Exhale

"Holy Mother of Pearl!" - incoherent ranting around the bend.

Haha Jah, I'm using your pet phrase because

i) I miss you. *snuggles*

ii) I thought this was appalling enough to warrant such an interjection:

Posts on the maidlibrary.com.sg forum:

"making a servant stand in corner or outside seems very appropriate to me and is good for teaching them their place in life"

"A disobedient maid should be made to stand in the corner with her hands on her head and then given extra work to do to make up the time she has wasted while being punished."

"Maids need to learn their place or they think they can usurp the place of their employers. Can anyone suggest better ways of helping the maid remain humble while the employer gives them more responsibilities so that the maid can ease the employer's burden? My philosophy is that knowing one's place is all ingrained in culture and personality. Chinese are people who can know their place - it's just our culture. So my solution would be to get a maid from a hierachical culture. Myanmar maids? Indonesians are also very respectful people. The Filipinos have the least sense of rank and file."

"I won't let my maid stand while we eat... Thinking she need strength to help us do work."

Whilst J. K. Rowling has been seriously going downhill after book 5, something I actually took away from Harry Potter (yar seriously. don't laugh.) is the idea that you can best gauge a person's character not from how he treats his peers but rather his subordinates.

(They were talking about house elves of all things)

And it's really true when I think of it. Digressing just a bit from maids, I think I've blogged before about how 'nice' is a personality trait applied rather indiscriminately. More often than not, we base it on how the person we're describing treats ourselves or his/her peers. But really, that can be quite a meaningless measure given how none of our relationships are without some tinge of self interest. Take friendship which is so celebrated with promises of timelessness, selflessness and cutesy Hallmark cards. But 'friends' are never made out of purely altruistic reasons. Crudely put, they are often stumbled upon incidentally and sometimes without much discernment as we collect faces for popularity, status, friendster, that self-gratifying warm-an'-fuzzy-feeling and token lunch companions.

Friends, lovers, family, colleagues ...to varying extents such relations are one-part contractual and enmeshed within a system of mutual exchange and benefit. So yes, it's no shocker that so-and-so's "nice" to his friends or girlfriend, given his vested interest in treating them well.

And that's why someone's only truly nice when they accord those who can offer them far less or even nothing the same amount of consideration and decency. In short, behaving toward people who are completely inconsequential to your life materially or otherwise as you would your 'peers'. For that reason I really respect people who treat maids, migrant workers, waiters, janitors, disabled/elderly tissue-paper sellers, stray animals, random strangers on the street etc with kindness. Yes Sirius Black, Prisoner of Azkaban you were right: it's moments like these when you really see a person for who he/she is. I'm reminded of families in Church who initially seem all appropriately Christian and good to their fellow 'brothers' and 'sisters'...but then you suddenly realize how they completely ignore their maid and make her sit like two seats away from them in the pews.

And by treating subordinates with kindness I don't mean condescension like say, those Singaporean families who loudly declare that they bring their maids on holiday with them. And then they instruct their maids to be 'grateful', acting as if they've donated their liver to her or something. Please. You brought her there to carry your luggage and look after your kids so you can vacation in peace. That does not entitle you any bragging rights and you have nothing to be so smug about. Boo hoo to you.

But please excuse the ranting above. It's slightly tangential to the real ranting I want to do in relation to the subject at hand. So back to this maid forum...I think its utterly disgusting what some of these people say. For a minute I wondered if some of the posts were meant to be a really bad joke.

I am particularly annoyed by the user who nattered on about how maids need to have 'some sense of rank and file' and 'know their place'. Pray tell, what "place" would that be 'Unregistered Poster 30 Nov 2004'? And by extension, what place do you see fit to accord your pompous self? I don't think the ability to pay your domestic help a subsistence wage while getting away with it due to inadequate legal protection for maids in Singapore places you much higher on the food chain...or the so-called 'hierarchy' you speak of whatever that's supposed to mean. And if you think your maid exists for your moral and social edification, that's both laughable and pathetic.

And I resent your oversimplified, culturally deterministic comments! But I'll save this for another rant fest.

There are people who very rightly remind us that 'maids are human too'. However, I think its a sad state of affairs when we need persistent reminders of their humanity. Is it somehow puzzling to accept that they are carbon based too? Are our best minds cracking their brains over why maids require more sustenance than instant noodles and leftovers? Are employers performing some wack scientific experiment when they make their maids clean windows on the 19th floor just to see if they actually can die like 'normal' human beings? Or did they hypothesize that the laws of gravity somehow do not apply to these strange, anomalous foreign articles? Really. If you will spill blood for clean, fingerprint-less kitchen windows you are beyond uptight.

I also take offence when maids are refered to as 'servants'. To me, that term really dehumanizes and gives license to abuse and oppression, not to mention masturbates the already swollen egos of Singaporean employers. They actually start to believe they are inherently superior to their hired help who, by the way, should know 'their place in life'. So much so that some see fit to make their maids stand 'in a corner facing the wall' (reported by "ChopChop") so they are not disturbed during meals and they can eat their dinner in tranquil settings or something.

I never really understood why some people have such hangups about dining arrangements with regards their maids. Your dining table is not an altar. Your melamine dishes are not sacred. Your food is not the holy host. You probably watch TV/sms/read/zone out during 'family dinners'. So get over yourselves. If your maid is good enough to cook your food, set the table, feed your children, clean up your dishes and shit then I don't see why she can't partake of the same meal at the same table.

I was hoping to conclude this post nicely but I'm too sleepy to think of a snappy ending. But to all those who share in the same spirit as Unregister Poster 30 Nov 2004, I just thought it fit to let you know that you're really nothing special. So don't act out your mistaken grandeur on those who lack the power and legal means to refute you.

And keep fighting for the rights of migrant workers in Singapore!

posted by Jeanne @ 12:28 AM