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GOLDSEA |
ASIAMS.NET |
ASIAN AMERICAN ISSUES
Are AA Women the Real Victims of Prejudice?
sian women get a free ride at the expense of Asian men. That's the received wisdom here in the U.S. This belief appears premised on the suspicion that American society sees Asian women as sexy exotics in need of rescuing from the cold clutches of Asian men who don't know how to smile except evilly.
The real victim?
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Credit Hollywood for its tireless casting of Asian women as sexual accessories to white heroes while suppressing the very existence of Asian men except as unsavory paper tigers. Credit too the TV networks that uncover bevies of talking Asian women but rarely their male counterparts.
In fairness this media fantasy of the Asian race was partly inspired by recent history. Devastated and impoverished Asian nations sent tens of thousands of war brides and orphans, followed by several million desperate immigrants willing to hock their identities while toiling to build new lives.
Male-dominated societies toast new women as exotic sexual prospects while suppressing new men as an exploitable lower class or even enemy aliens. The women get all the breaks and the men get all the lumps. Even worse, the women have their heads turned and adopt a scornful attitude toward their own men. So goes the complaint of some AA men.
The women have a different take. Sexual predators bearing insulting stereotypes must be fended off while coping with women who see them as unfair competitors. Add to that the pain of being scorned as sellouts by AA men for no more reason than their apparent welcome by American society. Worst of all, complain AA women, is being begrudged the right to take simple pleasure in their own identities. How much easier just to face straightforward racial prejudice!
Do Asian women really have an easier time in America? Or do they suffer from the double-whammy of insulting stereotypes from non-Asians and unfair persecution from Asian men?
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WHAT YOU SAY
[This page is closed to new input. --Ed.]
(Updated
Tuesday, Apr 1, 2008, 06:10:54 PM)
This is the last post I will make on Goldsea. Okay, I apologize for the comments I made. I see that they were a little out of line and I apologize if I offended anyone.
me
Saturday, June 08, 2002 at 11:50:18 (PDT)
(A.Domina, you rock! Thanks)
As an AM actor-screenwriter, I find the talk here refreshingly frank and provocative. In daily life so much goes unspoken, so we're each left to decode signals by ourselves, or ignore them entirely, which seems to be the socially-approved state of mind for Americans generally: Denial.
There is a unique disadvantage in "model minority" status. Insofar as it sets us apart from more visibly oppressed minorities, it's a subtle "divide & conquer" caste system strategy. How dare we complain after we've been made "Honorary White People"? (The subtext being, "See, America's not racist, if those Asians can make it, the others have no excuse.")
The media is my chosen battlefield, and after 15 years, I'm a LONG way from satisfied with Hollywood's progress. To me it's the weakest link in the model-minority myth; if you don't keep your blinders on, the mass brainwashing is blatant, and it does translate into social behavior. (The Hong Kong influence doesn't count as AA progress; if anything, FOB actors only help AA actors get more kung-fu/gangster work. That's all we need, thanks!)
For ex., most of us would not deny that AFs get much more attention than AMs as objects of desire (except among gay men, but that's not really helpful). It appears to me that women generally are conditioned to prefer the highest-status male (the type varies from country to country, but here it's the tall rich white man). Conversely, men are conditioned to prefer certain female physical traits, and the ethnic range is wider now: AFs and Latinas are now "officially hot".
I'm supportive of IR dating, the more the merrier, as long as I'm invited. Maybe in the long run racial mixing will force the culture to face reality: there's only ONE race. Right now, though, the same choices can, in different contexts, be interpreted as conformist or as rebellious.
Example: When a WF dates an AM, it's in spite of her programming. But for the AM, is he conforming? Becoming whiter by association? He might feel under pressure to prove his motive isn't race-status based. There's no telling what's going on in their heads! But if it's real love, hooray!
Wayne
waynio@jps.net
Saturday, June 08, 2002 at 10:23:08 (PDT)
A Dom,
Oh that post was great for a laugh, thanks!
No I guess I would have to say that for the most part I don't like asian females. Neither do a lot of other white women. It's a fact of life, so deal with it.
me
Friday, June 07, 2002 at 11:54:15 (PDT)
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