KITN Overcoming and Accepting Difference



A couple classes ago I mentioned my three - hour conversation over a recent weekend with my roommates about critical and potentially controversial on my part discerning of identity, including that of race, gender, and socio-economic status in particular. Amazingly the whole critical and (at times) tense conversation began with my roommate making a pop-culture reference to our other roommate and my being excited of having been a bit familiar with the case. The controversy of YouTube personality Trisha Paytas’ self identifying as both “trans MTF” and “1000%” with his/her biologically assigned gender [female] confused and offended many audiences, many laughing off his/her ignorance, or in some cases actively discounting the person’s understanding and dignity. I can not speak for this person, but it almost felt like he/she was missing the word gender fluidity, or misguidedly adopting this language to validate controversial desires. Policing and determining our collective social norms is important, but how we do that varies.


Thinking critically about the themes in this course, I’ve gotten in many similar thoughtful and sometimes unsettling discussions. My continuous concern has been how can we correct, socially police, or be open and more in a way the maintains love and dignity of even the person on the receiving end of criticism. Why does it feel that recently most people are more willing to attack and cancel people without compassion? Should we care about the immediate impact of some becoming apathetic or hateful in the face of brash corrections?

It seems Epeli Hau’ofa’s use of satire in Kisses in the Nederends finds a way to make critical commentary and normative statements in a hurtful way [even if he literally puts his character(s) through a world of hurt].

In desperation, Oilei does try to consider all parts of society. He is willing to take advice and see value in all different fields hoping maybe any will relieve him of suffering. Hau’ofa’s legitimization even of the failed attempts and emphasis on community as a common trope makes me consider that as we discussed in class about the activities/struggles associated with his body be metaphors for societal issues. By extension then, his body would be a symbol of society as a whole, struggling at different ends.


Martin Luther King’s “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” who extends from the Christian tradition of the Communion of Saints (that the community was known as the Body of the Church, or believers living and dead are connected spiritually, and the body as a whole needs each member/part nourished). This is a similar idea to the Zulu tradition of ubuntu often translated as “I am because we are,” calling for an understanding of connectedness, of togetherness.


Hau’ofa explicitly addresses this by saying, “All problems in the world are connected, however disparate they may appear…”(Hau’ofa 99). In the Christian faith, some believe that if the hand of the body of the church is ill, other parts of the body are affected.


Slightly later in Oilei’s journey for healing, it is said essentially that until he [all of us] learn to kiss your ass and those of your fellow human beings “lovingly and respectfully” that you will understand yourself “purified” and thus able to “overcome your worst fears and phobias” (Hau’ofa 101). This is one of those moments in the short novel, where Hau’ofa says something quite profound in my eyes despite the supposed focus, which like the issues/taboos it represents, are uncomfortable with which to deal. Hau’ofa clearly is calling for loving the most shunned, marginalized, “dirty,” odious, or even just hidden parts of society. Hau’ofa uses different healers to point out that in fact “the problem with your anus is rooted in the inherent human tendency”(Hau’ofa 99), and so this is not a subtle comment anymore. He is being the most direct in explaining this message. When juxtaposed to the earlier misconception Oilei had that once the bleeding finished and cleansed out the would “[he’d] be quickly on the mend” (Hau’ofa 39), seems to suggest that even in the absence of aftermath to actual physical violence and tension, more work needs to be made to make the community heal and feel whole, just as his body had not recovered from the infection.


Lastly, consider the fantastical anus transplant surgery that was set outside of the fictional area in New Zealand, and instead set in Australia. What is the power of Oilei undergoing this transplant elsewhere and potentially having to come back to his society? In fact, the idea of his body literally merged with a very different identity in a private way is stark--a white woman’s anus given to a black man. The experience of covert ridicule and concern Sister Agnus and the doctor talk through reveals this tension, but his body initially radically rejecting it also speaks to the lack of understanding/acceptance between these groups in his society (Between women and men? Between white and black? Other potential divides manufactured?) (Hau’ofa 147). With the open questions in the implementation of such new ideology of potential intimate gratitude, the last line is comical as an insult and maybe even request to “kiss [his] ass.”

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