about the origins of contemporary “social justice warrior” ideology, but it would be too much of a diversion for an expat blog. It suffices to say, an important name is Herbert Marcuse and the movement he founded known as ‘Cultural Marxism.’  I’ll give a brief explanation of Cultural Marxist identity politics with a few recent examples.

Caption reads: Uncle People's Liberation Army, Quick! Go and liberate the suffering kids of Taiwan. This poster is promoting male PLA privilege! It should be a boy asking the PLA aunties to attack Taiwan! 

The Cultural Marxist redefinition of racism posits that racism is not a belief of racial superiority held by bigoted individuals, but one of prejudice plus power. It is a kind group power exercised by a privileged oppressor group against a minority group deemed oppressed. It is therefore impossible, according to SJW’s, for a black person in America to ever be racist against a white person, regardless of the circumstances. Similarly, women cannot be sexist against a man EVER. How could they be? Women lack the societal power necessary to wield the weapon of sexism (talk about infantilizing). Only men can do that. Men, by the way, who are all responsible for the oppression of women, regardless of anything they may or may not have done individually.

 By employing what has been dubbed the progressive stack, the more marginalized you are, the less likely you can be guilty of racism, sexism etc. This can sometimes get dicey. For instance, a woman cannot be sexist against a man, unless that man is LGBT, in which case there is a sort of regressive Mexican standoff. A woman loses if the LGBT man has anymore cards in his “stack.” For example, she would be done for if he happens to be a minority in addition to LGBT. She would be using her white, straight ableism privilege to oppress him (No, I’m not making this up for comedic effect).

So how does all of this relate to being an expat in Taiwan? Well, as mentioned earlier, this ideology has begun to rear its ugly head on our shores. I recall one weird Facebook exchange a while back with one unpleasant American woman, who told me that I, because I am a man, need to learn what consent is. She did not know me at all but, because of my male Facebook name, I have to be re-educated in what consent is— just like all male oppressors. We’re all responsible for rape culture, after all. She went on to describe rape as being anything from sex with a woman who’s been drinking (but not a drunk man, obviously), any instance where there is regret afterwards or, most weirdly, any instance where the woman is not 100% turned on or wet—yes, she used those words.

Gratuitous Pagoda Pic, because I want to oppress with my photo-ist privilege!

In another online post, I read another SJW proclaim, almost like good news, that we cannot be racist against Taiwanese. The claim was that it was not possible for whites to be racist against ethnic Asian Taiwanese, because they are privileged here. Remember, that whoever is perceived as the dominant group is privileged in SJW ideology. It isn’t possible for minority subjects to be racist against the privileged group. Therefore, in Asia, whites cannot racist (again, I’m not making this up).

Yet another online expat exchange tried to play both sides of the oppression games. One expat was mentioning how he had become a naturalized local citizen. Another poster wrote that he would never be accepted here. He’s an ethnic minority and locals would always treat him as an outsider. The citizen poster replied that he does feel totally accepted here. The other poster shot back that locals always stare and point and that they would always exclude a non-Chinese person. Citizen guy wrote back that the only group that has consistently had issues with his decision to obtain local citizenship was the expat community and that “you’ll never truly be local” was a common refrain. Seeing as how citizen guy refused to take his oppression Olympic medal when it was offered to him, the other poster changed tack and declared that citizen guy had white privilege (no joke).

An expat friend of mine married an aboriginal woman. Once, during a public event with the tribe, a visiting white western woman accused him of "cultural appropriation" for wearing tribal clothing and partaking in the event with other aboriginal men, both of which he was specifically ASKED to do. She further tried to tell a village chief not to use the word 'aboriginal,' but instead to use 'indigenous.' She was perhaps unaware that her actions were taboo, as in the tribe, women cannot tell a chief what to do. Tribe members were puzzled as to what the strange white woman's problem was. I wonder if some of these ideologues understand just how poorly their ideas travel.

I could go on about the internal contradictions and cognitive dissonance inherent to this ideology or how it is ‘problematic” because it not only excuses abhorrent behavior, it actually encourages it, provided you come from the right groups. But I’ll just close by saying I find this ideology to be juvenile, overly simplistic and just plain annoying. Please, newbies, keep your Che Guevara T-shirt ideologies out of expat life in Taiwan!