#StopAsianHate Racial Stereotypes of Asian Americans and Internalized Trauma

On March 16, 2021 a domestic terrorist killed 8 people, 6 of whom were Asian women, in Atlanta. Let's not mince words here, this was not a "sexual addiction" or the result of a "bad day". This was a targeted attack on Asian women. But this isn't an isolated incident. Hate crimes against all AAPI people have risen, especially after former President Trump referred COVID-19 as the "China Virus" and "Kung Flu" with many pundits, politicians, and people co-opting those derogatory terms. 

From the onset of COVID-19 and we were ordered to wear masks and quarantine, I have seen the micro-aggressions directed toward Asian Americans. The glares from people at AAPI, communicating "this is your fault", "you brought this on us". The way that people would walk on the other side of the street, profiling AAPI as automatic careers of the disease, the same way Black folk are profiled "walking while Black". Some may not be familiar with the term "model minority" but it was a status given to AAPI for their seemingly quick & effective assimilation into America, as a means of pitting Asians against Black & Latinx folk and deny any restorative policies to address generations of Jim Crow. Well if the bloom wasn't off the rose before, it was certainly off in 2020. 

In addition to being the scapegoats for COVID-19, the mass shooting also brought to focus on the fetishization and hyper-sexualization of Asian women in media. Asian women are perceived as docile and subservient, treated as sexual objects as well as trophy wives, dating back to GI's returning from war with Asian wives. For many of a certain generation, is our introduction to interracial relationships. My eldest aunt married a veteran and my cousins are biracial. I would never doubt the sincerity of my uncle's love to my aunt but I can't help but wonder what about my aunt he fell in love with. Was it her individuality or was it her identity? Another legacy of US military interventions in Asia, every city they inhabited became places of prostitution. "Me love you long time" wasn't just a line from Full Metal Jacket, but a very real representation of how Asian women were viewed. 

To this day, I pause whenever a man from a different ethnicity shares their preference for Asian women. My antennas go up and I brace myself for the worst. Love who you love, but what is the motivation? What about Asian women especially appeal to you? Are they seeing these women for who they are or have they caught "Yellow Fever" and internalized a bunch of stereotypes.

Asian men on the other hand caught the short end of the stereotype stick. When the first Chinese immigrants were brought over to America for labor, women weren't allowed to travel. So the men didn't have any one to date. And god forbid White women began dating and mating with Asian men. As a result, Asian men were deemed sexually inferior, or sexually deviant and undesirable. While in college I researched the rates of interracial dating among AAPI and found that Asian men were by far less likely to date interracially than Asian women, especially if they grew up in the US. Even though the data I found was in 2005, I wonder how much has changed since then. Just anecdotally, I'm far more likely to see interracial couples of AAPI women with other men than I am to see the reverse. It makes me wonder, just how much have AAPI women also internalized the negative stereotypes of Asian men?

For the last 2 weeks I've been processing the trauma of the attacks as well as reflecting how stereotypes of AAPI have effected me. The effect that hyper-sexualization of Asian women had one me growing up was that it made me want to be a "protective brother". I wanted them to feel safe & self-expressed around me, and i did that by acting against stereotype. Not only did I not hyper-sexualize them, I couldn't bring myself to see AAPI women as sexual beings at all, which was equally problematic and restrictive. Acting that way, I invariably trapped myself into the stereotype of Asian men as non-sexual. To put it simply, I "friend zoned" myself in order to "protect" my AAPI sisters. The reason I know it wasn't about protection is that that desire to protect Asian women didn't extend universally to all women. I had no problem objectifying and sexually gratifying myself with other ethnicities of women at times. 

It's trendy and sometimes nauseating to say that one is "doing the work". What the "work" looks like for me going forward is really confronting all of my internalized stereotypes as well as addressing the traumas it caused. And the key is in self-expression. Providing a space where my AAPI sisters aren't hyper-sexualized, or de-sexualized as what I did to them, but the acknowledgement of being sexually free beings, taking ownership of their sexuality without being fetishized as "exotic" or other. Recognizing it's just as problematic for me to hold up my AAPI women as wholesome "madonnas" as it is for America to view them as "whores". For me, it's learning to embrace my Asian queens as the beautiful and desirable beings they are, just as I would any other group.