August 24, 2015 • 52 mins
The fetishization of East Asian women, derisively referred to as "yellow fever," is as old as the Silk Road. Cristen and Caroline unpack the history and Hollywood perpetuation of stereotyping Asian women as either submissive lotus flowers or cunning dragon ladies, defined only by their exoticism and sexuality.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from House Supports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline and Caroline. We on Stuff I Never
Told You have talked about the spicy Latina stereotype, the
(00:24):
poccon to this princess Native American women stereotype, exoticizing women
of color, and now today we're going to dig into
stereotypes about Asian women, and particularly East Asian women. Yeah,
And the thing is, there's there's not just unfortunately, one
(00:45):
Asian lady stereotype to zero in on for this episode,
but the ones that we are going to dive into
should be pretty familiar to a lot of our listeners.
The idea of the dainty, submissive gaysh uh, or the
diminutive China doll, the angry sexualized dragon lady, or the
(01:07):
overbearing tiger mom. So all of these stereotypes should be
pretty familiar to our listeners. We've touched on a couple
of them in the podcast before, but we're really going
to zero in on the fetishization of East Asian women. Yeah,
and the phrase it comes up a lot to talk
about that kind of fetishalization, particularly within American culture with
(01:31):
the idea of white men especially being particularly drawn to
East Asian women is the whole Yellow Fever so called phenomenon,
and I realized that that is not the nicest way
to put it. It's an uncomfortable phrase to even say
on the podcast Caroline, but that is I mean, that's
(01:52):
what it's called for better for worse. I mean it
gets at the slur and sort of the creating a
monolith out of all of these women. It's the same
thing as exoticizing women of color. It's just a different
brand of that. And that exoticization of non white populations
is definitely nothing new. And in terms of the topic
(02:13):
at hand today, well, we've been doing it since about
the time of Marco Polo. Yeah, I mean essentially, once
there was Western contact with the Far East, the orient
started to develop that that mystical quality, and then all
of this gendering started to happen, not only of obviously
(02:35):
like the women and men and like drawing, you know,
stereotypes about the type of people they were, but even
gendering the entire geography. Because this whole issue of Western
fetishization when it comes to East Asia is really a
story of imperialism. And this was something that Patricia Park
(02:56):
laid out really well over in Rich Magazine in an
article called the Madam Butterfly Effect. Um. And like you said, Caroline,
it does go back to Marco Polo's thirteenth century jaunt
to China, and that the whole development of the Silk Road,
and once they're started to be those exchanges of goods
and stories brought back from the East, right, just like
(03:19):
things that people in the West had never seen before,
whether that was spices or fabrics or just you know, um,
human beings we considered to be so insanely different from ourselves. Um.
But it's interesting when you do look at that gender
aspect because East Asia as sort of a whole has
(03:41):
been historically feminized in the eyes of the West, sort
of as a reaction against its formidable strength. We could
not come in and take over. Essentially, we couldn't come
in and be the boss, and so we ended up
fetishizing entire groups of people and claiming the women for
(04:02):
our own, us being the West and typically Western men. Yeah.
And and this pathological fetishization is called orientalism, and ultimately
it is an occidental or Western attempt to masculinize itself
and cement global dominance. And you see this fetishization of
(04:24):
East Asian women happening, uh, particularly peaking at different times
when on the flip side of that, a cultural castration
of Asian men happens. And we're not gonna have time
to get into that on the podcast today, but just
kind of keeping the back of your mind, how while
these women were being sort of elevated and sexualized, we
(04:46):
were doing the opposite to Asian men in a lot
of ways. But things really began to fetishize in Earnest
and Caroline, if we had a dollar already for the
number of times we said fetish a version of fetish
in this podcast, we could buy a sandwich perfect. Yes,
you're speaking my language. But yeah, So it began an
(05:09):
urnas so in the eighteen forties after the Opium Wars
opened up British access to China. And this was something
that Patricia Park talked to Kim Brand about, who is
an associate professor of Japanese history and an author as well. Yeah,
because suddenly you have these buttoned up Victorian men, as
(05:30):
she calls them, uh, confronted with the image of the
Japanese geisha. This is a culture that had previously been
closed to the West. They'd kicked the white people out,
they were sick of them trying to make a buck
with through trading, and so Japanese culture had been pretty
closed to westerners for a long time. Um. But once
you have white guys returning to Japan, to China, to
(05:53):
this whole region, they're sort of blown away at what
they're seeing, especially when they are confronted with the women
around them. Yeah. So all of this leads up to
the seven publication of the book that's set off this
whole thing. Even still today we are seeing echoes of
(06:17):
it in this entire concept of yellow fever. So in
that year, a French writer named pure LOADI publishes Madame
chrissan Him pardon my poor French pronunciation, uh, And it
is a massive hit, And the whole plot line will
(06:38):
probably sound a little bit familiar. It's about this French
naval officer who travels to Nagasaki and has an affair
with his quote unquote temporary bride, chrissant Him, who's one
of many delightfully diminutive, doll like women he discovers in Japan.
And this whole tale is a huge, huge hit. There
dozens of reprints and translation out of the gate and
(07:01):
it is considered the seminal text that created the Western
idea of East Asian women. So thanks a lot, Pierre. Yeah,
I mean this is part of the trend of white
guys shaping how we view Asian women as a whole,
where we get this whole idea, this whole stereotype of
all Asian women being small, dainty wayfish women who are
(07:25):
able to satisfy you sexually in ways that you've never
dreamed of before. And meanwhile, though, I think it's important
to note, this is just one of many of Lodi's
tales of exploiting foreign women that he encounters. So like
traveling the world writing variations on Madam kreisntem just in
(07:46):
different countries, like oh well, now I'm going to exploit
this country's women and this region's women over here, shaping
all of them into these perfect little submissive dolls. So
he's basically the original globe trotting bro who comes holm
with so many stories you wouldn't believe the women men
you gotta get over there, that's right, And just like
(08:07):
with those people, I would imagine that not all of
his tales of conquest or true. No, seriously, it's true. Man,
I'm telling you. She lives in Canada. You wouldn't know
he was crazy. But Loady's success in this whole story
inspires another guy named John Luther Long who writes a
(08:28):
short story a lot of listeners have probably heard of
called Madame Butterfly, So now I don't have to try
to mispronounce quez antem um and Madame Butterfly is all
about a dude named Lieutenant Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton and his
temporary Asian bride shows your son who has his baby,
(08:51):
who is then named Trouble, and then spoiler alert, she
kills herself. Well, I think actually in the short story, uh,
they generously allow her to just attempt to kill herself
and then she gets to live out like a troubled
and miserable existence with her child from then on out.
But it's not until we get the Piccini opera of
(09:13):
Madtern Butterfly, which I believe is when that character kills
herself but she needs like oh you know what audiences
love well, right, because then so not only do you
have the dainty submissive sexually satisfying woman, but you throw
in some self sacrifice into all of that to make
her like the perfect lady martyr figure for a white guy. Yeah,
(09:37):
a woman who is so in love with you that
when she can't have you, she kills herself. Hello, what
a dream gal Um? Yeah, Madama Butterfly premiered in nineteen
o four and remains one of the most performed operas
in the US and abroad. And Caroline, is this the
moment when when we can take a quick side trip
(10:00):
to talk about high school? Oh my gosh. Yeah, So
I don't understand how I got through so many, so
many of my years, um without putting these two pieces together.
I guess it's just because I'm not a Puccini fan
girl like maybe I should be. But as I was
(10:21):
researching and reading for this episode, I was seeing the
named Pinkerton. Pinkerton Pinkerton. Oh my god, that was one
of my most favorite albums in high school, the beloved
second release of Weezer. And Yeah, I mean, of course
I realized listening to it approximately one ba jillion times,
that he is seeing about Checho, sad and stuff. But
(10:44):
I never put two and two together, and it sort
of blew my mind too. I can't believe in the
number of times that I listened to that record growing up,
and even as a college student, that I didn't I
didn't realize that that's the connection. And this whole time
I had just been thinking Rivers Cuomo is just some
sort of like creep with yellow fever fetishization of Asian women.
(11:09):
And it's not that I'm necessarily wrong, but I was
trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, thinking, oh, well,
he just really likes Puccini, or he really likes Madam Butterfly,
Like that's great, right, that's cultured demo, that's not really EMO.
Don't send me your letters clarifying why Weezer is not EMO, please. Um. Well,
so I did a little googling. I wanted to better
(11:32):
understand the connection there between Weezer and Madam Butterfly. But basically,
in this Rolling Stone interview that I read with Rivers Cuomo,
he goes on and on about how in listening to
Madam Butterfly over and over again, he becomes fascinated with
the character, with her character, and at the same time
(11:52):
became infatuated with that type of girl that's in the opera,
and he says that he identifies with the Pinkerton character
because he's basically like the rock star of his day.
He goes from port to port picking up ladies. And
I was like, no, I guess okay, considering the popularity
of Wheezer, All right, Rivers Cuomo, you are tortured Pinkerton.
(12:14):
Maybe that's why he entered his celibacy phase for a while. Um,
but it was it was just surprising again that it
somehow took this long. Thank you stuff, Mom never told
you for putting the pieces together. And it's also interesting
to really just keep in mind that these stereotypes and
this fetishization led to a hundred years plus of this
(12:40):
self sacrificing storyline, because then all of this Madam Butterfly
business inspired Miss Saigon, which is basically the same story
but told about a Vietnamese woman rather than a Japanese woman. Yeah,
and if we move forward in our timeline, well hop
(13:00):
back from Weezer, but forward from Puccini. When we're in
the twentieth century, we have the emergence of a new
sexualized stereotype, the dragon lady. And this is the cunning
fem fatal foil to the China doll slash lotus flower,
(13:22):
and the term was coined in the nineteen thirties. Yeah,
it was used to describe Empress Dowager c ch as
she was slanderously portrayed in British historian Hugh Trevor Roper's
completely false account of his affair with her. Among other things,
this guy claimed that the Empress had an oversized clitterists,
(13:45):
so good for him, just slut shaming women that he
never actually had any sort of contact with. Well, and
that reflects how these stereotypes do tend to meander down
to vulver anatomy. And yes, vulver is an adjective. It's
(14:06):
all awkward to say, but it does exist. Yeah, it's
just it's just one of of many that are vulver related. Yeah,
and have to do with size and assumptions about size.
And that's something too. Echoing back to our podcast on
big butts and the fetishization, particularly of women of color,
and with the story of Sarki Bartman and all of
(14:28):
that fascination um as well with or I shouldn't say
fascination but even just dark obsession with this idea that
Native African women had different sized volvers compared to white
women as well. So all sorts of just horrible types
of things like that going on. Um. And one person
(14:49):
that we wanted to talk about in terms of the
portrayals of the stereotypes in Hollywood once we move from
literature and into film. In early Hollywood, one of the
only Asian American actresses that you saw on the silver
(15:10):
screen was a woman named Anna May Wong, and our
cultural treatment of Asian women is so much reflected in
her career. Yeah, and this really echoes the career paths
of a lot of black actresses during this time too,
who were often shuttled off into roles as maids, housekeepers
and the like. Um Anname Wong, for instance, appeared in
(15:34):
sixty films always the Home as some type of slave, temptress, prostitute,
or doomed lover. There was always some sort of subservient
sexuality and sexual tension going on. And we wanted to
spend a little time talking about her biography and experience
in Hollywood because to me, at least, it was so
(15:55):
informative of how these stereotypes really took root and manifested
in the United States. And I highly recommend listeners that
you read the BuzzFeed piece about this written by the
fantastic an Helen Peterson, who has also been on the
podcast UM. She wrote a great piece about Anime Wong
(16:15):
and it is a recommended read. And Wong was a
Chinese American actress born in l a in nineteen o five.
And even the fact that she was born in the
United States was something that Hollywood tabloids because you could
never really wrap their minds around, like, I know, she
looks Chinese, but surprised she was actually born here. Yeah,
(16:37):
and I now, like all of the articles about Anime
Wong put every modern fashion spread that discusses Asian inspired
fashion and stark relief because because I don't know if
the headline East meets West sort of originates in terms
of pop culture youth originates with Anime Wong articles. But
holy crap, like that seems like they couldn't write anything else.
(16:59):
They were so everybody's minds were blown that this is
an American woman born in America in case you were wondering, UM,
who didn't speak with an accent, And they just couldn't
get over the like the discrepancy there. Yeah, and and
the treatment of Asians at the time that she was born.
(17:21):
Is very much reminiscent of what we talked about in
our Spicy Latina's episode exploring how those anti Mexican in
particular stereotypes really started to creep in at this time, because,
as Anne Helen Peterson lays out, in the nineteenth century,
the first mostly male Chinese laborers start coming to the US,
(17:46):
and then in two you have something called the Chinese
Exclusion Act barring their entry to the country because they
were believed to be a moral, unhealthy, and a threat
to our fabric of society. So this is the environment
where things are happening. And there was also a lot
(18:07):
of discomfort too with the fact that a lot of
Asian women, because of these kinds of US policies, were
not allowed to come into the United States as well.
There were fears that they would bring over things like STDs.
So you have these communities of mostly Asian men that
white people similarly, we're like, oh, what's going on over there?
That's not right. There are new women, but at the
(18:28):
same time they judged their women as being immoral too,
so there was it was just a mess to begin with.
And here's anime Wong who grows up in l A
and decides to be an actress. Yeah, so she starts
appearing as an extra and a few films being shot
in Chinatown. When she's like fourteen, she gets her dad's permission,
(18:49):
and he only lets her go if she is constantly
supervised in chaperone by a bunch of big dudes. But
she began acting full time in nineteen one, with her
big rate coming in ninety two's The Toll of the Sea,
which is basically another take on the Madam Butterfly storyline.
And of course, her character's name is Lotus flower Um.
(19:12):
But despite the fact that she's a great beauty and
a great actress, she's got this passion for acting. The
racism of the day kept her from everything from attending
Hollywood parties to even kissing her white co stars on screen,
thanks to things like California's anti misgenation law. She also
(19:34):
was super afraid to be caught with any white co
stars out and about in the same way that celebrities today,
if their photos taken and they're together, everybody automatically assumes
their dating or sleeping together. Whatever. Celebrities back then, especially
celebrities of color, were also subject to all of these assumptions,
and so she was quoted as saying that she had
(19:54):
to cut off a bunch of love affairs because she
was so worried that one or both of them would
get personally hurt or that professionally hurt. Yeah, and so
this is similarly reflected in the roles that she's offered,
because she could only ever play either a more sympathetic
character who has to kill herself like a cho Cho
(20:15):
San because her exotic love is doomed and also ps
they can't show them kissing, so it's not like they
can really have a romance blossom. Or she would play
a dragon lady temptress who tries to thwart romance between
two lily white leads. So not exactly uh much of
an arrange she was, you know, at liberty to explore,
(20:40):
but the Tabloyd's loved her. This is one thing that
Peterson noted that, unlike say black actresses of the day,
who would not have gotten any coverage at all, because
Animy Wong was light her skinned and still exotic in
the fact that she just wasn't black, they could still
talk about her. She would never make the cover of magazine,
(21:01):
But she made for just such tantalizing content as we
would say in the Internet age today, right, And one
of the descriptors that they tended to use for really
Asian people in general, but definitely for Anime Wong as well,
is talking about her ancient race. There's always this discussion
by white media back then and I don't know, maybe
(21:24):
today about the ancient races of Asia, as if we
have somehow excavated from some block of ice, like the
entire groups of people who have just been around alive
for centuries, giving them like the dinosaur treatment almost. But yeah,
so along those same lines, one of the fan magazines
(21:46):
of the time said that she reminds us of cruel
and intricate intrigues and at the same time of cruoned
Chinese lullabies. She brings to the screen the rare comprehension
and the mysterious colors of her ivory skinned race. Who so,
considering that climate, it's not terribly surprising that she never
(22:06):
really broke through America's outsize racism to become an a list,
Unlike one of her gal pals, Marlene Dietrich, who she
befriended when she moved to Europe where things were a
bit more liberal, and she was even passed over at
certain times for Chinese character lead roles that were instead
(22:28):
cast with white ladies. For instance, in two Madam Butterfly,
the movie started Carrie Grant as Pinkerton, which that broke
my heart a little bit because yes, did I have
a childhood crush on Carrie Grant? For sure? Totally. Mr
Blandings built his dream house. Hello, I know someone who
(22:50):
can fill that dream bedroom and his Chocho son. Oh well,
Sylvia Sydney, of course, famed white ladies, Yes, the white ladies,
Sylvia Sydney. And there were all of these magazine spreads
at the time kind of behind the scenes of these
films detailing how they transformed to white women into Asian characters,
(23:14):
which was just a lot of like racist, awful, Like
here's how we pull our eyes back and put her
in yellow face, uh and make her talk with a
broken English accent. It was all pretty horrifying. Um, But
there was Anne Helen Peterson points out over in that
BuzzFeed article a film version of the book The Good Earth,
(23:36):
which was not perfect in its depiction of Asian people,
but still a little bit better a little bit more rounded.
And so she points out that MGM offered Anime Wong
the role of again Lotus, a slinky tea house dancer
who seduces the main moral character and becomes the second wife.
(23:57):
But Anime Wong actually refused the role because at this
point she'd been to Europe she saw that it could
be better. She saw that her friend Marlene Dietrich was
getting these great roles. She saw that white women were
portraying Asian women all all on screen everywhere, and so
she said, you're asking me with Chinese blood to do
the only unsympathetic role in a picture featuring an all
(24:19):
American cast portraying Chinese characters. No thanks, So she turned
that down and basically stepped back from large roles. So
by the time we get to World War Two, when
relationships between sday the United States and the Japanese become
far more complicated, to say the least, this relationship is
(24:40):
already so disfunctional. We already have these ideas firmly ingrained
in popular culture. And we're going to talk more about
World War two and the Lotus Flower revival when we
come right back from a quick bread. So, once World
(25:04):
War two happens, and then we're involved in the Korean
War and in Vietnam, American soldiers and Americans in general
are put more in contact with Asian cultures than really
ever before, and they're dealing with them in ways that
they've never really dealt with them before. And of course, unfortunately,
(25:26):
one of the ways in which American gis and Asian
women are become involved is through the sex trade. Yeah.
I mean, of course there were actual relationships that might
have been taking place, but there was rampant prostitution that
was happening, also rape between soldiers and local women. And
(25:47):
again we return to this era of gendering of the East,
so sort of refeminizing this area of the world, which
certainly isn't a coincidence because yet again you have this
West Durn power the occident like trying to reassert its
dominance to be the masculine world power. And it's Madam
(26:09):
Butterfly all over again culturally, with similar stories that we've
talked about in the first half of the podcast, repackaged repeatedly,
only this time with more white Guy's savior twists and
prostitutes with hearts of gold. Yeah, and Kristen put together
(26:30):
a list, and I've only seen one of the movies
on this list, and that's South Pacific, which premiered on
Broadway in nine. But I was growing up my dad
was such a huge like Broadway and musical fans, so
I've definitely familiar with South Pacific. But in this era
you also get nineteen fifty seven's Sayinara, in nineteen sixty
(26:51):
you get the world of Susie Wong. And in the
eighties we see Missigon, which is set in Vietnam, as
we already mentioned, but also Full Metal Jacket, which coined
some more unsavory pop cultural references with the whole mesa
horny line that we've heard not only from that movie,
but it got also shuttled into music as well. Yeah,
(27:14):
and today we still see Hollywood peddling stereotypical roles for
Asian actresses. They're either model minorities, you know, the nerdy
kid in class, their dragon lady businesswomen. They're sexy kung
fu masters or non English speaking immigrants running dry cleaners,
or their prostitutes. And if we move away from the
(27:37):
big screen to the small screen, television is slightly more
progressive as it usually is, but just slightly. It's not
like it's the Land of Plenty. Yeah. Of course Grey's
Anatomy fans will recognize Sandra Oh's name. She she was
probably my favorite character, definitely was my favorite character on
(27:58):
Gray's Anatomy back when I used to watch it, and
her characters existence was certainly not built or shaped around
her race at all. Um. You also have Lucy Lou,
who I love too. She went from being sort of
the resident dragon lady on Ally McBeal to a more
well rounded character on the show Elementary as Watson, and
(28:20):
then on Glee. You have Jenna push Cowitz and Hettian
Park on Hannibal as investigator Beverly Cats and this was
really interesting. So um, spoiler alert for those of you
who are not caught up on Hannibal, Park's character was
written off the show, and it won't tell you how,
We'll just say that she was written off the show
(28:41):
and there was a fan outcry, partially because it is
still relatively rare to see Asian women in these more
well rounded roles. And she took to her blog to
personally respond to the fan outcry, and it really, you know,
gets at how this issue is still alive and well
(29:02):
in Hollywood, So she wrote, quote, I'd rather focus on
the positive stuff. I got to play this amazing woman
who didn't have to sleep with anyone or act dum
and girly or fawn all over some guy to be
conniving to get people to notice or respect me. And
she didn't speak broken English or karate chop anyone, not
that I would have minded. Nobody called her dragon lady
(29:25):
or exotic. Yeah, it's just that whole idea of of
normalizing diversity and and having TV and film represent our
everyday experience, what we're seeing on the street, and so
not having a character like I was saying with Sandra
and Grey's anatomy that's built entirely around someone's Asian nous,
having an Asian actor or actress be able to play
(29:48):
just a character on a TV show um and over
at Salon, though, they point out that two particular Orange
Is the New Black characters aren't as well rounded as
they could be, and those are the characters of So
So and Chang, that they sort of huge stereotypical, and
that their backstories either haven't been fleshed out enough or
(30:11):
that they haven't gotten as much play as some of
the other characters. Yeah, it seems like Kimiko Glenn's plot
line playing So So is a little less stereotypical. Like
if anything, um, she you know, portrays the mental health
realities that can be associated with not only well being
in prison, but also these model minority expectations that you know,
(30:36):
do sometimes happen within Asian American households. But with Chang Um,
up until this most recent season, I mean, she was
very much just a stock character and a little bit
of comic relief. But I remember watching it, I mean
long before obviously we were searching for this episode and
(30:56):
thinking like, huh, okay, that's kind of an outlier, as
I should before So So came along, she was the
only Asian character and rarely spoke. Yeah. Well, in that
Salon article, the writer was like, well, I'm not trying
to argue for more Asian women in prison, um, but
the whole underrepresentation of Asian characters in this show that
(31:18):
takes place in a prison does sort of reflect the
existing stereotype of Asians as the quote unquote model minority
that they never do anything wrong. They just study math
and get a grades and get married and go on
to be model citizens. When even if some people do
think that that model minority stereotype is positive, like, hey,
we're not saying that you break the law, so shouldn't
(31:39):
you be grateful, it's still squashing entire groups of people
down to a one dimensional representation that doesn't reflect reality
absolutely well, and speaking of squashing down a culture to
not reflect reality, very briefly, this is something that we've
seen female pop stars in particular pedal out with some
(31:59):
of the air acts. I mean, this is more of
a bigger conversation about cultural appropriation, but this is also
too recycling some of these fetishistic images that we've talked about.
So I feel like the conversation really got started way
back now in the olden days of two thousand four
when Gwen Stefani released Love Angel Music Baby, and as
(32:23):
part of her stick with that, she hired on the
Hard Juko Girls posse do not only appear in shows
and backup dance for her, but just to be her
posse everywhere well, to be her accessories. Yeah, I think
it is what a lot of people took issue with,
as you can really claim about any type of cultural
(32:46):
appropriation or plenty of stuff that musicians do in music videos.
You know, there have been plenty of people like Miley
Cyrus and Taylor Swift have been accused of similar things,
but with African American women. Um but in and you
also have uh Katie Perry at the American Music Awards
recycling that tired geisha image of the cute, c diminutive,
(33:11):
submissive woman carrying the little parasol wearing the kimono. Yeah.
And then it also in two thousand thirteen, Avril Levine's
Hello Kitty video was very much Japanese school girl. A
lot of people weren't too happy about that. Her defense was, hey,
I shouted in Japan and the director was Japanese. I
(33:32):
love Japanese culture. Which is why a lot of this
really meanders over more to a conversation about cultural appropriation
than these kinds of this fetishization that we're talking about,
But it's still related. It's all part of the same ballawact. Yeah,
Because whether you're fetishizing someone or you're appropriating part of
their culture, you're still just taking a tidbit of information
(33:56):
that is oftentimes false or misrepresentative and using it to
represent entire groups of people. And it's definitely something that
you see play out when you do talk about romantic
or sexual relationships and dating and the way that people
who are accused of having yellow fever are talked about.
(34:16):
But there's still pervasive stereotyping, especially when it comes to
relationships between white men and Asian women. And I'm not
just talking about, you know, fetishization that some white dudes
might have, particularly for Asian women, but I'm talking about
from the outside looking into and our outside assumptions when
(34:36):
we see those couples and the whole yellow fever thing
of saying, oh, well, he must be like that, she
must be like that. They're like X y Z. Yeah.
And Patricia Park in that Bitch article that we sited earlier,
talks a lot about how everyone from comedians to frat
boys to whoever, recycles a lot of that to borrow
(34:58):
a phrase ancient praise of Asian women's supposed physical perfection,
the fact that they are small and petite everywhere. Yeah,
this is something too that Karen Ang wrote about in
also in a Bitch article that was published in two
thousand called the Yellow Fever Pages, and it's cited in
(35:20):
so many pieces that talk about this um and she
wrote the fantasy Asian is intelligent yet pliable, mysterious yet ornamental,
perpetually pre pubescent, ageless, and petite, and she comes from
a culture where women traditionally serve men. So you know,
you package all of that up together and you get
(35:41):
yellow fever. Meanwhile, too, we have the more cultural casphration
of Asian men in the United States, and there is
some disturbing evidence of that, especially if you look at
the sex industry, especially in Southeast Asia and and sex
tourism being the primary tourist attraction in Thailand. Yeah, and
(36:04):
then you combine that with the fact that you've got
all of these websites that are dedicated to matching up
American men with Asian women, and that's a huge market
and in and of itself, it's almost like a new
type of arranged marriage. And then far more casually and
anecdotally in the United States, there's the kind of the
off hand suggestion to say Asian girl friends of like, oh,
(36:28):
you know what, you should date this guy because he
loves Asian girls. Um and a huge YouTuber Anna Kna
made a fantastic video about this in which she just said, no, stop, stop,
shut it down, don't do any of that because it's
kind of racist and insulting basically, and they're in fact,
(36:50):
is an entire documentary called Seeing Asian Female about online dating,
specifically to find an Asian hide, and it was made
by Chinese American documentarian filmmaker Debbie Lum, who follows this guy,
you know, as he seeks out a girlfriend, um and wife.
(37:15):
He wants an Asian wife, and particularly a Chinese born woman,
and he meets her online. He travels to China, she
comes back with him, they get married. Yeah, this guy,
Stephen definitely wasn't portrayed in the best light. That's a
nice way of saying. He was definitely portrayed as a creep,
(37:35):
and his wife was definitely portrayed as someone who was
just seeking a visa. So this wasn't a glowing representation
of white guy meets Asian girl, they fall in love.
This wasn't sort of a fairy tale story. And not surprisingly,
Stephen did not love being portrayed as this pathetic white
guy with a massive fetish and he left this huge
(37:57):
comment on the NP our story, which was fascinating. Um.
But he says that, you know, lightheartedly, he could accept
the dismissive and negative phrase yellow fever, but he says
in reality that sounds far more strange than how I
view it, like an affliction rather than a preference. But
you have to keep in mind that he was explicitly
(38:19):
seeking out Asian women and that he zeroed in on
Chinese women after communicating with countless women and realizing that
he liked the communication style of Chinese women more so
whatever that means, um well, and even the notion that
you like the and I don't. Maybe he gets into
(38:42):
this more in the documentary. I would hope so, because
as someone Caroline who spent almost three weeks in China,
I'm an expert. But the very idea that it's like saying, oh,
I like how American women, uh communicate where it's like,
(39:03):
wherever you go, it's going to be a little bit different,
regional differences, especially if you go to China, big differences
depending on where you're going in the country where she
grew up, what her family dynamic was like. So wait,
are you saying that, like, women can be different, I'm
saying people can be different. My god, crazy. But you
(39:25):
know a lot of people would argue, as Stephen might,
that this is just his preference the way that somebody
might like a blonde mate, or somebody else might like
somebody who's tall. Uh, that this is just a preference. Yeah,
I mean, I will be completely honest. I mean, because
why not, I've only ever dated white guys. It's not
that I have not dated guys of other ethnicities, because
(39:50):
I have no but that has been what I've been
attracted to. So I could see, I can see how
you can play it both ways, like, well maybe, well,
maybe that's just my biological, innate brain, you know, mechanics
leading me to my now, you know, blonde, blue eyed
(40:11):
fiance with a dreamboat. He's like a Kendall. But I
mean other people would say, well, that's just social influences,
and so there could definitely be some social influences that
lad the twice divorced Stephen to see that his son
had married a Japanese woman, whom he described as very agreeable. Uh,
(40:33):
to then decide, well, I'm going to pursue Asian women.
I'm just not sure what tap yet. Yeah. Yeah, I mean,
there's kind of no way around it in his case. Um,
But regardless though of the fact that I think, you know,
that does exist in some situations that does exist. Um,
there's also two side note, Caroline. One thing that I
(40:56):
wasn't able to find any analysis on, but jumping from that,
the stereotype of especially the white geek guy being extremely
attracted to Asian women. There's this whole comic about it
called Charisma Man. You can google it and it sort
of sums up the whole thing. So like rivers Cuoma, Yeah,
(41:19):
like rivers Cuomo. Yeah. Get Caroline just made a weak
face because it does get to a point with that
of like, way, what is what is really going on here?
What are these dynamics not just like demonize all of
you know, anyone in this situation, but just wonder what
those dynamics are. Well, sure, especially because um, whether you're
(41:44):
Asian or whether you have Asian friends or family, Uh,
you're probably familiar with the horrors that a lot of
Asian women face on dating sites. I mean, yes, yes,
all women hashtag all women do face horrific messages is
and things like that on dating sites. I have was
definitely the recipient of a few when I used to
(42:04):
be on Okay keep it back in the day. Um,
but Kristen and I have a friend who used to
be on a couple of dating sites, and the abuse
that she would suffer from men who were saying horrific
things that were based purely on her race, purely on
her Asian nous. I I just don't know, um how
you can say that it's not an Asian fetish I
(42:28):
just like Asian chicks. I mean, it definitely speaks to
the power of these stereotypes. Going back, told Pierre LOADI
come on, Pierre, and it's unfortunate because when we get
out of stereotype and fetishization land and into attraction, Bill,
you know, you have plenty of healthy, real world relationships
(42:53):
between Asian women and white guys. And because though of
all of that stereotypical baggage, now they have to deal
with assumptions. This was something that Victoria Chan wrote about
over Advice, basically saying like, You're like, these stereotypes are
making my relationship unbearable sometimes because of the things people
(43:17):
say to me, the jokes that I'm expected to endure,
and also just this assumption that my boyfriend is a creep. Yeah,
it is that dual awfulness of having to endure casual racism.
One of the examples that Chan gave was they went
to her boyfriend's family's place over the summer and they
were going to play beer pong, and people were like, hey,
(43:39):
you'll like this. It's just like ping pong. Yeah, your
your people are familiar with that. Um, which I think
she was talking about caused a fight with her and
her boyfriend, and he apologized on behalf of the person.
But so you've already got to deal with the pressures
of one member of the relationship having to deal with racism,
whether it's explicit or implicit, or direct or indirect um,
(44:02):
and one not one being, as she says, the privileged,
middle class white guy. Um. But then also having to
deal with assumptions about your relationship like that stinks that
people are just looking at you and being like a
Asian lady and white guy, your boyfriend must be a creep.
Something's twisted. Well, and she brought up to the assumptions that, well,
(44:23):
she must be ashamed of her heritage or she's just
you know, why doesn't she want to be with an
Asian guy? What does you think is wrong with with
with those guys? Um, which again is unfortunate because these
relationships exist. I mean, if we look at marriage as
of of Asian newlywed's in the US partnered up outside
(44:47):
of their race. And this is coming from the Pew Center.
Thirty seven percent of Asian women married someone who is
an Asian and compared to six of Asian men. So
these couplings are like totally common, you know, but so
unfortunately weighed down with this baggage which so unfortunately just
(45:10):
relates back to imperialism and the occident just being gross jerks. Yeah,
it was sort of crazy to put it all in
the perspective that so many of the stereotypes that we
culturally hold about Asian women in general come from just
some white guys who went into a previously pretty insular,
(45:33):
closed society and wrote books or plays or operas about it.
And uh so that's that's what we think of Asian women.
Thanks a lot. And what do we do then, Caroline,
what can we the change starts with us to change start. Yeah,
just like that Michael Jackson song, Yes, podcasters in the mirror.
(45:54):
So one thing though, that we can do on an
individual level to make life a little bit easy year
with all this stuff is stop the questions of but
where are you really from? Oh no, no, no, no,
I know that you were born in the United States,
but I mean, where are you really from? Yeah, because
then all that does is echo back to those articles
about Anime Wong who people were like, wait, wait, wait,
(46:16):
wait wait wait your Chinese, but you're also American, but
you're born here. Why don't you have an accent? Where
are you from? Where you really from? Because all of
this really just amounts to a giant pile of other ing.
And while you might think, oh, I don't perpetuate these
kinds of stereotypes, there are more of those microaggressions we
(46:36):
could say that we can all probably pay closer attention to.
And seriously, friends, if you have a single Asian friend
that you want to hook up, don't don't suggest the
guy who exclusively dates Asian girls, you know, like, don't
don't try to don't pull that whole thing. Yeah, yeah,
(46:57):
because then that just makes you feel or makes your
friend feel like she's just another another widget in a
collection of things. Like if you were to say, Caroline,
I've got this this guy for you, Uh, he's really
into short girls. The only dates girls with bangs, you'll
have a lot to talk about. Yeah, hairstyling and tall shoes. Um,
(47:20):
but Yeah, thats just that just enforces that nobody could
be possibly interested in you for you and your personality,
but that's something about you physically or culturally is the biggest,
most important part of you. Well, I'm really curious to Caroline,
to hear from listeners who might experience these kinds of
(47:41):
stereotypes unfortunately in their relationships or in how they're treated
in their dating experiences. UM, whether they might be like
a white guy who has been interested in or dated
or married to an Asian woman or vice versa. UM,
we want to hear from you. What are your thoughts
on this kind of stereotyping or is this just something
(48:03):
that you can block out and just completely disregard as
nonsensical because a lot of it really is mom Stuff
at how Stuffworks dot Com is our email address. You
can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or messages
on Facebook, and we've got a couple of messages to
share with you right now. So I have a letter
(48:29):
here from Christina. She says, I just wanted to say
hi and tell you how much I enjoy your podcasts.
I've been listening for a few years. You make mowing
the grass and running fun. Oh wow. Mowing the grass
one okay, she says, as a woman who's consistently worked
in non traditional types of jobs, I love the girl
power feeling I get from listening to your topics. I
(48:50):
think there has been some progress and attitudes towards women
in male dominated professions, but there's still so far to go.
I've been a military police officer in the Army, a
civilian city police office are and now I work in
the firearms industry. If I had a dollar for every
time a customer calls in and assumes I'm the receptionist
or ask for someone who can answer a technical question,
(49:10):
as if there is no way I would know anything
about those scary things that go bang, I could retire tomorrow.
My co workers are all male, and no one ever
calls and a stams they cannot assist them. I've even
had several occasions where I've been told straight up that
they want to speak to a man. Most of the time,
I'm happy to just surprise them by showing that I do,
in fact, I know my stuff. I hope you guys
(49:32):
have a great week and keep up the awesome podcasting. Well, thanks, Christine,
I keep up the awesome listening and knowing things about
those scary things that go bang. Well, I've gotta let
her here from Abby and she writes, I'm an a
gender and work sociology class at the University of Georgia
right now, in which my professor has so graciously exposed
my classmates and I to your podcast. For the short
(49:53):
summer course, we've been required to listen to seven of
your podcasts, but seven has simply not been enough for
someone like me who was so interested in educating myself
on gender type issues. Side note, we give that professor
an A plus. That's so cool. We're part of a
syllabu scareline. I love it. In recently listening to your
podcast on Bio Ratire, I found myself getting excited and
(50:15):
somewhat sad at how true everything you were saying was.
As a by slash pan woman in a hetero relationship,
I find my queer status being questioned all the time.
I recently faced some complications in my relationship where I
admittedly cheated on my significant other with a woman. I
felt terrible, but when all of my friends found out
afterward about how much of it told the instance had
(50:37):
taken on my relationship, I ran into my favorite question,
You only hooked up with a woman, so why does
it matter? People were insistent that I had I cheated
with a man, my significant other would have every right
to be heartbroken, but since it was only with a woman,
he was overreacting. Some people even dared suggest that my
significant other should have only been upset because as he
(51:00):
wasn't able to watch the interaction. You can imagine how
invalidating this was to both my sexuality and to his emotions.
This also touches on your mention of female bisexuality being
more accepted. I think it's important to note that true
female bisexuality is not actually accepted at all. Instead, it's
(51:22):
a hyper sexualized idea of girl on girl physical contact
we so often see in porn that's truly accepted. I
hope for one day where sexuality need not be so defined,
and that a queer individual's sex life must be exposed
so explicitly in order to be justified. Thanks for all
of your hard work, and thank you Abby. And that
(51:43):
is horrific of your friends, and I hope that they
came back and later apologized. So if you have any
emails to send to us, Mom stuff at how stuff
Works dot com is where you can send them and
drillnks to all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts, including
this one with links so you can learn more of
(52:04):
the history of these Asian stereotypes. Head on over to
stuff Mom Never told You dot com for moral this,
and thousands of other topics. Does it have stuff works
dot com
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from House Supports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline and Caroline. We on Stuff I Never
Told You have talked about the spicy Latina stereotype, the
(00:24):
poccon to this princess Native American women stereotype, exoticizing women
of color, and now today we're going to dig into
stereotypes about Asian women, and particularly East Asian women. Yeah,
And the thing is, there's there's not just unfortunately, one
(00:45):
Asian lady stereotype to zero in on for this episode,
but the ones that we are going to dive into
should be pretty familiar to a lot of our listeners.
The idea of the dainty, submissive gaysh uh, or the
diminutive China doll, the angry sexualized dragon lady, or the
(01:07):
overbearing tiger mom. So all of these stereotypes should be
pretty familiar to our listeners. We've touched on a couple
of them in the podcast before, but we're really going
to zero in on the fetishization of East Asian women. Yeah,
and the phrase it comes up a lot to talk
about that kind of fetishalization, particularly within American culture with
(01:31):
the idea of white men especially being particularly drawn to
East Asian women is the whole Yellow Fever so called phenomenon,
and I realized that that is not the nicest way
to put it. It's an uncomfortable phrase to even say
on the podcast Caroline, but that is I mean, that's
(01:52):
what it's called for better for worse. I mean it
gets at the slur and sort of the creating a
monolith out of all of these women. It's the same
thing as exoticizing women of color. It's just a different
brand of that. And that exoticization of non white populations
is definitely nothing new. And in terms of the topic
(02:13):
at hand today, well, we've been doing it since about
the time of Marco Polo. Yeah, I mean essentially, once
there was Western contact with the Far East, the orient
started to develop that that mystical quality, and then all
of this gendering started to happen, not only of obviously
(02:35):
like the women and men and like drawing, you know,
stereotypes about the type of people they were, but even
gendering the entire geography. Because this whole issue of Western
fetishization when it comes to East Asia is really a
story of imperialism. And this was something that Patricia Park
(02:56):
laid out really well over in Rich Magazine in an
article called the Madam Butterfly Effect. Um. And like you said, Caroline,
it does go back to Marco Polo's thirteenth century jaunt
to China, and that the whole development of the Silk Road,
and once they're started to be those exchanges of goods
and stories brought back from the East, right, just like
(03:19):
things that people in the West had never seen before,
whether that was spices or fabrics or just you know, um,
human beings we considered to be so insanely different from ourselves. Um.
But it's interesting when you do look at that gender
aspect because East Asia as sort of a whole has
(03:41):
been historically feminized in the eyes of the West, sort
of as a reaction against its formidable strength. We could
not come in and take over. Essentially, we couldn't come
in and be the boss, and so we ended up
fetishizing entire groups of people and claiming the women for
(04:02):
our own, us being the West and typically Western men. Yeah.
And and this pathological fetishization is called orientalism, and ultimately
it is an occidental or Western attempt to masculinize itself
and cement global dominance. And you see this fetishization of
(04:24):
East Asian women happening, uh, particularly peaking at different times
when on the flip side of that, a cultural castration
of Asian men happens. And we're not gonna have time
to get into that on the podcast today, but just
kind of keeping the back of your mind, how while
these women were being sort of elevated and sexualized, we
(04:46):
were doing the opposite to Asian men in a lot
of ways. But things really began to fetishize in Earnest
and Caroline, if we had a dollar already for the
number of times we said fetish a version of fetish
in this podcast, we could buy a sandwich perfect. Yes,
you're speaking my language. But yeah, So it began an
(05:09):
urnas so in the eighteen forties after the Opium Wars
opened up British access to China. And this was something
that Patricia Park talked to Kim Brand about, who is
an associate professor of Japanese history and an author as well. Yeah,
because suddenly you have these buttoned up Victorian men, as
(05:30):
she calls them, uh, confronted with the image of the
Japanese geisha. This is a culture that had previously been
closed to the West. They'd kicked the white people out,
they were sick of them trying to make a buck
with through trading, and so Japanese culture had been pretty
closed to westerners for a long time. Um. But once
you have white guys returning to Japan, to China, to
(05:53):
this whole region, they're sort of blown away at what
they're seeing, especially when they are confronted with the women
around them. Yeah. So all of this leads up to
the seven publication of the book that's set off this
whole thing. Even still today we are seeing echoes of
(06:17):
it in this entire concept of yellow fever. So in
that year, a French writer named pure LOADI publishes Madame
chrissan Him pardon my poor French pronunciation, uh, And it
is a massive hit, And the whole plot line will
(06:38):
probably sound a little bit familiar. It's about this French
naval officer who travels to Nagasaki and has an affair
with his quote unquote temporary bride, chrissant Him, who's one
of many delightfully diminutive, doll like women he discovers in Japan.
And this whole tale is a huge, huge hit. There
dozens of reprints and translation out of the gate and
(07:01):
it is considered the seminal text that created the Western
idea of East Asian women. So thanks a lot, Pierre. Yeah,
I mean this is part of the trend of white
guys shaping how we view Asian women as a whole,
where we get this whole idea, this whole stereotype of
all Asian women being small, dainty wayfish women who are
(07:25):
able to satisfy you sexually in ways that you've never
dreamed of before. And meanwhile, though, I think it's important
to note, this is just one of many of Lodi's
tales of exploiting foreign women that he encounters. So like
traveling the world writing variations on Madam kreisntem just in
(07:46):
different countries, like oh well, now I'm going to exploit
this country's women and this region's women over here, shaping
all of them into these perfect little submissive dolls. So
he's basically the original globe trotting bro who comes holm
with so many stories you wouldn't believe the women men
you gotta get over there, that's right, And just like
(08:07):
with those people, I would imagine that not all of
his tales of conquest or true. No, seriously, it's true. Man,
I'm telling you. She lives in Canada. You wouldn't know
he was crazy. But Loady's success in this whole story
inspires another guy named John Luther Long who writes a
(08:28):
short story a lot of listeners have probably heard of
called Madame Butterfly, So now I don't have to try
to mispronounce quez antem um and Madame Butterfly is all
about a dude named Lieutenant Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton and his
temporary Asian bride shows your son who has his baby,
(08:51):
who is then named Trouble, and then spoiler alert, she
kills herself. Well, I think actually in the short story, uh,
they generously allow her to just attempt to kill herself
and then she gets to live out like a troubled
and miserable existence with her child from then on out.
But it's not until we get the Piccini opera of
(09:13):
Madtern Butterfly, which I believe is when that character kills
herself but she needs like oh you know what audiences
love well, right, because then so not only do you
have the dainty submissive sexually satisfying woman, but you throw
in some self sacrifice into all of that to make
her like the perfect lady martyr figure for a white guy. Yeah,
(09:37):
a woman who is so in love with you that
when she can't have you, she kills herself. Hello, what
a dream gal Um? Yeah, Madama Butterfly premiered in nineteen
o four and remains one of the most performed operas
in the US and abroad. And Caroline, is this the
moment when when we can take a quick side trip
(10:00):
to talk about high school? Oh my gosh. Yeah, So
I don't understand how I got through so many, so
many of my years, um without putting these two pieces together.
I guess it's just because I'm not a Puccini fan
girl like maybe I should be. But as I was
(10:21):
researching and reading for this episode, I was seeing the
named Pinkerton. Pinkerton Pinkerton. Oh my god, that was one
of my most favorite albums in high school, the beloved
second release of Weezer. And Yeah, I mean, of course
I realized listening to it approximately one ba jillion times,
that he is seeing about Checho, sad and stuff. But
(10:44):
I never put two and two together, and it sort
of blew my mind too. I can't believe in the
number of times that I listened to that record growing up,
and even as a college student, that I didn't I
didn't realize that that's the connection. And this whole time
I had just been thinking Rivers Cuomo is just some
sort of like creep with yellow fever fetishization of Asian women.
(11:09):
And it's not that I'm necessarily wrong, but I was
trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, thinking, oh, well,
he just really likes Puccini, or he really likes Madam Butterfly,
Like that's great, right, that's cultured demo, that's not really EMO.
Don't send me your letters clarifying why Weezer is not EMO, please. Um. Well,
so I did a little googling. I wanted to better
(11:32):
understand the connection there between Weezer and Madam Butterfly. But basically,
in this Rolling Stone interview that I read with Rivers Cuomo,
he goes on and on about how in listening to
Madam Butterfly over and over again, he becomes fascinated with
the character, with her character, and at the same time
(11:52):
became infatuated with that type of girl that's in the opera,
and he says that he identifies with the Pinkerton character
because he's basically like the rock star of his day.
He goes from port to port picking up ladies. And
I was like, no, I guess okay, considering the popularity
of Wheezer, All right, Rivers Cuomo, you are tortured Pinkerton.
(12:14):
Maybe that's why he entered his celibacy phase for a while. Um,
but it was it was just surprising again that it
somehow took this long. Thank you stuff, Mom never told
you for putting the pieces together. And it's also interesting
to really just keep in mind that these stereotypes and
this fetishization led to a hundred years plus of this
(12:40):
self sacrificing storyline, because then all of this Madam Butterfly
business inspired Miss Saigon, which is basically the same story
but told about a Vietnamese woman rather than a Japanese woman. Yeah,
and if we move forward in our timeline, well hop
(13:00):
back from Weezer, but forward from Puccini. When we're in
the twentieth century, we have the emergence of a new
sexualized stereotype, the dragon lady. And this is the cunning
fem fatal foil to the China doll slash lotus flower,
(13:22):
and the term was coined in the nineteen thirties. Yeah,
it was used to describe Empress Dowager c ch as
she was slanderously portrayed in British historian Hugh Trevor Roper's
completely false account of his affair with her. Among other things,
this guy claimed that the Empress had an oversized clitterists,
(13:45):
so good for him, just slut shaming women that he
never actually had any sort of contact with. Well, and
that reflects how these stereotypes do tend to meander down
to vulver anatomy. And yes, vulver is an adjective. It's
(14:06):
all awkward to say, but it does exist. Yeah, it's
just it's just one of of many that are vulver related. Yeah,
and have to do with size and assumptions about size.
And that's something too. Echoing back to our podcast on
big butts and the fetishization, particularly of women of color,
and with the story of Sarki Bartman and all of
(14:28):
that fascination um as well with or I shouldn't say
fascination but even just dark obsession with this idea that
Native African women had different sized volvers compared to white
women as well. So all sorts of just horrible types
of things like that going on. Um. And one person
(14:49):
that we wanted to talk about in terms of the
portrayals of the stereotypes in Hollywood once we move from
literature and into film. In early Hollywood, one of the
only Asian American actresses that you saw on the silver
(15:10):
screen was a woman named Anna May Wong, and our
cultural treatment of Asian women is so much reflected in
her career. Yeah, and this really echoes the career paths
of a lot of black actresses during this time too,
who were often shuttled off into roles as maids, housekeepers
and the like. Um Anname Wong, for instance, appeared in
(15:34):
sixty films always the Home as some type of slave, temptress, prostitute,
or doomed lover. There was always some sort of subservient
sexuality and sexual tension going on. And we wanted to
spend a little time talking about her biography and experience
in Hollywood because to me, at least, it was so
(15:55):
informative of how these stereotypes really took root and manifested
in the United States. And I highly recommend listeners that
you read the BuzzFeed piece about this written by the
fantastic an Helen Peterson, who has also been on the
podcast UM. She wrote a great piece about Anime Wong
(16:15):
and it is a recommended read. And Wong was a
Chinese American actress born in l a in nineteen o five.
And even the fact that she was born in the
United States was something that Hollywood tabloids because you could
never really wrap their minds around, like, I know, she
looks Chinese, but surprised she was actually born here. Yeah,
(16:37):
and I now, like all of the articles about Anime
Wong put every modern fashion spread that discusses Asian inspired
fashion and stark relief because because I don't know if
the headline East meets West sort of originates in terms
of pop culture youth originates with Anime Wong articles. But
holy crap, like that seems like they couldn't write anything else.
(16:59):
They were so everybody's minds were blown that this is
an American woman born in America in case you were wondering, UM,
who didn't speak with an accent, And they just couldn't
get over the like the discrepancy there. Yeah, and and
the treatment of Asians at the time that she was born.
(17:21):
Is very much reminiscent of what we talked about in
our Spicy Latina's episode exploring how those anti Mexican in
particular stereotypes really started to creep in at this time, because,
as Anne Helen Peterson lays out, in the nineteenth century,
the first mostly male Chinese laborers start coming to the US,
(17:46):
and then in two you have something called the Chinese
Exclusion Act barring their entry to the country because they
were believed to be a moral, unhealthy, and a threat
to our fabric of society. So this is the environment
where things are happening. And there was also a lot
(18:07):
of discomfort too with the fact that a lot of
Asian women, because of these kinds of US policies, were
not allowed to come into the United States as well.
There were fears that they would bring over things like STDs.
So you have these communities of mostly Asian men that
white people similarly, we're like, oh, what's going on over there?
That's not right. There are new women, but at the
(18:28):
same time they judged their women as being immoral too,
so there was it was just a mess to begin with.
And here's anime Wong who grows up in l A
and decides to be an actress. Yeah, so she starts
appearing as an extra and a few films being shot
in Chinatown. When she's like fourteen, she gets her dad's permission,
(18:49):
and he only lets her go if she is constantly
supervised in chaperone by a bunch of big dudes. But
she began acting full time in nineteen one, with her
big rate coming in ninety two's The Toll of the Sea,
which is basically another take on the Madam Butterfly storyline.
And of course, her character's name is Lotus flower Um.
(19:12):
But despite the fact that she's a great beauty and
a great actress, she's got this passion for acting. The
racism of the day kept her from everything from attending
Hollywood parties to even kissing her white co stars on screen,
thanks to things like California's anti misgenation law. She also
(19:34):
was super afraid to be caught with any white co
stars out and about in the same way that celebrities today,
if their photos taken and they're together, everybody automatically assumes
their dating or sleeping together. Whatever. Celebrities back then, especially
celebrities of color, were also subject to all of these assumptions,
and so she was quoted as saying that she had
(19:54):
to cut off a bunch of love affairs because she
was so worried that one or both of them would
get personally hurt or that professionally hurt. Yeah, and so
this is similarly reflected in the roles that she's offered,
because she could only ever play either a more sympathetic
character who has to kill herself like a cho Cho
(20:15):
San because her exotic love is doomed and also ps
they can't show them kissing, so it's not like they
can really have a romance blossom. Or she would play
a dragon lady temptress who tries to thwart romance between
two lily white leads. So not exactly uh much of
an arrange she was, you know, at liberty to explore,
(20:40):
but the Tabloyd's loved her. This is one thing that
Peterson noted that, unlike say black actresses of the day,
who would not have gotten any coverage at all, because
Animy Wong was light her skinned and still exotic in
the fact that she just wasn't black, they could still
talk about her. She would never make the cover of magazine,
(21:01):
But she made for just such tantalizing content as we
would say in the Internet age today, right, And one
of the descriptors that they tended to use for really
Asian people in general, but definitely for Anime Wong as well,
is talking about her ancient race. There's always this discussion
by white media back then and I don't know, maybe
(21:24):
today about the ancient races of Asia, as if we
have somehow excavated from some block of ice, like the
entire groups of people who have just been around alive
for centuries, giving them like the dinosaur treatment almost. But yeah,
so along those same lines, one of the fan magazines
(21:46):
of the time said that she reminds us of cruel
and intricate intrigues and at the same time of cruoned
Chinese lullabies. She brings to the screen the rare comprehension
and the mysterious colors of her ivory skinned race. Who so,
considering that climate, it's not terribly surprising that she never
(22:06):
really broke through America's outsize racism to become an a list,
Unlike one of her gal pals, Marlene Dietrich, who she
befriended when she moved to Europe where things were a
bit more liberal, and she was even passed over at
certain times for Chinese character lead roles that were instead
(22:28):
cast with white ladies. For instance, in two Madam Butterfly,
the movie started Carrie Grant as Pinkerton, which that broke
my heart a little bit because yes, did I have
a childhood crush on Carrie Grant? For sure? Totally. Mr
Blandings built his dream house. Hello, I know someone who
(22:50):
can fill that dream bedroom and his Chocho son. Oh well,
Sylvia Sydney, of course, famed white ladies, Yes, the white ladies,
Sylvia Sydney. And there were all of these magazine spreads
at the time kind of behind the scenes of these
films detailing how they transformed to white women into Asian characters,
(23:14):
which was just a lot of like racist, awful, Like
here's how we pull our eyes back and put her
in yellow face, uh and make her talk with a
broken English accent. It was all pretty horrifying. Um, But
there was Anne Helen Peterson points out over in that
BuzzFeed article a film version of the book The Good Earth,
(23:36):
which was not perfect in its depiction of Asian people,
but still a little bit better a little bit more rounded.
And so she points out that MGM offered Anime Wong
the role of again Lotus, a slinky tea house dancer
who seduces the main moral character and becomes the second wife.
(23:57):
But Anime Wong actually refused the role because at this
point she'd been to Europe she saw that it could
be better. She saw that her friend Marlene Dietrich was
getting these great roles. She saw that white women were
portraying Asian women all all on screen everywhere, and so
she said, you're asking me with Chinese blood to do
the only unsympathetic role in a picture featuring an all
(24:19):
American cast portraying Chinese characters. No thanks, So she turned
that down and basically stepped back from large roles. So
by the time we get to World War Two, when
relationships between sday the United States and the Japanese become
far more complicated, to say the least, this relationship is
(24:40):
already so disfunctional. We already have these ideas firmly ingrained
in popular culture. And we're going to talk more about
World War two and the Lotus Flower revival when we
come right back from a quick bread. So, once World
(25:04):
War two happens, and then we're involved in the Korean
War and in Vietnam, American soldiers and Americans in general
are put more in contact with Asian cultures than really
ever before, and they're dealing with them in ways that
they've never really dealt with them before. And of course, unfortunately,
(25:26):
one of the ways in which American gis and Asian
women are become involved is through the sex trade. Yeah.
I mean, of course there were actual relationships that might
have been taking place, but there was rampant prostitution that
was happening, also rape between soldiers and local women. And
(25:47):
again we return to this era of gendering of the East,
so sort of refeminizing this area of the world, which
certainly isn't a coincidence because yet again you have this
West Durn power the occident like trying to reassert its
dominance to be the masculine world power. And it's Madam
(26:09):
Butterfly all over again culturally, with similar stories that we've
talked about in the first half of the podcast, repackaged repeatedly,
only this time with more white Guy's savior twists and
prostitutes with hearts of gold. Yeah, and Kristen put together
(26:30):
a list, and I've only seen one of the movies
on this list, and that's South Pacific, which premiered on
Broadway in nine. But I was growing up my dad
was such a huge like Broadway and musical fans, so
I've definitely familiar with South Pacific. But in this era
you also get nineteen fifty seven's Sayinara, in nineteen sixty
(26:51):
you get the world of Susie Wong. And in the
eighties we see Missigon, which is set in Vietnam, as
we already mentioned, but also Full Metal Jacket, which coined
some more unsavory pop cultural references with the whole mesa
horny line that we've heard not only from that movie,
but it got also shuttled into music as well. Yeah,
(27:14):
and today we still see Hollywood peddling stereotypical roles for
Asian actresses. They're either model minorities, you know, the nerdy
kid in class, their dragon lady businesswomen. They're sexy kung
fu masters or non English speaking immigrants running dry cleaners,
or their prostitutes. And if we move away from the
(27:37):
big screen to the small screen, television is slightly more
progressive as it usually is, but just slightly. It's not
like it's the Land of Plenty. Yeah. Of course Grey's
Anatomy fans will recognize Sandra Oh's name. She she was
probably my favorite character, definitely was my favorite character on
(27:58):
Gray's Anatomy back when I used to watch it, and
her characters existence was certainly not built or shaped around
her race at all. Um. You also have Lucy Lou,
who I love too. She went from being sort of
the resident dragon lady on Ally McBeal to a more
well rounded character on the show Elementary as Watson, and
(28:20):
then on Glee. You have Jenna push Cowitz and Hettian
Park on Hannibal as investigator Beverly Cats and this was
really interesting. So um, spoiler alert for those of you
who are not caught up on Hannibal, Park's character was
written off the show, and it won't tell you how,
We'll just say that she was written off the show
(28:41):
and there was a fan outcry, partially because it is
still relatively rare to see Asian women in these more
well rounded roles. And she took to her blog to
personally respond to the fan outcry, and it really, you know,
gets at how this issue is still alive and well
(29:02):
in Hollywood, So she wrote, quote, I'd rather focus on
the positive stuff. I got to play this amazing woman
who didn't have to sleep with anyone or act dum
and girly or fawn all over some guy to be
conniving to get people to notice or respect me. And
she didn't speak broken English or karate chop anyone, not
that I would have minded. Nobody called her dragon lady
(29:25):
or exotic. Yeah, it's just that whole idea of of
normalizing diversity and and having TV and film represent our
everyday experience, what we're seeing on the street, and so
not having a character like I was saying with Sandra
and Grey's anatomy that's built entirely around someone's Asian nous,
having an Asian actor or actress be able to play
(29:48):
just a character on a TV show um and over
at Salon, though, they point out that two particular Orange
Is the New Black characters aren't as well rounded as
they could be, and those are the characters of So
So and Chang, that they sort of huge stereotypical, and
that their backstories either haven't been fleshed out enough or
(30:11):
that they haven't gotten as much play as some of
the other characters. Yeah, it seems like Kimiko Glenn's plot
line playing So So is a little less stereotypical. Like
if anything, um, she you know, portrays the mental health
realities that can be associated with not only well being
in prison, but also these model minority expectations that you know,
(30:36):
do sometimes happen within Asian American households. But with Chang Um,
up until this most recent season, I mean, she was
very much just a stock character and a little bit
of comic relief. But I remember watching it, I mean
long before obviously we were searching for this episode and
(30:56):
thinking like, huh, okay, that's kind of an outlier, as
I should before So So came along, she was the
only Asian character and rarely spoke. Yeah. Well, in that
Salon article, the writer was like, well, I'm not trying
to argue for more Asian women in prison, um, but
the whole underrepresentation of Asian characters in this show that
(31:18):
takes place in a prison does sort of reflect the
existing stereotype of Asians as the quote unquote model minority
that they never do anything wrong. They just study math
and get a grades and get married and go on
to be model citizens. When even if some people do
think that that model minority stereotype is positive, like, hey,
we're not saying that you break the law, so shouldn't
(31:39):
you be grateful, it's still squashing entire groups of people
down to a one dimensional representation that doesn't reflect reality
absolutely well, and speaking of squashing down a culture to
not reflect reality, very briefly, this is something that we've
seen female pop stars in particular pedal out with some
(31:59):
of the air acts. I mean, this is more of
a bigger conversation about cultural appropriation, but this is also
too recycling some of these fetishistic images that we've talked about.
So I feel like the conversation really got started way
back now in the olden days of two thousand four
when Gwen Stefani released Love Angel Music Baby, and as
(32:23):
part of her stick with that, she hired on the
Hard Juko Girls posse do not only appear in shows
and backup dance for her, but just to be her
posse everywhere well, to be her accessories. Yeah, I think
it is what a lot of people took issue with,
as you can really claim about any type of cultural
(32:46):
appropriation or plenty of stuff that musicians do in music videos.
You know, there have been plenty of people like Miley
Cyrus and Taylor Swift have been accused of similar things,
but with African American women. Um but in and you
also have uh Katie Perry at the American Music Awards
recycling that tired geisha image of the cute, c diminutive,
(33:11):
submissive woman carrying the little parasol wearing the kimono. Yeah.
And then it also in two thousand thirteen, Avril Levine's
Hello Kitty video was very much Japanese school girl. A
lot of people weren't too happy about that. Her defense was, hey,
I shouted in Japan and the director was Japanese. I
(33:32):
love Japanese culture. Which is why a lot of this
really meanders over more to a conversation about cultural appropriation
than these kinds of this fetishization that we're talking about,
But it's still related. It's all part of the same ballawact. Yeah,
Because whether you're fetishizing someone or you're appropriating part of
their culture, you're still just taking a tidbit of information
(33:56):
that is oftentimes false or misrepresentative and using it to
represent entire groups of people. And it's definitely something that
you see play out when you do talk about romantic
or sexual relationships and dating and the way that people
who are accused of having yellow fever are talked about.
(34:16):
But there's still pervasive stereotyping, especially when it comes to
relationships between white men and Asian women. And I'm not
just talking about, you know, fetishization that some white dudes
might have, particularly for Asian women, but I'm talking about
from the outside looking into and our outside assumptions when
(34:36):
we see those couples and the whole yellow fever thing
of saying, oh, well, he must be like that, she
must be like that. They're like X y Z. Yeah.
And Patricia Park in that Bitch article that we sited earlier,
talks a lot about how everyone from comedians to frat
boys to whoever, recycles a lot of that to borrow
(34:58):
a phrase ancient praise of Asian women's supposed physical perfection,
the fact that they are small and petite everywhere. Yeah,
this is something too that Karen Ang wrote about in
also in a Bitch article that was published in two
thousand called the Yellow Fever Pages, and it's cited in
(35:20):
so many pieces that talk about this um and she
wrote the fantasy Asian is intelligent yet pliable, mysterious yet ornamental,
perpetually pre pubescent, ageless, and petite, and she comes from
a culture where women traditionally serve men. So you know,
you package all of that up together and you get
(35:41):
yellow fever. Meanwhile, too, we have the more cultural casphration
of Asian men in the United States, and there is
some disturbing evidence of that, especially if you look at
the sex industry, especially in Southeast Asia and and sex
tourism being the primary tourist attraction in Thailand. Yeah, and
(36:04):
then you combine that with the fact that you've got
all of these websites that are dedicated to matching up
American men with Asian women, and that's a huge market
and in and of itself, it's almost like a new
type of arranged marriage. And then far more casually and
anecdotally in the United States, there's the kind of the
off hand suggestion to say Asian girl friends of like, oh,
(36:28):
you know what, you should date this guy because he
loves Asian girls. Um and a huge YouTuber Anna Kna
made a fantastic video about this in which she just said, no, stop, stop,
shut it down, don't do any of that because it's
kind of racist and insulting basically, and they're in fact,
(36:50):
is an entire documentary called Seeing Asian Female about online dating,
specifically to find an Asian hide, and it was made
by Chinese American documentarian filmmaker Debbie Lum, who follows this guy,
you know, as he seeks out a girlfriend, um and wife.
(37:15):
He wants an Asian wife, and particularly a Chinese born woman,
and he meets her online. He travels to China, she
comes back with him, they get married. Yeah, this guy,
Stephen definitely wasn't portrayed in the best light. That's a
nice way of saying. He was definitely portrayed as a creep,
(37:35):
and his wife was definitely portrayed as someone who was
just seeking a visa. So this wasn't a glowing representation
of white guy meets Asian girl, they fall in love.
This wasn't sort of a fairy tale story. And not surprisingly,
Stephen did not love being portrayed as this pathetic white
guy with a massive fetish and he left this huge
(37:57):
comment on the NP our story, which was fascinating. Um.
But he says that, you know, lightheartedly, he could accept
the dismissive and negative phrase yellow fever, but he says
in reality that sounds far more strange than how I
view it, like an affliction rather than a preference. But
you have to keep in mind that he was explicitly
(38:19):
seeking out Asian women and that he zeroed in on
Chinese women after communicating with countless women and realizing that
he liked the communication style of Chinese women more so
whatever that means, um well, and even the notion that
you like the and I don't. Maybe he gets into
(38:42):
this more in the documentary. I would hope so, because
as someone Caroline who spent almost three weeks in China,
I'm an expert. But the very idea that it's like saying, oh,
I like how American women, uh communicate where it's like,
(39:03):
wherever you go, it's going to be a little bit different,
regional differences, especially if you go to China, big differences
depending on where you're going in the country where she
grew up, what her family dynamic was like. So wait,
are you saying that, like, women can be different, I'm
saying people can be different. My god, crazy. But you
(39:25):
know a lot of people would argue, as Stephen might,
that this is just his preference the way that somebody
might like a blonde mate, or somebody else might like
somebody who's tall. Uh, that this is just a preference. Yeah,
I mean, I will be completely honest. I mean, because
why not, I've only ever dated white guys. It's not
that I have not dated guys of other ethnicities, because
(39:50):
I have no but that has been what I've been
attracted to. So I could see, I can see how
you can play it both ways, like, well maybe, well,
maybe that's just my biological, innate brain, you know, mechanics
leading me to my now, you know, blonde, blue eyed
(40:11):
fiance with a dreamboat. He's like a Kendall. But I
mean other people would say, well, that's just social influences,
and so there could definitely be some social influences that
lad the twice divorced Stephen to see that his son
had married a Japanese woman, whom he described as very agreeable. Uh,
(40:33):
to then decide, well, I'm going to pursue Asian women.
I'm just not sure what tap yet. Yeah. Yeah, I mean,
there's kind of no way around it in his case. Um,
But regardless though of the fact that I think, you know,
that does exist in some situations that does exist. Um,
there's also two side note, Caroline. One thing that I
(40:56):
wasn't able to find any analysis on, but jumping from that,
the stereotype of especially the white geek guy being extremely
attracted to Asian women. There's this whole comic about it
called Charisma Man. You can google it and it sort
of sums up the whole thing. So like rivers Cuoma, Yeah,
(41:19):
like rivers Cuomo. Yeah. Get Caroline just made a weak
face because it does get to a point with that
of like, way, what is what is really going on here?
What are these dynamics not just like demonize all of
you know, anyone in this situation, but just wonder what
those dynamics are. Well, sure, especially because um, whether you're
(41:44):
Asian or whether you have Asian friends or family, Uh,
you're probably familiar with the horrors that a lot of
Asian women face on dating sites. I mean, yes, yes,
all women hashtag all women do face horrific messages is
and things like that on dating sites. I have was
definitely the recipient of a few when I used to
(42:04):
be on Okay keep it back in the day. Um,
but Kristen and I have a friend who used to
be on a couple of dating sites, and the abuse
that she would suffer from men who were saying horrific
things that were based purely on her race, purely on
her Asian nous. I I just don't know, um how
you can say that it's not an Asian fetish I
(42:28):
just like Asian chicks. I mean, it definitely speaks to
the power of these stereotypes. Going back, told Pierre LOADI
come on, Pierre, and it's unfortunate because when we get
out of stereotype and fetishization land and into attraction, Bill,
you know, you have plenty of healthy, real world relationships
(42:53):
between Asian women and white guys. And because though of
all of that stereotypical baggage, now they have to deal
with assumptions. This was something that Victoria Chan wrote about
over Advice, basically saying like, You're like, these stereotypes are
making my relationship unbearable sometimes because of the things people
(43:17):
say to me, the jokes that I'm expected to endure,
and also just this assumption that my boyfriend is a creep. Yeah,
it is that dual awfulness of having to endure casual racism.
One of the examples that Chan gave was they went
to her boyfriend's family's place over the summer and they
were going to play beer pong, and people were like, hey,
(43:39):
you'll like this. It's just like ping pong. Yeah, your
your people are familiar with that. Um, which I think
she was talking about caused a fight with her and
her boyfriend, and he apologized on behalf of the person.
But so you've already got to deal with the pressures
of one member of the relationship having to deal with racism,
whether it's explicit or implicit, or direct or indirect um,
(44:02):
and one not one being, as she says, the privileged,
middle class white guy. Um. But then also having to
deal with assumptions about your relationship like that stinks that
people are just looking at you and being like a
Asian lady and white guy, your boyfriend must be a creep.
Something's twisted. Well, and she brought up to the assumptions that, well,
(44:23):
she must be ashamed of her heritage or she's just
you know, why doesn't she want to be with an
Asian guy? What does you think is wrong with with
with those guys? Um, which again is unfortunate because these
relationships exist. I mean, if we look at marriage as
of of Asian newlywed's in the US partnered up outside
(44:47):
of their race. And this is coming from the Pew Center.
Thirty seven percent of Asian women married someone who is
an Asian and compared to six of Asian men. So
these couplings are like totally common, you know, but so
unfortunately weighed down with this baggage which so unfortunately just
(45:10):
relates back to imperialism and the occident just being gross jerks. Yeah,
it was sort of crazy to put it all in
the perspective that so many of the stereotypes that we
culturally hold about Asian women in general come from just
some white guys who went into a previously pretty insular,
(45:33):
closed society and wrote books or plays or operas about it.
And uh so that's that's what we think of Asian women.
Thanks a lot. And what do we do then, Caroline,
what can we the change starts with us to change start. Yeah,
just like that Michael Jackson song, Yes, podcasters in the mirror.
(45:54):
So one thing though, that we can do on an
individual level to make life a little bit easy year
with all this stuff is stop the questions of but
where are you really from? Oh no, no, no, no,
I know that you were born in the United States,
but I mean, where are you really from? Yeah, because
then all that does is echo back to those articles
about Anime Wong who people were like, wait, wait, wait,
(46:16):
wait wait wait your Chinese, but you're also American, but
you're born here. Why don't you have an accent? Where
are you from? Where you really from? Because all of
this really just amounts to a giant pile of other ing.
And while you might think, oh, I don't perpetuate these
kinds of stereotypes, there are more of those microaggressions we
(46:36):
could say that we can all probably pay closer attention to.
And seriously, friends, if you have a single Asian friend
that you want to hook up, don't don't suggest the
guy who exclusively dates Asian girls, you know, like, don't
don't try to don't pull that whole thing. Yeah, yeah,
(46:57):
because then that just makes you feel or makes your
friend feel like she's just another another widget in a
collection of things. Like if you were to say, Caroline,
I've got this this guy for you, Uh, he's really
into short girls. The only dates girls with bangs, you'll
have a lot to talk about. Yeah, hairstyling and tall shoes. Um,
(47:20):
but Yeah, thats just that just enforces that nobody could
be possibly interested in you for you and your personality,
but that's something about you physically or culturally is the biggest,
most important part of you. Well, I'm really curious to Caroline,
to hear from listeners who might experience these kinds of
(47:41):
stereotypes unfortunately in their relationships or in how they're treated
in their dating experiences. UM, whether they might be like
a white guy who has been interested in or dated
or married to an Asian woman or vice versa. UM,
we want to hear from you. What are your thoughts
on this kind of stereotyping or is this just something
(48:03):
that you can block out and just completely disregard as
nonsensical because a lot of it really is mom Stuff
at how Stuffworks dot Com is our email address. You
can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or messages
on Facebook, and we've got a couple of messages to
share with you right now. So I have a letter
(48:29):
here from Christina. She says, I just wanted to say
hi and tell you how much I enjoy your podcasts.
I've been listening for a few years. You make mowing
the grass and running fun. Oh wow. Mowing the grass
one okay, she says, as a woman who's consistently worked
in non traditional types of jobs, I love the girl
power feeling I get from listening to your topics. I
(48:50):
think there has been some progress and attitudes towards women
in male dominated professions, but there's still so far to go.
I've been a military police officer in the Army, a
civilian city police office are and now I work in
the firearms industry. If I had a dollar for every
time a customer calls in and assumes I'm the receptionist
or ask for someone who can answer a technical question,
(49:10):
as if there is no way I would know anything
about those scary things that go bang, I could retire tomorrow.
My co workers are all male, and no one ever
calls and a stams they cannot assist them. I've even
had several occasions where I've been told straight up that
they want to speak to a man. Most of the time,
I'm happy to just surprise them by showing that I do,
in fact, I know my stuff. I hope you guys
(49:32):
have a great week and keep up the awesome podcasting. Well, thanks, Christine,
I keep up the awesome listening and knowing things about
those scary things that go bang. Well, I've gotta let
her here from Abby and she writes, I'm an a
gender and work sociology class at the University of Georgia
right now, in which my professor has so graciously exposed
my classmates and I to your podcast. For the short
(49:53):
summer course, we've been required to listen to seven of
your podcasts, but seven has simply not been enough for
someone like me who was so interested in educating myself
on gender type issues. Side note, we give that professor
an A plus. That's so cool. We're part of a
syllabu scareline. I love it. In recently listening to your
podcast on Bio Ratire, I found myself getting excited and
(50:15):
somewhat sad at how true everything you were saying was.
As a by slash pan woman in a hetero relationship,
I find my queer status being questioned all the time.
I recently faced some complications in my relationship where I
admittedly cheated on my significant other with a woman. I
felt terrible, but when all of my friends found out
afterward about how much of it told the instance had
(50:37):
taken on my relationship, I ran into my favorite question,
You only hooked up with a woman, so why does
it matter? People were insistent that I had I cheated
with a man, my significant other would have every right
to be heartbroken, but since it was only with a woman,
he was overreacting. Some people even dared suggest that my
significant other should have only been upset because as he
(51:00):
wasn't able to watch the interaction. You can imagine how
invalidating this was to both my sexuality and to his emotions.
This also touches on your mention of female bisexuality being
more accepted. I think it's important to note that true
female bisexuality is not actually accepted at all. Instead, it's
(51:22):
a hyper sexualized idea of girl on girl physical contact
we so often see in porn that's truly accepted. I
hope for one day where sexuality need not be so defined,
and that a queer individual's sex life must be exposed
so explicitly in order to be justified. Thanks for all
of your hard work, and thank you Abby. And that
(51:43):
is horrific of your friends, and I hope that they
came back and later apologized. So if you have any
emails to send to us, Mom stuff at how stuff
Works dot com is where you can send them and
drillnks to all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts, including
this one with links so you can learn more of
(52:04):
the history of these Asian stereotypes. Head on over to
stuff Mom Never told You dot com for moral this,
and thousands of other topics. Does it have stuff works
dot com
Stuff Mom Never Told You News
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