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This story came to me from a German guy. He had a friend, also German, -- let's call him Heinrich -- who once had to relocate to the United States (I can't remember which city) for a job. After staying a few weeks in a hotel, and with the bulk of his possessions arriving by seafreight, he found a nice apartment to move into. He got hold of an American friend to help him move.

With just the two of them, it was quite a day's work, but eventually it was done. Heinrich then said to his friend, "Would you like to have a beer to cool off?"

The American said, "Oh, I've already got one from your fridge!" and held up the half-finished can.

Heinrich was flabbergasted.

Why? Well, why is the whole point of the story. My German friend explained to me that this illustrated a cultural difference between Americans and Germans. There was a difference in perception as to what was private space and what was the appropriate tone for friendly interaction. The American might have thought he was just being friendly by being casual, making himself at home, helping himself rather than depend on being served. Having spent a day moving boxes together, they were now buddies. Helping yourself to beer was what buddies did. The German on the other hand, felt the American breached good manners by invading his private space of the kitchen and raiding his fridge. He instinctively felt the American was being over-familiar.

The further point from this story was that both sides didn't expect there to be cultural differences between them. Superficially, they looked similar. They were both white, they both spoke English, and they were both in the United States. If anything, the surface similarities misled them to assume (subconsciously) that they shared the same values and instincts.

Just about everyone in the world make, sometime or other, this kind of mistake, myself very much included, as you will see from another story below. When we come across another person, or group of persons, certain attributes we can see (or hear) quite plainly. Sex, age, racial type, language used, maybe even social class. Other attributes are far from obvious, e.g. political views, religious affiliation, affinity for alcohol and sexual orientation. A lot of us use shortcuts to fill in the blanks about the "other person" we meet. If, in the visible attributes, they look similar to ourselves, we often assume that in the invisible aspects, they're similar too. This explains why most Japanese tourists, when they encounter Chinese or Koreans in France or Nepal, simply assume we are Japanese too, and speak Japanese to us. Since we look the same, therefore we should be the same.

Even when we look different, quite often we assume that the "other" shares the same habits and instincts as ourselves. This usually happens when in all our lives we have never quite encountered other people with different instincts and habits; we are not clued in to the possibility that there is another way of doing the same thing. A lot of foreign businessmen get extremely frustrated with the way the mainland Chinese (or the Japanese for that matter) handle negotiations. There are enormous cultural differences in assumptions, approach and articulation. Not just in the big things, but in the smallest things too. For example, all over East and Southeast Asia, dinner is usually around seven o'clock. But if we are visiting India, we are shocked to discover (usually with rumbling tummies) that when invited to dinner in a middle class home, no one eats before ten! And of course, if you're straight and living in a society where homosexuality is unmentionable, it just does not occur to you that some others' sexual instincts are quite different from yours. If that other person is male, like yourself, you just assume he goes after females, like yourself again.

This extension of the self is not always blameless ignorance, it is often conceit as well. We use our preferences, our value systems, even taste-buds, as the measure of things. I saw it happening to me and my friends, smack bang in our faces, less than a month ago.

We were in Bangkok, the three of us, all Chinese Singaporeans. We wanted to have a good Thai meal, and I suggested a restaurant which a Thai business associate had introduced me to years ago. It was quite well known, and I remembered it served very good food. So there we went that evening, except that there were four of us by then. One of my friends brought along his Thai boyfriend.

It was a wonderful meal, and we (oh definitely!) over ate. After dinner, we went for a stroll, looked at the shop displays and then found a nice little café, lots of local flavour, where we could have an after-dinner brew. There we ordered the basic tea or coffee, except that the Thai boyfriend kept looking at the menu. Finally he ordered a beef stew!

Soon a big bowl came, a very local dish, with brisket and a few other elements that looked suspiciously like tripe. My friends and I stared at each other with some amazement. "He's still hungry!"

It dawned on us that what we Singaporeans thought was great Thai cooking in that first restaurant was probably (a) Chinese-Thai, and (b) a wee bit too touristy for the boyfriend, who was a true-blue native Thai. We thought the meal was fantastic. He must have thought it wasn't quite food; the beef stew in that unknown café was far more palatable.

If we laugh at our conceit, then at least we must have seen it for what it is. The sorrow is when people don't, and continue to insist that their measure of things, their perspective on the world, their values and instincts, are the true yardsticks. Why does this happen? Sometimes, people just don't know any better; but sometimes they just don't want to know. To acknowledge that there are different humans is subversive of their sense of representativeness and importance in this world. To allow that those different from yourself are not marginal, is to concede that maybe you yourself are marginal instead, or at least you're not quite the norm. And for some people the emotional response to that horrible suggestion of relegation is anger.

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"Cibai so pretty, why you want to fuck ass?" doesn't sound like an angry statement to me [1]. Nonetheless it is a good example of the point that I am making: how we so often use our self as a measure of things. Let's look closely to see how this statement does that, and the unspoken assumptions contained within:

1. The reduction of sexuality to sex. The guestbook in which this entry was made belonged to a site that dealt with homosexual orientation. Other entries in the guestbook focussed on orientation, but then they were mostly from gay and lesbian persons. This particular entry, obviously from a straight person, distilled the issue to sex. Sex is a visible difference. Straight people can grasp that gay people do things differently. Sexual orientation is much less visible, and straights are seldom conscious of their own heterosexuality. They're only conscious of sex. They tend to see and measure homosexuality from the angle of sex, not orientation.
2. The use of the male perspective. The website was a gay and lesbian site, yet the "accusation" in the guestbook entry only addressed the gay male. The writer used his measure of what he found erotic as the standard measure to judge gay persons by. He assumed that gay persons do not find the cibai "pretty", and gave us a failing grade. But hey, what do lesbians find erotic?
3. The centrality of fucking. Penile penetration is unquestionably central to heterosex. The writer assumed that penile penetration is likewise central to male homosex. Is it?
4. The targetting of the ass. Of course, if penile penetration is so important, what it penetrates must also be a crucial issue. The candidate closest to the vagina is the anus. The writer assumed then that as straight men like himself are obsessed by the vagina, so gay men (by his measure) must be obsessed by the anus. Really?

And one last thing, quite aside from all the above. In that sentence is everything that even straight women don't like about some straight males: the reduction of women to cibai. As if everything else about women -- their bodies, their intelligence, wit, hopes and dreams -- are just bothersome tumours, unavoidable outgrowths of the one and only thing that really matters.

© Yawning Bread