I Am Still the Other
*although this is my picture, for privacy reasons I have blocked out the faces in this photo, other than mine*
This photo was from a friend’s birthday event at Fortune Sound Club on January 7, 2017. This was the first time that I had ever hung out with so many women of colour in Vancouver, as my entire close friend group here is made up of Caucasians.
On this night, my friends and I were approached by many guys at the club, all of whom had to make a comment about our Asianness. They would say we were cute Asian girls and that they were into that, thinking that this was a compliment. It is precisely things like this that I find others, particularly my Caucasian friends, do not understand to be an issue. Countless times when I have mentioned my interest in a boy I have been told that I am lucky because “every guy is into Asian chicks.” It is hard for someone who has not felt such racial objectification to understand the negative aspects of it. This fetishization comes from stereotypes of East Asian women as sexual, shy, exotic, docile and submissive (Constable, 2003, p. 122). These stereotypes have successfully objectified and commodified the East Asian body, distorting it so that it suits male pleasures (Kim & Chung, 2005, p. 67). This Oriental romanticism homogenizes all East Asian women as looking the same and having the same traits of submissiveness and docile natures (Constable, 2003, p. 122). This homogenization is accepted because this romanticism does not thrive on the accuracy of the differences between various East Asian women, but on the inaccuracy that lumps all of these women together as one in the same (Said, 1979, p. 71).
Locally, this fetish means that East Asian women in the West must look out in relationships, to be sure that their partners are not into them because of the connotations attached to their race.
Globally, this fetishization is dangerous for East Asian women. On this night, even after we left the club, guys continued to approach and follow my friends and me. This stereotype therefore brings a notion of “no does not mean no,” as men believe that the lack of attention towards their advances is not an indication of disinterest, but instead an indication of these tropes being real. It is also dangerous because these stereotypes lead to ideas that condone the domination of women and their bodies and violence against women (Kim & Chung, 2005, p. 67). These racial objectifications aim to justify some sort of claim to and right that Western men have over East Asian bodies, normalizing male dominance in these relationships. This is a large reason as to why the Philippine Women Centre in BC condemns and tries to bring awareness to correspondence marriages. These marriages are built upon Western ideas of stereotypes of East Asian women, but also on Orientalist ideas of their Eastern Otherness. There has been a phenomenon where Western men flock to East Asian women, with their backwards traditional familial beliefs, in hopes that these non-feminist, non-progressive and submissive women will be completely devoted to their families and husbands (Constable, 2003, p. 125). These women often leave their countries to stay with their husbands in the West, where they often are victims of spousal abuse and are isolated from any friends, family or networks (Philippine Women Centre, 2001).
This fetish may seem harmless, as these are just imaginative sexual desires targeted at East Asian women. However, an Asian fetish is not just about someone thinking that someone of a certain race is attractive, but is about the implications of these ideas that endanger East Asian women and promote Western supremacy. The trope of a docile Asian women hints at an undertone of Asian women’s sexual submission to men, including the White man (Kim & Chung, 2005, p. 85). This in itself promotes the idea of Western supremacy and Eastern inferiority, as the fragile East Asian woman is considered better off and lucky to be with the strong White man. Furthermore, the objectification of East Asian bodies leads to the commodification of these bodies, to the point where they are seen as property and not actual people (Kim & Chung, 2005, p. 76).
Works Cited
Constable, N. (2003). Political Economy and Cultural Logics of Desire. In Romance on a Global Stage: Pen Pals, Virtual Ethnography, and “Mail-Order” Marriages (pp. 116-145). Berkeley: University of California Press.
Kim, M. & Chung, A. Y (2005). Consuming Orientalism: Images of Asian/American Women in Multicultural Advertising. Qualitative Sociology, 28.1, 67-91. doi:10.1007/s11133-005-2631-1
Philippine Women Centre (2001). Stories of Struggle. Retrieved from pwc.bc.tripod.com/research.html
Said, E. (1979). Imaginative Geography and Its Representations: Orientalising the Oriental. In Orientalism (pp. 50-72). New York, NY: Vintage Books.