By Rei Tanotsuka, 8 February 2020
From the recent spate of unpleasantness crossing my path, it would take Herculean faith to believe that I’m not the instigator of these crimes against sanity.
Yet I swear to the Almighty that not once, have I been the one to throw the first punch, I didn’t even sulphurise the the air with noisome thoughts. Yet as much as I abstain from provocation, it seems rife is on the hunt and the target is Rei.
So let’s recap 2020 thus far.
Coming back from Australia to Japan on January 7th, I run into 2 racist imbeciles on a plane.
Last week I got stalked by a fellow Quoran, the unfortunate looking India Samara, aka Ms Mt Nosiosko. She got my posts relating my real life experiences with racism collapsed, and got me banned from Quora.
And now today, my troika of scummery should hopefully conclude with this loud mouth bugger.
So what happened today, dear Rei?
Today I had a public speaking gig for around 50 people. It was in an international community in Japan. My topic was about the main difference between Eastern and Western forms of expression.
This topic arose because of my life experiences from my childhood in Australia, where my Christian friends told me I would suffer ETERNAL DAMNATION because I didn’t believe in Jesus Christ, to a quaint observation in teaching Japanese children.
I have taught young children for almost 16 years, and this is what I noticed about the pecking order in my classes.
If ALL the kids are Japanese, the alphas in the class will be based on traditional qualities of rambunctiousness and “leadership” qualities, HOWEVER throw in a biracial or full blooded Western white child, then that child will naturally ascend to be the class leader IRRESPECTIVE of whether s/he shows leadership skills or other characteristics commonly associated with popular kids. The question naturally is, WHY?
Inorder to answer my OWN question, I had to find out how similar and how different we all are. If we are all indeed from Africa, how is it that we evolved 2 almost disparate systems of conduct and expression, eventhough we eventuate the same conclusion?
These presentations are like a poor man’s TED, where the speaker talks for 1.5 hours then the audience can ask the presenter questions for 30 mins, a 2 hour engagement in total.
So off I go starting on the origins of the hominid species from Ardipithecus all the way to homo sapien. Then I reached the part where I explain how the genetic line is traced with asexual traits which are inherented, namely mitochondrial DNA with women, and the Y chromosome with men.
I then said “common knowledge” for a while was that women evolved before men, however now we know Y chromosome Adam is about 208,000 years old whereas mitochondrial Eve is 200,000. I remarked that it’s interesting that the bible put Adam before Eve.
That’s when the heckler took his shot at me.
He was an elderly Japanese man who is a Christian and he took offence at me combining science together with the bible. He wouldn’t let up. He kept barking on and on, so I asked was anyone else offended. Noone else was. A few other men told him to be quiet and let me continue.
I told him point blank, that the exit was “that way” or if he insists I go, then would he take over and finish the presentation for me?
I know at this point, you might be thinking he has a right to voice his feelings, and yes you are right. He indeed does have the right, BUT is it proper decorum to do so in a middle of a presentation, and has he ever done it to the OTHER non Asian looking speakers?
This International community is set up to engage in a knowledge exchange of sorts. The speakers are usually foreigners living in Japan and they share their field of expertise. After I finished my talk, a few people stayed behind and asked me more questions, that’s when I made my enquiry into the heckler’s usual behaviour during other presentations. I was told that he always has an opinion, HOWEVER he has never been provocative in this way that was tantamount to harassment.
This dear reader, is a manifestation of internalised hatred. I have encountered Japanese people and other Asians of this calibre. They take obscene offence at the closest thing to a Western narrative that they wished they could articulate in front of a WHITE ANGLO WESTERN national but lacked the temerity to do so, and now utilises a chance to bite back with something “close”.
Since I am a Western woman of an Asian lineage, this is as easy as it gets.
The pecking order goes like this.
A white Anglo Western man insults Japanese culture /food/people. The Japanese person grins and bears it.
If a white Anglo woman does it, the Japanese will give a brief retort.
If an Asian Western Anglo man does it, there will be more venom laced in the rebuttal, and finally if it’s someone like me, all the bottled up anger and frustration will be released, because my demographic is ostensibly the closest and weakest link they can attack.
Yet, how grossly mistaken. Like they say, it’s not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog that matters, and unfortunately for people who conjecture they can pick on me, fail to realise that there’s a giant gladiator living inside THIS BITCH!
Not one gets to give me shit without getting their own face rubbed in it. I have been asked back to make another presentation because the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Guess the next topic? Yep, it’s one dedicated to the likes of that internalised racist mofo, I’m calling him out.
Self hating and Asian on Asian sabotage is my forte, he will be my muse. Unlike muses of the past who inspire creativity, he inspires me to keep spitting the truth irrespective of whether he is ready to face it or not.
Call out injustice and stupidity not because you can change the instigator, do it because YOU RESPECT YOURSELF ENOUGH TO!