Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 05:55, 17 April 2006

The neutrality of this article is disputed. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until conditions to do so are met. (Learn how and when to remove this message)

This article is not about love and/or normal interracial relationships. For the latter, see interracial marriage.

The term Asian fetish refers to sexual stereotypes associated with Asians, especially Asian women. It is a neologism that may appear in three contexts:

1. To denote pornography, the subjects of which are Asian women, often in stereotypical costume or situations, and to describe Western men who seek this form of pornography;
2. By Asian American civil rights activists and authors to describe a form of racism and sexism against Asians and based on stereotypes about Asians; and
3. As an academic term in postcolonialist literary and philosophical theory, referring to the racial fetishism of Asians in the western world.

Thus the meaning and interpretation of the term vary depending on the context. An Internet search for the term will yield a mix of uses by activists and references to pornography sites, though in all cases it denotes an intense or abnormal sexual attraction of a non-Asian, typically a white man, to Asian women, primarily East Asians (such as Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Taiwanese), or to stereotypical images of these women to the point where it may be difficult or impossible for such a man to form relationships with women of his own race, or even non-Asian women in general. Activists frequently stress the abnormal and unhealthy aspects of sexual attraction to distinguish Asian fetish from the healthy attraction to Asian women of those in regular interracial relationships.

Asian American social activists have borrowed from each use (popular fetish, sexual fetish, and commodity fetish) to create their use of the term.

Popular terminology

Apart from academic discourse and Asian American social activism, the term Asian fetish is primarily found applied to pornography and, to a lesser degree, online dating services. In this sense it is a colloquial reference to a sexual fetish.

Definition

According to Webster's Dictionary, a "fetish" may be:

• Any object believed by superstitious people to have magical power
• Any object or activity to which one is irrationally devoted
• Any non-sexual object, such as a foot or glove, that abnormally excites erotic feelings.

Use in pornography

In popular usage, an Asian fetish is a form of sexual fetish in which a white man is unusually or abnormally attracted to Asian women. In this sense is an obsession with Asian women or an irrational devotion to stereotypes of them, in contrast to people in normal, healthy interracial relationships. While this is a reference to sexual fetishism, this is normally considered an incorrect or unscientific usage, though it may be considered that the fetishist is devoted to stereotypes of Asian women (as innocent, submissive and/or promiscuous) more than Asian women themselves. This is the basis for the term when used in conjunction with pornography, where it holds a comparable place to other forms of paraphilia such as foot fetishism or breast fetishism. However, some argue that Asian facial features may simply be more desireable to the "fetishist", in the same way others might be attacted to those with freckles or blond hair.

Asian fetishists may be sexually attracted to Asians because of stereotypical qualities they believe to be true amongst the Asians, such as innocence, submissiveness, promiscuity, or sexual prowess. Some argue that there is a distinction between individuals who are attracted to Asians for those stereotypes and individuals who are attracted to Asian culture, though this does not appear to be supported by its widespread use in denoting pornography.

Academic terminology

In coining and using the term Asian fetish, Asian American activists and authors have drawn heavily from the postcolonialist concept of racial fetishism. While racial fetishism is an academic study in its own right, the popular use of the term Asian fetish is in some way a popularization and simplification of the dense and complex academic topic of racial fetishism.

According to UNLV assistant professor of sociology Matthew Wray, there are three uses of the term fetish: as a popular fetish, as a sexual fetish and as a commodity fetish . In postcolonialist and Neomarxist discourse, the racial fetishism of Asians is a form of commodity fetishism, the process in which Asian women are associated with Eurocentric sexual stereotypes of submissiveness, innocence and latent promiscuity, and the subsequent act of identifying such constructs as reality.

This is analogous to a commodity fetish in the sense that commodity fetishism. is the process by which things with no inherent use-value (e.g., money) become imbued with inherent exchange-value (e.g., to exchange for food, which has inherent use-value).

As an example, consider the Neomarxist interpretation of the process by which the commodity fetishism of currency is said to arise in a capitalist system.

1. Money has no inherent use-value.
2. People create money and assign to it exchange-value (e.g., as a metaphor for exchange).
3. People confuse exchange-value with use-value (reality).
4. People forget that they created money as exchange-value, so that it is only left with use-value.

Postcolonialists and Neomarxists have argued that the alleged commodity fetishism of Asians arises in a similar manner.

1. Asian women in reality have no inherent stereotypes.
2. Orientalists assign stereotypes to Asian women in order to better understand the realities of Asian women.
3. Later generations of Europeans confuse the stereotypes as realities.
4. Finally, the fact that Orientalists created the stereotypes themselves is forgotten, and so the stereotypes become reality.

There is a link between the social activist usage of the term "Asian fetishism" and the academic usage of racial fetishism of Asians. In the academic sense, the racial fetishism of Asians denotes the colonial and/or capitalist sterotyping and objectifying of Asian women. Asian American social activists consider their usage a simplification of the academic sense.

Social activism terminology

Asian American social activists have adopted the term "Asian fetish" from both popular usage and academic usage to address what they see as stereotyping and objectification of Asians in Western society. Some argue that there is a distinction between individuals who are attracted to Asians for those stereotypes and individuals who are attracted to Asian culture. However, some Asians do not accept the explanation of a generalized and gender-specific attraction toward Asian women, given the diversity of Asian cultures and different degrees of acculturation among Asians and Asian Americans, and the prevalence of non-gender-specific cultural differences between Asians and Americans. Some Asians also argue that the interest among white males in Asian culture is confined to the most palatable aspects of the culture - cuisine, mysticism, martial arts, and female sexuality - and is rarely accompanied by an equally enthusiastic interest in the equality or perspectives of Asian Americans in American politics or society.

Other Asian Americans, such as Kenneth Omura, have labeled these arguments, and the term "Asian fetish" as used by activists, to be thinly-disguised calls for racial separatism. Statements such as these from Asian American activists cited elsewhere in this article clearly indicate that a call for racial separatism is indeed a significant part of the "Asian fetish" literature:

• "An Asian American sensibility must be unique. We must find our own tongue with minimal influence from the white mainstream or the African American alternative."
• "The path of attempted assimilation is the path of ethnic submission and white superiority." "Accomodation is a synonym for murder; as Asian Americans, we must reject it completely."
• "The handicapped native steeps himself in self- contempt for being 'quick to learn... and imitative.' At worst, he's a counterfeit begging currency. At best he's an 'Americanized Chinese,' someone who's been given a treatment to make him less foreign."
• "Interracial dating between white men and Asian women undermines the integrity of Asian America." "As individuals, white society will pick us off one by one. As a group, we can stand together, keep our ethnicity, and draw strength from each other."

There is controversy within the Asian American community about the use of the term "Asian fetish". Authors such as Frank Chin and David Henry Hwang regard it as a form of racist love and/or an expression of white supremacy (whether by white men attracted to Asian women or implicitly by Asian women themselves in rejecting their native culture). Other authors, such as Phoebe Eng, argue that not all Asians feel that the current trend of "Asian fetish" is bad, since it has given new sexual visibility and liberation to an otherwise invisible and disempowered minority .

Sexuality and stereotypes

Asian Americans are the subject of numerous stereotypes, many dealing with sexuality. Asian American activists claim these stereotypes are the motive force behind a widespread Asian fetish.

Though Asians in the U.S. have the highest household income of any other racial group, and some Asians self-identify as a "model minority", and suffer from lower overall rates of crime (see below), Asian American activists such as Model Minority believe the label and accompanying stereotypes have a negative impact on Asians, , .

Stereotypes include those concerning the sexual desirability of Asian women, the sexual undesirability of Asian men, or the relationships of Caucasian men with Asian women (i.e. stereotypes of Asian fetishists).

Stereotypes of Asian womanhood

Activists argue that some stereotypes send the signal that Asian women are romantically attracted to white men only because they are white. In Daughter of the Dragon, the daughter of Fu Manchu lays her eyes on a British detective and instantly falls in love with him. Miss Saigon, The Bounty and Come See the Paradise also contain scenes where Polynesian or Asian women fall in love with white men at first sight. The website PhilippineNews.com quotes UC Davis Filipino American student Anthony Tadina's criticism of a character in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books: “Rowling based Cho Chang on what she views Asian girls are -- light skinned, skinny, smart ... the stereotype.”.

Stereotypes of Asian manhood

Some race and gender theorists, as well as Asian American activists, allege that there is a race-based disparity in how men of different races are portrayed in the mass media: while white men are shown as protectors of women, and both white and black men are depicted as virile, Asian men have been presented as asexual, and both black and Asian men have been protrayed as threats to white women . Racist depictions of Asian men as "lascivious and predatory" were common at the turn of the 20th century . However, an Asian American media watchdog group has detected a shift from a "hypersexual" stereotype of Asian masculinity to "asexual" and even "homosexual," as suggested in a controversial 2004 article Gay or Asian in Details magazine.

Writing about the differences in representation between Asian men and Asian women, UC Berkeley Professor of Asian American Studies Elaine Kim believes that "Asian women are only sexual for the same reason that Asian men are asexual: both exist to define the white man's virility and the white race's superiority."

Historically, between 1850 and 1940, U.S. popular media as well as pre-war and WWII propaganda portrayed Asian men as a military and security threat to the country, and a sexual danger to white women . In the 1916 film Petria, a group of fanatical Japanese who invaded the United States attempted to rape a white woman .

On the physical level, Asian men are stereotyped as being shorter and less well-built than Caucasian men. Traditionally, part of this disparity in human height had much to do with endemic malnutrition in Asia. For example, the average height of males in South Korea is 5'8.2", while in impoverished North Korea, it is 5'4.9". This difference between the two Koreas, which are highly homogeneous racially, can largely be attributed to chronic famine in the North. By way of reference, the average male height in the United States is 5'9.6". A common perception is that height differences make Asian men less physically desirable when compared to their white or black counterparts. Other stereotypes regarding physical characteristics of Asian men have even less basis in widely-recognized research.

Sexual crimes

The discussion of sexual crimes in association with an Asian fetish is controversial. There is no statistical evidence linking crimes against Asian women to an "Asian fetish", nor is there any evidence that relationships between non-Asian men and Asian women are measurably different from any others. In general, Asians are less likely to be victims of violent crime than every other major racial group. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, "In 1998, 110 American Indians, 43 blacks, 38 whites and 22 Asians were victims of violence per 1,000 persons age 12 or older in each racial group", and in a report on hate crimes, "There were no significant differences in rates of hate crime vulnerability for racial or ethnic groups.".

Recently, both Asian Pacific American and feminist organizations have given increased attention to sexual crimes committed against Asian women, centered on fetishism, sexual harassment and violent crimes . Asian American women complain that Asian fetish is considered an annoying but benign phenomenon that does not need to be taken seriously . List of sex crimes against Asian women provides a short list of sexual crimes against Asian women. Since repeated sexual offenses which center around a specific object or person are sometimes considered as fetishistic behavior by some psychologists, Asian and Pacific American activists believe that the perpetrators in these crimes had an Asian fetish.

Slang

The activism community has a number of other terms which are considered equivalent to "Asian fetish" in the activism sense but not in the pornographic sense. Asian fetish has also been called "yellow fever". In Gay Slang, a heterosexual man who has an Asian fetish may be referred to as a "rice king", "rice lover", or "rice chaser" (a homosexual man, a "rice queen")

Criticisms

Men labelled with the term "Asian fetishist" often believe it to be a racist stereotype of them, claiming that the activists who use the term treat all cases of sexual attraction as objectification or fetishism, dismissing the possibility of normal interracial relationships. In such cases the activists may be accused of being "angry Asian men".

Other critics contend that the stereotype of an Asian fetish is a means of discouraging interracial relationships or race mixing. In the past, racial supremacists opposed such relationships, though today in the United States, critics of interracial dating are sometimes Asian males and African American women, which in turn may be considered "reverse" racism. Asian women may date non-Asian men because of unhappiness with certain perceived aspects of Asian culture, whether real or imagined, a scenario presented in the novel The Joy Luck Club, which presents Asian men as sexist and domineering.

References

1. Prasso, Sheridan (2005). "'Race-ism,' Fetish, and Fever". The Asian Mystique. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books. pp. 132–164. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |chapterurl=, |coauthors=, and |month= (help)
2. ^ Lowenstein, L.F. (2002). "Fetishes and Their Associated Behavior". Sexuality and Disability. 20 (2): 135 – 147. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
3. Prasso, Sheridan (2005). "'Race-ism,' Fetish, and Fever". The Asian Mystique. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books. pp. 132–164. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |chapterurl=, |coauthors=, and |month= (help)
4. Wray, Matt (1998). "Fetishizing the Fetish". Bad Subjects. 41. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
5. "Deconstructing "Asian fetish" - the appeal of physical appearance and/or cultural traits". ColorQ World: interracial interacions between people of color.
6. Chin, Frank (1972). "Racist Love". In Richard Kostelanetz (ed.). Seeing Through Shuck. New York: Ballantine Books. pp. 65–79. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |month= (help); External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
7. San Juan, Jr., E. (1983). "The Cult of Ethnicity and the Fetish of Pluralism: A Counterhegemonic Critique". Cultural Critique. 18: 215–229. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
8. Eng, Phoebe (2000). "She Takes Back Desire". Warrior Lessons : An Asian American Woman's Journey into Power. New York: Atria. pp. 115–142.
9. The Thief of Bagdad (1924)
10. Daughter of Fu Manchu (1931)
11. Tong, B. (1994). Unsubmissive women: Chinese prostitutes in nineteeth-century San Francisco, University of Oklahoma Press.
12. Tajima, R. (1989). Lotus blossoms don't bleed: Images of Asian women., Asian Women United of California's Making waves: An anthology of writings by and about Asian American women, (pp 308-317), Beacon Press.
13. Kim, Elaine (1984). "Asian American writers: A bibliographical review". American Studies International. 22 (2): 41-78.
14. Pangilinan, Erin (July 27, 2005). "Harry Potter and the Asian American image in media". Philippine News Online.
15. Espiritu, Y. E. (1997). Ideological Racism and Cultural Resistance: Constructing Our Own Images, Asian American Women and Men, Rowman & Littlefield Publishing.
16. Frankenberg, R. (1993). White women, race matters: The social construction of whiteness., University of Minnesota Press.
18. Kim, Elaine (1990). "'Such Opposite Creatures': Men and Women in Asian American Literature". Michigan Quarterly. 29 (1): 68–93.
19. Wu, W.F. (1982). The Yellow Peril: Chinese Americans in American fiction 1850-1940, Archon Press.
20. Quinsaat, J. (1976). Asians in the media, The shadows in the spotlight. Counterpoint: Perspectives on Asian America (pp 264-269). University of California at Los Angeles, Asian American Studies Center.
21. Rennison, Callie (March 2001). "Violent Victimization and Race, 1993-98. Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report". U.S. Department of Justice.
22. Harlow, Caroline Wolf (November 2005). "Hate Crimes Reported by Victims and Police. Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report". U.S. Department of Justice.
23. Nash, Phil Tajitsu (Apr 29, 2005). "Depravity Against Women On- and Off-campus". National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum.
24. Kim, Sallie and Stockdale, Shannon (April 14, 2005). "For Asian Women, 'Fetish' is Less Than Benign". The Yale Daily News.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
25. Long, Daniel (1996). "Formation Processes of Some Japanese Gay Argot Terms". American Speech. 71 (2): 215–224. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
26. Tizon, Joyce (February 3, 2000). "A Threatened Manhood? Exploring the myth of the angry Asian male". Asian Week.

See also

• Asiaphilia
• Orientalism

External links

On Asian fetish

• "Facing Up to Facebook Racism", Campusprogress.org, May 24, 2005. -- News survey of campus racial bias cases. Accessed February 17, 2006.
• The Asian fetish does not Exist An Asian American man believes the concept called the Asian fetish does not exist.

Opinion/Editorial

• "Sex and the Campus Case 6: Attack of Yellow Fever", The Harbus Online, January 26, 2004. -- Op-ed piece from Harvard student newspaper. Accessed February 17, 2006.
• "The Asian Female Mystique", The Korea Times, May 27, 2005. Accessed February 17, 2006.
• "Racial Fetishes", Punchandus.com, October/November 2005 issue. -- Humor. Accessed February 17, 2006.
• "The Yellow Fever Pages", Zukazuka.com, 2002. Accessed February 17, 2006.
• "Why Do Asian Women Date White Men?", Modelminority.com. (Originally published on Usenet, April 22, 1992) Accessed February 17, 2006.
• "The Asian America That Can Say 'No'", Modelminority.com. (Originally published in The Daily Californian, September 9, 1991) Accessed February 17, 2006.
• Asianguy.com discussion thread Accessed February 17, 2006.

On interracial romance

• "Asian Fetish?", Salon.com, December 4, 2003. -- Sex-advice column. Accessed February 17, 2006.
• Multiracial activist
• AznLover.com (dedicated to Asian-males, by non-Asian females)
• AsianWhite.org

• Asian American-related topics
• Race