You know, itâs funny - I used to just support Hillary by merit of âNot Donald Trumpâ (or, honestly, âNot a Republicanâ). I was feeling the Bern pretty hard during the primary elections, and I just was really concerned that she wasnât liberal enough, wasnât honest enough, was offput by the Debbie Wasserman Schultz stuff, etc., etc.
And then I⊠actually started reading things? And realized that she had the exact same PoliticFacts honesty rating as Bernie Sanders? That I was falling for a narrative of repeated indictment constructed by Republicans seeking to delegitimize her way back when?
So then I started rethinking things. And around this time, I got a call, actually, from my local Democratic party organizing group - not strictly âfor Hillaryâ so much as generally trying to organize the disparate Democratic groups in the area, which is something Iâd wanted for a while. So obviously, I went in, and at first we met once alongside some others from my family, but it became quickly apparent that he was really, really interested in meeting later to discuss social media strategies. Like, that was clearly the biggest thing he was interested in. Simultaneously, it became apparent that heâd organized for Hillary in the primaries. I agreed to meet for a coffee later to discuss strategies, but at the meeting, I went ahead and made it pretty clear up front that Iâd been a Bernie supporter but I thought unity was important, etc., etc. And he was justâŠ
I guess Iâd sort of expected to have to fight for things a little bit? That Iâd have to be holding my ground, that heâd be sort of smug or whatever, but it wasnât like that at all. He was just immediately welcoming, talking about how glad he was to have me aboard, how important he thought it was to address Bernie supporterâs concerns, how much great work Bernie had done and how eager they were to integrate it into the campaign. But the moment that really stuck with me was when he made a casual reference to abortion rights as âwomenâs rightsâ and I stopped him and went âThatâs trans exclusionary, I donât like to call them that.â (Grade A Tumblr discourse, right?) And he didnât get defensive or anything, just immediately went âOh, Iâm sorry, what should I be calling them?â I was a little taken aback and immediately checked back into the conversation, explaining that âreproductive rightsâ was more inclusive, etc.
He immediately thanked me and explained that this was why he was so excited to have me and people like me in the campaign, to make sure everyone was included.
I left the conversation feeling a lot more optimistic about this whole thing, feeling like maybe I wasnât just chipping in to stave off a worst case scenario and was actually fighting fo a cause that was actively including me.
But the real tipping point was⊠embarrassingly recent, if Iâm honest, and came about through a Spotify ad of all things. You may have heard it a zillion times - âmillions of jobsâ, yada yada yada, but with the stinger at the end that you should go onto her site and read The Plan. âYou know, maybe I should actually read that whole âPlanâ thing,â I said, and did.
And uh, guys. Do you⊠has anyone else actually read this? I wonât say I agree on every single point, but there is so much that Iâm actually really excited about??
I knew that Hillary was opposed to voter ID laws and probably vaguely supported early voting, but did you also know that she plans to do automatic voter registration at the age of 18 like weâve wanted to happen for ages? I knew that Hillary had talked about âmending trust between the police and Black communitiesâ, but did you know that her platform explicitly includes body cameras? Did you know that it specifically calls out the school to prison pipeline and her plan to end it? Did you know that it specifically calls out ending private prisons? Did you know that it specifically calls out ending violence against trans women of color with a crosslink to her LGBT rights platform? Did you know that it talks about defending Puerto Rican rights, something even a lot of the mainstream Tumblr SJ discourse tends to overlook?
And thatâs just two of the pages on this thing! Look at this stuff! She has the only autism platform that has the ASAN stamp of approval and explicitly includes autistic adults! She has explicit plans to fight anti-LGBT âconversion therapyâ and to upgrade the service records of everyone discharged for being queer! Increased HIV/AIDs combating funding including increasing the usage of post-exposure prophylaxis (something not too surprising in retrospect, I suppose, given the Clinton Foundationâs long history of combating HIV/AIDs).She not only supports debt-free college education at all state colleges (something I knew), but she has plans for investing in historically Black colleges and debt relief plans for people already dealing with student loans! She has a substance abuse platform focused on improving treatment options and eliminating jail time for possession! Mental health infrastructure reform!
And Iâm still barely touching on all of this, Jesus Christ - we could be here all day discussing all the policies I looked at and went âOh, wow, thatâs actually pretty in line with why I liked Bernie.â
So yeah, okay. You win this round, Hillary. I wanted Bernie to be our candidate, but you know what? Maybe sometimes, primaries are just choosing between two candidates who are actually both pretty great. And maybe youâve proved that youâre actually willing to listen. And all it took to win me over was, uh, me actually reading your campaign page.
But hey, better late than never, right? It was a slow path to get here, but a worthwhile one, and dammit, at least now I can say without reservation that #imwithher
#it wouldnât do any harm to sit down and read through her entire Plan#and then sit down and read through her Plan from when she was a Senator#and see how many of those specific Plans she got through during her tenure as Senator#aka how many promises she kept#and even more how many of those promises she WORKED FOR throughout those eight years#meaning: if HRC says this is what she wants to do thereâs no reason to think she wonât do it#other than your assumption that she is a liar and a fraud#which is an assumption that frankly you ought to be smart enough to question#because you my friend have lived your entire life with the narrative that Bill Clinton Is Evil And Hillary Is Worse#I mean the same people who push the âsheâs corrupt and a liarâ narrative#are the ones whoâve been saying sheâs a Secret Lesbian for a quarter century#so IDK if you really want to rely on those particular sources (via @leupagus)
For those who werenât tuned in when the shit hit the fan in January⊠I woke up one morning with pain that was only moderately worse than my regular menstrual cramps, but it was 1. off-schedule, and 2. localized in my lower right abdomen. I (grumpily, reluctantly) packed myself off to the emergency room, because even I know better than to fuck with potential appendicitis symptoms.
During intake, they asked me how bad my pain was on a scale from one to ten. I thought to myself, âcramps canât be more than a two, right?â and said out loud, âUh, maybe a three and a half?â
It was not appendicitis.
It was a ruptured ovarian cyst and a couple of kidney stones. Nowhere near as dangerous as appendicitis, thank fuck. But still two of the most infamously painful medical conditions striking, right on top of each other, at the exact same time.
Uh, maybe a three and a half.
Six months later I was back in the hospital with stomach bleeding from heavy NSAID use. âNobody needs to take that much Aleve just for menstrual cramps,â I was told. âCanât you just go without next month?â
I collapsed walking back to my dorm from work one morning. Â My legs just would not support my body because the pain was so overwhelming. Â An ambulance had to be called.
I made a bunch of videos discussing how to register, vote absentee, get a sample ballot, find your polling place, and vote in each of the 50 states. Each of them is around 2 minutes long and they have all the information that you (and everyone else) needs to get make their voice heard on November 8th. Please spread so those who are voting for the first time can have an easy resource to figure out exactly how to do it!
STATES
Alabama - Alaska - Arizona  - Arkansas  - California  - Colorado - Connecticut - Delaware  - Florida - Georgia - Hawaii  - Idaho  - Illinois  - Indiana  - Iowa  - Kansas -  Kentucky -  Louisiana  - Maine  - Maryland -  Massachusetts  - Michigan  - Minnesota - Mississippi - Missouri - Montana - Nebraska - Nevada - New Hampshire - New Jersey - New Mexico - New York - North Carolina - North Dakota - Ohio - Oklahoma - Oregon - Pennsylvania - Rhode Island - South Carolina - South Dakota - Tennessee - Texas - Utah - Vermont - Virginia - Washington - West Virginia - Wisconsin - WyomingÂ
OTHER
Washington DC - Unincoporated Territories - Military and Overseas
I wanted my first-year film students to understand what happens to a story when actual human beings inhabit your characters, and the way they can inspire storytelling. And I wanted to teach them how to look at headshots and what you might be able to tell from a headshot. So for the past few years Iâve done a small experiment with them.
Some troubling shit always occurs.
It works like this: I bring in my giant file of head shots, which include actors of all races, sizes, shapes, ages, and experience levels. Each student picks a head shot from the stack and gets a few minutes to sit with the personâs face and then make up a little story about them.Â
Namely, for white men, they have no trouble coming up with an entire history, job, role, genre, time, place, and costume. They will often identify him without prompting as âthe main character.â The only exception? âHe would play the gay guy.â For white women, they mostly do not come up with a job (even though it was specifically asked for), and they will identify her by her relationships. âShe would play the mom/wife/love interest/best friend.â Iâve heard âShe would play the slutâ or âShe would play the hot girl.â A lot more than once.
For nonwhite men, it can be equally depressing. âHeâs in a buddy cop movie, but heâs not the main guy, heâs the partner.â âHeâd play a terrorist.â âHeâd play a drug dealer.â âA thug.â âA hustler.â âHomeless guy.â One Asian actor was promoted to âvillain.â
For nonwhite women (grab onto something sturdy, like a big glass of strong liquor), sometimes they are âluckyâ enough to be classified as the girlfriend/love interest/mom, but I have also heard things like âWell, sheâd be in a romantic comedy, but as the friend, you know?â âMaid.â âProstitute.â âDrug addict.â
I should point out that the responses are similar whether the group is all or mostly-white or extremely racially mixed, and all the groups Iâve tried this with have been about equally balanced between men and women, though individual responses vary. Women do a little better with women, and people of color do a little better with people of color, but female students sometimes forget to come up with a job for female actors and black male students sometimes tell the class that their black male actor wouldnât be the main guy.
Once the students have made their pitches, we interrogate their opinions. âYou seem really sure that heâs not the main character â why? What made you automatically say that?â âYou said she was a mom. Was she born a mom, or did she maybe do something else with her life before her magic womb opened up and gave her an identity? Who is she as a person?â In the case of the âthugâ, it turns out that the student was just reading off his film resume. This brilliant African American actor who regularly brings houses down doing Shakespeare on the stage and more than once made me weep at the beauty and subtlety of his performances, had a list of film credits that just said âThug #4.â âGang member.â âMuscle.â Because thatâs the film work he can get. Because it puts food on his table.
So, the first time I did this exercise, I didnât know that it would turn into a lesson on racism, sexism, and every other kind of -ism. I thought it was just about casting. But now I know that casting is never just about casting, and this day is a real teachable opportunity. Because if we do this right, we get to the really awkward silence, where the (now mortified) students try to sink into their chairs. Because, hey, most of them are proud Obama voters! They have been raised by feminist moms! They donât want to be or see themselves as being racist or sexist. But their own racism and sexism is running amok in the room, and itâs awkward.
This for every time someone criticizes how characters of color and female characters of color especially are treated in text and by subsequent fandoms.  Itâs never âjust a television/movie/bookâ. Itâs never been âjustâ.
This one is always worth reblogging.
When I say, âRepresentation matters,â itâs not just the presence of PoC, women, PwD, LGBTQIA, in narrative, itâs the roles are those characters are occupying.
The hall of mirrors that is the interplay between fiction and real life becomes a negative feedback loop with real consequences, because we internalize things and then we act them out.
Storytelling is a powerful thing. What stories are we telling, and why?
no idea how new it is, as i typically avoid reddit like the plague (but i discovered this term through the link to the gendercritical subreddit)Â
âA Black Knight is someone who pisses women off for entertainment.â as opposed to a White Knight aka someone that stands up for women in order to try and get sex :/
here are some excerpts, courtesy of theredpill
on the subject of a woman walking away from you at night:Â âIâm just a man who decided to run an errand at night. Next time this happens jog after her. There is no law against jogging. Chase her for a while and then stop. Enjoy the fear you created. Woof woof you stupid cunt.â
on the subject of what they called âbiological warfareâ: âHow do you exploit these two weaknesses? Start baking for the office. See how much butter and sugar you can make the little piggies eat. With sustained effort everyone will be up ten pounds in three to six months.â
âFructose has various nasty biological effects when consumed in excess.
Main ones we are interested in are raised blood trigs, adiposity and increased appetite (outside of normal insulin fuckery, but related).â
âTry replacing the fructose with a sugar alcohol like sorbitol. For a portion of the population, it causes âgastric distressâ - diarrhea and gas, mostly.â
another story that im gonna paraphrase: guy didnt like his female boss, she was stressed over a project, someone âaccidentallyâ sent flowers to the wrong desk- to HER boss- with a note saying âthe interview went great and we look forward to working with you next month!â to make it look like she was secretly searching for another job. she got fired within the week.
using the womans bathroom at starbucks, which one man described as âempowering in a red pill wayâ because of course most women are going to look confused if not upset⊠clearly beyond the red piller to imagine reasons a man might enter a womans restroom besides to go to the bathroom
some things fairly innocuous like leaving empty condom wrappers in womens restrooms and stuffâŠ. to intentionally trying to intimidate women, getting a woman fired, etc. men harassing women in various ways, âfor teh lulzâ i guess.Â
women who hate men want to distance ourselves from men, have our own communities, when women hate men, we want to get away from men. When men hate women they do the exact opposite, they invade our spaces, harass us, intimidate us, stalk us, are violent against us. It doesnât matter how much women hate men, we donât hate men the way they hate us.
Look at me. Look me in the eye. On November the 8th, 2016, one of two things will happen: Hillary Clinton will become president, or Donald Trump will become president. These are the only two possibilities. The superdelegates arenât going to switch. An indictment isnât coming. There is no third possibility. There is no space between the spaces where you can hide. Every vote for Donald Trump requires two Hilary Clinton votes to overcome. A Hillary Clinton vote can only be overcome by two Donald Trump votes. If you stay home, a Donald Trump vote doubles its power. This is the real, actual reality of the situation. There is not one other option.
And to those of us who supported Bernie, he WANTS you to vote for Hillary. If you believe in him and his mission you will follow his advice. He knows that writing his name in, or voting for anyone else besides Clinton, is effectively voting for Trump.
Refusing to vote for Hillary is a vote for Trump, no matter how much you scream and say how itâs not. And if youâre standing by to do nothing in regards to taking down Trump, then you ARE grouped along with the rest of the people in this country that ruin things for everybody else.
If you werenât old enough to remember and/or understand the ramifications of the 2000 election, I WILL TELL YOU.
Do not let Trump win. Please. I beg you. I went to grad school with people who voted for Nader in 2000 and my FB feed is full of them begging others not to make the same mistake they did. Bernie has his priorities straight, and the priority is stopping Trump.
And if that doesnât do it for you, this is the Republican platform 2016. It calls for:
Conversion therapy for queer kids. Let me repeat that. CONVERSION THERAPY FOR QUEER KIDS.  Some members of the RNC even wanted to endorse it more explicitly than they did.
Zealous opposition to same-sex marriage. Hereâs the quote:Â âOur laws and our governmentâs regulations should recognize marriage as the union of one man and one woman and actively promote married family life as the basis of a stable and prosperous society. For that reason, as explained elsewhere In this platform, we do not accept the Supreme Courtâs redefinition of marriage and we urge its reversal, whether through judicial reconsideration or a constitutional amendment returning control over marriage to the States.â
Reversing the Obama administrationâs order to grant trans students access to restrooms, locker rooms, etc. The Republicans feel that such things should be based on biological gender, not gender identity.
Treating internet porn as âa public health crisis.â Quote: âPornography, with his harmful effects, especially on children, has become a public health crisis that is destroying the life of millions. We encourage states to continue to fight this public menace and pledge our commitment to childrenâs safety and wellbeing[.]â
Gender discrimination. To quote Time magazine: â[T]he platform committee voted against including the word âgenderâ in a list of types of discrimination that should be opposed. Â On Tuesday, one member described the attempt to add that word to a list including qualities like race, sex and creed as a âsneak attack.â
Repeal of the Johnson Amendment. The Johnson Amendment currently prevents churches and other tax-exempt organizations from organizing politically, endorsing political candidates, etc. Repealing it would throw separation of church and state out the windowâŠnot to mention that it would give evangelical churches and televangelist organizations much more power, driving the country further to the right.Â
If you vote for Trump, these are some of the planks of  the platform youâre voting for.Â
READ THAT AGAIN AS MANY TIMES AS YOU NEED TO - THE FORMER GRAND WIZARD OF THE KU FUCKING KLUX FUCKING KLAN IS RUNNING FOR SENATE IN 2016 BASED ON THE SUCCESS OF TRUMPâS RACIST MOVEMENT. STILL THINK THIS IS A JOKE?
Donald Trump is allied with Vladimir Putin and one of his biggest supporters is a known member of the murderous violent cult known as the Klu Klux Klan, a gathering of filthy criminal scumbags and worthless THUGS who destroy property, kill innocent people and threatens whole communities
Vote for Hillary Clinton this year and keep Donald Trump OUT of the White House
America does not need a president who spells America with a K
If you've ever wondered what the âbig dealâ is about racist fetishes, this horrifying information about the objectification of East Asian women will show you exactly why they're a problem.
Recently, a friend and I were talking about growing up Asian American in predominantly white neighborhoods and schools, and she told me that when she was in fifth grade, boys teased her on the playground by saying that she had a âsideways vagina.â
This has happened to me, too â and Iâm sure to so many other Asian girls.
From racist humor in mid-1800s brothels to todayâs playground jokes, the race and gender identity of Asian women is seen as so foreign, so âalien,â that our vaginas magically defy biology.
Throughout my life, Iâve received unwanted comments and questions about my body, specifically my anatomy, including being harassed on the street with calls like, âNi hao,â âKonichiwa,â âAre you Chinese, Japanese, or Korean,â and recently, âHi Ling Ling.â
On top of that, in my dating history, I was expected to be more quiet and less assertive.
The hyper-sexualization and fetishization of East Asian women is problematic â I am not âluckyâ that my race and gender is imagined as sexy and exotic, that Asian women âall so beautiful.â
Or that, an image search of âAsian womenâ pulls up excessive pictures of women posing in lingerie.
Racial fetishes are about objectification, fetishizing an entire group of people â in this case Asian women, means reducing them down to stereotypes instead of recognizing their full personhood.
Beyond just personal preferences or âhaving a type,â racial fetishes project desired personality and behavior onto an entire racial or ethnic group.
The fetishization of Asian women even has a name, âyellow feverâ â as if the obsession with Asian women were also a disease.
When my identity as an âAsian womanâ becomes the only thing thatâs important to someone in an interaction, thatâs a problem.
This is different from an interracial partnership where all partners are equally respected. Fetishizing someoneâs race and gender means not caring about someone as an individual.
So, where did the fetishization and objectification come from? How did Asian women get the hypersexualized stereotypes of being docile and submissive or being dangerous and seductive?
While today, some people might think of fetishes and sexual stereotypes as ânot a big deal,â the history behind these tropes is rooted in violence and war, which get oppressively reimagined by mainstream media and entertainment.
Below are five ways East Asian women became fetishized and how that fetishization horribly impacts our lives.
1. Mainstream Media Creates the Submissive âLotus Blossomâ and Evil âDragon Ladyâ Stereotypes
â[S]mall, weak, submissive and erotically alluringâŠSheâs fun, you see, and so uncomplicated. She doesnât go to assertiveness-training classes, insist on being treated like a person, fret about career movesâŠâ âTony Rivers, âOriental Girlsâ, Gentlemanâs Quarterly, 1990
Growing up, Lucy Liu was one of the only East Asian women I saw on TV and in movies. It was her, the Yellow Power Ranger (Thuy Trang), and Mulan.
For me, Liu is badass â both for being one of the only Asian American actresses in mainstream Hollywood and also for playing roles that literally kick ass.
However, many of her roles throughout the 90s and early 2000s, such as Ling Woo on Ally McBeal or as O-Ren Ishii in Kill Bill, were also ones that showed Asian women as beautifullyevil, aggressive, and also mysterious.
Asian women are often stereotyped as either the dangerously cunning âDragon Ladyâ that seduces White men, leading to their inevitable downfall, or as the submissive âLotus Blossom.â
Both are meant to be demeaning and demonizing.
While there are exceptions, for the most part, mainstream media has created one dimensional, sexualized representations of Asian women that have affected the way theyâre perceived by others.
Chinese actress Anna May Wong, the first Asian American actress to be internationally famous in the 1920s, was often cast in stereotypical supporting roles â and passed over for leading roles of Asian characters, which were given to white actresses in yellowface.
One of her most recognized characters was the demure, respectful Lotus Flower in The Toll of the Sea. The demure, subservient, and delicate âLotus Blossomâ stereotype is intended to cast Asian women as âless than,â both in terms of race and gender.
These stereotypes are seriously harmful. In the US, up to 61% of Asian women experience physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner during her lifetime.
Being docile is specifically about being deferent and obedient, especially to the authority of men.
As our race, gender, and sexuality become ruled by Western and male fantasy, in order to serve men sexually, Asian women must both be âfeminineâ and âheterosexualâ and also either submissive and/or hypersexual.
These double stereotypes of âLotus Blossomâ and âDragon Ladyâ reflect the ways that Asian women become transformed into either a sexual servant or embodied as a sexual adventure.
2. Labeling Products âOrientalâ Leads to the Objectification of East Asian Women as Exotic Commodities
Have you heard of Oriental rugs or Oriental lamps? What do those have in common? Theyâre objects.
âOrientalâ was used as an adjective by âthe Westâ to describe âthe East.â And now, itâs often represented as anything with dragons, lotus blossoms, red lanterns, and other âmysticalâ symbols from the âFar East.â
The historical and media image and idea of âOrientalâ also ends up lumping together all âAsian womenâ as East Asian and also conflates Chinese, Japanese, and Korean identities.
The âOrientalizingâ of Asian women is a historical process where race, gender, class, immigration status, and also empire all play a role.
Since trade routes that opened up in the 1200s, notably the Silk Road, White adventurers sought to find exotic goods in the âFar Eastâ â not only spices and fabrics, but women as well. (Netflixâs recent series Marco Polo retells this âWhite-guy-in-Asiaâ story.)
As seemingly faraway cultures and places begin being defined by objects and artifacts, these so-called exotic aesthetics end up getting imposed onto people and their physical appearance.
Similarly, Asian women become defined by their âjet black hair,â âdark almond eyes,â or âpetite figure,â and thatâs part of that objectification.
Like a porcelain vase, Asian women are often seen as decorative and fragile. Transformed intopassive commodities of sex, our bodies must also be seen as weak and submissive â dainty, delicate, and small.
This shows up in everyday ways that men perceive sex with Asian women as something to collect. Thereâs a scene in Wedding Crashers where Vince Vaughn screams, âThat was my first Asian!â Sadly, that line is used often in real life.
Like many other Asian women who have tried online dating, when I was on OKCupid, I received messages such as, âIâve never been with an Asian before. Are you as exotic in bed as you look?â or âYouâre a beautiful, delicate flower. Do you need someone to protect you?â
These expectations and demands on our external bodies also end up getting internalized â my identity as both Asian and a woman is constantly under scrutiny.
3. Exclusive Immigration Policies Create Perception of Asian Women as âImmoralâ
Immigration policies affected the ways Asian women were perceived by White Americans.
Specific to the US, one example comes from Chinese American history. During the 1800s, most of Chinese people in the US were immigrant men working as low-cost laborers. The sexual interactions of Chinese immigrants were controlled by immigration laws and laws that prohibited interracial sexual relationships.
Many Chinese women who immigrated to the US around that time were women that were deceived and kidnapped or trafficked into serving this group of Chinese men.
Eventually, they also established White clientele, and racial stereotypes began to emerge that Chinese women were luring White men towards sin and expanded the trope of people in the sex industry as irresponsible and dangerous.
âYellow Perilâ anti-Chinese immigration sentiments also created the threatening perception of Asian women as âgreedy, devious, and immoral.â The Page Act of 1875 prohibited âundesirableâ immigrants from entering the US.
Other acts, like the âGentlemenâs Agreementâ discontinued passports for Japanese laborers to the US and Hawaii. However, it allowed women and children to join husbands, leading to over 10,000 Japanese and Korean women came to the US as arranged âpicture brides.â
This practice was looked down upon by White Americans, adding to anti-Japanese sentiment at that time.
After World War II, Congress also passed the War Bride Act, where those serving abroad were allowed to bring Japanese and European wives home and Americans saw Japanese wives as virtuous homemakers.
Yet, while Asian men with picture brides were decidedly immoral, it was acceptable for White American soldiers to have war brides.
Today, the fantasy of having an overseas Asian wife continues through the âmail order brideâ industry, which continues to both commercialize women and put them in vulnerable positions. In this industry, women can literally be âreturned and exchanged.â
4. US Military Representations in Pop Culture Construct Asian Women as Subservient to White Men
â The Problem of Miss Saigon makes us believe that we are worth less, that it is only through the white loverâs touch that we may be conferred a fuller humanity.â âKai Cheng Thom
While the âEast meets Westâ narrative is centuries overdone, literary and film history plays a role in the construction of Asian women as subservient.
In 1887, Pierre Loti wrote the novel Madame Chrysantheme about a French officer going to Japan to find a âdaintyâ and âdelicateâ woman ânot much bigger than a doll.â
This becomes the main basis for Pucciniâs 1904 opera Madame Butterfly. The gist is that an American soldier travels to Japan and takes on a Japanese wife.
He leaves her to return to legitimately marry a White American woman, and she ends up killing herself.
This storyline repeats itself in various films with settings across locations throughout Asia. Later, the 1989 musical Miss Saigon resets the narrative in Vietnam.
The problem with the Miss Saigon and Madame Butterfly storyline is that in these novels, plays, and films, Asian women from different places end up homogenized and literally depicted as ornamental objects created for the sole purpose of White menâs pleasure.
Later films and novels like The World of Suzie Wong embellished the Western soldier seeks Asian bride narrative by adding a savior element âAsian women needed to be rescued and protected by White men.
This narrative is something that Iâve internalized. Iâve found myself wondering in previous relationships and never truly being able to articulate out loud: Are you just trying to experience what itâs like being with an Asian woman? Are you just with me because Iâm Asian?
As it turns out, these fictional tales and stories are also a big part of history.
5. War and Military Presence Produce Even More Sexual Violence
Throughout history, the sexual violence against women is used as a wartime weapon and women are seen as part of the âspoils of war.â
In World War II, Japan enslaved approximately 200,000 women across Asia, including Korea, China, Taiwan, Indonesia, and the Philippines to provide sex for its troops. Women were raped by multiple men every day.
After Japan surrendered to the United States, US occupation authorities approved of continuing the system for US troops, setting up a network of brothels under a âRecreation and Amusement Association.â
Military presence impacts local economies â for women who are poor, the sex industry offers an opportunity to make a living.
US military presence in Asia led to the creation of local sex industries and sex trafficking rings that would serve soldiers. Some of the first encounters soldiers ever had with Asian women were around the idea that these women were there to serve them sexually.
By the end of the Vietnam War, around 300,000 South Vietnamese women were working within the sex industry.
Although many women suffer horrible working conditions including assault and violence, institutions are more interested in turning women into commodities to serve military clientele then in the wellbeing of the women.
Also, thanks to Stanley Kubrickâs Full Metal Jacket, the experiences of these woman have been reduced down to one line: âMe so horny. Me love you long time.â Strangers will ask me on the street or in bars, âWill you love me long time?â
This historical violence carries on its legacy today in large scale ways. Human trafficking of domestic and sex workers continues to exploit women as commodities.
Over 30,000 Asian women are trafficked into the US each year.
Wars against Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and Vietnam have also created national imagery that gets represented in pop culture and then get internalized by any Americans who may not know any Asians or Asian Americans.
Asian nations and the people from them are perceived as both dangerous as well as desired objects of conquest.
***
The objectification and fetishization of Asian women comes out of devastating wars and exclusionary immigration practices that get re-transcribed by books, movies, and other mass-consumed media.
While some folks might think that these sexual stereotypes are a âcomplimentâ or âpositive,â the ongoing violence perpetrated against Asian women as a direct result of these stereotypes get overlooked.
Objectification is about being seen as less than human. As unworthy of anything else but a singular use and function.
Asian and Asian American women continue to be objectified sexually through cultural consumption and misrepresentation in ways that also have negative day-to-day impacts, from commuting to dating.
bernie is verbally begging his supporters to vote for hillary and ensure a liberl presidency and hillary blatantly mentioned a promise to include bernie in her policies and gave him the credit for permanently changing the landscape for the party and his impact on young voters and bernie babies still wont get a grip and vote
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