On the nature of human relationships

I hate to say this but being female is not necessarily recommendable in HK. Don’t get me wrong: I like being what I am! *smile* What I mean is that although gender roles are subtle and not directly imposed (and women are probably more “equal” in society here than in other South East Asian countries – as inaccurate a generalization as it is and however exactly the term equality might be defined in this context) these still exist – and are obeyed. I do not completely understand it –but do I need to? - but I feel very intimidated sometimes since my behavior triggers reactions and conclusions which I feel are completely irrelevant and thus for me unexpected. Of course certain roles or societal expectations, norms, exist in European countries (giving back a similarly inaccurate generalization of clustering cultures as one), but I feel that in Finland these are while more broadly defined simultaneously not as strict nor invisibly present. This being an effect that is surely in part explicable by the fact that these roles are subconsciously included in my own behavior and definition of self and identity, I can only emphasize the limits and subjectivity included –and dominating- any statements I make regarding this issue.

To give an example: girls here do not do sports. Logically, if I want to play football, basketball or do anything else classified as “physical exercise” I have to do so with male students. This is no problem for me – or at least I never thought of it as one- but it seems to cause a lot of confusion – for the local HK students. For example, when playing football, I am not regarded as a normal person, but something “undefined”, i.e. in e.g. counting the members of a team, I am not counted. And all other players are afraid of getting to close to me, of touching me. And they are very sorry if they do – I think they are afraid of me getting hurt if I get hit by the ball. Or maybe it is just cultural… (or I just suck) while I am afraid of knocking them over, since most are shorter/smaller than me. It all results in a weird (boring) game. It makes me feel a bit inferior… and it – my behavior, my confusion and the reaction of others- annoys me.

Girls are supposed to be cute. It is not accepted for girls to pursue hobbies that might be “disgraceful” for the family – some parents are very conservative. A mainland student joined a drama society, but since her parents did not want to see their daughter acting, she told them she was in a finance club. To produce the needed evidence, she got around 20 friends together- all of them dresses up in suits and staged the “HKUST Finance society” posing for pictures which were later sent to her parents. I only know about this, since a fellow exchange student from Shanghai was posing as the “professor”- the pictures are very authentic. It’s scary!

Western girls hitting on HK guys: no, no …. NO! Completely unacceptable!!!

And more of a cultural clash independent of gender (which as an issue should not be overrated nor mixed with a too generous notion of feminism, see the above):

Having an opinion and not being sorry for expressing it or really pressing for important issues being solved is regarded as really aggressive, impolite (but this has no gender background).

Drinking? No! (Only the rich kids I guess…)

Why do I not understand?