Author Archives: ofurhe

Iran/Iraq

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Every couple years when Iran’s in the news I find myself explaining some very basic differences between Iran and Iraq to friends and colleagues. So here’s a quick PSA from your friendly neighborhood Middle Eastern Studies major:

The Middle East is a British term referring to the area between the Near East and the Far East. There are three main ethnic/linguistic/cultural influences in the area, Arabic, Turkish and Persian.
All three are represented in the center of the Middle Eastern region where Iraq and Iran share a border.

Iraq is roughly half the size of Iran in land and population. Iraqis mostly speak Arabic while Iranians mostly speak Farsi/Persian. Both countries are majority Muslim.

Please read more yourself, if you’re up for a fun & informative graphic novel or movie, I’d suggest Persepolis by Marjan Satrapi

I know it’s simplistic to think that bigotry comes only from ignorance, but I really wonder where we would be if most Americans could place Afghanistan and Palestine on a map.

This Fiona Apple song weighed heavily on my May 2025 playlist rotation

The word of the day is; ایستگاه اتوبوس

Donate locally: https://www.peoplesprograms.com/donate

Donate globally: https://www.instagram.com/gazamutualaid?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

Neighbors

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It seems particularly important in this era to be neighborly. Offering people the benefit of the doubt, since we’re all struggling with current circumstances.

It’s hard though, people hurt people hurt people, even when they don’t mean to. I gave some money to a neighbor, who was asking for more than usual to buy her medication. She proceeded to remark on my appearance, in ways that she thought were complimentary, but I found insulting. I had another elder accuse me of rudeness for not greeting him quickly enough when he greeted me (I didn’t hear him). Finally I’ve seen so many pleas from desperate Palestinians and Sudanese people on social media. Begging is undignified by its nature, and it’s jarring and unusual to see so much of it. It’s uncomfortable to witness this, and sometimes the tactics are sometimes crass and maudlin. Still, we must strive to treat our neighbors with dignity and respect, always.

I must have watched Bad Bunny on Tiny Desk at least 10 times in April (May Public Media thrive in this era of violence and uncertainty):

Word of the Day is: okpa

I encourage you to support National Nurses United in their effort to Reinstate NIOSH – National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and keep basic workplace protections: https://act.medicare4all.org/sign/tell_congress_reinstate_niosh

Join the $15 for Palestine campaign; send $5 each to the following organizations to help provide critical and sustained aid to the people of Gaza:

One thing

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I’ve been inspired by Carvell Wallace’s substack consistency to post on this blog again. I’d like to post something that made me feel something once a month or so.

Last month I read about Monserrat’s St Patrick’s Day rebellion on the instagram account @pokateo_maps (wherein a fellow potato-lover named Kate posts about maps). On the Caribbean island of Montserrat, the enslaved people conspired to revolt against their Irish oppressors on a day known for drunken revelry. This article describes some of the ethnic history leading to the island’s current cultural identity.

According to iTunes, the song I listened to most in March 2025 was this one from; ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’ https://youtu.be/3dF7zX747HA?si=E7weDQaoNFuSvy3D

I’m playing my little language games every day and the current unit for my Persian lesson is about Working Remotely. The word of the day is:

پسزمینهٔ مجازی = virtual background

If you’ve got a couple bucks, might make a donation to a local cause: https://www.omprakash.org/global/wood-street-commons/crowdfund/emergency-van-fund

Or a global cause: https://chuffed.org/project/crips-for-esims-for-gaza

Gentrification and Street Harassment

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I met a man last year who was concerned about gentrification in his neighborhood. He saw rich White people moving into this historically Black neighborhood and was offended that they didn’t want to interact with him, a Black man. They put up spite fences and ignored him when he tried to get their attention. I began to tell him about my work, explaining that if he called to me from his porch I might ignore him too, not because I didn’t respect him or because I meant to change the nature of his neighborhood but because of my experience with street harassment.
When a man, alone on his porch, yells ‘Hello’ at a woman on the street it’s not a neutral or innocuous act. In my experience the man wants something from me, sometimes he’s satisfied with a nod or ‘hello’ back, but most of the time he isn’t. In my experience he wants my name, my phone number, my time, my energy, my approval, all the things men feel emboldened to ask for, and when denied, demand. In fact, this man wanted all these from me too. I gave them willingly, hoping he would spread the word. The word that sometimes women just want to be left alone, and that has to be ok.

IMMEDIATE ACTION: California Correctional Health Care Services and San Quentin

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Contact:

San Quentin https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/facility-locator/sq/

California Correctional Health Care Services Lifeline@cdcr.ca.gov ,

CA Governor Newsom https://govapps.gov.ca.gov/gov40mail/

Sample email:

San Quentin and CCHCS would rather have not have nurses than have teleworking Nurses. 

San Quentin has ordered a number of high risk nurses, who have been successfully and diligently working remotely, to report to San Quentin on Monday, 7/6. San Quentin is currently experiencing an outbreak of over 1300 COVID-19 cases

Essentially they are forcing nurses ready, willing and able to telework, to choose their job over health and family safety. 

Repeat. Ready, willing and able to continue to work remotely, but essentially, Nursing management is forcing them to go out on disability or sick leave. 

This is a further example of irresponsible decision making collectively by the SQ, Regional and Statewide Chief Nurse Executives working for the receivers office. They join Kelso’s ongoing incompetent responses to the COVID crisis. While the CEO, as hiring authority, could override these bad choices, he passively signs off.

Desirability Politics

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It’s been a year of writing my dissertation and not updating my blog, but I think I might be able to get one in before the year (/decade?) ends. One of the things I’ve found most interesting my study of sidewalk interactions is a reflection of what the mechanism is, while I have my theoretical framework, that an interaction revolves around participant profile, bias, location and interaction type, I think fundamentally it’s about attraction. Do you want to spend more time with someone? Be closer to them? This is another way of asking whether or not you’re attracted to them. There are other reasons why you might want or need to talk to someone but I keep coming back to attraction because it’s in the word definition. If you feel are leading a fairly frictionless urban walk (you’re not in a rush and are free to go wherever you want,) who do you veer towards and who do you veer away from? There are reasons to talk to someone other than sexual attraction, but I think interest is a form of attraction. Whether you’re attracted to that type of interaction (you say hello and make eye-contact with everyone), that type of person (someone you see every day?).

I’ve been following a twitter discussion on desirability politics which I think is similar. In that cis, white, able-bodied, thin, conventionally attractive people get treated better in the US. Socio-economic status can often be inferred through clothes, accessories and other accoutrements. In my study aspects of desirability politics are noted as well as a measure of proximity. Neither leads to very strong conclusions but more interesting questions.

Negative City Experience: Gender

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One of the most common experiences in a urban area is a negative sidewalk interaction on the basis of gender. Catcalling is a type of street harassment that often involves a man as initiator, in a public space, verbally trying to capture the attention of woman, who he doesn’t previously know, using sexual comments (di Leonardo via Bowman 1993). The male initiators of sidewalk interactions often defend this behavior by arguing that not only is this behavior a polite form of civil discourse but that their comments are complimentary. Campaigns going as far back as the early 20th century show women (and men) trying to fight against this misconception and explain that this behavior is unwanted. While other negative interactions are based on the person being undesirable, catcalling happens when a man wants a woman to know that he finds her desirable.

The experience is common and has been studied by many different types of scholars including feminist geographers who have interrogated the fear of violence and the way this changes the way women move through spaces.

Notes on Attraction, repulsion and desirability

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What am I measuring? And why? One of my jokey subtitles for my dissertation was ‘quantifying the oppression olympics.’ You know the ‘oppression olympics‘ that ‘game’ you play with your friends at cocktail parties competing over who has it worse, disabled people or trans people? Black people or Latinx? It’s not a fun or particularly useful game because pain is pain, comparison isn’t usually going to get you to improve your cocktail party or lead to understanding. But exploring the question of which demographic groups are most and least respected in the US seems worthwhile.

Another way of putting this is social desirability. A friend once joked that the most powerful people in America were old rich white men and young attractive women. The term social capital is used to refer to education and other attributes that make people attractive in the economy. Social desirability includes the more attributes that make people attractive in sidewalk interactions, which often happen very quickly. On the nature vs nurture debate, I think social desirability is more nature, since it has a lot to do with what you look like, while social capital is more nurture. While completely subjective ‘attractiveness’ is also completely socially constructed, overtly political, and objective in the sense that you are treating someone else as an object rather than a subject. While it’s true for someone to say ‘I’m just not attracted to black women’ this truth was not achieved in an apolitical media vacuum and OKCupid stats bare this out.

With the recent incel news came this article: Does Anyone Have a Right to Sex. In the article, Amia Srinivasan problematizes sex-positivity which, she argues, covers for misogyny, racism, ableism, transphobia and every other oppressive system under “the seemingly innocuous mechanism of ‘personal preference.” While gay men understand and problematize this phenomenon with thing the webseries ‘What the Flip’. However, writes Srinivasan,” straight people – or should I say, white, able-bodied, cis straight people – aren’t much in the habit of thinking there’s anything wrong with how they have sex.”

Happy Cities

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Many urban planners have historically focused on positive interactions in cities. Scholars like Jane Jacobs, William H. Whyte and more recently James C. Scott, Jeff Speck and Charles Montgomery talk about idealistic communities where everyone is safe because they are keeping an eye on each other. Jane Jacobs famously asserted:

“This is something everyone already knows:A well-used city street is apt to be a safe street.”

Jacobs argued for ‘sidewalk terms’ and ‘eyes on the street,’ small exchanges and conversations that promote public respect and trust. According to this logic, dense, walkable cities promote neighborhood safety.
These neighborhoods sound like they exist in a bygone era, when life was simpler, we knew our neighbors, people weren’t on their phones all the time, kids played outside because crime was low and the air was smog-free. Through people-centered design and transit-oriented development New Urbanists like Charles Montgomery hope to build Happy Cities. The ideal city behind these positive interactions is a communitarian one (according to Martin de Waal’s urban ideal types), focused on beneficial ways we interact with each other.

I’ll write more about unhappy cities next week, and how mixed up in the nostalgia and environmentalism is a denial of racial and class differences that lead to public mistrust of certain strangers.