Reacting to taboo: how avoidance can make us complicit

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in ANASTASIA ASHMAN,culture,friendship,harem,history,identity,memoir,society,taboo,women

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By ANASTASIA ASHMAN

I’m looking forward to attending TEDGlobal in Oxford especially since the 2009 conference’s theme is ”The Substance of Things Not Seen”.  Invisibility, hiddenness, misapprehension – all are threaded  through my own work.

Consider Expat Harem‘s anachronistic, titillating concept. It taps into robust yet erroneous Western stereotypes about Asia Minor and the entire Muslim world: a forbidden world of cloistered women. When infused with a modern and virtual positivity — the Expat Harem as peer-filled refuge and natural source of foreign female wisdom  – a masked reality emerges: the harem as a female powerbase. This is an Eastern feminist continuum little known in the Western world.

“Help people talk about what they’re most afraid of,” is a mantra I’ve been hearing a lot from thoughtful personalities in my life. But first we have to surmount our own resistance to the topics.

I’m discovering with my latest book project, a forensic memoir of friendship, that taboo has an unintended cloaking effect. Societal taboos may be meant to protect us from harmful practices yet banishing from our thoughts the most unimaginable and unspeakable human acts only makes us blind to them happening in our midst.

By finding it so unthinkable, we make possible for taboo behavior to continue in our communities.

Name a taboo from your life.  When you hear it mentioned, what’s your reaction?
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Anastasia Ashman is a California-born writer/producer of neoculture entertainment based in Istanbul. This series covers what’s crossing the mind and desk of expat+HAREM’s founder.
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Tagged as: anachronism, Anastasia Ashman, Asia Minor, cloistered, enabling, expat, expat+HAREM founder, expat+HAREM founder series, founder's desk, harem, invisibility, Muslim world, Oxford, refuge, stereotype, taboo, TED, TEDGlobal, unthinkable, virtual, wisdom, women

  • Pingback: Is that a pain cry? « Furthering the Worldwide Cultural Conversation

  • Anastasia M. Ashman

    A must read –> Penelope Trunk writes on 7/21/09 about how much better her life would have been without all the secrets:

    http://tr.im/us9M

  • http://www.expatharem.com/identity-messages/ Anastasia

    A must read –> Penelope Trunk writes on 7/21/09 about how much better her life would have been without all the secrets:

    http://tr.im/us9M

  • http://www.expatwomenentrepreneurs.com Karen Armstrong

    Anastasia,

    Hats off to you for opening up the conversation to taboo subjects. The more they remain hidden, “undiscussable,” the more they fester. The more we resist them the more they persist.

    You asked about a taboo subject from our own life… Although my family is close and “functional” now, it wasn’t always that way. Growing up there was intense strife, the pain from which I can still feel now. Only in recent years have I been able to talk about it without letting that pain pierce me to the core. In talking about what happened in my family, I’ve been able to detach myself from it – and the pain has lessened significantly.

    As for taboo subjects in general… Get it all out there on the table. Open up the converstaion so you can see what’s really there, make changes where you can and let go of what’s not serving you.

    Best to you with the memoir!

    Karen

  • http://www.expatwomenentrepreneurs.com Karen Armstrong

    Anastasia,

    Hats off to you for opening up the conversation to taboo subjects. The more they remain hidden, “undiscussable,” the more they fester. The more we resist them the more they persist.

    You asked about a taboo subject from our own life… Although my family is close and “functional” now, it wasn’t always that way. Growing up there was intense strife, the pain from which I can still feel now. Only in recent years have I been able to talk about it without letting that pain pierce me to the core. In talking about what happened in my family, I’ve been able to detach myself from it – and the pain has lessened significantly.

    As for taboo subjects in general… Get it all out there on the table. Open up the converstaion so you can see what’s really there, make changes where you can and let go of what’s not serving you.

    Best to you with the memoir!

    Karen

  • Anastasia Ashman

    Thanks Lisa, for “going on record” about taboos and for your point about social media’s potential role in breaking down our barriers to talking about taboos.

    Just this week via SM I broached a bit of a taboo: coming out as a non-fan of Michael Jackson. Sounds like a minor thing. But being on the opposite side of worldwide sentiment is scary, and I felt queasy after posting. Soon enough, I started hearing from others who had their reasons not to be enamored with the man or blinded to his failings just because he achieved massive success in other areas.

  • http://www.expatharem.com/identity-messages/ Anastasia

    Thanks Lisa, for “going on record” about taboos and for your point about social media’s potential role in breaking down our barriers to talking about taboos.

    Just this week via SM I broached a bit of a taboo: coming out as a non-fan of Michael Jackson. Sounds like a minor thing. But being on the opposite side of worldwide sentiment is scary, and I felt queasy after posting. Soon enough, I started hearing from others who had their reasons not to be enamored with the man or blinded to his failings just because he achieved massive success in other areas.

  • http://www.lisahickey.com Lisa Hickey

    I admire what you’re doing, and love your thinking about taboos. One of the things I’ve found so powerful about social media is the ability to *take action* when hearing about something. My whole life, news and information was a passive stream, coming at me, I felt powerless to really do anything about it. The conversations I had about issues that bothered me were always around closed doors. I rarely felt that I knew how to talk about things.

    I still don’t talk about all things taboo, certainly. I still feel I need to think through what are appropriate channels to speak of things publicly. But I am no longer afraid, it is simply a question of doing things thoughtfully. I am looking forward to continuing the conversation about what is possible and how things can change, with you, with others. Thanks, Anastasia!

  • http://www.lisahickey.com Lisa Hickey

    I admire what you’re doing, and love your thinking about taboos. One of the things I’ve found so powerful about social media is the ability to *take action* when hearing about something. My whole life, news and information was a passive stream, coming at me, I felt powerless to really do anything about it. The conversations I had about issues that bothered me were always around closed doors. I rarely felt that I knew how to talk about things.

    I still don’t talk about all things taboo, certainly. I still feel I need to think through what are appropriate channels to speak of things publicly. But I am no longer afraid, it is simply a question of doing things thoughtfully. I am looking forward to continuing the conversation about what is possible and how things can change, with you, with others. Thanks, Anastasia!

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