Kinja reply list

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La.M.Katie J.M. Baker
9/13/13 11:10am
(I'm still convinced this is all bullshit and it was the only way they could get rid of her)

Ding ding mother fucking ding. Ah yes, the 10 day warrior get away. Something that men prepare their whole lives for, a cultural rite of passage. Now anyone with access to a personal trainer and some PTO can experience the victory over oneself, the passage from childhood to adulthood to eternal. Inspired by the Warrior Dash, Tough Mudder and Dirty Girl Mud Run I am sure.

I have set a goal for myself to be come a little less cynical, but this story, I just can not override my natural urges.
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  well-seasoned aloe-veraLa.M.
  9/13/13 11:17am
  Seriously, Maasai women are not well-respected in my experience. This will change nothing for them. But they made the white woman feel good, which that tribe is excellent at. It's how they keep themselves a tourist destination and provides a chunk of income since pastoralism is increasingly less feasible with all those agricultural neighbors. Also, the Maasai dudes can be real jerks, but that's neither here nor there.
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  Sheeeeeeit-ClayDavisLa.M.
  9/13/13 11:23am
  "Every 15 years or so, a new and individually named generation of Morans or Il-murran (warriors) will be initiated. This involves most boys between 12 and 25, who have reached puberty and are not part of the previous age-set. One rite of passage from boyhood to the status of junior warrior is a painful circumcision ceremony, which is performed without anaesthetic. This ritual is typically performed by the elders, who use a sharpened knife and makeshift cattle hide bandages for the procedure. The Maa word for circumcision is emorata.The boy must endure the operation in silence. Expressions of pain bring dishonor, albeit temporarily. Any exclamations can cause a mistake in the delicate and tedious process, which can result in lifelong scarring, dysfunction, and pain. The healing process will take 3–4 months, during which urination is painful and nearly impossible at times, and boys must remain in black clothes for a period of 4–8 months."
  
  This is the Massai warrior initiation. So unless she got some body mutilation, she just paid them to say this after killing an animal (zero parts of the ritual).
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TyrannosaurusBataarKatie J.M. Baker
9/13/13 11:06am

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  awkwardturtleTyrannosaurusBataar
  9/13/13 11:15am
  That pretty much sums it up.
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  volutidaeTyrannosaurusBataar
  9/13/13 11:26am
  
  GIF
  
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MelimouKatie J.M. Baker
9/13/13 11:11am
I'm not sure the nasty sarcasm is warranted; would you be snarky about the first Maasai woman who came and did an EMT course in the U.S. if she wanted to write a book about it? I lived for several years in parts of Asia where my gender/nationality combo put me in a weird liminal space, much like this woman's must have been- not quite a man, not quite a woman. Doing things in that space, respectfully, has an effect on the culture. Maasai people are pretty savvy, and have been very successful in recognizing the value of their ways in the face of modernity.
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  MayatiMelimou
  9/13/13 11:16am
  The power dynamics and history of colonialism are reversed for a Maasai woman coming to the US. Plus, that woman wouldn't be actively trying to change US culture from that position of power.
  
  You're right that the key is respect. This "warrior princess" is not being respectful.
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  PyraxMelimou
  9/13/13 11:19am
  It's not an equal two-way street. White people have a long, storied history of oppressing other cultures, complete with appropriating the bits they like and skewering the bits they don't - in this case, living there contributing to their culture isn't good enough for her, but she still wants to be included in their warrior rites.
  
  The white savior is a very problematic pattern; it is born from and perpetuates the attitude that places that aren't Euro-centric need to be 'civilized' because they're not doing things right, and the only people who know how to civilize them properly are white people. If she wanted to make a difference in the tribe, she should have found a young woman that wanted to become a warrior and helped her. She shouldn't have tried to insert herself in their culture just long enough to get what she wants, before she returned to her cushy upper-middle-class white girl life.
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Martha_Jones21Katie J.M. Baker
9/13/13 11:33am
Why is it that white people always go to brown countries to find themselves? Go to the spa or some shit. Or sleep and drink your way through europe like normal people. Leave black and brown people out of your shit.
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  LassieLudditeMartha_Jones21
  9/13/13 12:09pm
  I dunno about that—sometimes getting really out of your element is necessary to gain valuable perspective. Much of that includes being somewhere that nobody looks like you, where day-to-day life is much different than anything you've ever known. Admittedly, this could be done on a much smaller, more local level by just spending time in the disenfranchised ghetto on the other side of town populated entirely by people of color, but I suspect you'd be making the same argument for that, too. Maybe it takes traveling across the world to really feel like you're "in this for the duration and there's no backing out?" This privileged princess is delusional and insulting—no doubt about that. Plus the duration of her stay was laughable, in terms of "accomplishing" something. Many other well-meaning white westerners attempting to be "saviors" have the same problem, but not all. It's not fair to say every Peace Corps volunteer is out there perpetuating this shit.
  
  I do believe it's useful for white people to spend some point in their lives as the minority where they live, if only to know how it feels to stand out from the crowd by no fault of your own. Of course, the historical and cultural trappings of white privilege suggest that as minorities, white people may be singled out for respect, rather than derision as is tragically often the case for non-whites in largely white society, so it's not a two way street. For better or worse, having the opportunity to be judged by your race as an outlier to the local norm has value, if you're willing to see it. Needless to say, our Warrior Woman didn't seem too savvy to her privilege as a white minority here.
  
  Yeah, white people really should stop playing savoir to other countries and cultures in a top-down way, but that isn't to say we should avoid those people and places entirely. The message should be come on over, but be humble. It's not the end of the world if you occasionally make a faux pas early on as you adjust to local culture, but please own your mistakes. You're the outsider; it's up to you to accommodate local customs, not local customs to change for you. You are a child and a court jester; you are not a leader. Do not preach. Most of all, recognize that you're there to learn a thousand times more than teach.
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  tarpsyMartha_Jones21
  9/13/13 12:13pm
  Canada is also nice for vacations.
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kshortie16Katie J.M. Baker
9/13/13 11:22am

GIF

I can't help but laugh. This is shit is too hilarious.
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  TyrannosaurusBataarkshortie16
  9/13/13 11:29am
  I wish I had found this gif when I was looking for a "white people" gif.
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  kshortie16TyrannosaurusBataar
  9/13/13 12:56pm
  To be fair, I had to scour Tumblr for this one.
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Tequila MockingbirdKatie J.M. Baker
9/13/13 11:11am
Reminds me of the white lady who went and lived with Aboriginal people in Australia, except that she totally didn't.
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  Gonzo the SomethingTequila Mockingbird
  9/13/13 12:02pm
  Ooh ooh ooh! Here's another!
  
  http://lynnandrews.com/
  
  I'm not First Nations in the least, but I was amused to hear that when she was with medicine women in Manitoba and partook in a ceremony that involved being naked outdoors in the bush.
  
  As any Manitoban can tell you, if you're dumb enough to go naked in the forest on a summer night you will be eaten alive by mosquitoes.
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  Gonzo the SomethingGonzo the Something
  9/13/13 12:25pm
  I should give credit to this (although my own experience with mosquitos backs it up)
  
  http://www.skepdic.com/andrews.html
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Rebecca "Burt" RoseKatie J.M. Baker
9/13/13 12:56pm
So, which plucky actress do we think will land the movie role? This has Reese Witherspoon written all over it, reworked as a comedy 'with a heart of gold.'

But maybe Anne Hathaway has a shot. Kate Hudson or Katherine Heigl making a play for a comeback? Or am I leaving out someone obvious?

Leave your best guess in the replies:
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  LucyWoodhullRebecca "Burt" Rose
  9/13/13 1:12pm
  I vote Jennifer Lawrence. So plucky! So fakely dark-haired! Whoops I tried to be a warrior princess but I tripped LLLUUULLLZZZZ.
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  Gonzo the SomethingRebecca "Burt" Rose
  9/16/13 12:34am
  
  Gina Carano. She doesn't really need to act, which is good, because she can't.
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LaFlaneuseKatie J.M. Baker
9/13/13 11:38am
This is my first time commenting (I studied Anthropology as an undergrad — learning extensively about the Maasai — and am currently a grad student in Women's Studies, so I do feel strongly about this), but Mindy Budgor enrages me. If she ever took a decent anthropology (or even history) course, she'd know about the Maasai "tribe" (in quotation marks because they were categorized into one entity by European colonists) and how they were hugely restructured due to colonialism. Little known fact: Maasai women were actually heads of their households/clans (if we must use that term) before colonists came and automatically assumed men were the leaders, thus restructuring their society and "giving" all the political and economic power to the men.

Getting a book deal out of this is just gross. I hope her memoir gives equal — or greater — weight to the individual and collective stories of the actual Maasai women, but I won't get my hopes up.
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  HMSKittensLaFlaneuse
  9/13/13 1:24pm
  This is intriguing. Do you know how prevalent matriarchal households were in that general area of the world? Was it just the Maasai or other cultural groups as well? Do you have any particular books that you'd recommend?
  
  I've spent some time in the Mozambique, and it seems that Portuguese colonization did a good job of erasing a lot of the local culture (which was extremely varied, there are still so many individual, local dialects). I need to do some research.
  
  I would love to hear stories of actual Maasai women.
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  LaFlaneuseHMSKittens
  9/13/13 3:35pm
  You should read all the books about the Maasai by Dorothy L. Hodgson! http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&fiel...
  
  Start with her first book, Once Intrepid Warriors. She personally says of her book: My first book, Once Intrepid Warriors , combines cultural, historical, and political economy approaches to explore the intersection and interconstruction of gender and ethnicity, and to demonstrate how they shaped and were shaped by the shifting meanings, uses and effects of "development" from the colonial period until the present. The book seeks to define, locate and analyze "development" historically, culturally and spatially, with particular attention to how "development" is mediated, reshaped, and even resisted at local levels as policies are translated into practices. I explore the gendered ways in which Maasai imagine and experience "development," and negotiate "marginality" as well as "modernity."
  
  Once Intrepid Warriors: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Cultural Politics of… Once Intrepid Warriors: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Cultural Politics of… Once Intrepid Warriors: Gender, Ethnicity, and…
  
  Amazon.com: $24.00
  
  Buy now
  
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ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ : Riot GRRR is RUNNING WILDKatie J.M. Baker
9/13/13 11:15am

Mindy went to Kenya on a short humanitarian program after turning in business school apps

Come on, you're bullshitting me here. This is like slowly clearing a full board of Vapid White Girl Bingo.
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Buford.b.BaileyKatie J.M. Baker
9/13/13 11:38am
Yeah, leave Africa alone! They're doing so well without us!
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  JaniceWaffleBuford.b.Bailey
  9/13/13 12:40pm
  Oh fuck right off. This girl didn't go for a "humanitarian mission," she went to feel better about herself. She wanted a neat little story to tell her friends; she absolutely did not make anything better for the Maasai.
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  zu_zuBuford.b.Bailey
  9/13/13 12:46pm
  Oh yes the monolithic culture of Africa!
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