expat+HAREM, the global niche - Latest Comments

Re: Decolonize your inner world: Amna Ahmad shows how to gain sovereignty of your hybrid life

Noor alam Afghan — Sun, 14 Feb 2016 10:38:33 -0000

Hey, my living Sion Switzerland my mom and father no my from Afghanistan please please please help me mom ? ?

Re: Decolonize your inner world: Amna Ahmad shows how to gain sovereignty of your hybrid life

Noor alam Afghan — Sun, 14 Feb 2016 10:38:02 -0000

Hey my living Sion Switzerland my mom and father no please help me mom ? my wathsaf number 0041779155983

Re: Decolonize your inner world: Amna Ahmad shows how to gain sovereignty of your hybrid life

Noor alam Afghan — Sun, 14 Feb 2016 10:36:20 -0000

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Re: Rude honesty: when politeness is cultural

Kate Thwaite — Fri, 08 Aug 2014 15:44:25 -0000

We thought they were lovely but we are from Northern UK

Re: Buff culture: the shock of public nudity

justmeinseattle — Wed, 09 Jul 2014 12:19:17 -0000

Also, I was just recalling our first trip to Turkey some 8 years ago - my wife and I took a local bus to a resort area maybe 30 km west of Antalya, and walked through the tourist area and along the beach - where we were stunned to see topless European women.
We have both visited nude beaches, hotsprings, and nudist resorts in the USA and Canada, so we weren't offended in the least - but a little bemused. Prior to our trip, I had studied Turkish for a year in a language school, and this encounter was during our 2nd or 3rd week, but it was still a surprise!

Re: Buff culture: the shock of public nudity

JustMeInSeattle — Wed, 09 Jul 2014 12:13:05 -0000

Although, Dutch-ess, just this past week, here in Seattle, I've been to two Seattle city beaches where men AND women were either topless or nude, and NO ONE that I noticed, so much as blinked at them. I was nude too, and no one stared or even noticeably looked at me.
And of course we have the annual Solstice Parade in Fremont with naked cyclists, and our local instance of the World Naked Bike Ride (coming up this coming Saturday, I believe).
And I say this as an otherwise-conservative Christian...

Re: Rude honesty: when politeness is cultural

AfroDutchess — Thu, 03 Apr 2014 09:35:16 -0000

Ah come on Kristin, it sounds soooo bad Lool
Anyway, I understand what you mean: the Dutch love to be blunt but generally speaking they cannot handle their own piece of cake, which is I think quite amusing. Still, since they are so pecular, one one knows how they are, it's easier to still love the NL, so in case you ever come again on this of the world, I'd be happy to welcome you :-)

Re: Winged etiquette: do manners travel?

supported break — Wed, 15 Jan 2014 05:45:57 -0000

I do hope so.

Re: Buff culture: the shock of public nudity

Peter — Fri, 10 Jan 2014 23:38:57 -0000

I can understand not liking to be naked in public, but as someone born and raised in America I still don't understand not being naked at the doctor's office. It's a doctor, after all. I just don't see what is the big deal. When a doctor wants me to wear some silly gown, apparently so I won't be ashamed of my naked body, I think he is some kind of freak. I just don't get it. But on the other hand, I don't like being naked in public or even at home much of the time. My kids on the other hand love being naked everywhere they can. I think that's fine.

Re: Rude honesty: when politeness is cultural

Kristin — Tue, 06 Aug 2013 14:47:46 -0000

I'm a Brit who has just moved to Washington D.C. for three years after my wilderness years in the Netherlands. American friendliness and politeness (insincere or not!) feels WONDERFUL. So relaxing, so refreshing, so easy and nice. So normal.
Because yes, the Dutch are rude. RUDE, Mr Fawlty! One thing I always noticed was that while they never hesitate to give you the benefit of their unrequested, ignorant opinions and advice, they don't like being on the receiving end of the 'direct' behaviour they are so unaccountably proud of. I don't know why they can't just be normal and nice.
I am thinking of ways to never go back to NL. Having escaped makes me realise even more what an awful place it is. There is just nothing to recommend it. Food, weather, scenery, mediaeval maternity care and medical care in general? Quality of life...?!
This sums them up: You board the train at Schiphol airport carrying luggage. The people already in the train give you that uniquely unpleasant Dutch stare. Someone at an airport...carrying luggage...? Nee, eh!

Re: Buff culture: the shock of public nudity

John Cox — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 18:23:25 -0000

Do not assume that the Czech republic is unusual or different. That is your America-centric bias. It is the USA that is unusual; puritanical hostility to nudity, combined with almost total moral collapse, makes the USA the most hypocritical and dysfunctional place on earth.

Re: Expat Harem, the book: foreign women in modern Turkey

Anastasia ASHMAN — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 15:40:53 -0000

Thanks so much for writing Venitra, it's lovely to hear about your experience in Turkey and I can definitely relate to how it's lodged in your heart and that of your children.

Re: Expat Harem, the book: foreign women in modern Turkey

Venitra — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 10:23:34 -0000

I just finished your book. As an African American who lived in Turkey from 1998-2005, this book brought back so many wonderful memories. To myself and my sons, Turkey will always be home.

Re: Strategic love: the embassy of intercultural marriage

Tara Agacayak — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 02:01:13 -0000

You are a shining example of this post Michelle, and you have lots to offer others in terms of insight. It's so good to know you.

Re: Strategic love: the embassy of intercultural marriage

Michelle Deniz Drousé Woodhous — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 06:52:53 -0000

Love this piece, Tara. It resonates with me - 2nd generation Turkish-American living in London with my 100% British husband. Since the moment we met, we have been building bridges of understanding among our cultures. Often there is confusion as I represent multiple cultures - Turkish, American and secular Muslim/Jew. But we enjoy celebrating the best parts of our cultures - especially food! - and integrate them in our daily lives and share them with our friends and family. We hope to pass these pearls of understanding down through our future generations of family and broader communities. :)

Re: Strategic love: the embassy of intercultural marriage

Michelle Deniz Drousé Woodhous — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 06:52:05 -0000

Re: Decolonize your inner world: Amna Ahmad shows how to gain sovereignty of your hybrid life

Anastasia ASHMAN — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 19:03:29 -0000

You can catch the recording of our summer 2012 GlobalNiche session with Amna here: http://www.globalniche.net/...

Re: Waking up Hausfrau: the secret of the Swiss

Jsasdf — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 16:02:18 -0000

Mann in German also means Man and Husband...implying you can't be a man without being a husband. Works both ways.

Re: Death at a distance: finding solace abroad

Emily — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 00:07:20 -0000

thank goodness for this post...ive just lost a friend back home..i didnt know how hard it would hit me as it is the first death at home that ive experienced whilst living abroad. i am feeling the shock of this sudden loss and the sense of being alone because im not with those who are also grieving at home. so i thought what can i do ? i can cry and talk to friends here and i can phone and skype with those back home. but with 13 hours time difference its difficult. nonetheless it is making me feel better by feeling connected with them all be it not in person. even if it means that i'm on skype till 2 or 3 in the morning.
no one tells u that coping with death whilst abroad is going to be so hard. im a very resilant person but this has hit me harder than expected and im having to consciously make an effort not to avoid dealing with it. ive taken a few days off work to deal with what has happened so that i dont supress the sadness, letting it out with understanding friends here and through keeping in contact with those at home who are also experiencing it.
RIP Rami

Re: Awkward greetings: the intercultural social dance

Lauren Brown — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 02:05:22 -0000

What homeboy means is that while the gesture has good intentions, the idea of sharing everybody's germs is not.

Re: Lost words: saying goodbye to mono-language

Beabaabe — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 12:19:04 -0000

I'm looking for the "Mono" word that represents........ forever or, eternity? Can you help? :)

Re: Book club study guide: Tales from the Expat Harem

Azhiraz — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 22:03:49 -0000

OK, I'll bite...
1) 'Expat Harem' ...hmmm...those words brought an image of a gaggle of women thrown together; all different backgrounds in foreign palce. I liked it, tho.
2)I think I'd be re-evaluating what family means, what success means & what it means to be a woman, period.
3)Haven't read the book, no comment yet.
4)I would hope that travel in Turkey would make someone more receptive to kindness; a better sense of self as a woman; realize the only chains you have are what you accept
5)Haven't read the book, no comment yet.
6)Haven't read the book, but everything I thought about the middle east has changed with exposure
7) Yes
8)See answer #6
9)Will comment when I read it, but one thing I notice(being American) is American women take personal freedom for granted &sometimes have unrealistic expectations on living conditions ;-)
10)Hospitality & trust of strangers. The sheer physical beauty of the people
11) See answer #6
12) Frankly, envious - wish I had family interested in my life; I feel I lack cultural identity in comparison

Re: Disposable liaisons of the traveling class: the questionable cultural exports of sexpats and sex pilgrims

Anastasia ASHMAN — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 14:46:12 -0000

Here's my full review from Perceptive Travel:

Romance on the Road
Traveling Women Who Love Foreign Men

By Jeannette Belliveau (reviewed by Anastasia M. Ashman)

Jeannette Belliveau was a "sex pilgrim" for 12 years and now the 51 year old former erotic adventuress reveals all in this dense volume of travel sex history and how-to cum memoir.The author got her groove back after a divorce by sleeping with men in Greece, the Virgin Islands, the Bahamas and Brazil. Of French Canadian descent, she is currently married to a younger man of color she fantasizes looks like a 'pharaoh'. In ROMANCE ON THE ROAD she attempts to place her actions into wider context.

As an American expatriate living in Turkey, this reviewer senses a motive of authorial self-preservation: to normalize controversial sexual behavior which not only falls outside the bounds of her own culture but severely strains mores at international destinations.

Creating what she calls a geography of sex and love, the newspaperwoman from blue-collar Maryland examines a social phenomenon that may have involved more than 600,000 Western women in the past 25 years: travelers who engage in flings or long term affairs with foreign men, vaulting over cultural boundaries. While intercultural love and marriages are a subtheme, the book's focus is hedonistic sex with virile strangers."Travel sex by women is revolutionary," Belliveau declares, a rebellion barred from polite conversation and insufficiently chronicled by social scientists even if its roots are deep in Victorian travel.

The Western world might not deem it noteworthy but the buzz is growing in remote Central American fishing villages, sandy strips of West Africa, and the tiniest towns in the Himalayas. The author suggests that today's feminine voyagers are "stumbling into a major life experience without a map."

Does Romance on the Road provide a compass for the heartbroken (or hot-and-bothered) globetrotter looking for a distant cure? It can get a gal started.

Prurient interest will be dampened however by the charts, graphs, survey results, and Modern Language Association-style citations of more than 800 bibliographic sources from Henry James' Daisy Miller to a British newspaper feature entitled "My Toyboy Tours".

There's a global chronology of the trend, a summary of related books and movies, and basic ethics and etiquette ("remember the man is real, not an actor in your fantasy"; and "do not use him as a sperm donor").

She has done an admirable job of combining veteran intelligence on each locality with a profile of an adventurous Western woman and a timeline of foreign female exploits in the region. Much like the book itself, these geographic chapters are not all fun and games. In Latin America, "sex is a parallel universe of magic" yet gigolos may sport "a breezy attitude toward the truth". A sex pilgrim profiled has a bleak history, found murdered on the side of a Mexican road, "presumably left by a cruel pickup".

Clearly an optimist, Belliveau argues that despite obvious risks the lustful practice can be psychologically healing, fulfill a woman's urge for sexual connoisseurship, or address situations like involuntary celibacy.It can also be a road to discovery.

Erotic adventure may not be on the agenda but can be inspired by the act of travel itself. Wandering women have the opportunity to "reclaim pagan freedoms lost since the advent of civilization" Belliveau waxes, since they exist in a liminal zone, a reality unconnected to their usual existence. A traveler may view the people around her as social equals, think of herself as anonymous, feel unburdened by expectations of social propriety, be more playful and suggestive. Novelist Rebecca Brown is quoted discovering her sexuality on a trip abroad: "Like Stein, Toklas, and other women who have traveled away from home, it took leaving my native land to realize I was a lesbian."

Even so, it is difficult to approach Romance on the Road, or know who would, besides social scientists who might wallow in its surfeit of statistics or old hands who will identify with the insider dope, and buoyant we-can-all-get-it-on (and perhaps heal the world by having international children) conclusions. It's hardly pleasure reading nor something to openly peruse on a crowded subway. Some may not want to get caught reading it at all. This reviewer's Turkish husband handed it over saying "You got a trashy book in the mail."

It's unfortunate that Belliveau's concentration on ecstasy abroad overwhelms her scholarship on ethical and economic questions as well as cultural and social ramifications in sex-host cultures.

The few harmful consequences she includes are female tourists being perceived as "man-stealers" by native women in the Mediterranean, the Caribbean and Africa; the new role of hustler that thousands of foreign men have adopted; and a rise in STDs and incidents of harassment and assault. Soon enough she is making the case for positives like liberated Scandinavian women spurring sexual revolutions for their sisters in Spain, Greece and Mexico.

Belliveau doesn't seem concerned with the cultural factor freespirited sensualists export.

Writing from the sex-toured Near East, this reviewer suggests the damaging potential of each disposable liaison is empirical evidence that Western culture is morally corrupt. One forgettable fling has the power to affect systems far larger than the person, family, village or region which witnessed and absorbed the behavior.

The environment of sexual predation many Western women face overseas is also bound to be heightened by the wanton and culturally inappropriate choices of sex pilgrims. Travelers and expatriates striving to modulate their behavior to find social acceptance with native friends, families and colleagues must struggle to differentiate themselves from sexual opportunists who don't have to lie in the messy bed they've made.

Without apology Belliveau admits this detrimental byproduct of her Shirley Valentine amusement (or was it healing?): "At first I was appalled at the smothering level of harassment I encountered in Athens. Then I succumbed to these temptations, with the likelihood that my sex partners became further convinced about the ease of seducing any lone Western female tourists to later cross their paths."

On behalf of thousands of traveling women hoping to explore the world unmolested -- thanks for nothing.

Anastasia M. Ashman co-edited the best-selling nonfiction anthology Tales from the Expat Harem: Foreign Women in Modern Turkey. Her work has appeared in the women's humor collection The Thong Also Rises and the upcoming New York-themed The Subway Chronicles. From Berkeley, California, she holds a degree in Classical Archaeology from Bryn Mawr College. Anastasia currently lives in Istanbul with her Turkish husband, where she is at work on a travel memoirBerkeley to Byzantium: The Reorientation of a West Coast Adventuress.

Re: Disposable liaisons of the traveling class: the questionable cultural exports of sexpats and sex pilgrims

Anastasia ASHMAN — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 14:44:49 -0000

What kind of editor? An edgy one, who had to go to one of his most conservative-on-the-topic contributors to get it done.

Hope you clicked through to read the full review! I will also post it here....

Thanks for the comment Leslie, interesting about the misconceptions people have when they arrive at your site.

Re: Disposable liaisons of the traveling class: the questionable cultural exports of sexpats and sex pilgrims

Leslie Forman — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 23:38:25 -0000

The fling as cross-cultural experiment, with potential long-term consequences: yes. I can relate on many levels, but I have one question: what kind of editor would assign such a book and go out of his way to get it to you??

Sidenote: far too many people have the misconception that my blog is all about dating in other countries (It is not. This is a sign I must rename and redesign it.)

Thank you for making me think about this in a new way.