Something that’s often on my mind is the level of social responsibility that we should feel while living and working in our adopted countries. I admit that I sometimes feel relieved to have been freed from my duties to participate in a home country democracy that I don’t feel is working particularly well, but at the same time feel that I have no right meddling with the affairs of the country I now live in. A thought provoking article at the F Word, a site discussing contemporary feminism, looks into one of the darker aspects of social responsibility, in this case while teaching English in Cambodia:

When teaching English in Cambodia, a country with a pervasive, exploitative sex industry, Laura Carr was shocked to discover that almost all her western male friends were happy to participate.

In an attempt to shrug off years of feeling that thin, smiling and pretty was the way a girl should be, I spent my late teens turning my back on girly magazines that offer hypocritical lip service to feminism (page 17: why men love the your curves… page 54: how to lose 7 lbs in three weeks - and eat all the chocolate you want!!!). I surrounded myself with friends who didn’t conform to standardised notions of gender and sought out female role models who went out of their way to condemn a patriarchal definition of femininity.

Learn more about teaching in Cambodia at the ELT in Cambodia blog

Despite the bombardment of media messages explaining skinny is good, make-up is needed (come spend your hard-earned money - it will help you get that promotion you think you’ve always wanted), and men like us to be sexy, sexual, demure, undemanding, affectionate, cute, caring, attentive, easy, ice-queenish etc etc etc etc etc, I finally realised that most men actually are interested in more than what women look like and how we can be of benefit to them. So I packed away my insecurities and finally enjoyed a world in which sexual inequality and a media hierarchy of beauty was but superimposed on a reality that told me otherwise. Shortly after finishing university, I went with my boyfriend to teach English in Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia. The following ten months seriously damaged my hard worked for confidence in the opposite sex and left me questioning my optimism for our highly flawed but relatively respectful culture.

Read the full article http://www.thefword.org.uk/features/2004/09/why_men_suck_and_the_women_who_have_to.