Asian American Sexual Politics by Rosalind S. Chou

Author:Rosalind S. Chou
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

CONCLUSION

The narratives in this chapter show that externally imposed meanings of Asian sexuality are often exploitative and coercive. Asian American women are socialized in a world that defines their sexuality, whether they reside in the United States or elsewhere. As a social being, it takes exceptional strength to define oneself without regard to externally imposed definitions. While other communities of color have already laid the groundwork for counter-narratives, Asian Americans have yet to fully develop a strong collective counter-narrative. Collections like Vickie Nam’s Yello-Oh Girls are certainly a step in the right direction. In this chapter, my respondents have demonstrated that there are struggles with self-image, self-esteem, and identity formation because of cultural and familial expectations combined with being ethnosexually defined in another capacity in the United States.

In chapter 5, my male respondents share their racialized and gendered experiences. However, as one of my male respondents, Irwin, noted, there are many more voices of support and scholarly research focusing on the experience of Asian American women. In general, there are many gaps to fill and to understand the Asian American male experience, and these men are underrepresented in scholarly research and literary works. One drastically noticeable difference between the experiences between Asian American men and women is the regular threat of violence that the boys and men experience at the hands of other boys and men. While women experience the violence in a different capacity, like the symbolic violence of self-hatred because of hegemonic beauty standards and the threat of sexual violence, the Asian American men experience those threats in addition to the overt threat of physical violence that is central to the construction of masculinity. Ann notes this experience from high school:

My sophomore year, there was, I realize a guy who was six feet, really heavyset, played football. He picked a fight with one of the Latin American or South American immigrants in the ESL program. He harassed one of them one day, and afterwards a Vietnamese guy told me, “Yeah, Mike’s a racist.” I got paranoid; we were in the same class together, and I never realized it. We always sat on opposite sides of the classroom, but he never said anything to me and then I realized that’s why he never said anything to me. I was like, “Is he gonna do anything to me?” My friend said, “No, no, no. He doesn’t harass girls. You’re a girl, so you’re okay.” I’m like, “Ok, but I’m still Asian.” It didn’t make sense at that time but I was kind of relieved that he would never pick on me because I was a girl. I felt a little threatened but not extremely, where I think my friend felt a little threatened and definitely kept his distance from that guy.

Ann is not free from the psychological threat of violent racism, but in this case her gender seemed to protect her from her classmate’s physical violence. In the next chapter, we see that Asian American men are not as sheltered from male posturing.

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