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Chapter One Why Asian American Sexual Politics?

In 2000, two white men and a white woman in Spokane, Washington, specifically targeted Japanese women in an elaborately planned scheme to kidnap, rape, sodomize, and torture them and to videotape the whole ordeal. According to police reports, the rapists had a sexual fantasy about and fixation with young Japanese women. The three assailants believed that the Japanese women were submissive.[1] In just one month, the predators abducted five Japanese exchange students, ranging in age from eighteen to twenty. Motivated by their sexual biases about Asian women, all three used both their bodies and objects to repeatedly rape—vaginally, anally, and orally—two of the young women for over seven hours.[2] One of the attackers immediately confessed to searching only for Japanese women to torture and rape; eventually, all pled guilty and were convicted.[3] In 2004, American Idol, the most watched TV series in the Nielsen ratings and the only

program to have been number one for seven consecutive seasons,[4] premiered the season with an episode that showcased twenty-one-year-old William Hung singing a rendition of Ricky Martin’s “She Bangs.” The episode was a collection of the most “talentless” of those who auditioned, and it was if Hung was crowned the “king.” His inability to carry a tune, dance to the beat, or exude any sex appeal made the video go viral on the Internet, and viewers were laughing at him, not with him. He was a perfect fit for the unflattering racial stereotype of the asexual, nerdy Asian American man. Across the blogosphere, race scholars and Asian American men were bemoaning the perpetuation of the racist stereotyping and yet another instance where Asian American men are emasculated in American media. These two examples demonstrate the racial stereotyping of Asians and Asian Americans.

The perpetrators in Spokane, Washington, used racist stereotypes to pick their targets. While both being racially “othered,” Asian and Asian American women have been constructed as sexually exotic docile bodies while men have been racially “castrated.” These constructions created a complicated racialized Asian American sexual politics affected by racist-gendered constructions but also “home-culture” expectations. The vignettes and analysis shared in this book are an attempt to look at the nuanced way that constructions can operate in the lives of some Asian Americans. Feminist scholars argue that women's sexuality is socially shaped in ways that sustain men's

social and political dominance. I extend this feminist scholarship and argue that Asian American sexuality is socially shaped in ways that maintain social and political dominance for whites, particularly white men. I want to set this stage with the assertions made by Patricia Hill Collins in her seminal work, Black Sexual Politics.[5] Collins defines sexual politics as

Chou, Rosalind S.. Asian American Sexual Politics : The Construction of Race, Gender, and Sexuality, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/washington/detail.action?docID=947980. Created from washington on 2020-01-16 16:47:25.

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“a set of ideas and social practices shaped by gender, race, and sexuality that frame all men and women’s treatment of one another, as well as how individual men and women are perceived and treated by others.”[6] Collins brilliantly asserts that the oppression of African Americans extends beyond race. Controlling and enforcing the gender and sexuality of African Americans maintains white supremacy. Similarly, Asian Americans have their own unique sexual politics as they face gendered and sexualized racial stereotyping and discrimination. However, there is also dissimilarity. Collins notes the hypersexualization of African American men and women within the

outwardly appearing “sexually repressive” nature of the United States.[7] She extends her analysis to other people of color, but the sexualization of Asian Americans is somewhat different. Asian Americans come from nations with different sexual mores than the United States, and their experiences cannot be explained in the same fashion. Within those nations of origin, there are differences in gender oppression and homophobia that should be taken into account when understanding Asian American femininity, masculinity, and sexuality. In later chapters, these differences in nationhood and origin are explored to help explain the unique experiences of Asian Americans. In my narrative analysis, it is apparent that the maintenance of white supremacy through

controlling images and stereotypes of Asian Americans as gendered and sexualized bodies is a sobering reality for my respondents. While all people go through a gendered and sexualized process in this society, the intersecting racial identity for people of color introduces racial domination into the mix. The additional struggle with defining one’s own racial identity is difficult enough as a man, woman, gay, straight, bisexual, or trans person. There are societal forces constantly imposing identity on us all based on gender, sexuality, class, race, age, ability, religion, and so on. However, consideration of power and domination must constantly be centralized in the analysis to get a clear picture of how oppression is operating. Asian Americans, while perhaps seen as “nearly white,”[8] are not free from gendered, racialized treatment. This racialized and gendered process is not static. The sexual stereotyping of people of Asian descent has mutated throughout American history, changing based on the needs and interests of whites. Interview respondents share in great detail the present-day gendered and racialized process they face as Asian Americans. Structural factors based on race, class, gender, and sexuality have an effect on the lives of

Asian Americans. I would be naïve if I believed my own attraction to others was solely based on internal “animal instinct.” However, research in the life sciences and psychology factor in a biological basis for sexual desires. Pheromones,[9] ovulation patterns,[10] symmetry of facial features,[11] and chest-waist-hip ratios[12] have been determined as legitimate scientific indicators of what is attractive and beautiful. However, these factors are socially constructed categories of significance.[13] Historically, science has been used to justify social systems of inequality and oppression.[14] While examining sex, sexuality, gender, and race, it would be unwise to believe that biases fail to exist in these studies. Numerous studies have indicated that racial stereotyping can affect perceptions of others and the self, the most influential and famous case being the Kenneth Clark study used during Brown v. Board of Education.[15]

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The terms sex and sexuality have become intertwined with our cultural understanding of gender. Race is not so intimately wed to a layman’s understanding of sex, sexuality, and gender. However, race is central to how sex, sexuality, and gender can be understood in the lives of Asian Americans. While functioning in both similar and different ways for Asian American men and women, gender and sexuality act as fundamental mechanisms in maintaining white supremacy and white hegemonic ideals. Racial stereotypes crawl into bed with people of all races. White hegemonic ideologies of masculinity and femininity determine who gets to have sex with whom and the characteristics of those sexual and romantic partners. The selection and vetting process of potential sexual or romantic partners is not happening outside of our social world. We do not make choices of attraction in a vacuum. Whether we are conscious or not, ideas of masculinity, femininity, and race influence our decisions for potential partners. Our world shapes our “wants” and “choices” of whom we sleep with or take home to introduce to our families. Hegemonic ideology becomes our commonsense notions. When we believe we find someone attractive, there is a socializing element that comes into play. This research is a call to scholars, educators, policy makers, journalists, and any person

concerned with issues of race, gender, and sexuality to pay attention to Asian Americans. Their experiences speak more broadly to issues of racism, sexism, and homophobia in the United States, and we can learn a great deal about the tangled web of social structures through this narrative analysis. Our identities are so complexly intertwined, and the numerous social norms and hegemonic common-sense programming pulls individuals in a number of directions. This book is an attempt to begin to capture and decipher the complexity. Through the words of respondents, hopefully we can learn how to talk about how someone is sexualized and gendered while being simultaneously racialized. These identities do not always become salient at the same time or with equal force. The

complexity of intersecting identities is how their salience shifts and alters from situation to situation. Larger social structures and hierarchies remain omnipresent, but there are instances when stereotyping may seem “positive” or “negative.” Whether the difference in stereotyping awards an individual with actual structural power is contestable and may remain to be seen. This book is an effort to begin to ask these questions and start to define and discuss the sexual politics of Asian Americans.

WHY ASIAN AMERICAN SEXUAL POLITICS?

Why should we study Asian American sexual politics? By evaluating constructions of Asian American gender and sexuality, it informs us on how racism, specifically white supremacy, works in the United States. The externally imposed meanings placed upon Asian and Asian American bodies unveil the new racism in this supposed postracial United States. One thing I recognize and acknowledge is that many of us do not like to be told whom we

should and should not love. Love and relationships, whether in fairy tales or Hollywood blockbusters, is not romantic if thought of as a calculated political move, but all love is shaped by sociohistorical factors.[16] Whether a relationship is intra- or interracial, same or opposite

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sex, there are negotiations and choices to be made, conscious and unconscious. This book gives us a look into the lives of sixty Asian Americans and how they negotiate their racialized gender, sexuality, and relationships. The goal of this book is to not only share the experiences of my respondents but continue the

dialogue that other scholars have already begun about the intersection of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. Social forces shape our lives. Ideas are normalized about our identities that may influence our thoughts, feelings, and actions. I am not writing this book to tell people whom they should and should not find attractive. Most important, I hope my readers begin to recognize the role of power and privilege and to see white hegemonic masculinity[17] in its various forms and the way it shapes how we see the world. As a result of normalized hegemonic ideology, we can fail to deconstruct our world, motivations, preferences, and “choices.” My Asian American respondents see the world through “frames.” They can be “multiframers” who possess ideology from a “white racial frame” and simultaneously draw from “counter-frames” that are in conflict with each other.[18] Individuals make sense of their world through these frames and are either shaped by white social structure or at odds with oppressive powers.

METHODOLOGY: STANDPOINT EPISTEMOLOGY, EXTENDED CASE METHOD, AND NARRATIVE ANALYSIS

There are three key elements to my methodological approach for this project: standpoint epistemology, extended case method, and narrative analysis. Among my sixty interview participants, thirty-two self-identify as women, twenty-seven as men, and one as “female- bodied gender queer.” Ethnically, the respondents self-identify as Taiwanese, Chinese, Indian, Filipino, Korean, Malaysian, Vietnamese, Hmong, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Japanese, Thai, and multiracial Americans. The umbrella term “Asian American” is used to describe the participants.[19] The age range is eighteen to seventy-one years of age. The respondents come from varying geographic regions around the country.[20] The sample is overly educated, with 90 percent of the respondents having bachelor degrees.[21] I begin my research with standpoint epistemology, where the voice of the “marginal” is the

starting point. Specific to feminist theory, the focus lies on power differentials that exist in gender relations; I am extending the feminist theory to include racial marginalization. Harding asserts, “The activities of those at the bottom of such social hierarchies can provide starting points for thought—for everyone’s research and scholarship—from which humans’ relations with each other and the natural world can become visible.”[22] My research addresses intersecting identities placed in overlapping hierarchies, so it will be a delicate task to describe how they operate separately and in combination. Power has been centered in scholarship from the top of hierarchy, so standpoint epistemology creates knowledge from a different perspective. The research is situated where one stands in a marginal position and investigates how a person “comes to know.” However, a person in a more powerful position in a hierarchy can also contribute, as long as standpoint position is acknowledged. The goal is to

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provide a look from the “bottom up.”[23] Standpoint epistemology acknowledges situatedness instead of labeling itself as an objective

point of view” because the whole notion of “objectivity” is interrogated. Feminist scholars assert that history and knowledge labeled as “objective” produced by academics has largely been “phallocentric.”[24] Harding contends:

Thus the standpoint claims that all knowledge attempts are socially situated and that some of these objective social locations are better than others as starting points for knowledge projects [that]challenge some of the most fundamental assumptions of the scientific world view and the Western thought that takes sciences as its model of how to produce knowledge.[25]

Sandra Harding asserts, “one can see these sexist and or androcentric practices in the discipline.”[26] Much of the knowledge that has been produced has come from the standpoint of privileged white men. The situatedness of standpoint epistemology can elaborate on the experiences and contributions made by women.[27] The standpoint approach works to “eliminate dominant group interests and values of successfully colonized minorities.”[28] My research is an exercise in elaborating on the situated experiences of Asian American men and women and offers perspectives that may counter the historically white, androcentric dominant view. Qualitative methods are used to make meaning of social phenomenon at the micro level and

highlight the relationship of these interactions to the macro level.[29] While quantitative methods illuminate shifts or movement of group trends, such as Asian American intermarriage rates, qualitative methods can help to explain the phenomenon.In this research, I rely on the use of the extended case method (ECM)because it elucidates the link between the micro and macro by placing “everyday life in its extralocal and historical contexts.”[30] In this case, extended case method informs us how external forces shape the lives of Asian American men and women.[31] Narrative analysis takes as its starting point the belief that, as human beings, we understand

our experiences and ourselves by telling stories. These can be as specific as accounts of particular events, or as broad as an entire life story. Meaning-making involves storytelling as interview participants attempt to make sense of their experiences. My task during narrative analysis is to understand those stories, examining not only their content but also their structure. Analyzing content is fundamental to any mode of qualitative research; what narrative analysis offers is a chance to expand our understanding of informants by examining how they tell us what they want us to know. Narrative structure is both holistic (the form the story takes) and particular (the language used to tell it). Narrative analysis, then, addresses both the content and the form of interview data. Although individuals are sharing these narratives, other elements of social life affect their experiences. Their storytelling will incorporate larger ideologies of placement in social structure, media discourse, and cultural values.

THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON RACE, GENDER AND SEXUALITY

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First and foremost, I treat race, sexuality, and gender as sociohistorical constructions. Omi and Winant explain that "Racial categories and the meaning of race are given concrete expression by the specific social relations and historical context in which they are embedded. Racial meanings have varied tremendously over time and between societies."[32] I define gender as a “social status, a legal designation, and a personal identity” and “through social processes of gendering, gender divisions and their accompanying norms and role expectations are built into the major social institutions of society.”[33] While I use the terms “men,” “women,” “boys,” and “girls” I want to clarify that I find problems with the terminology. The terms are constructed as a binary and restrict gender to just two categories. Because of the restrictive boundaries to this language, please note that my usage of gender pronouns are understood as constructed categories that are problematic. There are male-bodied and female- bodied respondents that may have different gender presentations then what present language may allow. When a respondent self-identified as something else outside of this binary gender paradigm, such as butch, boi, or trans, it is stated, and the pronoun they prefer is used. Second, I define sexuality as “lustful desire, emotional involvement, and fantasy, as enacted

in a variety of long- and short-term intimate relationships.[34] I do find the terms homosexual and heterosexual problematic because the origin of the terms arises from the early discipline of sexology that created a legal and medical discourse that stigmatized any sexual practices that deviated from monogamous heterosexual relationships.[35] Jeffrey Weeks asserts that through the use of medical terminology differentiating homosexuality from heterosexuality, stigma has been attached to same-sex loving sexualities.[36] The mere act of labeling homosexuality as a practice creates a discourse of deviant behavior that strays from the “norm,” heterosexuality. Similarly, laws construct a discourse surrounding sexual acts, dividing them into acceptable and unacceptable categories.

Systemic Racism, the White Racial Frame, and Counter-Frames

I use a systemic racism approach to view racial oppression as a foundational and persisting underpinning of U.S. society. From the beginning, powerful whites have designed and maintained the country’s economic, political, and social institutions to benefit, disproportionately and substantially, their own racial group. For centuries, unjust impoverishment of Americans of color has been linked to unjust enrichment of whites, thereby creating a central racial hierarchy and status continuum in which whites are generally the dominant and privileged group.[37] Since the earliest period of colonization, European Americans have sustained this

hierarchical system of unjust material enrichment and unjust material impoverishment with legal institutions and a strong white racial framing of this society. Whites have combined within this pervasive white frame many racist stereotypes (the cognitive aspect), racist concepts (the deeper cognitive aspect), racist images (the visual aspect), racialized emotions (feelings), and inclinations to take discriminatory action.[38] This white racial frame is old, enduring, and oriented to assessing and relating to Americans of color in everyday situations. Operating with this racial frame firmly in mind, the dominant white group has used its power to

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place new non-European groups, such as Asian immigrants and their children, somewhere in the racial hierarchy that whites firmly control—that is, on a white-to-black continuum of status and privilege with whites at the highly privileged end, blacks at the unprivileged end, and other racial groups typically placed by whites somewhere in between.[39] This white racist framing is centuries old and continues to rationalize racism that has been systemic in this society. Understanding framing is essential to understanding how racism persists today and is

disguised in institutions and color-blind discourse. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva asserts that whiteness is normalized by “white habitus.”[40] “White habitus” is defined as a “racialized uninterrupted socialization process that conditions and creates whites’ racial tastes, perceptions, feelings, and emotions and their views on racial matters.”[41] The socialization process of whites that shapes their racial tastes, perceptions, and feelings can also have the same affect on people of color. Feagin’s definition of framing allows for the inclusion of people of color in the adoption of these racist ideologies. Scholarship in gender and sexuality would use terms like “hegemonic masculinity” to discuss the powerful ideology of domination and how the ideas become normalized. In terms of race, “white habitus” can exist outside of white spaces and the meanings can be adopted by people of color and, in this case, Asian Americans. In opposition to the white racist framing and hegemonic framing of masculinity are three

types of counter-frames: (1) a white-crafted “liberty and justice” frame; (2) the anti-oppression counter-frames of Americans of color; and (3) the home-culture frames that Americans of color have drawn on in developing their counter-frames.[42] Asian Americans, collectively, have very few counter-frames from which to view alternative constructions of Asian American masculinity, femininity, or sexuality. The externally imposed identity of “Asian American” represents many different cultures which would provide a splintered or quilted “home-culture” frame with some overlap but a great deal of diversity of meanings and practices. Additionally, with more than half of Asians in the United States being newer immigrants, there are complications in identifying racist structure and oppression, which serves as another obstacle for developing strong anti-oppression counter-frames. Whether the scholars choose to use “white racial framing,” “white habitus,” or racial

“hegemony” to explain the persistence of racist thoughts, feelings, and practices, white supremacist ideology persists and comes in various forms embedded in institutions and in the psyches of whites and people of color alike. Racist ideology is passed along subconsciously through “colorblind discourse” in the era of the “new racism.”[43] Asian Americans in this study have been socialized in a society where whiteness is normalized.

Asian American Masculinity and Femininity

While the racial demographics of the United States have shifted and continue to shift over time, they are not necessarily “naturally” occurring changes. The law has played a central role in the “racial morphology” of the country.[44] Asians in the United States comprise just over 4 percent of the population. This is by white supremacist design. Legislation, both racist and

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sexist in nature, has played a significant role in the lives of Asian Americans. These laws have shaped their racial and gendered experiences. These imposed gendered meanings faced by Asian Americans have operated to support white supremacy, the white racial frame, and hegemonic masculinity. Asian American men and women share some of the same racialized experiences; however, the racialized experiences can manifest differently for people based on gender, class, and sexuality. Asian American women have consistently been constructed as sexually available to white men. Asian American men have seen a different shift in gender stereotyping that is unlike other men of color in the United States because they, exclusively, have gone through an emasculating, castrating process.[45]

Who Moved My Manhood? The Evolution of Asian American Masculinity

Dana Takagi argues, “As Asian Americans, we do not think in advance about whether or not to present ourselves as ‘Asian American,’ rather that is an identification that is worn by us, whether we like it or not, and which is easily read off of us by others.”[46] Asian Americans have specific racial stereotypes imposed upon them by others, but that identity does not stand alone. Race intersects gender and sexuality in a particular way. Racial stereotypes can and do change over time, but the meaning remains the same—people of color are inferior to whites. Antiblack stereotypes remain from the slavery era, but in our “colorblind” society, these stereotypes are coded or rephrased to seem less overtly racist.[47] However, this relatively constant stereotyping of African Americans as aggressive, dangerous, and oversexed varies greatly from the ideological transition of Asian American manhood. Historian Ronald Takaki describes the stereotyping of early male Chinese immigrants that was very similar to past and current constructions of African American men:

The language used to describe the Chinese had been employed before: Racial qualities that had been assigned to blacks became Chinese characteristics. Calling for Chinese exclusion, the editor of the San Francisco Alta claimed the Chinese had most of the vices of the African: “Every reason that exists against the toleration of free blacks in Illinois may be argued against that of the Chinese here.” Heathen, morally inferior, savage and childlike, the Chinese were also viewed as lustful and sensual.[48]

Chinese men and women faced stereotypes quite similar to African Americans. Takaki asserts that they went through a “Negroization” process as they settled into this country. The sexual stereotypes were uncannily the same. Chinese men were denounced as sexual threats to white women. White parents were advised not to send their daughters on errands to the Chinese laundry where horrible things happened to white girls in the back rooms.[49] Also mirroring the stereotypes of American Indian and African American men, Chinese men

were accused of having a special appetite for white women and girls. If a white woman married a Chinese man, it was considered an act that threatened “white racial purity.” The association with African Americans was so close that the Chinese were called “nagurs” and the “new barbarians.[50] ” This stereotyping of Asian American men has disappeared from the discourse and, like a

pendulum, has swung to the opposite of end of the spectrum where they are seemingly castrated and devoid of all things “manly.” Even Asian American men as martial artists serve as targets

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for mocking.[51] Early immigrants to the United States such as the Irish and Italian were negatively stereotyped when they arrived. As they melted into the collective “whiteness,” these men retained their manhood in the discourse, unlike Asian American men.[52] Scholars have noted that the types of labor assigned to early Asian immigrants in the United

States were “feminizing” occupations.[53] Asian American men worked in a more domestic realm, doing laundry and restaurant work. This type of labor is often labeled “women’s work,” but many Asian immigrant men were doing agricultural farming and construction work as well (specifically, with the railroad).[54] These types of segmented labor were also assigned to African and Latino American men. The feminized labor argument does not fully explain the shift in gender ideology of Asian American men because all of these men of color have historically shared the same gendered labor.

Asian American Femininity

The stereotyping of Asian American women has been relatively consistent throughout U.S. history compared to the shifts felt by their male counterparts. Research interrogating the sexualization of Asian women in the United States shows that the images have remained stable over time.[55] The images of Asian women as sexually available have been globalized, though these images are centered mainly on women of East Asian descent, with very little representation of women of South or Southeast Asian descent. South Asian women are often invisible or lack sexuality. My respondents of South and Southeast Asian descent speak openly about their lack of representation in the media. Some scholars agree that femininity is undertheorized in the current literature,[56] but there

are some definitions of femininity that have been. Pyke, Johnson, and Schippers use the term hegemonic femininity while Connell chooses the term emphasized femininity to describe what is usually equated with white, heterosexual, middle-class women.[57] Pyke and Johnson, however, conceptualize hegemonic femininity in an entirely different way than Schippers. Subordinate(d) or pariah femininities are femininities associated with sexually transgressive women, such as lesbian, bisexual, and nonmonogamous women.[58] Marginalized femininities are femininities associated with women of color or poor or working-class women.[59] Using either theoretical terminology, Asian American women are either the “de- emphasized” or “marginalized” femininity. Asian American femininity is seen as attractive to men because of the stereotyping as passive or docile, but these stereotypes have different meanings in a hierarchy of women.

Intersections of Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Nationality

“Orientalism” is a useful descriptive term developed by Edward Said to describe white racism against Asians and Asian Americans.[60] He uses the term to describe how whites associate with East with being “static and unfree,” and Western civilization with being “dynamic and free.”[61] Vijay Prashad insists that “Orientalism” is a method that whites use to negatively stereotype Asian Americans as exotic, barbaric, and primitive.[62] Theorists argue that Orientalism is the root of Asian emasculation. It is the ideology

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established during colonialism that the West is the protector of the East.[63] A binary ideology exists which describes the West as “masculine” and the East as “feminine.” Orientalism is Eurocentric in notion and serves to “exoticize” what is seen as Eastern culture in a patronizing way. It works to create difference between East and West with power and dominance being associated with the West. However, Takaki’s historical evidence that Asian American men were initially feared like African and Latino American men complicates this theory. Asian Americans were often seen as “shifty,” “untrustworthy,” and “filthy,” but even as early immigrants they were classified as “intelligent” compared to other people of color.[64] This early “model minority” stereotyping was not dominant in the discourse. World War II played a pivotal role in launching the “model minority” stereotype into mainstream discourse.[65] Japanese Americans were seen as a threat to national security and the response of the interned Nisei[66] generation was a systematic attempt to combat future racial assaults by pushing their Sansei children to do well in school. A dramatic shift in discourse can be traced to the relative financial and academic success of Asian Americans during this time period after World War II. [67] As a threat to white power and privilege by these “model minorities” became seemingly more realistic, the stereotypes of Asian American men as hypersexual, violent, and dangerous seemed to subside. Gender, race, and class intersect in a unique way.[68] The white racist structure has had

effects on the class mobility and divisions of labor for African American men and women.[69] Similarly, Asian Americans have faced specific labor barriers that have been gendered.[70] The historical and contemporary oppression of Asians in the United States has (re)structured the balance of power between Asian American women and men.[71] Race, gender, and class, as categories of difference, are not parallel to but intersect with and confirm one another. Joane Nagel contends that sex is a core element of “race, ethnicity, and the nation, and that

race, ethnicity, and nationalism are crucial components of sexual and moral boundaries and systems.”[72] Where Feagin identifies racist images as a key component in the white racial frame, Nagel adds that sexual images and stereotypes are imbedded in ethnic images and stereotypes.[73] There is also an emotional aspect to ethnosexuality. Nagel asserts, “Sexual fears and loathing are endemic to racial terror and hatred.” Similar to Feagin’s conception of the white racial frame, strong emotive reactions from whites fearing the sexuality of people of color is fundamentally tied to racial domination. This white fear, especially of Asian American men, becomes apparent through participant narratives in later chapters. Intersectional scholars have argued that oppressions of race, class, gender, sexuality, and

nation are interconnected; black women have often been restricted because of external definitions of black womanhood expressed through controlling images, and black women have created worldviews out of a need for self-definition and to work on behalf of social justice. [74] I extend these points to Asian Americans. Theorizing the intersection of race and gender is a complex task. Intersectional paradigms view race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and age, among others, as mutually constructing systems of power. Because these systems permeate all social relations, untangling their effects in any given situation or for any given population remains difficult.[75]

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Patricia Hill Collins suggests that because of intersecting identities, African American women and men are engaged in unique “Black sexual politics.” These politics are defined

as a set of ideas and social practices shaped by gender, race, and sexuality that frame all men and women’s treatment of one another, as well as how individual men and women are perceived and treated by others. Because African Americans have been so profoundly affected by racism, grappling with racism occupies a prominent place within Black sexual politics.[76]

Similarly, Asian Americans have been affected by racism. The affects of this racism remain relatively invisible in the dominant racial discourse, even among academics.[77] Collins contends that “such politics lie at the heart of beliefs about Black masculinity and Black femininity, of gender-specific experiences of African Americans, and of forms that the new racism takes in the post-civil rights era.”[78] As demonstrated by my respondents, gender- specific experiences are a reality for Asian Americans in this now “post-racial” society four decades after the civil rights movement. Race, class, and gender intersect and affect the lives of African American men and women

in many different ways, but with similarly oppressive results.[79] A narrow sexual politics based on American ideas, ideals of masculinity and femininity, and the appropriate expression of sexuality work to repress gay and straight, male and female.[80] The hegemonic racial and gender ideologies repress Asian Americans, but there are diasporic factors to consider that differ from the African American experience. Colonialism and Orientalism have a unique effect on the construction of Asian American gender and sexuality. Hung Cam Thai’s work in For Better or for Worse demonstrates the complicated nature racist relations can have on a global transnational scale.[81] While Vietnamese American men may face obstacles being viewed as “unmarriageable” in the United States because of the way class intersects race, their “Americanness” is a commodity for them in Vietnam.[82] The Westernization of these men appeals to women in Vietnam, and the men improve their social standing and regain a sense of dignity by finding a bride.[83] This convertibility of social capital was evident for some of my respondents as well, even if they were high wage earners in the United States. The constructions of Asian masculinity often put them in the lower rungs of the male hierarchy so that it was “easier” for them to find partners that were less Americanized; specifically, they either sought out their wives in Asian countries or married very recent immigrants to the United States. Intersectional paradigms are important to understanding intersectionality because they

stimulate new interpretations of experiences of various identities working simultaneously. They untangle relationships between knowledge and empowerment because they shed new light on how domination is organized.[84] Collins utilizes the concept of a “matrix of domination” to better address the analytical dilemma raised by intersecting identities. Collins’s matrix is a mechanism to explain how power and dominance work structurally in intersecting systems. Collins states, “All contexts of domination incorporate some combination of intersecting oppressions, and considerable variability exists from one matrix of domination to the next as to how oppression and activism will be organized.”[85] However, while there is variability from one matrix to another, they all share common elements. They all have at work

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the same four “domains of power”: structural, disciplinary, hegemonic, and interpersonal. The structural domain of power “encompasses how social institutions are organized to

reproduce Black women’s subordination over time. One characteristic feature of this domain is its emphasis on large-scale, interlocking social institutions.”[86] This domain of power includes institutions such as the legal system, labor markets, housing, and banking. African American women will have a different experience with these institutions than white women or black men. Similarly, Asian American women will have different experiences than white women or Asian American men. The hegemonic domain of power deals with “ideology, culture, and consciousness.”[87] In

order for hegemony to operate, coercive force must become consensual by controlling ideology and making the thoughts, feelings and values of the dominant group appear to be “common sense.”[88] The hegemonic domain of power dangerously reinforces the form of power, structural and disciplinary, because it “aims to justify the practices in these domains of power” without force.[89] Collins contends, “By manipulating ideology and culture, the hegemonic domain acts as a link between social institution (structural domain), their organizational practices (disciplinary domain), and the level of everyday social interaction (interpersonal domain). . . . In the United States, hegemonic ideologies concerning race, class, gender, sexuality, and nation are often so pervasive that it is difficult to conceptualize alternatives to them.”[90] Media play a major role in the dissemination of hegemonic ideals, normalizing them. The interpersonal domain of power is the place where an individual finds a microlevel of agency. Resistance to the other domains of power comes from this interpersonal domain. The resistance can take various forms, not just widespread political action, but also in the day- to-day practices of creating new self-definition. Collins’s assertion of the universality of the four domains of power allows for all

standpoints to be recognized and evaluated in social science research. The matrix acknowledges the situatedness of individuals living in complex intersecting social structures. Collins also accounts for the transformative and mutating nature of oppression. She asserts “because oppression is constantly changing, different aspects of an individual U.S. Black woman’s self-definitions intermingle and become more salient: Her gender may be more prominent when she becomes a mother, her race when she searches for housing.”[91] This is true for other marginalized people as well. The salience of an identity may change over time and place, but the focus remains on the position of power and dominance. Collins’s matrix of domination extends earlier feminist standpoint epistemology to incorporate intersectionality. Collins argues that African American men and women have unique sexual politics because

of their particular situatedness in U.S. history. Similarly, Asian Americans have also experienced a unique history where immigration, land laws, and labor laws had an effect on gender relations.[92] Asian Americans also have a different relationship to nationhood in the United States compared to whites and African Americans because they face continual struggles with being perceived as foreign.[93] This can cause of clash of ideologies with the dominant “white racial” frame and “home-culture” frames. David Eng argues that racial analysis of Asian Americans is inadequate without the

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consideration of how their sexuality has been constructed.[94] Eng’s point becomes clearly apparent with the unique experience of my respondent narratives. Asian American men face a particular placement on a gendered hierarchy and deal with battles against hegemonic masculinity that operate differently than masculinity has for their Latino or African American male counterparts. Asian American women also have different perspectives and life experiences than white women and other women of color.[95] While Asian American men and women may share similar experiences facing white hegemony, their gender identity may cause differences in how that racism manifests.

THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF ASIAN AMERICAN GENDER AND SEXUALITY: 1800S TO WORLD WAR II

While there is a record of Asians in the United States dating back to the late 1700s, the first sizeable groups did not immigrate to the U.S. and its territories until the 1850s. In Hawaii, laborers were needed to work on sugar plantations; Chinese men filled that role. Chinese labor was also used for mining during the gold rush in California, with 20,000 individuals entering the United States in 1852 alone. Other Asian laborers were coming from nations including Korea, the Philippines, Japan, and India. Chan asserts, “Although these five Asian groups came under different sets of circumstances all were recruited as workers by U.S. capitalists to meet the need for inexpensive and manipulable labor in the still-developing U.S. capitalist economy.”[96] The growing strength of the United States as a nation was dependent on the stolen land of indigenous people and the free and cheap labor of people of color. Asians fulfilled the same labor needs as Africans had on plantations. The interests of the white elites who ruled the nation were to continue to find cheap labor. Asian immigration was restricted because white ruling elites had no interest in having them become citizens; it was about capitalist exploitation that was racialized in nature. Seen as laborers, not as humans, the policies in place to restrict families, more specifically

the entrance of women and children, had a profound effect on the Asian men that entered the country. Asian men had no kinship networks and no access to intimate heterosexual partners. These men formed “bachelor societies,” creating friendships with other men as replacement families and kinship networks. Since there were no women in these arrangements to do domestic, reproductive labor, these men learned to cook and do dishes and laundry. The homosocial elements of the bachelor communities and the domestic practices of men living in them had an emasculating effect on the racial discourse. During this time, there was a small population of Asian immigrant women, but the majority

worked as prostitutes.[97] In 1870, women made up 7.2 percent of Chinese immigrants.[98] There was fear that Chinese prostitutes would bring in “especially virulent strains of venereal diseases, introduce opium addition, and entice young white boys to a life of sin.”[99] The Page Act was introduced to decrease the number of women because they were assumed to be amoral, disease-carrying prostitutes. Once this law was enacted in 1875, the sex ratio among Chinese immigrants became even more skewed, reaching its peak in 1890 at a rate of 27 men

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to 1 woman. There were similar trends in sex ratios for Asian Indian, Korean, Filipino, and Japanese Americans.[100] Donald Goellnicht suggests that the targeted exclusion of Chinese women was a “deliberate agenda by mainstream (white) culture to “prevent any increase in the Chinese American population and to undermine the virility of Chinese and Chinese American men.”[101] The law was used as a mechanism to control the sexuality of Asian American men. Asian

men were constructed as impotent and their women as “whores.” Controlling sexuality and creating controlling images of Asians in the United States reifies white supremacy, and these images become embedded into the white racial frame.[102] These images are both racialized and gendered; thus, hegemonic masculinity is also reinforced. The U.S. government (namely the white actors who ran it) played a central role in creating an environment of state-controlled sexuality for Asian Americans. The laws determined whether and with whom Asian American men could have heterosexual relationships. In some states, antimiscegenation laws made it impossible for Asian men to marry white women. Thus, Asian men had to create their kinships with each other; “institutionally barred from normative (hetero)sexual reproduction and nuclear family formations,” many of these Chinese men had to “sustain themselves in a hostile society, often by redefining and extending the concept of “family” to include new forms of “queer domesticity.”[103] With small numbers, single Chinese women in the United States became highly prized and

were thus empowered with some bargaining tools to pick the most financially sound bachelors. Chinese women who were sex workers received offers of marriage, which allowed them to escape their exploitative work for the chance of matrimony and raising a family.[104] Men who were married before immigrating had the responsibility of sending back wages to

their families overseas. The restrictive immigration laws in the United States were impacting couples and families transnationally, and “split households” left women in Asia caring for their families without the help of their husbands. Espiritu asserts, “The split-household arrangement, enforced and maintained by racist and gendered U.S. immigration policies, made possible the maximum exploitation of male workers.”[105] The Asian male workers could be bought cheaply, and they were obligated to support families overseas. As they toiled in mines and laid railroad tracks, their wives were raising the next generation of laborers, many of whom would work in the United States. While Asian men in the United States were being exploited for their labor, they were facing contradictory stereotyping. On the one hand, they were painted as ruthless, hypersexed, violent, and dangerous with strong appetites for white women.[106] Media warned of the “Yellow Peril,” worried that the “shifty” Asian man may attack at any moment. The Chinese became so detested that the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed in 1882 and the Gentlemen’s Agreement with Japan served a similar purpose. On the other hand, at the opposite end of the spectrum, racist and sexist legislative moves were creating new stereotypes of Asian American men as impotent and asexual. Asian women in the United States, although exploited as sex workers, were gaining some independence from the disproportionate sex ratios. Asian men were constructed in the media as hypersexual and threatening to white women

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roughly from 1850 to 1940.[107] But the restrictive labor market limited types of work available to Asian American men that were often “feminized” types of employment.[108] For example, Chinese “houseboys” became symbols of the upper class in San Francisco.[109] The “houseboy” labor further feminized the Asian male laborers as they performed “women’s work.”[110] Asian men working in the domestic realm were also of Korean, Filipino, and Japanese descent. The emasculating process became cyclical as domestic labor put Asian and Asian American men in subordinate positions to both white men and white women. White women who lived in households that could afford a “houseboy” would then exercise power over him as her servant, compounding the emasculating effects.

THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF ASIAN AMERICAN GENDER AND SEXUALITY: WORLD WAR II TO THE PRESENT

A more obvious change in the lives of Japanese Americans during World War II was wartime internment. Japanese Americans experienced unique racialized oppression and shifts in gender relations during internment. Relative to Japanese Americans, other Asian American groups saw somewhat improved lives, specifically with access to education and new work opportunities in manufacturing and professional arenas.[111] Despite different experiences among Asian American groups during the war and immediately after the war, all Asian Americans faced similar imposed racial and gendered stereotyping. The incarceration of Japanese Americans began almost immediately after the bombing of

Pearl Harbor. Executive Order 9066 had been signed, and 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry were placed into concentration camps. The camps caused great disruption of the family structure. The male patriarchal figure in the Japanese American households lost authority over his wife and children.[112] Women did not have to cook and clean up meals because the meals were prepared communally and there was rarely running water or cooking facilities. This allowed women to spend time independent of men, enhancing their friendship networks and being involved in adult education classes and other activities. The Nisei[113] began to spend time with peers as opposed to their own families. Many Nisei were sent away from internment camps to finish their college educations in the Midwest and East. This was significant because 40 percent of the relocated students were women. Women’s newfound independence was one major shift in the gender structure for Japanese

Americans at the cost of family structure and Issei men’s manhood. The Nisei men suffered as well with high rates of alcohol abuse, and 40 percent did not reach the age of fifty-five.[114] The loss of prime farmland worsened the situation after internment. Fathers could not pass on their land to their sons, and Issei men and women who had previously owned successful farms or businesses were relegated to toiling in service work. Men worked “as gardeners, janitors, kitchen helpers, and handymen; their wives as domestic servants, garment workers, and cannery workers.”[115] The Nisei, who had greater educational opportunities than their parents, still struggled with postwar anti-Japanese sentiment. They faced difficulty entering the workforce of their choice. Internment proved to further emasculate Japanese American men.

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While Japanese Americans faced overt racial discrimination, people of Chinese, Korean, Filipino, and Asian Indian ancestry experienced a relatively different treatment. Their countries of origin were U.S. allies; so many men and some women joined the World War II military effort, which “dramatically changed American public attitudes toward these groups.”[116] There was also a great need for labor in manufacturing that allowed Asian American men and women to get higher-salaried jobs than their service industry work.[117] Nevertheless, these better wages were still not on par with white workers’; Asian American women remained the lowest paid of the bunch. Even with lower wages relative to their white counterparts, the earnings from World War II manufacturing sparked the beginning of an Asian American middle class. World War II was the beginning of a long string of wars with countries in Asia. As a result, a

large population of “war brides” immigrated to the United States. Many Chinese Americans serving during World War II were eligible for citizenship. These men were also allowed to bring over wives with the passage of the War Brides Act of 1945. Women made up 89 percent of Chinese immigrants to the United States from 1945 to 1953. This was also the trend for many other Asian Americans, creating more gender parity. However, this immigration of Asian women to the United States was not without problems. The U.S. immigration service commonly detained Asian, mostly Chinese, women who were the wives of Chinese American husbands because they were assumed to be prostitutes.[118] The racial stereotyping of these women was taken directly from images from the white racial frame. With the influx of these women, there was a Chinese American baby boom. Patriarchal Chinese culture promotes a dominant ideology that prefers sons to daughters; thus, the young women of the second generation

also had to combat sexist stereotypes of Asian American women, particularly the image of the sexy, submissive prostitute popularized by Nancy Kwan in the 1960 film The World of Suzie Wong. Besieged by mass media images that constructed and reinforced U.S. standards of beauty as “blond, blue eyed, and big breasted,” young Chinese American women of the 1950s received a message of inferiority from the larger society as strong as that which they received at home.[119]

Within Chinese American households, and many other Asian American groups, gender scales tipped in favor of men. Outside the home, these women continued to face sexually exploitative and controlling images stemming from the white racial frame, further supporting white supremacy and hegemonic masculinity. Women were painted as perpetually sexually available to white men while Asian American men were constructed as castrated or impotent, which further reified the hierarchical racial and gender structures. From 1952 to the present, a split-immigration pattern has caused an ethnic and class

bifurcation of Asian Americans. A mass “intellectual migration” began in the 1950s, bringing highly educated and skilled middle- to upper-class East and South Asians to the United States for work in professional industries. East and South Asian Americans are often deemed “model minorities” and have higher household incomes than all other racial groups, including whites. For these more successful Asian Americans, patriarchal authority is challenged, but there is greater equity division of labor in the home with both spouses working in highly skilled jobs or

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owning their own businesses. Although there is more independence for women in these homes, they still do more of the domestic labor. Among Asians immigrating as refugees, a high concentration of which come from Southeast

Asia, the men have a greater loss of status. They do not have the same educational background, skill set, or access to resources.[120] With the ability to exploit female Asian labor because it is cheaper than male labor, capital interest further disrupts the family structure and gender relations in these homes. The lack of employability of lower-classed Asian American men further complicates the sexual politics of Asian Americans. While I have given much historical evidence of structural factors that have shaped the racialized and gendered lives of Asian Americans, these institutionalized practices also affect ideology. One aspect of the white racial frame is the ability for it to create alienating social relationships.[121] Through racist and sexist laws and practices, Asian Americans experience not only alienating relationships in relation to other racial groups but within their own relationships as men and women. White anti-Asian sentiment has persisted since early colonial conquests. The historical

background I provide denotes a pattern of policies by white lawmakers targeting various Asians in the United States. While these policies were targeting specific ethnic groups, they intersect with the constructed racial category “Asian American” and consequently provide new gendered and sexualized meanings. Policies that at first glance affect laborers did much more to shape and reshape families, bodies, and the gendered hierarchy. As seen with other Americans of color, policies and practices that are racialized, such as slavery, can have profound, long-lasting effects not only on individuals but on couples, families, and communities.

OVERVIEW

There is great variation within masculinity and femininity, even though the mainstream media often presents a narrowly defined hegemonic ideal. Any variation from the white, middle- upper-class, heterosexual standards occupy subordinate positions of interlocking social hierarchies. Race intersects these constructions of genders. For Asian Americans this is further complicated by the various ethnicities that are incorporated under the umbrella term. Asian American masculinity and femininity are also quite varied. There are many different stereotypes of Asian American men and women based on perceived country of origin, class, education, religion, and sexuality. There are also variations in terms of physical body—that is, height, weight, and skin tone. I do not contend that this is a completely exhaustive volume addressing all the variations. This work is an introduction to the conversation about Asian American gender and sexuality and how it is shaped by white racial ideology. Coupled with white racial ideology and controlling media images, all Asian Americans face

a reality of imposed stereotyping regardless of nation of ancestry, class, sexuality, or gender. In film, “Asian males yield to the sexual superiority of the white males who are permitted filmically to maintain their sexual dominance over both white women and women of color.”[122] This is eerily parallel to the social reality of Asian American men. Among all

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other races and genders, Asian American women have the highest outmarriage rates. The majority of Asian American women who outmarry have white male partners.[123] There is a strained relationship between Asian American women and men as the media construct and portray the men as the most undesirable and incapable sexual partners. Western film and literature constructs Asian women in a dichotomous fashion, as either the

cunning “Dragon Lady” or a servile “Lotus Blossom.”[124] Both of these constructions erotize Asian women, while Asian men are simultaneously “castrated” or denied manhood.[125] These omnipresent controlling images in the media exacerbate the oriental fetishism that Asian and Asian American women face.[126] Controlling images affecting both Asian American men and women exist “to define the white man’s virility and the white man’s superiority.”[127] At the core of this imaging is hegemonic whiteness and masculinity. Defining white male virility and superiority through demeaning images of Asian Americans is essential in retaining white supremacy. These images are not contemporary inventions of Hollywood. In the United States, Asian Americans have faced 150 years of imposed identities through racialized and gendered projects. My hope is that through my participant narratives, we may begin to understand how these sociohistorical exercises of white supremacy may be affecting Asian American men and women today.

Chapters

In chapter 2, I introduce my key concepts and highlight the presence of the home-culture frames in the lives of my respondents. For first-generation Asian Americans, the “home-culture” frames play a central role in how gender and sexuality are constructed in their lives. For second-generation Asian Americans, the lessons from their parents may conflict with the white racial frame and definitions of Western masculinity, femininity, and sexuality. Subsequent generations of Asian Americans must negotiate the meanings of ethnic, racial, gender, and sexual identity. In chapter 3, I focus primarily on messages my respondents received from external forces, in

school, from peer groups, and in the media. Their narratives show how the white racial frame is used as a policing tool for racialized gender and sexuality. With the use of respondent narratives, I detail how Asian American masculinity and femininity is constructed and how it operates in a racial hierarchy. The male respondents share experiences that highlight how “racial castration” occurs in the socialization of Asian American men. Constructions of gender and sexuality are sometimes at odds with their “home-culture” frames and can leave lasting impressions on how they should act as boys and girls. A clear theme emerged in regard to masculinity; a hegemonic white ideology of masculinity was prevalent and pervasive. Respondents detail ways in which they were pressured or influenced to meet certain gendered racialized or sexualized expectations. Questions addressed in this chapter are: What methods are used to enforce these gendered and racialized stereotypes? How does gender socialization push Asian Americans into an intersected racial hierarchy? How are the experiences of men and women different? Chapter 4 addresses the short- and long-term consequences of gendered and sexualized

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racist treatment for Asian American women. I analyze narratives that discuss how intersected racial and gender identity affects self-image and self-esteem. The women share their experiences as ethnosexualized beings, dealing with exotification and fetishism. Asian American women are met with an exotification and orientalization as sexual bodies but do not face the threat of physical bullying like their male counterparts. The women discuss psychological and emotional well-being relative to racial and gender identities. Respondents discuss how femininity has specifically been shaped by racial identity. Chapter 5 details how the gendered and sexualized racialization process and racial

castration has impacted Asian American men. Violence is a prevalent theme in gendered and racial formation. Asian American men begin as targets of violence and sometimes become perpetrators. In their own words, Asian American male respondents detail how they have internalized messages about their own physical attractiveness or lack thereof. Respondents address issues of self-image and dating. Male respondents make statements such as, “We're the ugly ones, and our women are hot,” and, “I might as well not have a penis.” Gay respondents discuss facing similar difficulties with emasculation in gay spaces. When these Asian American men resist their emasculating racism, it often mimics the hegemonic masculine image of powerful white male counterparts. They immerse themselves in activities such as sports to increase physical strength and join and create all-Asian groups, like fraternities, to create support networks. Chapter 6 explores sexual and romantic relationships and examines the dynamics of Asian

American intraracial and interracial relationships. Respondents balance messages from their families and external forces. There is a hierarchy of partners based on race, ethnicity, class, and gender. Respondents discuss relationship hardship and success. I summarize my findings and discuss their implications, drawing larger conclusions about how race and gender operate in the lives of Asian Americans. Chapter 7 addresses the question, “What now?” In this chapter I share resistance strategies

my respondents use to confront racism, sexism, and homophobia in their daily lives and offer additional strategies. Many of my respondents lacked guidance from family, friends, or their community on how to cope with discrimination. Chapter 7 will hopefully be thought-provoking and facilitate discussions about race, racism, and how it relates to other systems of oppression. In greater detail, I conclude by offering both individual and structural-level strategies to cope with and combat racism and sexism. There has been exceptional scholarship on Asians and Asian Americans regarding, race,

ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. I am writing this book to extend the scope of existing work and to give an opportunity for Asian Americans to feel validated in their experiences and for others to be enlightened. This is part of the process of recovery and discovery. This is for individuals to share their experiences and for us to continue our conversations about oppression and how Asian Americans can simultaneously be a target group of oppression and can play a role in maintaining the racial status quo. This book aims to critique white supremacy and colonialism and to comment on the collision of these social forces with the unique Asian American experience.

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I posed the question “why should we study Asian American sexual politics” earlier in this chapter, and when I first embarked on my research I did not have the answer. This project was born out of my first book in which I focused primarily on racial and ethnic experiences. Interview after interview, I found my respondents talking about their racialized experiences, but they were simultaneously gendered and sexualized. The Asian American men could not talk about racist incidents without the experience also being about challenges regarding their “manhood” and masculinity. Similarly, the Asian American women had experiences unique to their intersecting identities. With issues of gender and sexuality emerging throughout the data collection process, I realized I could no longer ignore them. This is just a brief look, shaped by time and place, into the lives of sixty Asian Americans, and I hope that scholars continue to examine this subject matter to reveal the stories that are waiting to be uncovered.

NOTES

1. Alex Tizon, “Rapists Bet on Victims’ Silence—and Lose,” Seattle Times, May 31, 2001. 2. Tizon, “Rapists Bet.” 3. Tizon, “Rapists Bet.” 4. Steven Herbert, “Viewership for ‘Idol’ Finale Highest in 3 Years,” Orange County Register, June 1, 2011. 5. Patricia Hill Collins, Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism (New York: Routledge, 2005). 6. Collins, Black Sexual Politics. 7. Collins, Black Sexual Politics. 8. Mia Tuan, Forever Foreigners or Honorary Whites? The Asian Ethnic Experience (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003). 9. Sarah Harding, “Your Pheromones Are So Hot: A Study of Sexual Attraction,” Serendip, Bryn Mawr University,http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/357, accessed May 21, 2011. 10. Kari Grammar, Bernhard Fink, and Nick Neave, “Human Pheromones and Sexual Attraction,”European Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Reproductive Biology 118, no. 2 (2005): 135–42. 11. David I. Perret et al., “Symmetry and Human Facial Attractiveness,” Evolution and Human Behavior 20, no. 5 (1999): 295–307. 12. Barnaby J. Dixson et al., “Eye-Tracking of Men’s Preferences for Waist-to-Hip Ratio and Breast Size of Women,” Archives of Sexual Behavior 40, no. 1 (2011): 43–50. 13. Tufuku Zuberi and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, White Logic, White Methods: Racism and Methodology, (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008). 14. Stephen Jay Gould. The Mismeasure of Man, rev. and expanded ed. (New York: Norton, 1996). 15. Kenneth Clark and Mamie Clark, “Racial Identification and Preference in Negro Children,” in Readings in Social Psychology, ed. T. M. Newcomb and E. L. Hartley (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1947); Kenneth Clark, Prejudice and Your Child (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1988). 16. Kristen Lee, Simon Ho, and Rosalind Chou, “The Myth of the Model University” (unpublished paper, 2011). 17. Hegemonic masculinity—equated here with white, heterosexual middle-class men—refers to those who inhabit the positions of authority in society; it varies across societies and depends on external and internal hegemony. From Anthony Chen, “Lives at the Center of the Periphery, Lives at the Periphery of the Center: Chinese American Masculinities and Bargaining with Hegemony,” Gender and Society 13, no. 5 (1999): 584–607. 18. Joe R. Feagin, The White Racial Frame: Centuries of Racial Framing and Counter-Framing (New York: Routledge,

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2009). 19. I use the umbrella term “Asian Americans” to describe my respondents, while acknowledging that the term does not fully embrace the diversity of the population. I use it to describe respondents from East, Southeast, and South Asia. I also have a few respondents from Pacific Islands such as the Philippines. 20. We have lightly edited the interview quotes for grammar, stutter words (“you know”), and clarity. Pseudonyms are given to all respondents to conceal their identity, and some details have been omitted or disguised in the quotes from interviews to increase the anonymity of participants. 21. The interviews were conducted from 2005 to 2010. 22. Sandra Harding, “Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology: What Is ‘Strong Objectivity’?” in Feminist Epistemologies, ed. Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter (New York: Routledge, 1992). 23. Harding, “Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology.” 24. Hélène Cixous, “Laugh of Medusa,” in French Feminism Reader, ed. Kelly Oliver (New York: Routledge, 2000). 25. Harding, “Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology,” 56. 26. Harding, “Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology,” 56. 27. Cixous, “Laugh of Medusa.” 28. Harding, “Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology,” 74. 29. Michael Burawoy, “The Extended Case Method,” in Ethnography Unbound, edited by M. Burawoy, A. Burton, A. A. Ferguson, K. J. Fox, J. Gamson, N. Gartrell, L. Hurst, C. Kurzman, L. Salzinger, J. Schiffman, & S. Ui, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 271-287; “The Extended Case Method.” Sociological Theory (16(1) 1998), 4-33. 30. Michael Burawoy, “The Extended Case Method,” in Ethnography Unbound, edited by M. Burawoy, A. Burton, A. A. Ferguson, K. J. Fox, J. Gamson, N. Gartrell, L. Hurst, C. Kurzman, L. Salzinger, J. Schiffman, & S. Ui, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 271-287; “The Extended Case Method.” Sociological Theory (16(1) 1998), 4-33. 31. The main ideas explaining the use of extended case method are attributed to the work of Jennifer Mueller. 32. Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1980s, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 1994). 33. Judith Lorber, Gender Inequality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). 34. Lorber, Gender Equality. The terms homosexuality, heterosexuality, and bisexuality are used when referring to sexuality. I also use the term queer if respondents self-identify in that manner. 35. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1 (New York: Vintage Press, 1984). 36. Jeffrey Weeks, “The Construction of Homosexuality,” in Queer Theory/ Sociology, ed. Steven Seidman (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1996), 41–63. 37. In this and later sections I draw on Joe R. Feagin, Systemic Racism: A Theory of Oppression (New York: Routledge, 2006), 1–45 and 290–9, and on Joe R. Feagin and Clairece B. Feagin, Racial and Ethnic Relations, 8th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2008), chapters 10–11. 38. Feagin, The White Racial Frame. 39. Rosalind S. Chou and Joe R. Feagin, The Myth of the Model Minority: Asian Americans Facing Racism, (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2008). 40. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Carla Goar, and David G. Embrick, “When Whites Flock Together: The Social Psychology of White Habitus,” Critical Sociology 32, nos. 2–3 (2006): 229–53. 41. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), 104. 42. Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists. 43. These terms are theoretical concepts from Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and Patricia Hill Collins that refer to the ever-changing nature of racism and how it has become more covertly hidden in society. 44. Ian F. Haney López, White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (New York: New York University Press, 1996). 45. Much of the emasculation in the media of Asian American men is focused specifically on men of East Asian descent.

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South Asian men, especially after September 11, 2001, have been constructed more closely to Arab or Middle Eastern men. Southeast Asian men are less prevalent in the media, and when they are present, they are associated with military conflicts in Southeast Asia or constructed similarly to men of color or working-class white uneducated men involved in crime. However, my respondents vary in Asian region of origin, and many of the South Asian, Pacific Islander, and Southeast Asian men share similar experiences with men of East Asian descent. Asian American women also have variations in gendered and racialized stereotyping by geographic region, immigration status, and class. These variations are further explained in subsequent chapters of this book. Please see chapters 4 and 5. 46. Dana Y. Takagi, “Homophobia: Why Bring It Up?” in The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, ed. Henry Abelove, Michele Aina Barale, and David M. Halperin (New York: Routledge, 1996), 99–102. 47. Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists. 48. Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore (Boston: Back Bay, 1998), 217. 49. Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore. 50. Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore. 51. Frank Wu, Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003). 52. Feagin, Systemic Racism. 53. Yen Le Espiritu, Asian American Women and Men: Labor, Laws, and Love. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008). 54. Espiritu, Asian American Women and Men. 55. Sheridan Prasso, The Asian Mystique: Dragon Ladies, Geisha Girls and Our Fantasies of the Exotic Orient (Cambridge, MA: Public Affairs Books, 2006). 56. R. W. Connell and James W. Messerschmidt, “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept,” Gender and Society 19, no. 6 (2005): 829–59; Karen Pyke and Denise Johnson, “Asian American Women and Racialized Femininities: ‘Doing’ Gender across Cultural Worlds,” Gender and Society 17 (2003): 33–53; Mimi Schippers, “Recovering the Feminine Other: Masculinity, Femininity, and Gender Hegemony,” Theory and Society 36, no. 1 (2007): 85–102. 57. Connell and Messerschmidt, “Hegemonic Masculinity”; Pyke and Johnson, “Asian American Women”; Schippers, “Recovering the Feminine Other.” 58. Schippers, “Recovering the Feminine Other.” 59. Schippers, “Recovering the Feminine Other.” 60. Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Press, 1978). 61. Said, Orientalism. 62. Vijay Prashad, The Karma of Brown Folk (Twin Cities: University of Minnesota Press, 2003). 63. Said, Orientalism; Shahnaz Khan, “Reconfiguring the Native Informant: Positionality in the Global Age,” in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 30, no. 4 (2005): 2017–37. 64. Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore. 65. Chou and Feagin, Myth of the Model Minority. 66. First-generation Japanese Americans are Issei, second-generation are Nisei, and third-generation are Sansei. 67. Janice Tanaka, When You’re Smiling (Janice Tanaka Films, 1999); Chou and Feagin, Myth of the Model Minority. 68. Angela Y. Davis, Women, Race, and Class (New York: Vintage Books, 1983). 69. Davis, Women, Race, and Class. 70. Espiritu, Asian American Women and Men. 71. Espiritu, Asian American Women and Men. 72. Joane Nagel, Race, Ethnicity, and Sexuality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 255. 73. Nagel, Race, Ethnicity, and Sexuality. 74. Collins, Black Sexual Politics. 75. Collins, Black Sexual Politics, 11.

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76. Collins, Black Sexual Politics, 6. 77. Chou and Feagin, Myth of the Model Minority. 78. Collins, Black Sexual Politics, 7. 79. Collins, Black Sexual Politics, 7. 80. Collins, Black Sexual Politics, 7. 81. Hung Cam Thai, For Better or for Worse: Vietnamese International Marriages in the New Global Economy. (Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008). 82. Thai, For Better or for Worse. 83. Thai, For Better or for Worse. 84. Collins, Black Feminist Thought. 85. Collins, Black Feminist Thought. 86. Collins, Black Feminist Thought, 277. 87. Collins, Black Feminist Thought, 284. 88. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, trans. and ed. Q. Hoare and G. N. Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971). 89. Collins, Black Sexual Politics, 284. 90. Collins, Black Sexual Politics, 284. 91. Collins, Black Sexual Politics, 284. 92. Espiritu, Asian American Women and Men; Yen Le Espiritu, “All Men are Not Created Equal: Asian Men in U.S. History” in Men’s Lives, 7th ed., ed. Michael Kimmel and Michael Messner (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2007), 21–29. 93. Claire Jean Kim, Bitter Fruit: The Politics of Black-Korean Conflict in New York City (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003); Tuan, Forever Foreigners or Honorary Whites?; Wu, Yellow. 94. Daniel L. Eng, Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001). 95. Prasso, The Asian Mystique. 96. Sucheng Chan, Asian Americans: An Interpretive History (Boston: Twayne, 1991), 4. 97. Chan, Asian Americans, 20. 98. Gary Y. Okihiro, Margins and Mainstreams: Asians in American History and Culture (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994). 99. Suecheng Chan, “The Exclusion of Chinese Women,” in Entry Denied: Exclusion and the Chinese Community in America, 1882–1943, ed. S. Chan (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991), 138. 100. Bruno Lasker, Filipino Immigration to the United States and to Hawaii (New York: Arno,1969). 101. Donald Goellnicht, “Tang Ao in America: Male Subject Positions in China Men,” in The New Asian Immigration in Los Angeles and Global Restructuring, ed. S. G. Lim and A. Ling (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), 196–226 (specifically pp. 194–95). 102. Feagin, Systemic Racism. 103. Espiritu, Asian American Women and Men, 25. 104. Peggy Pascoe, Relations of Rescue: The Search for Female Authority in the American West, 1874–1939, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). 105. Espiritu, Asian American Women and Men, 33. 106. Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore. 107. William F. Wu, The Yellow Peril: Chinese Americans in American Fiction, 1850–1940 (Hamden, CT: Archon, 1982). 108. Espiritu, Asian American Women and Men, 40.

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109. Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Issei, Nisei, Warbride: Three Generations of Japanese American Women in Domestic Service (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986). 110. Espiritu, Asian American Women and Men, 41. 111. Espiritu, Asian American Women and Men, 41. 112. Espiritu, Asian American Women and Men, 50-51. 113. First-generation Japanese Americans are referred to as Issei, second-generation as Nisei, and third-generation as Sansei. 114. Tanaka, When You’re Smiling. 115. Sylvia J. Yanagisako, “Mixed Metaphors: Native and Anthropological Models of Gender and Kinship Domains,” in Gender and Kinship: Essays toward a Unified Analysis, ed. J. F. Collier and S. J. Yanagisako (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987), 92. 116. Chan, Asian Americans: An Interpretive History, 121. 117. Espiritu, Asian American Women and Men. 118. Espiritu, Asian American Women and Men. 119. Espiritu, Asian American Women and Men. 120. Espiritu, Asian American Women and Men. 121. Feagin, Systemic Racism. 122. Espiritu, Asian American Women and Men, 104. 123. Kumiko Nemoto, “Intimacy, Desire, and the Construction of Self in Relationships between Asian American Woman and White American Men,” Journal of Asian American Studies (February 2006): 27– 54. 124. Benson Tong. Unsubmissive Women: Chinese Prostitutes in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994). 125. Espiritu, Asian American Women and Men; Eng, Racial Castration. 126. Prasso, Asian Mystique. 127. Elaine Kim, “‘Such Opposite Creatures’: Men and Women in Asian American Literature,” Michigan Quarterly Review 29 (1990): 70.

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