The Harms of the Hypersexualization of East Asian Women in Western Culture

19.06.2023

Ilona Barrero

The patriarchal nation-system has produced multiple mechanisms for the oppression of women, one of the main ones being the hypersexualization of the female experience. This is especially true for East Asian women or women of East Asian descent who have seen their racial and gender identities reduced to mindless sexual stereotypes in the eyes of the West. Whether through the media, Hollywood, or the law, East Asian women are often painted as one-dimensional, eager-to-please caricatures, resulting in harmful perceptions of them by other groups, especially white men^[1]Ma, R. (2021, April 9). The Myth of the Oriental Beauty: The History of the Hypersexualization of Asian Women – Catalyst. The Capsule. … Continue reading. Although East Asian women have a long history of being dehumanized through hypersexualization in the West, acts of hate against them are especially relevant in the post-COVID world. Since the rapid spread of the virus, in early 2020, hate crimes against Asians have spiked^[2]Lee, J. (2022, May 18). Confronting the invisibility of anti-Asian racism. Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/how-we-rise/2022/05/18/confronting-the-invisibility-of-anti-asian-racism/, leaving East Asian women at higher risks of sexual harassment than usual. Furthermore, this paper will explore the research question: How is the hypersexualized view of East Asian women dehumanizing and putting them at higher risk of harassment and violence in Western nations?

U.S Government Condoned Discrimination Against East Asian Women

Culture influences law, and law influences culture. This principle has held true for East Asian women’s experiences of hypersexualization in the West, especially the United States. The United States Congress passed the Page Act of 1875: the nation’s first restrictive immigration law, which prohibited the entry of Chinese women^[3]Mineo, L. (2021, March 24). A long history of bigotry against Asian Americans. Harvard Gazette; Harvard University. … Continue reading. This act essentially banned East Asian women from entering the country because they were seen as prostitutes^[4]Mosley, T., & McMahon, S. (2021, March 22). A Century Of Objectifying Asian Women: How Race Played A Role In Atlanta Shootings. Www.wbur.org. … Continue reading, beginning a long tradition of Asian women being seen as sexually deviant in the eyes of U.S law and culture. The law explicitly stated that the prohibition was due to Chinese women entering the nation for “immoral purposes”^[5]Immigration History. (2019). Page Law (1875) – Immigration History. Immigration History. https://immigrationhistory.org/item/page-act/. Discrimination against these women came from their perceived sexuality; from the false notion that all Chinese women were on some level prostitutes. The concept terrified white Americans, who feared that these women would “corrupt” their society and decrease the white population in the United States by having children with white men^[6]Women & The American History. (n.d.). Page Act, 1875. Women & the American Story. https://wams.nyhistory.org/industry-and-empire/expansion-and-empire/page-act-1875/. Although the act is no longer in place, scholar Courtney Sato argues that the 1875 Page Act “is a precursor to the dehumanizing narratives and tropes that render Asian women as objects of sexual fetishization^[7]Mineo, L. (2021, March 24). A long history of bigotry against Asian Americans. Harvard Gazette; Harvard University. … Continue reading”. Unfortunately, the Page Act is not the only act of racist and sexist legislature passed to oppress and censor Asian immigration into the United States. Many exclusion acts were passed after the latter, and the notion of Asian women migrating into the U.S became a question of constitutionality. Eiku Nishimura attempted to enter the United States in 1891 to reunite with her husband, but she was denied entry when he was not there to pick her up, on the grounds that she was “likely to become a public charge^[8]Chan, S. (2010). 12 Asian American Struggles for Civil, Political, Economic, and Social Rights. In Asian American Studies Now. Rutgers University Press”. Cases such as Nishimura’s are plentiful and exemplify the institutional sexism and racism that East Asian women were subjected to, paving the path for their current struggles.

The events of U.S involvement in the wars in Vietnam (1955-1975) and Korea (1950-1953) and their further representations in the media heavily aggravated the hypersexualized view of East Asian Women in the West. These wars and the presence of white European males in East Asia gave birth to the well-known “submissive Asian woman” stereotype, as many East Asian women were forced to surrender themselves to these men as means of survival^[9]Wen, G. (n.d.). Hyper-Sexualization of Asian American Women History and Future Development. file:///Users/Ilona/Downloads/125977050.pdf more than anything else. This perception of a “Feminine East” remains extremely relevant and harmful today, as many Asian women still suffer harassment and prejudice over these stereotypes. In 1965, 85% of U.S soldiers surveyed reported having been involved with Asian prostitute during the time they served^[10]Wen, G. (n.d.). Hyper-Sexualization of Asian American Women History and Future Development. file:///Users/Ilona/Downloads/125977050.pdf. That is to say that most encounters white men had with Asian women were of a sexual manner, more specifically, a transactional sexual manner. Their perception of East Asian women was severely warped by wartime life, and they brought back the stereotypes of sexual deviancy and submission back to the U.S and Western culture, media, and government. For example, Filipina sex workers working around U.S military bases also report being treated like pigs and objects by U.S soldiers. There is an entire industry of sex work around U.S military bases in Asia, reaffirming the West’s perception of East Asian women as sexual objects^[11]Sunny Woan, White Sexual Imperialism: A Theory of Asian Feminist Jurisprudence, 14 Wash. & Lee J. Civ. Rts. & Soc. Just. 275 (2008).. Furthermore, the violence against East Asian women and men did not end with the wars. After Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor, 120,000 Japanese Americans were forced into internment camps, while refugees from the Vietnam War faced repeated discrimination in the U.S. The juxtaposition of the Page Act of 1875 and the documented sexual violence by U.S and Western troops in East Asia shows the hypocrisy adjacent to the stereotypes East Asian women face. White men racialized gender discrimination by sexualizing East Asian women when it was convenient for them but demonized them when it was no longer so. Hypersexualizing these women is useful to Western men when they need an excuse for sexually predatory behaviour and racist excuses to be violent.

The Role of The Media

Western media and Hollywood have played undeniable roles in the hypersexualization of East Asian women. Hwang and Parreñas argue that there is a large spectrum of sexual stereotypes that East Asian women have been shoved into through movies and television shows. They all generally fall into the “Villainous Temptress” umbrella; some are self- sacrificing and servile to the white man, others are dangerously treacherous to an unguarded white man, and others, especially seen in depictions of Southeast Asian women, are simply constantly suffering from “machine-like sexual drive^[12]Hwang, M. C., & Parreñas, R. S. (2021). The Gendered Racialization of Asian Women as Villainous Temptresses. Gender & Society, 35(4), 567–576. https://doi.org/10.1177/08912432211029395”. Being reduced to mere sexual innuendos brings real life consequences for these women, as they become nothing but punchlines and sexual punching bags for white, racist men. A survey by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media found that 17% of Asian or Pacific Islander Women are verbally objectified in media, and 13% of these are verbally objectified in the top 10 grossing films from 2010-2019^[13]Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media (2021). I am not a Fetish or a Model Minority: Redefining What It Means to Be API In The Entertainment Industry. Moreover, inaccurate representations in the media often reflect real life experiences of East Asian women working in this field. In the entertainment industry, an astounding 80.9% of Asian / Pacific Islanders report having been victims of microaggressions while at work^[14]Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media (2021). I am not a Fetish or a Model Minority: Redefining What It Means to Be API In The Entertainment Industry. Unsurprisingly, 56.1% of these are women, as the study also finds that women were more likely to be victims of belittling and racism. In Hollywood and even Broadway, through plays such as Miss Saigon, East Asian women are portrayed as different faces of the same racialized and hypersexualized coin. The storyline of the play follows a white U.S marine who has a one-night stand with a Vietnamese girl, which results in her pregnancy. The U.S marine flees Vietnam and marries a white woman back home, all while the Vietnamese girl, named Kim, looks for a “strong G.I to protect her”. In the end, when Kim realizes her American lover will never marry her, she commits suicide and leaves her son with the marine and his wife^[15]Sunny Woan, White Sexual Imperialism: A Theory of Asian Feminist Jurisprudence, 14 Wash. & Lee J. Civ. Rts. & Soc. Just. 275 (2008).. Miss Saigon exploits all the harmful stereotypes attributed to East Asian women, and affirms that Asian women’s only desire in life is to be sexually subservient to white men, especially white men in the military. Whichever variation of the stereotype these women are illustrated as, they are always built and developed around the story and needs of a white male protagonist figure, reinforcing the idea that East Asian women live to serve the imperial West, and are not multi-dimensional people of their own. Sexualized depictions of East Asian women are also notoriously present in the pornography industry, leading to even more dangerous depictions of violence marketed as “normal” for them. A study prompted Asian and Pacific Islander women to share their experience via twitter. As thousands of responses poured in, it became a trend for women to receive unwanted sexual attention from white men, going as far as a woman being asked to perform like a porn actress on a fetish site^[16]Azhar, S., Alvarez, A. R. G., Farina, A. S. J., & Klumpner, S. (2021). “You’re So Exotic Looking”: An Intersectional Analysis of Asian American and Pacific Islander Stereotypes. Affilia, … Continue reading. Pornography also perpetuates the aforementioned stereotypes of Asian women, depicting them as sexually submissive but also devious^[17]Myung, R. (2022, June 3). To Call Pornography a Public Health Issue Is Not Enough When it is a Public Health Crisis: A Multi-Survivor Analysis | The Public Health Advocate. Pha.berkeley.edu. … Continue reading. The intersection of racism and sexism is highly present in media representations of East Asian women, and as will be discussed in the next section, these stereotypes cause tangible harm to East Asian women.

The Harms and Effects of Stereotypes

On March 16th, 2021, Robert Aaron Long went on a shooting rampage in a spa in Atlanta, Georgia, and killed 8 people, 6 of whom were Asian women^[18]Graham, R. (2021, March 17). Live Updates: 8 Dead in Atlanta Spa Shootings, With Fears of Anti-Asian Bias. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/03/17/us/shooting-atlanta-acworth. This shooting happened at a time in the United States when Asians were facing skyrocketed rates of hate crimes due to the COVID-19 pandemic, shedding light on the dangers of misinformation and stereotypes. After the shooting, the suspect told police that he suffered from a sex addiction, and the shooting was an attempt to subdue temptations. Long also confessed to frequenting massage parlours (businesses generally associated with East Asian women) in the past and launching attacks as “vengeance^[19]Graham, R. (2021, March 17). Live Updates: 8 Dead in Atlanta Spa Shootings, With Fears of Anti-Asian Bias. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/03/17/us/shooting-atlanta-acworth” . After the government abstained from calling this shooting racial and gendered, Asian communities and scholars spoke out, outraged. The shooter had acted on the constructed image of Asian women as temptresses, and he blamed his own sex addiction on them, which caused 6 women their lives. Stereotypes perpetuated by the U.S armed forces, Hollywood, and Western media cost these women their lives. White men like Robert Aaron Long feed on imperialist views of “Oriental inferiority” and scapegoat East Asian women as the cause of all their problems to excuse their violence against them. The Atlanta spa shootings rekindled conversations about the systematic marginalization and hypersexualization of East Asian women, and how dangerous misconceptions and generalizations about minority groups can be.

The spread of COVID-19 severely worsened the safety of Asian people in the West. Asian people began to be blamed for the spread of the virus and suffered greatly because of this racist notion. Since the pandemic was declared a global health emergency 1 in 6 Asian American citizens reported being victims of hate crimes, a disproportionate amount of those being women^[20]Lee, J. (2022, May 18). Confronting the invisibility of anti-Asian racism. Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/how-we-rise/2022/05/18/confronting-the-invisibility-of-anti-asian-racism/. In a 2021 report published by Stop Asian and Pacific Islander Hate, East Asians especially reported some of the highest hate crime rates in years, with 52.6% of East Asian women reporting verbal harassment, and 9.2% reporting physical harassment^[21]Pillai, D., Yellow Horse, A. J., & Russell Jeung, R. (2021). The Rising Tide of Violence and Discrimination Against Asian American and Pacific Islander Women and Girls. … Continue reading. In 2021, just one year after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were 3800 hate crimes reported against Asian Americans in the United States, with 74% of these being female victims^[22]Yam, K. (2021, March 16). There were 3,800 anti-Asian racist incidents, mostly against women, in the past year. NBC News. … Continue reading. However, hate crimes against Asian women do not only happen in a geographically Western context. In 2014, two Indonesian women were repeatedly raped and tortured by a high-ranking British banker in Hong Kong. Their time of death is unknown, but their bodies were found without life on November 1st of that year. Later, evidence uncovered showed that the murderer had enjoyed their pornographic torture and recorded the events on his smartphone^[23]Hwang, M. C., & Parreñas, R. S. (2021). The Gendered Racialization of Asian Women as Villainous Temptresses. Gender & Society, 35(4), 567–576. https://doi.org/10.1177/08912432211029395. The hypersexualization of East Asian women is not only a plague for those residing in the West. The incident in Hong Kong displays how stereotypes against these women result in violence anywhere, and they are not safe to live in their own countries. Unsurprisingly, there are thousands of stories like this, pre and post COVID-19. Violence against East Asian women in the West has been present for centuries, but rarely talked about because of how normalized it became. Events during the pandemic, such as the Atlanta spa shootings in 2021, shed a new light on the gravity of the issue, and showed how deeply intertwined hypersexualization is with hate and racism against East Asian women, and even Asian people in general.

Aside from harassment, East Asian women in the West faced extreme economic hardship during the pandemic. Asian businesses were hit especially hard during the pandemic, as racism and xenophobia made their customer base dwindle^[24]CNN, H. K. (2021, March 17). Fetishized, sexualized and marginalized, Asian women are uniquely vulnerable to violence. CNN. … Continue reading. Asian women in particular made the highest percentage of long-term unemployed people since December 2020, a number which is both extremely high and non-coincidental. The stories of these women often get lost in the common “model minority stereotype”, where Asians are expected to work in secure high-powered jobs like engineers, lawyers, or doctors. The reality is that many Asian women work in the service industry, one of the sectors most heavily affected by government-mandated lockdowns. Massage parlour workers, beauty salon employees, and hospitality workers are especially at risk because they already face stigma and stereotypes about the nature of their work but are also often migrants^[25]CNN, H. K. (2021, March 17). Fetishized, sexualized and marginalized, Asian women are uniquely vulnerable to violence. CNN. … Continue reading. Their vulnerable migratory status means Asian women also risk deportation, aside from precarious financial situations.

The historical and structural racism against East Asian women has extremely damaging consequences for these women, far beyond being victims of tasteless jokes in the media. 41 to 61 percent of Asian women report experiencing physical and / or sexual violence by an intimate partner during their lifetime. This figure is significantly higher than in any other ethnic group, a result that exemplifies the effect of centuries-long stereotypes which depict East Asian women as sexualized figures who are more often than not involved in prostitution^[26]Asian Pacific Institute on Gender Based Violence. (2017). Statistics on Violence Against API Women – Asian Pacific Institute on Gender Based Violence Website. Asian Pacific Institute on Gender … Continue reading. Asian women have faced violence and sexual harassment because of Western imperialist ventures in their nations, wars which created stereotypes that were imported back into the West and continue to harm women of Asian descent in the West, and in their home countries.

Dismantling Structural Racism and Sexism Through Education

Most of the violence enacted against East Asian women comes from racist misogyny stemming from ignorance. White men are keen to follow the shallow stereotypes of these women to excuse their behaviour, because the media, Hollywood, and even the U.S military has enabled their racism. In order to dismantle racism and sexism that is so entrenched in Western culture, all aspects of civil society need to be summoned to foster real change. Public school curriculums should include units on imperialist Western wars waged in East Asia and how the behaviour of soldiers abroad affected stereotypes of East Asian women in the West. Discussions on how Hollywood perpetuates stereotypes should also be encouraged. At higher levels, the U.S needs to regulate prostitution rings around their bases in East Asia and work conjointly with local governments to provide basic protections for sex workers. The fusion of education with active policies against racism and sexism will greatly benefit young generations who are beginning to be exposed to harmful stereotypes, as they must be equipped to think critically about said stereotypes to think and act beyond them to protect the safety of East Asian women.

The statements in this article are the sole responsibility of the author.

To quote this article: Ilona Barrero (2023). The Harms of the Hypersexualization of East Asian Women in Western Culture. Gender in Geopolitics Institute. https://igg-geo.org/?p=13281&lang=en