December 11, 2021
The Atlanta spa shooting that targeted Asian women in early 2021 happened in the midst of rising anti-Asian sentiment due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Sociologist Nancy Wang Yuen characterized the incident as an “intersection of racism and sexism” against Asian women. While everyone has their personal preferences when it comes to sexual attraction—some people prefer blondes over brunettes, tall people over shorter ones, athletic builds over lanky ones, etc.—these individual preferences in physical appearance aren’t inherently harmful. The line between preferences and fetishization gets a little blurry when we bring in sexual attraction to certain groups of people solely based on their race.
What is Asian fetishization?
Racial fetishization happens when a person is made an object of sexual desire solely based on their race. Sexual arousal becomes overfixated on race and perceptions of a person are based on stereotypes. The individual’s race becomes the only aspect of their identity that is acknowledged, all while individual traits like personality, thoughts, and feelings go unnoticed. For Asian women, they are hypersexualized while also taking on a docile, submissive role. They are exotic yet sexually deviant. The punchline that Asian women have sideways vaginas solidifies the “exotic” view of Asian women as physiologically different from other races. Not only is it untrue, the myth that Asians have a different anatomy highlights the harmful idea of major differences between races.
History and origin
In order to properly understand the harm of Asian fetishization, it’s important to look at where these stereotypes come from. The long history of U.S. military involvement in Asian countries enforced the view of Asian countries as in need of a white savior and incapable of handling conflicts on their own. It also upheld the idea of Asia as a place to be dominated—especially by the white man. The huge number of military bases popping up around Southeast Asia, especially during the Vietnam, Korean War, and Philippine-American War, led to more GIs participating in the sex industry. A sharp increase in prositution came as a result, but it’s crucial to emphasize the historical pattern of compulsory sexual submission of women in developing countries due to Western political, military, and economic domination. Furthermore, many women in these countries were raped, sexually assaulted, or impregnated by white GIs before they were abandoned to take care of the child alone. These practices upheld the idea of Asian women’s bodies as disposable objects of colonization, all while stripping them of their humanity. Western imperialism created the idea that Asian women exist solely to serve white men, which led to the enduring stereotypes of Asian women as hypersexual, exotic, weak, and submissive.
How Western imperialism manifests itself today
Although the wars of Southeast Asia are long over, the effects of white colonization are widespread and lasting. The following quote comes from a Gentleman’s Quarterly article called “Oriental Girls.”
“When you get home from another hard day on the planet, she comes into existence, removes your clothes, bathes you and walks naked on your back to relax you … She’s fun you see, and so uncomplicated. She doesn’t go to assertiveness-training classes, insist on being treated like a person, fret about career moves, wield her orgasm as a non-negotiable demand…. She’s there when you need shore leave from those angry feminist seas. She’s a handy victim of love or a symbol of the rape of third world nations, a real trouper.”
This article, which was written by a white man in 1990, embodied the subservient view of Asian women while also pitting them against white women. The white male’s fantasy is not assertive, does not worry about career moves, and does not insist on being treated like a person. Essentially, white men want someone who doesn’t value sexual equality or challenge the objectification of women—something apparently only feminist and career-oriented white women are capable of. While the white male seems to place value in Asian women as uncomplicated sources of comfort and sexual satisfaction, it only serves to enforce racist and sexist divisions. Asian women are seen as inferior to white women, but both groups are involved in a struggle for the approval of the dominant white male. As a result, fetishization perpetuates outdated stereotypes rooted in white male supremacy.
Higher rates of sexual violence
A 2002 study conducted on violent internet pornography analyzed 31 websites that depicted rape or torture of women. The results found that over half of the videos showed Asian women as the victim, and a third showed white men as the perpetrators. Furthermore, when the keyword “torture” was searched, Asian women consistently came up as a result. Many scholars warn that race-specific pornography contributes to race-specific sexual violence, and the prevalence of violent depictions of Asian women has been associated with greater risk of sexual violence. The Atlanta spa shooting earlier this year was a manifestation of these correlations; the killer was allegedly motivated by “sexual addiction” and he had to “eliminate his temptations” that came from Asian women.
The pornography study also found a strong correlation between race and pedophilia, with titles like “Japanese Schoolgirls” or “Asian Teens,” emphasizing the docile, childlike nature of Asian women. This association has had profound effects on human trafficking. Impoverished populations are exploited by their desperation to obtain a better life for themselves and their family. Traffickers target these poor families and make false promises of employment and education opportunities. In reality, they face the same impoverished conditions and are forced into hard labor or prostitution. Extremely desperate parents resort to selling their children, and these children are often subjected to pedophilia and violence. In fact, out of 1,000 rape cases in Cambodia, over 70% of the victims were under the age of 18, according to the APIGBV. Although accurate data is difficult to obtain because human trafficking is underreported and underdetected, human trafficking is believed to be one of the world’s most lucrative underground businesses, raking in more than $150 billion. It is estimated to affect between 20 million to 46 million men, women, and children. Two-thirds of victims worldwide are in East Asia and the Pacific—but more than 85 percent of these victims are trafficked from within that region.
These statistics become an even bigger issue when we consider the prevalence of the sex tourism industry in Southeast Asian countries like Thailand and the Phillippines. Although sex work is voluntary and legal in these countries, the use of coercive sex trafficking tactics, exploitation of poor locals with limited work opportunities, and the number of children sold by their poor families into sex work doesn’t make it seem very voluntary. Although child pornography and human trafficking are universally illegal, certain governments and law officials don’t heavily monitor prostitution and sex trafficking, allowing a majority of abuses to go undetected. For example, in countries like Cambodia, sex with minors is considered as common behavior for men and often goes unpunished. This becomes more of a problem when we factor in the millions of visitors a year that visit sex tourism destinations. An overwhelming majority of these visitors are white middle-aged men from the west, and because increased demand leads to increased supply, an ever-increasing amount of women and children are subjected to exploitation and violence.
Whether done consciously or not, fetishization perpetuates racism because it’s the act of attributing certain biases and characteristics to a person because of their race. The fetishization of Asian women may not seem harmful until we analyze the extensive history of colonization and violence from which it stems. Stereotypes of Asian women as sexually deviant, submissive, and always consenting only serve to broaden racist and sexist divisions that keep white males dominant, all while ensuring the subordination of Asian women. Astronomically high rates of sexual violence and human trafficking are present-day manifestations of Asian fetishization, proving the resounding global impact of Western imperialism.
Aileen Tran 