A white man murdered eight people in Atlanta this week, six of them Asian women. He told police that he was a ‘sex addict’ and that he targeted people at Young’s Asian Massage, Gold Spa and Aromatherapy Spa because he saws these as “locations of temptation that he wanted to eliminate. Many people believe this attack was not motivated by race. These people are noisy and wrong. To understand how racism and misogyny are deeply linked, you need to understand the sexualisation of Asian Women.
We’re breaking down the history of the sexualisation of Asian women, why having an ‘Asian fetish’ is not the same as preference, and why this is an Australian problem too. White pals, we really need you to read this.
Sexualisation of Asian Women Has a Long History
Thinking of Asia and its people as a mysterious, exotic ‘other’ dates back to at least the 1840s, with European and North American travelling back and forth to ports in China, Japan and Korea for commercial trade. The popular 1887 French novel Madame Chrysanthème by Pierre Loti is widely credited with informing the West’s view of what Asian women were like. Telling the story of a British naval soldier who takes a ‘temporary’ wife while stationed in Japan, Loti describes the wife, Kiku, and Japanese women in general as small, doll-like and extremely subservient. She is often compared to a doll or an ornament. The British officer ultimately leaves Japan and Kiku behind – discarding her after she has served the purpose he needed.
War dialled up the sexual element of the stereotype. Again, European, North American and indeed Australian forces were stationed all throughout East Asia and Southeast Asia in almost all major wars: WWI, WWII, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. To service Western ally forces, all sorts of industry would pop up around the bases – including bars and brothels, where white men could be served and entertained, both sexually and non-sexually, by Asian women. In an powerful piece for Vogue Australia, Mahalia Chang also points out that this idea of foreign women being ‘eager’ for sex also excuses soldiers from raping them.
This image of Asian women as exotic, dainty objects meant to serve others (men, especially sexually) took hold. It has been replicated over and over in popular culture, including:
- 1904: Classic opera Madama Butterfly (a very close interpretation of Loti’s novel)
- 1930s: The work of Anna May Wong, a Chinese-American actress famous for her ‘femme fatale’ style role in films ‘Picadilly’ (1929), ‘Daughter of the Dragon’ (1931), ‘Daughter of Shanghai’ (1937), ‘Shanghai Express’ (1932)
- 1960: Movie ‘The World of Suzie Wong’
- 1987: ‘Full Metal Jacket’, Stanley Kubrick’s Vietnam War movie that includes a Vietnamese prostitute saying the infamous line: “Me so horny. Me love you long time. Me sucky sucky.”
- 1989: Musical Miss Saigon, a re-work of Madame Butterfly with the Vietnam War as the backdrop
- 1994: In beloved Aussie film ‘The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert’, Cynthia (Bob the mechanic’s wife) performs for the men in the country bar by shooting ping pong balls out of her vagina
- 2002: Japanese twins Fook Mi and Fook Yu in the movie, ‘Austin Powers in Goldmember’
- The growing popularity of anime in the US and Australia, which routinely hypersexualises female characters
We are all being told that Asian women are 1) physically small, 2) completely subservient and self-sacrificing in nature, and 3) very sexual, over and over and over.
How Being Hypersexualised is Damaging
Some people will say that Asian women being thought of as an objective of sexual desire is a positive thing. That response misses the point.
Asian women have been hypersexualised to the point of being dehumanised. They are seen as sexual objects – emphasis on ‘object’ – that can be discarded after use. Remember, the naval officers of Madame Chrysanthème, Madama Butterfly and Miss Saigon ultimately leave their Japanese/Vietnamese ‘wives’, returning home to Western women who they believe worthy of marriage, love and family in a way that their foreign lovers were not.
The Atlanta shooter said he suffered from sex addiction. In his mind, Asian women were responsible for this… because he views them as entirely representative of ‘sex’. That’s why he targeted three businesses staffed by Asian women.
Hypersexualisation is different to other racial stereotypes, like “Asian people are bad drivers” or “Black women are loud.” While these stereotypes also generalise across the entire group, they still give human qualities to the people being described. Being hypersexualised strips Asian women of their human qualities — reducing them down to the equivalent of sex dolls.
It’s worth noting that this happens to other groups of women in general, too. But there it’s especially painful to be dehumanised twice – once due to your gender, and the second time due to your race.
Good morning to everyone who knows you don’t need a racist misogynist to say “I’m a racist mysogynist” to know they’re a racist mysogynist.
— brittany packnett cunningham is on extended break. (@MsPackyetti) March 18, 2021
If Asian women are targeted as a “temptation” you feel the need to “eliminate,” you’re a racist mysogynist.
We shouldn’t have to say this
Difference Between ‘Having a Type’ and Fetishisation
We can’t talk about the hypersexualisation of Asian women without talking about ‘yellow fever’. White guys who exclusively pursue Asian girls. People will say there is nothing wrong with having a type. They’ll say that having romantic or sexual preferences are totally normal.
That’s true, but there is a difference between having a preference and fetishising Asian women.
It comes down to whether or not you’re reducing women to elements of their race rather than their individual traits. Because there is no common unifying factor among all Asian people… there is no common unifying factor among all Chinese people, or Thai people, Singaporean or Philippino people. Or for people of any race or nationality, for that matter.
So while a person might genuinely prefer a partner who has an introverted personality, why would that universally apply to Chinese women? Why would it rule out quiet women who are French or Ethiopian? It applies to physical attributes too. If you like small girls with dark eyes and dark hair, there is no reason for that to be exclusive to Asian women. And that’s not even delving into the gross equivalence some people make between being small in stature and the size of an Asian woman’s vagina. There are few things as dehumanising as being valued by the size of your genitalia (a feeling that Asian, African and Black men know well).
Festishisation is hurtful because it tells Asian women that they are interchangeable with one another, replaceable. Once again, it is deeply connected to perception of them as objects and not people. In a relationship, you want to be loved for who you are as a person – dudes with ‘yellow fever’ rarely communicate this in the dating phase.
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Information Overload?
We understand. But Australia is currently in the midst of a furious national discussion about men’s sexual entitlement towards women. It’s important to think about how that entitlement is amplified towards specific groups of women – including Asian women, who men have been trained to view as a purely sexual object that’s especially quiet, and in a predominantly White country, especially powerless.
