Stop Saying You Have a Fetish for Asian Women!
By: R. Danielson Zhang
Tags: Feminism, Race, Asian American, Women, Equality

Stop Saying You Have a Fetish for Asian Women!

Photo by Jeremy Marasigan from Burst

Outwardly presenting an “Asian fetish” or a “yellow fever” is a microaggression that objectifies Asian American women.

It might appear to be just a non-racial preference for a particular appearance, like hair length or eye color. However, a deeper look suggests that Asian fetishes are likely driven by misogynistic, racist, and dehumanizing stereotypes of Asian women. Simply validating an Asian fetish as an innocent preference for a physical trait perpetuates the subjugation of Asian women into sexual objects and submissive domestic servants who exist to please white males.

A review of our history and culture reveals how deeply rooted these negative stereotypes are.

“Historians, sociologists, psychologists, and literary and film scholars have long documented how White America has viewed Asian American women in an almost entirely sexual light.”¹

The perception of Asian women as lower humans and sexual objects by white males is evident as early as the 1800s, “when the first Victorian men visited Japan and became transfixed by geishas.”²

Chinese women who immigrated to the United States during the 1800s were perceived as immoral and promiscuous prostitutes.³ Against the backdrop of a brewing anti-Chinese sentiment, Chinese women were targeted by the Page Act of 1875, which denied entry of women from an “Oriental Country” for “lewd and immoral purposes.”⁴

Continuing into the 1900s, “Chinese women were accused of being prostitutes spreading the ‘unique, Chinese strain’ of syphilis that infused ‘a poison in the Anglo-Saxon blood.’”⁵

The history of US imperialism and military deployments in Asia is rife with the subjugation of Asian women.

Following the Spanish-American war, women were bought and sold by brothel owners in the Philippines “to meet the demands of U.S. soldiers.”⁶

When American troops arrived in Japan in 1945, US authorities tacitly approved the operation of a brothel system of comfort women. “Tens of thousands of women were employed to provide cheap sex to U.S. troops.”⁷ These brothels were set up as a “breakwater” by local Japanese authorities to protect the general population of women from US occupation troops.

During the Vietnam war, U.S. troops used women from Thailand and other countries for sex at “rest and recreation” spots.⁶

Literature and film plays a role as well.

In the 1887 novel Madame Chysanthème, Asian women were referred to as “playthings” and “China ornaments.”⁸ As Brittany Wong² writes, this novel “cemented the image of Asian women as doll-like, subservient objects of lust.” The novel was later adapted into the opera Madame Butterfly, which continues to cause controversy in modern adaptations.⁹

Asian women in the 1930s “were depicted as exotic femme fatales, weaponizing their sexuality to the detriment of the men around them.”² This “dragon lady” theme continues to be perpetuated in modern television. For example, the character Ling Woo played by Lucy Liu in the drama Ally McBeal is portrayed as a cruel and hypersexual woman devoid of emotion. The character Philippa Georgiou played by Michelle Yeoh in the show Star Trek Discovery is portrayed as a domineering, hypersexual, and deceitful villainess.

Laura Johnson documented the long history of Asian women being portrayed as submissive and sexual objects in American film — films that “promote a concept of the Asian female body as an erotic ornament created to serve the white male.”¹⁰

The 1987 Stanley Kubrick film “Full Metal Jacket” has the legacy of providing the famous scene of an Asian sex worker approaching US troops to solicit sex work, enticing them with phrases like “me love you long time,” “me so horny,” and “me sucky-sucky.”

Taken as a whole, this history cements an unconscious perception in the mind of white men that Asian women are submissive sexual objects who exist to serve them.

Your Asian fetish is not simply a mere preference for physical appearance.

Dismissing the Asian fetish as simply a preference for appearance ignores the likely influence of deeply rooted stereotypes.

Robin Zheng, a humanities professor at Yale-NUS College coined this excuse as the “Mere Preference Argument” (MPA).¹ Like all “colorblind” arguments, it ignores the presence and impact of unconscious bias. Indeed, she notes:

(1) “racial fetishes always depend on racial stereotypes rather than pure aesthetic features,” and

(2) “explicit disavowals of the stereotypes provide no evidence against this fact because the origins of sexual preferences are not usually transparent to those who have them.”

In other words, white males are likely unaware that their Asian fetish is fueled by the misogynistic stereotypes they harbor.

It’s ultimately about the victims of the microaggressions, not the aggressors.

Shifting the discussion back to the victims, the most important point is that the Asian fetish harms Asian American women, irrespective of the intent of the aggressor.

Derald Wing Sue, Professor of Psychology and Education at Columbia University, specifically categorizes Asian fetishes as a form of microaggression.¹¹ He categorizes the microaggression theme as “the exoticization of Asian American woman.”

Moreover, his studies reveal some of the impacts on the victims. Nearly all participants in the studies interpreted the microaggressions as “indicating that Asian women are only needed for the physical needs of White men and nothing more.”

Robin Zheng also emphasizes the importance of focusing the attention on the victims, regardless of the intent of the aggressors, noting that the targets feel “otherized” and “depersonalized.”¹ She notes that victims of racial fetishes are subjected to “psychological burdens of doubt, suspicion, and insecurity on account of their race.”

The negative stereotypes also act as a wedge between Asian women and supporters of feminist values. Participants in Derald Wing Sue’s study suggested that the “exotic image” of Asian women creates “an unconscious backlash to feminist values [and] potentially creates antagonism with White women.”¹¹ Robin Zheng points out that the sexual stereotypes have resulted in the portrayal of Asian women as the “sexual model minority,” which pits Asian women against women endorsing feminist values of independence and autonomy.¹

Particularly concerning is that the Asian fetish endangers the safety of Asian American women. As Zheng writes, “stereotypes about Asian women render them particularly vulnerable to sexual harassment and violence by men who target them on that basis.”

This point is apropos given the recent mass murder of six Asian women at spas in the Atlanta area.

The man accused of committing these murders told investigators that he was not motivated by race, but instead was motivated by a “sexual addiction.”¹² The police claimed that the spas were “a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate.”

We should not accept that this mass murder was not racially motivated simply because the accused murderer did not think he was motivated by race. Instead, these murders demonstrate how dangerous an “Asian fetish” stemming from unconscious stereotypes of Asian women can be.

As Kimmy Yam¹² writes:

While it’s unclear whether the businesses had any ties to sex work, experts and activists said it was nearly impossible to divorce race from the discourse — regardless of whether [the accused] will be charged with a hate crime — given the historical fetishization of Asian women, which has made them uniquely susceptible to sexual and physical violence.

Please check your blind spots.

If you are a white male, consider that your Asian fetish is unconsciously rooted in sexist and racist stereotypes of Asian women, particularly in light of the history discussed in this piece. Be open to the possibility that your fetish for Asian women draws from stereotypes and is not simply a preference for appearance.

As with all forms of unconscious bias, progress relies on a willingness to accept one’s blind spots. An unconscious bias is, by definition, unconscious.

Moreover, unconscious or not, the exoticization of Asian women has a well-studied impact. Asian fetishes deriving from negative stereotypes cause psychological burdens on Asian women, and even worse, put their lives in danger.