Warning: Gushing ahead I have been watching and waiting for this class since last year, and I am so thankful and so thrilled. I was so invested in the Maddaddam world, and this course was the perfect outlet for speculative fiction, technology, cyborgs, and feminism. I love Slack, and all the conversations we have on it, from Ex Machina to veganism. The way that everyone just throws themselves into conversation, pulling up references from different classes, news articles, and various experiences was probably the most inspiring and unexpected part of this class. What an awe-inspiring and standard-setting semester. Have a great summer!
More specifically to my final reflections for the Twinery, I focused on Katrina Woo Woo, and through her, Oryx. In many ways, this is an extension of my final blog post about the fetishization of Asian (American) women. When thinking about how to interpret the roles of Oryx and Katrina Woo Woo, both sex workers and both typified as “Asian Fusion” by white men (respectively Jimmy and Zeb), I immediately thought of the sex worker movement. Some sex workers see themselves as empowered entrepreneurs, conducting business in a savvy and profitable way. They claim their autonomous and nuanced politics through transnational, feminist, and/or sex-positive analysis and organize around issues such as legalizing sex work and marking this work as distinct from a narrative of trafficking victimhood. This political stance is close to the way Oryx defines herself as an empowered and adaptable businesswoman despite Jimmy’s belief that she is the victim trafficked from Southeast Asia. For Katrina, the entrepreneur behind Scales and Tails, sex work is clearly a business that she shapes into an empire, amassing independence and power. Her origins also have ties to history. We first see Katrina in New New York as Miss Direction. In the 1800s, Chinese Americans residing in New York City were predominantly male, with Chinese American women comprising of wealthy merchant’s wives and sex workers. The role that Katrina creates for herself speaks to the power of reclaiming sex work as a business in the male dominated world of the Maddaddam Trilogy.
Katrina’s pet snake could be a reference to the biblical apple and Eve, particularly in one scene in which Katrina is both costumed as an apple with the snake. There is plenty of other significant folklore and cultural practices that involve young women and snakes, from Medusa to Brittany Spears. There is also a particular dance in rural Indonesia called the dangdut goyang, or snake dance. Recently, Irma Bule, an Indonesian singer who had danced with snakes for an extra five dollars, died from snake venom after performing for 45 minutes after she was bitten. She was a young woman from a rural community who performed in order to attract crowds, primarily during election campaigns, and was paid $20 per performance. The stories about her went viral, and Indonesian journalist Made Supriatma frames her story in the spirit of Katrina and Oryx as one of a fighter who “exploits what she can exploit to go on living.” (Time, 2016)
Recommended Reading
Kwok, Yenni. “Here’s the Real Story Behind the Indonesian Singer Irma Bule, Who Died from a Cobra Bite.” Time. [http://time.com/4286323/irma-bule-snake-bite-cobra-singer-dangdut-indonesia/] 8 April 2016.
This is the article that I reference and quote in my paper.
Katsulis, Yasmina. “Gender, Sex Work, and Social Justice: Sociologists for Women in Society Fact Sheet.” Arizona State University. [http://www.socwomen.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/fact_sum2008-sexwork.pdf] Summer 2008.
This article is quick because it is a fact sheet, but these are facts distinguishing sex work from trafficking.
Kempadoo, Kamala. “Globalizing Sex Workers’ Rights.” Canadian Woman Studies Vol 22, No. 3,4 [http://cws.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/cws/article/viewFile/6426/5614] 1998.
This article covers sex work through history, situates sex work within the neoliberal framework, and gives an overview of sex worker rights organizing and issues that these workers face. I have seen this article cited in a few other pieces about sex workers, gendered migrant labor, and transnational feminism. The piece is easy to read, and helps us imagine what migrant sex work organizing and empowerment must look like in the Maddaddam world, and the near future.
