Give me a reason

Late last Wednesday night, having nothing much better to do, I worked on my Facebook profile. I edited the information on my profile, responded to requests, sent some of my own, and uploaded some photos to fatten my photo album. The oldest photos that I uploaded were taken in 2006, when I had the good fortune to have been able to go to Hanoi, Surabaya, Bali, Kuala Lumpur, New Delhi, and Agra.

A few minutes later, an email alert led me to my yahoo mailbox, where this email was waiting for me, from one of my friends in Malaysia. This was her exact message:

URGENT! Please delete the picture in Hanoi immediately. This is what I have been afraid of you. I am sorry for what I have to do to protect myself.

To which I wrote back, without thinking much, I must admit, “Excuse me? What are you talking about?”

My friend reacted to one photo, which I will not show here anymore (but if you want to see it, click this LINK), probably because of the caption (Hanoi LGBT) so I changed it to ‘Hanoi friends’. The next day she sent this message in response to my email:

Sorry about the other night. I was too shocked and overreacted. Just that I think the pictures taken in your hotel room in Hanoi were not appropriate for public display. If I could remember correctly, we were marking (sic) around in your room that right (sic) and in front of the camera, it was a very private and personal event. therefore i never thought and did not expect you would have re-present that moment or the photo to the public without getting our informed consent.

This puzzled me primarily because in my opinion, there was absolutely nothing in that photo that made it ‘inappropriate’ for public display. It showed a group of friends posing on a hotel bed, clearly having fun. Big deal, I thought. However, I was deeply bothered by a statement in her first email, so when I responded to her second email, I wrote this:

I understand where your reaction is coming from. However, I was deeply offended by your statement, ‘this is what i have been afraid of you’. What does this mean exactly? Am I some kind of vulgar threat to your public image? You can say that you were shocked when you wrote this but I think this is not a stray thought. Obviously this has been in your mind all along.

I ended this email by apologizing to her if the presence of the photo offended her but I added that I will not remove it. To which she responded:

Mike, this show (sic) how much respect you have for ‘friends.’ 

I wasn’t liking the direction where our conversation was heading, but I found myself unable to resist not responding with this:

Now look who is showing disrespect… honestly, you should just lighten up. There are more important things to do in life than gripe about a photo. A photo that, I’d like to point out again, is not even remotely inappropriate. This is just too silly… you made your point. And like I said, I understand your reaction. I may completely disagree with your point but I accept and understand it nonetheless. I have even apologized for offending you (as opposed to you completely ignoring my request for explanation on your remark, which deeply offended me)… this is what ‘friends’ do.

She responded by explaining some other point (that I did not include) but the end of her email caused me deep thought:

But too many bad experiences in Malaysia, not me alone, had made us to be cautious in what we do. Perhaps the worst of it is to learn about fear in a hard way.

I have always known that my friend had, still has, in fact, some hang-ups about her sexuality. I mean, much as she’d like to, she can’t express herself freely because she is constrained by her own culture and context: being a woman, being Chinese, being lesbian, etc. But it seems that I had ignored an important circle that has a significant impact on her life: her country and the policies of its government.

When you have a government that tries to disgrace its opponents through trumped-up charges of ‘deviant sexual behavior’, this just plays to the prejudices of people in general against marginalized groups of people such as gays and lesbians, even women. And when these biases are stoked, who wouldn’t feel fear in the face of all this vitriol and hatred from the so-called ‘general population’?

This is what repression ultimately does to people. 

However, in spite of this new understanding of how my dear friend must have felt when she saw herself in one of the photos in my profile, her failure to address my request for an explanation of her offending remark prevents me from doing what she asked.

Besides, I really think it’s such a great photo.