Sezin Devi Koehler's Blog, page 12

These Violent Delights Have Misogynistic Ends in HBO’s Westworld

"A clear demonstration of its ongoing misogyny problem, HBO still caters to that “perv side of the audience,” who the channel believes enjoys the constant and graphic sexual objectification of women. It’s such a shame, because if they really needed this level of full frontal nudity, the network had the perfect opportunity with Westworld to feature both males and females equally, since both males and females equally fell within that android slave narrative. Instead, they chose to toe their misogynistic party line, and focus on objectifying women to the point where it became a disgusting display of pure unadulterated sexism." For Wear Your Voice Mag, December 2016.

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Where are all the South Asians in Dystopian Films and TV?

"What The 100 was telling me, on no uncertain terms, is that an ethnicity that makes up one of the Earth’s most populous regions did not survive into the far future. What in the actual fuck.

Stopped in my tracks, I started thinking about all the different dystopian stories I’ve watched over the years, to realize over and over again that South Asians often don’t exist in the future. We’ve been erased."

For Wear Your Voice Mag, December 2016.

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The Gilmore Girls Revival Gets Real (But it is Still a Beautiful Escape From These Troubled Times)

"Haley Mlotek of The New York Times coined the phrase “emotional speculative fiction” to talk about Gilmore Girls, and that is still the best description of the show to date. As someone who doesn’t have a hometown, Stars Hollow has always offered me a special kind of comfort in imagining what it would be like to live and grow up in one place." For Wear Your Voice Mag, November 2016.

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On Consent and Being an “Other” in Trump’s America

"These (white) individuals believe I owe them explanations of who I am so they will know where and how to file my brown presence with a suitable label, thereby establishing my validity as an American. These (white) individuals believe it’s their right to put their hands on me because I am different from. Ultimately, these these are questions of (white) entitlement over people of color’s bodies, because it’s never brown or black people who ask invasive questions or cross physical boundaries. They probably have it happen often enough to understand how degrading and humiliating it is to have someone treat you like a zoo or sideshow exhibit." For Wear Your Voice Mag, November 2016.

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India’s First Transgender News Anchor Brings Visibility to Country’s Trans and Hijra Folks

"Incredible India, in all its marvelous contradictions, has surprised us all by hiring its first transgender news anchor, Padmini Prakash. Prakash has been leading a daily primetime news program on India state Tamil Nadu’s Lotus TV since August 15." For Wear Your Voice Mag, November 2016.

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The Crack in Everything Widens: A Dirge for Leonard Cohen

"As 2016 continues to steamroll our tired hearts, I can’t help but see yesterday’s passing of beloved, iconic Canadian poet-minstrel Leonard Cohen as yet another thread unraveling from the very fabric of society. I can see Uncle Leonard in the corner of a dive bar, clouded in smoke, a notebook and pen on the table in front of him next to a tumbler of whiskey, nodding along with me, his eyes sad but ever hopeful." For Wear Your Voice Mag, November 2016.

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The Election Fallout Begins for Women, People of Color, Immigrants and LGBTQ Community

"It happened. We have an admitted sexual assaulter, racist, Islamophobe, white supremacist and homophobe as the president-elect of the United States — and his Vice President is even worse. Idiocracy is now a documentary. As a woman of words, I find myself at a loss of what to say, how to even begin putting this into some kind of context that makes sense outside The Upside Down. Because let’s face it: one night at some point in the past year we went to sleep in our world, and the next morning woke up in a parallel universe." For Wear Your Voice Mag, November 2016.

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Bollywood’s Amitabh Bachchan: Admit it, You’re a Feminist

"But while all us South Asian feminists were cheering at this huge coup — we all know a powerful way for to shift rape culture is for male role models start championing women’s rights and bodily autonomy — Bachchan was already beginning his backpedal in an interview with The Hindu." For Wear Your Voice Mag, October 2016.

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“Good Girls Marry Doctors” Anthology Unveils South Asian Women’s Fraught Lives

"Piyali Bhattacharya’s Good Girls Marry Doctors: South Asian Daughters on Obedience and Rebellion was the book I had been waiting to read my entire life. Finally, a book about us. A book that represents us. Us South Asian American sisters who straddled multiple worlds and did our best to find a balance that most of the time was always going to be just out of reach." For Wear Your Voice Mag, October 2016.

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Skirt Warning Won’t Prevent India Rapes

"For a country in which one of the national dresses for women is the sari — an outfit that, even with all its yards of fabric, features a crop top that exposes a woman’s cleavage, back, and full belly — it was jarring to read that the Indian Minister of Tourism, Mahesh Sharma, issued a travel advisory to foreign women telling them to not wear skirts." For Wear Your Voice Mag, October 2016.

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