gender

By Professor Hyeouk Chris Hahm

Working with diverse immigrant populations who suffered from various mental health disorders in New York City, Professor Hyeouk Chris Hahm had a first-hand look at health disparities among Asian American communities. As a psychiatric social worker for 10 years, she saw a growing prevalence of young Asian American adults dealing with substance use and sexually transmitted disease (STDs). This led her to question the factors associated with risky health behavior patterns, as well as the protective factors of those behaviors including substance use and HIV/STDs risk behaviors among young Asian Americans.

 Are you currently unemployed? According to the new Canadian citizenship guidebook for prospective immigrants, over 8.6% of unemployed Canadians are not fulfilling the Canadian responsibility of having a job, which now comes with the rights of having a Canadian citizenship.

The new Canadian citizenship guidebook was unveiled last week, redefining what it means to be Canadian. After all, new Canadian immigrants are more likely to be unemployed, which must mean—according to the authors of the guidebook—that their economic difficulties are a result of their failure adopt Canadian values. In addition, the new guidebook tells prospective immigrants, “Canada’s openness and generosity do not extend to barbaric cultural practices that tolerate spousal abuse, “honour killings,” female genital mutilation, or other gender-based violence.”

China is moving to take back one of its own — even if it is legend. Mulan is the Middle Kingdom's gender-bending heroine, its Joan of Arc. The character from folktale is a daughter who disguises herself as a male soldier to take her father's place in the conscription army. The problem for the Chinese is that, since 1998, the definitive version of the story has been Disney's.

Indeed, because of the animated Disney film, the character Mulan has become one of the most recognizable symbols of Chinese culture worldwide. Baby girls adopted from China have been named Mulan by their American parents. Disney has staged musical versions of the movie Mulan from Mexico to the Philippines. And posing for a photo with Mulan is a must for hordes of tourists at Hong Kong Disneyland. (See China's long road to prosperity.)

 A judge today dismissed a discrimination lawsuit against Miley Cyrus that argued that Asians were harmed by a photo that showed the teen idol and her friends pulling back their eyelids.

The novel legal claim was filed by Lucie J. Kim in a class action suit against the singer earlier this year that sought $4,000 in damages for each Asian and Pacific Islander living in Los Angeles County. The suit argued that Cyrus, 16, violated a state law that prohibits businesses from discriminating against people based on race, gender, ethnicity and other traits.

The picture appeared on websites like gossipteen.com in February, and Cyrus repeatedly apologized. Cyrus’ attorney, Bryan M. Sullivan, referred all inquiries to Miley's spokesperson, who declined comment.

We all know her story. She was a beautiful, bright 24-year-old graduate student in Yale's pharmacology department who went missing just four days shy of her wedding. Her body was found on what was to be her wedding day hidden behind a wall in her laboratory, a Yale building at 10 Amistad Road in New Haven. A few days later, a 24-year-old animal technician who also worked at her laboratory was arrested for her murder.

I first read about her in The New York Times in my apartment in Manhattan. Across the globe, my brother read about her on Bloomberg News in his office in Hong Kong. We felt the pain and horror of her death and of the tragedy facing her family.

Annie Le was also Asian-American. As her story appeared all over the Internet and on 24-hour news updates, blogs, commentaries, Facebook and Twitter posts, the fact that she was an Asian-American female was to become an important part of her narrative, speaking to uniquely American anxieties about sex, violence, gender and race.

The Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC) and Asian American Justice Center (AAJC) applaud President Obama for signing the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009. The new law expands the federal definition of a hate crime – which currently covers attacks motivated by race, color, religion or national origin – to include gender, disability, sexual orientation and gender identity.

The bill also provides the U.S. Department of Justice with the ability to aid state and local jurisdictions in investigations and prosecutions of hate-motivated violent crimes.

That Minority Thing - Some 93 percent of studio directors were male this year — Nora Ephron with her “Julie & Julia” and a handful of other women notwithstanding. Damien Dante Wayans, with “Dance Flick,” joined Olatunde Osunsanmi of “The Fourth Kind” as black directors with studio releases, while a few directors were Asian or part Asian.

Uniformity would seem to shut out potential viewers and revenue. But there is really no way to be sure whether sales would go up or down if the studio directing pool were more diverse.

In some ways, studio directors are looking even more uniform than in the past. In 1999, a report on diversity from the Directors Guild of America, whose statistics include nonstudio films, found African-American directors to have worked 5.4 percent of total days covered by the guild’s film contract, while women logged 7.4 percent , Asian-Americans 1.5 percent and Latinos 1.1 percent.

"Strangers" of the Academy Asian Women Scholars in Higher Education, Edited by Guofang Li, Gulbahar H. Beckett, Foreword by Shirley Geok-Lin Lim

Abstract - No less than other minorities, Asian women scholars are confronted with racial discrimination and stereotyping as well as disrespect for their research, teaching, and leadership, and are underrepresented in academia.

In the face of such barriers, many Asian female scholars have developed strategies to survive and thrive. This book is among the first to examine their lived experience in Western academic discourses. It addresses the socio-cultural, political, academic, and personal issues that Asian female scholars encounter in higher education.

NAM - Last year, Frank Chang spent about $1,500 on non-surgical cosmetic procedures. This year, the 35-year-old Chinese American may go a step farther.

“I may be getting a lift for my eyes,” said Chang. “The reason I am not doing it yet is because I am a bit afraid of the pain.”

Chang said if he were happy with the results, he would continue to do more surgical procedures “in a healthy way.”

Chang is one of an increasing number of Asian-American men defying a cultural stigma to engage in cosmetic surgery in order to improve their appearances. Experts say what is motivating men to seek plastic surgery may be the need to raise their chances of surviving a job market that is increasingly favorable of younger workers, and to be competitive in romantic relationships.