"They're all women."
There are the protests, and then there is the coverage of the protests. And you can’t talk about the coverage of the protests without talking about the coverage of Myanmar as a whole and Burmese people in general. So this was one of the topics I explored in my conversation with MiMi Aye, when I asked her in what ways she has found this coverage lacking, especially in Western media. Her response was immediate: the mischaracterization of Burmese women. Here is an excerpt below, and listen to the full talk for more.
“Burmese women are bloody minded. We always have been.”
“So what's happened with all these protests, and obviously they have been very prominent in the media. And people are saying that they're being led by women, and not just young women, there’s old women! I've seen this video that was going around of the aunty, the grandmother who was blasting the military and the soldiers and saying, ‘You can take me away if you like!’
Yeah, it's like, it's not even that Generations Z is brave and not oppressed. You know, Burmese women are bloody minded. We always have been.
Look at what's happening now, the people who are organizing the protests, they're all women. It is not just the people who are organizing the food parcels, but the people that are coming up with the ideas of how to protest, the people that are drawing up the poster campaigns, that people that are drawing up the kinds of social media and memes, all of these things.
It's all women, young women doing that. I've seen people saying that they're really shocked and surprised to see, the women are in front!”
