Fetish or Masked Violence?

Abstract

Asian fetishization in Western culture is a direct result of White sexual imperialism and the resultant media portrayals of Asian women as hypersexual and submissive beings. Hypersexual portrayals of Asian women persist in modern media depictions and pornography, causing these women both psychological and physical harm. Solutions to this issue should offer Asian women psychological support, empower Asian women to share their experiences, and press the education system to provide students with an all-encompassing retelling of imperialism and its consequences.

Often overlooked in mainstream culture, Asian fetishization not only strips Asian women of their dignity, but it also perpetuates a hypersexualized vision of their bodies that promotes both domestic and sexual violence against them. Asian fetishization was at the heart of a recent 2021 homicide in which a White man killed eight people, six of whom were Asian women (Nieto 2021). Police and some members of the public were quick to believe the man when he said that his motivation was a sex addiction rather than a racially motivated killing. This highlights an example of the government’s systematic failure to confront an intersectional offense (Crenshaw 2016, 194). Additionally, it reveals the public’s complacency toward instances of fetish-fueled violence, owing partially to the normalization of Asian sexualization in the West.

In my paper, I will highlight the causal link between White male supremacy, imperialism, Asian fetishization, and the subsequent dehumanization and harm brought upon Asian women. Specifically, I will focus on American colonialism in the East and resultant plays and pornography that it inspired during the late 19th century and early 20th century. How has White sexual imperialism created the hyper-sexualized stereotype of Asian women? What role did 20th century play productions play in painting a hypersexual image of Asian women in the West? What can be learned from analyzing the recent trend of physical and sexual violence against Asian women through an intersectional lens, and how can we incorporate this understanding into mental health counseling practices? Finally, how can we increase visibility to the issue of fetish-driven violence through education and representative media portrayals? I will argue that intersectionality is at the core of Asian fetishization, and that we can only begin to remedy the issue by recognizing the historical forces that are central to the perceptions of Asian women as hypersexual beings. Asian women experience hypersexualization as a result of their unique history as targets and victims of White Imperialism in East Asia. Because of this, they experience discrimination that exists at the intersection of both their Asian and female identities rather than their racial or sexual identities independently.

For 49-year-old Xiaojie Tan, March 16, 2021 began as a day of normal business at Young’s Asian Massage Parlor. Tan was working her last 12-hour shift before her birthday the next day. Her fiftieth birthday would be a time for her and her loved ones to celebrate her many accomplishments, including making a life in the U.S., building a family, and launching two businesses. She had developed a close relationship with her daughter, Jami Webb, who said that Xiaojie “worked every day so that [she] and [her] family would have a better life” (Hughes, Ruis-Goriena, and Kelly 2021). Xiaojie was a loving and eager Asian mother, determined to achieve the American Dream at her small massage parlor. Little did she know that at 4:50 pm that day, she would lose her life. At the time of the shooting, Tan was assisting two customers, one of whom was shot. In addition to Tan and Yaun’s death, seven other people were shot that day. Five of these Atlanta victims were Asian women, one of whom worked at Young’s Asian Massage Parlor along with Tan. The other female Asian victims worked across the street at Gold Spa and Aromatherapy Spa (Abusaid, Hollis, and Stevens 2021).

The White man responsible for these shootings was 21-year-old Aaron Robert Long. Raised in a Southern conservative community that emphasized purity culture, Long was battling what the HopeQuest treatment facility deemed to be a “sex addiction.” Associated with several large evangelical churches in and around Atlanta, HopeQuest provides patients with the opportunity to meet with counselors specialized in treating “sinful” desires for sex outside of marriage. This “sex addiction” is what Long claimed to be the motivation of his killings. The shooter claims to have initially thought about committing suicide, but instead targeted Asian women-run businesses to “help” other dealing with sex addiction (Krohn 2021).

As victims’ families mourned at the news of their loved ones’ death, they faced rumors and speculation of prostitution at the massage and spa parlors in which victims of the shooting worked. Long’s statement about the parlors being an outlet for those with sex addictions raised public suspicion about these Asian-run businesses. Many took to Twitter to accuse the spas of providing sexual services to their customers. USA TODAY, however, found no criminal reports associated with any of the businesses (Hughes, Ruis-Goriena, and Kelly 2021). Furthermore, friends and customers of the targeted massage and spa parlors were enraged over the rumors circulating over social media. Many had reported the owners of the business to be friendly, sweet and professional. Greg Hynson, a longtime friend and customer of Tan’s salon, angrily rejected speculation Tan’s spa was providing sex services. In his words, “you’re coming here to get a massage. All these girls that have worked for her over the years are working for her on their own free will” (Hughes, Ruis-Goriena, and Kelly 2021).

Although Long was sentenced to life in prison, few were willing to admit the killings had anything to do with Asian fetishization. In a paraphrasing of what Long told investigators about his motives, Captain Jay Baker of the Cherokee County’s Sheriff Department said Long “was pretty much fed up and kind of at the end of his rope, and I guess it was a really bad day for him and this is what he did” (Sanford 2021). Not only did the Sheriff refuse to attribute Long’s actions to a racial and sexual crime, but he also refused to acknowledge the brutality and severity of this instance. Although he later apologized in a letter from the Cherokee County Sheriff’s office, his remarks still stand as an example of the lack of care and thought many devote to this issue. The lives of Asian women are of so little value that their murder is viewed as the product of a “bad day.” Many do not think critically about acts of violence like these, owing these incidents purely to anger or sex drive. Similarly, White people have historically ignored and continue to neglect sexist and racist implications associated with hypersexual portrayals of Asian women in play productions and in the media.

Why is it so difficult for people to ascribe these offenses to the fetishization of the Asian body? Kimberle Crenshaw attributes this lack of understanding to a failure to recognize intersectionality (Crenshaw 1991, 1242). Crenshaw is a leading scholar on Black feminist legal theory and studies overlapping social identities in relation to oppression and defines intersectionality as “a metaphor for understanding the ways that multiple forms of inequality advantage or disadvantage sometimes compound themselves and create obstacles that are often not understood among conventional ways of thinking” (Crenshaw 2016). The problem of physical and sexual violence against Asian women is not one that is exclusively related to race, nor is it one that is exclusively related to gender. Instead, it is a unique issue arising from discrimination towards people who possess both Asian and female identities.

Many Asian women were quick to identify the undercurrent of Asian hypersexualization associated with these acts of violence like these (Gonyea 2022). They link these all-too-familiar acts of violence to the historical fetishization of Asian women. In response to the shooting, professor of ethics studies Ceniza Choy said that “to disregard race in the acts of violence would erase the harassment and violence Asian women have faced for more than a century” (Hughes 2021). These recent events speak to the history of objectification of the Asian female body. Long’s referral to these women as “temptations” is a reflection of the way Westerners have crafted a hypersexualized portrait of Asian women. It is a result of the perpetuation of stereotypes around Asian women as exotic and submissive.

To begin to understand this intersectional issue, we must first take a deep exploration of its history. We must observe the history of anti-Asian sentiment and the belief that Asian women are immoral and sexual beings. General Anti-Asian sentiment has its roots in the mid- to late- 19th century when Chinese immigrants began entering into the country in large numbers. Although Chinese immigrants were initially welcomed for their contributions to the growing railroad system in the West, they were still viewed as inferior to the “true White American” (“Timeline of Systemic Racism Against Aapi” 2021). In addition to looking and sounding different, some Chinese immigrants had marital practices that differed from their White counterparts. In particular, some Chinese men had multiple wives and occasionally participated in prostitution (Abrams 2005, 653). For these reasons, Asian Americans were branded with a distinct “otherness” by White Americans that viewed their culture as a threat to their values. This contempt for Asian Americans is consistent with historical nativist attitudes against immigrants aimed at preserving Whiteness. These nativists “yearn for the freedom to police, punish, and exclude migrants to make them feel stronger, freer, and more agentic, transforming acts of racialized violence … into feats of heroism, democratic redemption, civil engagement, and virtuous sovereignty” (Beltrán 2020, 23). One 1873 San Francisco Chronicle headline reads “The Chinese Invasion! They are Coming, 900,000 STRONG'' (The San Francisco Examiner 1873, 3). This statement is reflective of the communal animosity White people felt towards the Chinese, as well as the nativist ideology that Asian immigrants ruin the homogeneity that White Americans work so hard to conserve. This nativist mentality frames xenophobia as the conservation of democracy, masking anti-Asian hatred with a seemingly desperate need to protect Americanism.

In an attempt to preserve the American system of monogamy, California lawmakers sought to ban Chinese women from coming into the country. Believing that these women would engage in prostitution with Chinese men, lawmakers sought to “end the danger of immoral Chinese women” with the Page Act of 1975 (The Page Act of 1875, 1875). Although prostitution was fairly common in the American West among many nationalities, the law specifically targeted Chinese women from entering the country. The law was consistent with the White belief that Asian women were promiscuous, immoral, and impure. Before the law, racist ideologies were already written into medical practices. The American Medical Association held that Asian women “carried distinct germs to which they were immune, but from which Whites would die if exposed” (Luibheid 2010, 201). Lawmakers and citizens feared that Chinese women could transmit these germs to White men through prostitution, and that banning them from entering the country would prevent potential infection from foreign germs. The Page Act served as a legal example in which Asian women were branded as overtly sexual and impure beings. White American lawmakers legislated on their personal biases and fear, writing their prejudice into law. Although the Page Act has since been abolished, the association of Asian women and hypersexuality is still prevalent today through media portrayals and pornography.

At around the same time Asian women were being shunned and being portrayed as hypersexual in the Western America, the United States was pursuing an imperialist campaign in East Asia. Late 19th century English novelist Rudyard Kipling dubbed the Western invasion of East Asia “the White man’s burden,” coining this term in a poem written to encourage Americans to colonize the Philippines (Kipling 1899). Former President Theodore Roosevelt popularized Kipling’s imperialist sentiment in speeches and lectures. Roosevelt insisted that civilized White men had a “manly duty to ‘destroy and uplift’ lesser, more primitive men for their own good and for the good of civilization” (Roosevelt 1908). This “primitivity,” as assigned to East Asians by Roosevelt and Kipling, justified White people’s domination and East Asian people’s subsequent inferiority. Both men employed inherently sexualized language by referring to the “civilized” Americans as White men. By assigning White men the quality of domination, they relegate the bodies of the indigenous women being conquered to inferiority.

Viewing female Asian bodies as inferior is consistent with Edward Said’s definition of what he calls “Orientalism.” He believes that Orientalism is a “Western Style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient” (Said 1978, 28). According to Said, Orientalism “views itself and its subject matter with sexist blinders … [the indigenous] women are usually the creatures of a male power-fantasy. They express unlimited sensuality, they are more or less stupid, and above all they are willing” (Said 1978, 32). Objectifying their bodies was a way for White people to establish and maintain power. Asian women were not people. Instead, they were tokens of imperialism whose purpose was to appease the superior White conqueror.

U.S. soldiers exemplified the mentality of White dominance through sexual conquest when they colonized the Philippines from 1898 to 1946. Along with killing a quarter million Filipinos, Americans engaged in widespread prostitution, jump-starting a booming sex industry in the Philippines. Believing they were justified by Kipling’s and Roosevelt’s statements, White soldiers used Filipina bodies to fulfill their sexual desires. American soldiers referred to Filipina women as “little brown fucking machines powered by rice” (Shimizu 2005, 6). The blatant lack of regard for human rights is reflected in this statement. Imperialism caused American soldiers to refer to Filipina women as machines, unworthy of the rights guaranteed to their White counterparts. In a White man’s world, however, White sexual pleasure is valued above human decency. Unfortunately, this sentiment remains today in the flourishing Filipino sex industry started by Americans more than a century ago (Shimizu 2005, 18).

U.S. soldiers arriving back to America brought home the idea that Asian women were inherently submissive and sexual, inspiring plays that portrayed Asian women with these traits. It is in these productions that we begin to see how modern perceptions of Asian women are directly inspired by these harmful depictions. These early film and play productions set the tone for hypersexual depictions throughout the 20th century and can still be seen today in contemporary television shows as well as movies. An example of such production was Madama Butterfly in 1904, which portrays a young Japanese girl named Cio San who falls in love with American naval officer Pinkerton. She was portrayed as a submissive individual who was willing to sacrifice her possessions and ancestral religion upon marriage to the American soldier. Although Cio San deeply loved her husband, Pinkerton was hesitant to reciprocate her passion. He was not sure if he had feelings for the girl, and insisted that someday he would take a real, American wife. Cio San waits years for her husband’s return from his naval service and rejects marital advances from local Japanese men. She dreams of the day her American husband returns. When Pinkerton comes back to Japan, however, Cio San devastatingly learns that he has found an American wife (Puccini 1904).

Film productions like Toll of the Sea similarly portrayed Asian women as submissive and hyper romantic people who did anything for White love. In this 1920 silent film, a Chinese woman named Lotus Flower falls in love with an American man named Allen Carver who promises to take her with him when he returns home. Despite having been forgotten by four previous American husbands, Lotus Flower believes that her new American husband will not abandon her. Allen Carver’s friends discourage him from taking Lotus Flower home and he eventually leaves and marries an American wife. While her American lover is away, Lotus Flower gives birth to Carver’s son who she names Allen after her father. When Carver comes back to China, he tells Lotus Flower that he has married an American woman named Elsie. Initially, Lotus Flower does not reveal that she has given birth to Carver’s son and tells him that the boy is the child of an American neighbor. She eventually confides the truth to Elsie and tells the American woman to raise the boy as her own son. Lotus Flower’s grief drives her to suicide (Marion 1922).

Madama Butterfly and Toll of the Sea are reflections of the way White people perceived Asian women. They fantasized about Asian women’s unlimited adoration for their colonizers. Cio San’s love for the American soldier was so strong that she was blinded to his lack of regard for her as his wife. Similarly, Lotus Flower adored her American lovers so much that she was able to dismiss each subsequent White man’s betrayal after they left or abandoned her. The story uses the “narrative convention of [the] submissive Oriental woman and the cruel White man” (Kondo 6). Popular storylines like this created the idea that Asian women possessed a distinctive desire for White love. The Asian women in these portrayals are naive and gullible. They are inevitably betrayed by their White lovers who see less value in them than their White female counterparts, speaking to the devaluation of Asian women and their love. Their love is dispensable and their bodies are replaceable. Depictions like the one demonstrated here are also consistent with Said’s definition of Orientalism. Both Lotus Flower and Cio San are Asian women who are more or less ignorant and willing to do and sacrifice whatever she must to appease the White man. The narrative once again reinforces the idea of White dominance in romantic and sexual settings.

Of course, Asian women played no role in the creation of these stories. The play rendition of Madama Butterfly was based on a novel written by American lawyer John Luther Long in 1898. Despite never having been to Japan, Long expressed a love for Japanese culture. His perceptions of Japanese culture, however, were purely based on his sister’s experiences in Japan (Belasco et al. 1970). The short story would be adapted into a popular play production by Giacomo Puccini, a renowned white Italian composer who also did not have any first-hand experience with Asian culture (Sartori 2023). Toll of the Sea was largely inspired by Madama Butterfly, and adapted into film by American screenwriter Frances Marion. She described the movie as “practically the step-daughter of Madame Butterfly” (Hodges 2012, 32). Marion spent her entire life in America and in Europe, again lacking exposure with Asian culture and tradition (Ruvoli 2013). Asian people were notably absent in the creation of these stories. Resultantly, these plays were purely the embodiment of White fantasies and ideologies about Asian female bodies rather than storylines based in any truth. Had Asian women played a more central role in the creation of these stories, perhaps they may have been a more comprehensive and accurate reflection of their sexual attitudes. Instead, the narratives reinforced a hypersexual depiction of Asian women. They were products of the imperialist sentiment that Asian women only desired White dominance.

Madama Butterfly premiered on February 17, 1904 to an Italian audience at La Scala in Milan and went on to receive widespread attention in major Opera houses throughout the Royal Opera House, the Metropolitan Opera House, and Garen Theatre. American soprano Geraldine Farrar would wear yellowface and play the Asian lead Cio San between starting in 1907, singing in a total of 95 performances until her retirement in 1922 (Cantoni and Schwarm 2014). The use of yellowface in this production is again reflective of the lack of Asian representation that went into these renditions. Although Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong was casted as the lead character in Toll of the Sea, there is no evidence of any collaboration with Asian people in the film’s production. The film was enormously successful, grossing an astounding $250,000 or $4.4 million today (Salisbury 2022). These productions exposed millions of Westerners who may never have traveled to Asia to hyper-romantic depictions of Asian women. They may not have been consciously aware of the role White dominance or imperialism played in the depictions of these Asian women. Commercially successful productions like these were responsible for planting the cultural perception of Asian hypersexuality into the minds of Americans. Early hypersexual depictions like these can also explain why the public was so quick to believe that the Asian female victims working at the massage and spa parlors were sex workers.

The storyline of the hypersexual and hyperromantic Asian woman willing to do anything for a White man repeatedly captivated Western audiences despite its redundancy. The popularity of these productions speaks to the initial inherent appeal of these naive and sexually excessive portrayals of Asian women in the media. Not only are these hypersexualized depictions harmful, but they also homogenize Asian women. Madama Butterfly was a story about a Japanese woman, while Toll of the Sea depicted a nearly identical narrative with a Chinese woman. In an analysis of these films, film scholar Celine Parrenas Shimizu claims that these portrayals are “a violent homogenization of Asian American women who are lumped together in representation where cultural and other specificities are obscured and eclipsed by hypersexuality” (Shimizu 2005, 235). Hypersexual stereotypes deprive Asian women of individuality and uniqueness that derives from their individual experiences and cultures, confining them to a White fantasy that holds little truth. This homogenization further contributes to Asian women’s dehumanization, as all Asian women are seen as objects with unlimited desire rather than different individuals with varying sexual attitudes. However, none of this mattered to the millions of Westerners who made these productions a massive success.

While people in the states were beginning to get exposed to hypersexualized depictions of Asian women, military men in the East continued to live out their fantasies. Imperialist conquests did not end after the colonization of the Philippines, of course. The U.S. asserted their military presence throughout Asia in countries like South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand and Japan (McDougall 2023). Military bases in Thailand sheltered between 40,000 and 50,000 American GIs at any given time during the Vietnam War. During their stay, these men ignited a booming sex industry to cater to their sexual desires. Between the years 1966 and 1969, as many as 70,000 military men came to Thailand for “Rest and Recreation” sites, which were known colloquially by Americans as “Intoxication and Intercourse” centers among soldiers (Ralston 693, 1998). The casual use of this term speaks to how indigenous female bodies in Asia were commodified and seen as objects of pleasure and entertainment amongst American soldiers. Asian women’s bodies were increasingly being seen as a necessity of imperialism. American soldiers dangerously normalized the objectification of Asian women, which was reflected in popular culture in the West.

American conquests coincided with yet another hypersexualized portrayal of Asian women in the 1980s. Miss Saigon centers around a Vietnamese prostitute named Kim who falls in love with an American Marine during the Vietnam War (“Miss Saigon.” 2023). With the main character being a hypersexualized Asian woman who is abandoned by a White man, this production has a striking resemblance to the early 20th century productions Madama Butterfly and Toll of the Sea. In the play, the influences of imperialism as it relates to the sex industry are again made clear. The setting and characters of the play are directly inspired by the American military conquests in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. This goes to show the pervasive impacts of the imperialist sentiment of White dominance, due in part to the continuous military presence of Americans in Eastern Asia. White men were engaging in the sex industry in Asia, inspiring these productions and in turn causing people in America to believe these stereotypes of Asian women being hypersexual. Film scholar Karen Shimakawa highlights the harmful stereotypes brought out in this production, saying that the women in the musical were “either hypersexualized Dragon Ladies in string bikinis or Kim, the single Lotus Blossom-shy, passive, virginal in an ersatz Vietnamese wedding gown” (Shimakawa 2002, 23). Despite the progression of time, these hypersexualized stereotypes surrounding Asian women still exist. Depictions perpetuating these stereotypes yet again captivated millions of viewers, with its Broadway production grossing $266 million between the years 1991 and 2000 (Pogrebin 2000).

Many Asian women in the audience were understandably enraged by the all-too-familiar hypersexualized portrayal of Asian women in this play. Tired of the tradition that views Asian women as objects to be conquered by the White hero, professor at the University of Southern California Viet Thanh Nguyen describes his disappointment at the production. In an interview with film scholar Diep Tran, Nguyen says he “thought it was terrible, fulfilling every Orientalist trope that I had studied and was opposed to… It fits perfectly into the way that Americans and Europeans have imagined the Vietnam War as a racial and sexual fantasy that negates the war’s political significance and Vietnamese subjectivity and agency” (Tran 2018). Nguyen not only highlights the harmful romanticization of Asian women as hypersexual and submissive in this production, but also emphasizes how it downplays the horrors of imperialism. The colonialist conditions that created this play are overlooked and substituted with a lively and fantastical musical distraction. Playwright Qui Nguyen says that the production is a “melodramatic White-savior fantasia claptrap” (Tran 2018). These insights perfectly encapsulate the rage felt by the many Asian Americans at these tired depictions of Asian women as hypersexualized and submissive dragon ladies with no desire beyond pleasing the White man. Their disappointment culminated in enraged newspaper reviews and protests through the 21st century, with one of the most recent protests summoning over 200 people in 2013. However, despite these protests, the production continues to be a massive success and draws millions of viewers to this day (“200 Assemble Outside Ordway” 2013).

Protests and complaints have done little to stop the hypersexualized portrayals of Asian women in the media. Asian women continue to be homogenized and branded as overtly sexual beings in both modern television and film. In the popular “A Benihana Christmas” episode of the television show The Office, protagonist Michael Scott brings two Asian waitresses to an office Christmas party. There, he reveals that he marked one of the women’s arms so he could tell them apart. Throughout the episode, Michael Scott refers to one of the women as “Asian Hooters”, reducing the Korean American actress who played this waitress to a punchline (“The Office’s a Benihana Christmas” 2006). Michael Scott’s inability to differentiate the Asian waitresses from each other speaks to the way Asian women are homogenized in the media. It is a reflection of the historical sentiment that all Asian women are hypersexual, as seen in Madame Butterfly and Miss Saigon. The show did not care to give the Asian waitresses identities beyond the harmful stereotypes that have been repeatedly played out in films and productions throughout history. Similarly, the 2002 film Austin Powers in Goldmember echoes the Imperialist idea that Asian women are sexual objects through its portrayal of two twin Japanese girls. In the movie, these girls ask Austin for an autograph before proceeding to have a threesome with him (Austin Powers in Goldmember 2003). The Asian women serve no purpose beyond being sexual objects with an unlimited desire for the white protagonist. Again, this trope has striking similarities to 20th century narratives like Toll of the Sea in which the Asian female protagonist submits herself to the dominant white man.

Additionally, the idea of White dominance embodies itself in harmful depictions of Asian women in pornography. Sociologists Sarah Byrne and Jennifer Lynn Gossett conducted a study on internet pornography sites that examined the link between race and violent sexual depictions. Of the 56 video thumbnails used in their sample. 34 of the images depicted Asian women. Eleven of the videos use words like Asian, Japanese, and Chinese to advertise Asian women in their titles. Additionally, more than half of the thirty-one pornographic websites that portrayed rape showed Asian women as the rape victim while one-third showed White men as the perpetrator (Gossett and Bryne 2002, 696-698). The dominant dynamic between White men and Asian women is reflective of the imperialist and orientalist attitude voiced by Theodore Roosevelt, who emphasized the need to assert power over the inferior Eastern foreigner. Justified by imperialism, Asian bodies were hypersexualized and commodified in the following century through war and U.S. military conquests. United States soldiers jump-started a sex industry in Asia to cater to their sexual desires, which lead to Asian women being associated with subservience and willingness to meet White people’s demands. Because of this history, portrayals of Asian women in sexually subordinate roles elicit interest unlike any other race and are widely popular on the internet.

Knowing the gravity of imperialism, media portrayals, harmful pornographic depictions, and the interplay between them, we can re-examine the Atlanta tragedy as a direct result of the conditions created by imperialism. Lawyer and academic writer of feminist and Asian issues Sunny Woan emphasizes the intersectional approach with which we must view contemporary tragedies involving violence Asian women by White men. In “White Sexual Imperialism”, she says “to comprehend the gravity of harm caused by sexual-racial disparities between White men and Asian women demands a tripartite inquest that conjoins colonial history along with that of sex and race related forces'' (Woan 2008, 286). To filter our analysis of the 2021 Atlanta shootings through the lens suggested by Woan, we must consider the stereotypes of Asian women being in sex work as a direct result of military sex tourism in the East. The referral to these Asian women as temptations speaks to the commodification and devaluation of their bodies as a consequence of American military presence. It is also reflective of the media portrayals of Asian women as seen in productions like Miss Saigon in which Asian women are overtly sexual beings, tempting White men to pursue them as sexual desires. Long was reported to have locked himself in his room for hours on end watching pornography before initiating the shooting. Although investigators have not confirmed what type of pornography Long had watched, his perceptions of Asian women could have been influenced by the prevalence of this demographic in recorded sexual settings.

The 2021 Atlanta shootings are evidence of a sustained trend around Asian women being harmed as a result of Asian fetishization and hypersexualization. While violent acts like the Atlanta shootings garner a great amount of media attention, violence against Asian women in domestic settings often goes unnoticed. The Asian Pacific Institute in Gender-Based Violence reports that 68% of homicides involving Asian female victims are perpetrated by an intimate partner (“Statistics on Violence against API Women.” 2018). According to the National Network to End Domestic Violence, 41 to 61 percent of Asian women report experiencing physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner during their lifetime. These numbers are significantly higher than any other ethnic group (“Sexualized, Submissive Stereotypes of Asian Women” 2016). These trends mirror the prevalence of sexual violence towards Asian women in pornography, as discussed earlier. According to Sarah Byrne and Jennifer Lynn Gossett, “violent pornography, the pornography most linked in research to actual violence against women, is just as accessible as nonviolent or soft pornography on the Internet. Thus, actual women may experience increased danger of sexual violence due to the proliferation of violent pornography on the internet” (Gossett and Byrne 2016, 705). Gossett and Byrne highlight the link between hypersexualization in pornography and real violence. Violence towards Asian women could also stem from the persistent dehumanization of Asian women throughout history due to imperialism. Asian women’s lives are attributed with little value because they are seen as merely objects of sexual desire. It is clear that these women continue to be seen this way in intimate settings, demonstrating the inescapability of imperialism’s consequences.

Asian fetishization stemming from harmful media depictions and imperialism also places a psychological burden on Asian victims of sexual harassment. In addition to having a higher likelihood of being victims of violence in domestic settings, Asian women are also more likely to experience sexual harassment. In a 2018 survey of over 120 Asian women, it was found that almost 66% reported experiencing sexual harassment in the past year. 78.3% of the 120 Asian women in this study reported at least one racialized instance of sexual harassment in the past year. This statistic again highlights the link between race and unwanted sexual advancements. Researchers from this study found that greater levels of unwanted sexual coercion and sexual attention were associated with higher levels of post traumatic stress symptoms (Buchanan et al. 2016, 261-280). Additionally, hypersexual stereotypes surrounding Asian women have led these women to experience guilt, self-blame, worthlessness, and distrust resulting in increased anxiety, depression, and disordered eating (Iyer and Haslam 2003). Given how Asian women have been historically portrayed in productions like Madama Butterfly and more recent films like Austin Powers in Goldmember, it is no surprise that these people experience racialized harassment and psychological harm today. Hypersexual stereotypes can have an adverse impact on the psychological development of Asian women and must be addressed by mental health counselors through an approach that takes into account the intersection of sexism and racism.

Some counselors have proposed broaching as an effective way to acknowledge the role that race, gender, and culture plays in the psychological harm that Asian women must face in the West. Broaching refers to “counselors explicitly initiating dialogues on sociocultural identities and their consequent impact on clients’ presenting concerns and incorporating these influences in treatment” (Anandavalli 2022). In this way, counselors can maximize discussions on racialized sexual harassment with their Asian female patients. Counselors specifically using this approach should specifically ask questions about how their gender, ethnic, and race identities impact their sexual harassment with nonjudgemental and compassionate language (Anandavalli 2022). Broaching has proven to be successful in mental health counseling practices, increasing reported satisfaction rates amongst patients as well as the likelihood of these patients returning (Thompson and Jenal 1994; Zhang and Buckard 2008). Adapting broaching into mental health counseling will allow Asian women to identify, address, and explore the sources of their distress while understanding the unique space they occupy in the U.S. as a result of Imperialism. This practice provides an effective framework for addressing the causes of these stereotypes while also accommodating the patient in a way they feel seen and heard. It empowers Asian women to share their experiences in a personal way that addresses both their racial and sexual identities. Current counseling literature offers limited training on the way intersectionality impacts the Asian female experience as it relates to sexual violence and subsequent psychological harm (Chan et al. 2021). In order to properly accommodate these patients, mental counselors should be educated on social justice relevant to Asian American women and how to use tools like broaching.

While counseling may help Asian women on an individual basis, combatting fetishization at its roots further requires acknowledging imperialism and its impacts on Asian women on a national scale through U.S. public education. Currently, the history of colonialism in Hawaii, the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico is not taught in many American primary and secondary schools. Instead, the U.S. education system often portrays Americans as defenders of freedom and democracy while the “negative impacts of colonialism and imperialism driven by the U.S. empire are often brushed over” (Huff 2022). This way of teaching dangerously neglects the harm faced by indigenous peoples in colonized lands while romanticizing White dominance. Under this education model, students do not learn about how Asian women were exploited and thus can not begin to understand how these women face Imperialism’s consequences today.

Scholars point to the need to “decolonize” school curriculums to give children a more comprehensive understanding of Imperialism. In this context, decolonisation refers to “the decolonization of the mind from the colonizer’s ideas that made the colonized seem inferior” (“Keele Manifesto for Decolonizing” 2018, 98). This approach would enable schools to teach Imperialism from a neutral perspective that addresses what it truly is while acknowledging its harm to indigenous peoples. If American schools begin to teach Imperialism as something with real and lasting consequences, people can begin to recognize fetishization as a harmful extension of racism. They can begin to associate fetishization with the perpetuation of harmful stereotypes with its roots in theories of White sexual dominance and hypersexualized media depictions. Armed with the knowledge of imperialism and its consequences, students will become informed adults who will not only recognize instances of racialized and sexual hate, but will also actively rally against it. Hopefully, the combined voices and recognition of both Asian women and other ethnicities will be enough to put an end to fetish-driven violence and hypersexualized depictions perpetuating the consequences of imperialism.

Finally, we must work against the violent homogenization of Asian women in shows like The Office and empower Asian people to share representative stories through film and media. In the spring of 2017, film scholar Celine Parrenas Shimizu wrote in the season’s edition of Cinema Journal about the importance of including Asian creators in Western film creation. She highlighted Asian-authored films’ potential to “establish a presence on the screen like their impact on the scene: through the globalization of culture, the influx of migrants, technological innovation, and the burgeoning influence on shaping what we know as cool, beautiful, and fun” (Shimizu 2017, 122). A year later, “Crazy Rich Asians” directed by Jon M. Chu and written by Adele Lim demonstrated Asian creators’ power to shape public perceptions on who Asian people truly are. The film works against the stereotype of Asian women being submissive and hypersexual by celebrating diversity within the Asian diaspora. The main character Rachel Chu is a strong and intelligent individual who demonstrates agency over her life and dating choices. Rachel Chu is unlike the oriental depictions of Asian women in Madama Butterfly who exist solely for the purpose of pleasing the White man. She is accompanied by a cast of strong Asian women and men with unique personalities that contribute to the movie’s diverse representation (Chu 2018). The film was lauded by many for its rejection of Hollywood stereotypes surrounding Asian people and its notable performances from Asian actors like Constance Wu and Henry Golding. The film was wildly successful, amassing over $230 million in global ticket sales worldwide (Yin 2018). Movies like “Crazy Rich Asians” have shown film’s potential to beautifully represent the Asian diaspora in a way that captivates millions of both Asian and non-Asian viewers. Portrayals of Asian people do not have to perpetuate harmful stereotypes rooted in imperialism to be successful. Including Asian women on-screen and behind the scenes in production can give Asian women a chance to show people who they are and can be; strong and smart individuals with the power to prove hypersexual and submissive stereotypes wrong.

Furthermore, I hope that representative films inspire Asian women to create more movies, books, and plays that reflect our experiences. Since the release of “Crazy Rich Asians” in 2018, films like Everything Everywhere All At Once and Minari have portrayed Asian women as resilient, nuanced, and loving individuals through representative narratives that reflect the complex yet beautiful Asian American experience (Kwan and Scheinert 2022; Chung 2020). Additionally, books like War Cross and Outrun the Moon depict fierce Asian female protagonists whose stubborn determination drives each story’s plot (Lu 2019; Lee 2019). Such inspiring narratives remind me of the power Asian creators hold in altering social perspectives on Asian women through evocative and true-to-life portrayals. I can see myself reflected in these fictional Asian women who share my determination, persistence, and strength. In writing this essay, I have grown closer to my identity as an Asian woman as I have come to understand the historical context for my combined racial and sexual experience in America. I have had the chance to learn about the experiences and grievances I share with millions of Asian Americans like me, as well as ways to ease the burden that our shared history places upon us. It is through my research and analysis that I have come to fully understand the catharsis I felt when first seeing women like me in “Crazy Rich Asians”. This essay serves as a small contribution to the growing collection of female Asian American literature that aims to acknowledge and combat harmful stereotypes surrounding Asian women. In this way, Asian women like me can establish agency over our shared history and put an end to fetishization.

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