On being an object

Objectify (v): to treat (someone) as an object rather than as a person. 

 Within feminist discussion, sexual objectification is at the forefront of every conversation about objectification. As a young woman the experience of sexual objectification is unfortunately all too familiar for it to not have been the dominating my association with the word. However, since beginning to work in my school I have been subjected to objectification in a new capacity.  The way that I consider the term objectification has changed as a result. 

There is a classic riddle that I have been thinking about a lot recently. One of the things that drove me to write this post that I have been reluctant to compose for a while now. I goes like this, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”  

I spend the majority of my time, at school and in my community, completely immersed in a language that I am not able to understand. Between the rapid pace at which people speak, pronunciation which lends itself to blending words, and my really horrible vocabulary memory, my ongoing attempt to learn Malay has not been very successful. I would say that about 95% of the time I have absolutely no clue what anyone is talking about. And generally teachers and students don’t really do anything to help me understand. For the most part I guess I get it, it is hard to constantly remember that there is that one American in the school who does not know what is being said, and can be pretty awkward to try to constantly translate into a language you are not comfortable speaking in. I have tried to stop thinking about what I would do if the situation was reversed because I have never been on the other side of this awkward linguistic tango. (Frankly, imagining what I would do can be a frustrating because I assume that I would put more effort into inclusion than what generally happens at my school.) But since I cannot change my situation, I am trying to make the best of it by just getting used to it. It does not mean I am giving up on learning Malay—I ask teachers what certain words mean, try to write down phrases I hear (or think I hear) and see a lot, and am constantly trying to recruit a Malay tutor from the teachers I interact with more often, but I am not allowing myself to be frustrated with how little I understand things. I try to understand as much as I can from context clues and snippets from vocabulary I recognize, but for the most part when people are talking around me I just tune it out, wait for someone to address me, and if not just kind of do my own thing.   

A couple of weeks ago my school celebrated “hari kanteen” (canteen day). This was basically a day where students and teachers ran different food, drink, and activity booths in order to raise money for the different student organizations and clubs that they are a part of. For me, this meant wandering around aimlessly basically all day stuffing myself with Malaysian delicacies, becoming the “model” (read: guinea pig) for a teacher’s Mary Kay makeup booth, and going through an elaborately executed haunted house (imagine a bunch high-school boys with tons of fake blood, black cloth, and masks trying to scare the daylights out of their peers).  

While these two full days of festivities were super interesting (and delicious), I spent most of the time sitting with groups of teachers while they talked about and around me in Malay. It was a really interesting time but those moments that are full of energy and conversation are when I feel the most lonely in my school. I am not able to fully engage with what is going on because I am watching and not really participating due to the language barrier. I did not realize how much this has really been effecting me or how used to this feeling I have gotten until hari kanteen. I sat next to a tuition teacher (basically a private tutor) who works with Form 5 students in after-school classes, she is getting her masters in English language education and just recently moved back to Perlis after living for several years in Kuala Lumpur. Throughout her conversations with teachers she was translating for me what was being said, and responding in English even when speaking with other teachers, making a conscious effort not to make me feel left out. If she forgot to translate or slipped back into Malay for a while she would apologize and catch me up in the conversation. I felt so much gratitude for her throughout the whole day, we actually had substantial conversations: she told me a lot about herself, and asked me about my life and future plans and feelings about being here. She really wanted to get to know me for me and become my friend. Obviously she felt more comfortable having a conversation with me because of her profession and education background. But what I valued more than her translating and english skills was the feeling of being recognized and acknowledged. I felt like she saw me as a person, a colleague, a friend even, and that is not something I really feel very often at my school. 

The longer that I have been here the more that I realize I am basically seen as a walking, talking, English lesson for the teachers, administrators, and students. Basically I exist as a way to force people at my school to speak English, therefore helping them to increase their vocabulary and confidence. But like any lesson, most people only participate if they are required to or passionate about it.  My mentor encourages me to speak with teachers (and vice versa), and there are some teachers who are generally excited to speak with me and get better at english. So in a way it is best that Im not fluent in Malay because then I wouldn’t fully be doing what I have ascertained is an important part of my role in my school. But it is exhausting to constantly exist not so much as a person but as a dictionary, a puzzle, a brain teaser, something that people engage with when they are seeking a challenge rather than someone people speak to for companionship. 

I feel a special type of isolation to be in a full room, or sitting at a full table in the canteen and have no one address me . It makes me feel invisible. I try not to take it so personally, but honestly how can I not take personally actions that deny me my personhood?  I know it is not about me specifically. I have not consciously done anything to push teachers and students away or make them uncomfortable. It is just this cavernous language barrier that none of us know  how to navigate well. Had I come into this experience with a wealth of knowledge in Malay I know I would be having a very different experience. 

This is not to say that no one ever speaks to me. But just that when they do I know it is because they are making a really conscious effort to do so. People have to actively remember to include me. I recognize the most comfortable space is to default to one’s first language. I am always grateful to the people who work to help me stay apart of the conversation. But even still, it does hurt to go through the day not being part of the conversation (and therefore not really apart of the community), sometimes actively being avoided just because people don’t want to be uncomfortable. It is doubly frustrating when people who have the capability to keep me in the conversation do not do so for whatever reason. While I am here I cannot simply choose not to be uncomfortable by avoiding the language barrier because I am completely surrounded by it everywhere I go. I wake up everyday in a place where I am constantly and relentlessly uncomfortable and I can’t change it. I do not know if people have not considered how difficult this is for me or just do not care. The lack of consideration about my comfort level or feelings about how I am treated (more like not treated) has to be directly correlated to the fact that no one really thinks of me. Me, Naja, not the ETA, the american, the foreigner, or the outsider. Me the young woman all the way on the other side of the world from everything familiar just trying to be seen. But why would you work to meet someone halfway if they are not even a someone to you in the first place, right? 

I left a work environment that was seriously fulfilling, with a employer and co-workers who saw me as an equal and a friend (despite being the youngest) and it can be very difficult to rationalize my decision to come here, to be immersed in this ceaseless isolation, this unending discomfort, this complete denial of consideration. I know I am gaining a lot from this experience but I cannot help but mourn the loss of what I had before. I cannot help but to be off-put by this blatant, habitual disregard. 

This objectification is taking a toll on me in ways I did not anticipate. The constant lack of acknowledgement as an actual complex person with emotions, opinions, and a need for more than baseline human interaction on the best days is a slight bother but on the worst days makes me question more than just my effectiveness as this school’s ETA. And so I will leave you with this question, one that I have not been able to answer for myself but has been bothering me for the past few weeks. If I am here without acknowledgement it does it matter if I am here at all?