#this is sinophobia

[this-is-sinophobia-orientalism]

Small or Monolid eyes = distrustful, deceitful, cold, emotionless, “beady”, shrewd, calculating, menacing, evil, “autistic”, “down syndrome”, exotic. [or else seductive “fox eyes”, “siren eyes” if they’re on anyone else but a chink]

But Big or double-eyelid eyes = doe-eyed, innocent, sentimental, loving, cute, dreamy, good.

This is Sinophobia. This is anti-Asianness. This is Orientalism. This is Ableism*.

[this-is-sinophobia-orientalism]

When an Asian person glorifies hegemonic powers, fixes to conceal their natural ethnocentric features, or hate on others from a similar background;

—I want you to take a pause before you jump to talking about any other forms of bigotries, and first think about how this ties into anti-Asianness.

They want to be paler? Anti-Asianness.

They want cosmetic surgery for other ethnic features? Anti-Asianness.

They demean 1A hair and 4C hair? Anti-Asianness.

They don’t want to be associated with other Asians and/or ONLY want to hang around a specific race of non-Asian people? Anti-Asianness.

They appropriate other cultures? Anti-Asianness.

They don’t like immigrants? Anti-Asianness.

There will be overlaps with other forms of racisms and bigotries that do need to be addressed, too.

But we as Asians need to center the decolonisation of ourselves which begins by making our relationship to anti-Asianness more conscious and visible.

And we have to do this by disentangling it from existing solely on Eurocentric/Western racial binaries, to address the longstanding anti-Asianness even between ourselves before Eurocolonial corruptions.

It’s easier to call out an Asian person who is explicitly doing all of these things, but it’s harder to call out Asian “leftists” suffering from a variant of white guilt, who push dependencies onto non-white POCs to shoulder the cross of decolonial resistances.

Some Asians abandon their duties to combat anti-Asianness as an intraracial community issue, due to conflict avoidance within one’s communities, denying their power to Asianness and infantilising themselves. They only want to talk about racism where it affects others but never of the ones that identifies victims amongst our own to our own self-hatred and divisiveness.

This level of performativity and the invisibilisation of our own struggles, NEEDS to be fixed.

All of this comes with Asians acknowledging internalised anti-Asianness FIRST.

[this-is-sinophobia-orientalism]

when people assume all products made in china are cheap or fake or made with child labor

The assumption is a kernel of economic awareness, and a snowball of Sinophobic rhetoric.

This also applies to how people look at products made in Vietnam, Thailand and India, as backwards low-quality goods.

The Anglosphere would be nothing if it didn’t build its wealth on the exploitation of resources including human labour from the global south. This is often priced as cheap labour and may involve unethical practices including underpaying—and it is a mirror reflection to minors being frequently underpaid in the Anglosphere and its many unethical labour policies INCLUDING the system’s siphoning of resources and money away from the working class into its upperclassmen with a lack of redistribution and socialist practices to balance things out.

The difference is that the Anglosphere is where readymade products are shipped to, and they own Asiatic labour therefore limiting the barefaced truth of mass manufacturing factories and its impacts on the environment. They also kind of have to pay their minors more than they do some random kids in Asia.

China is a part of the global south, and its exploited peoples are suffering these impacts. With that said it is a class issue within China, within the US, and between China and the US. Generally, the United States has a higher overall wealth inequality, while China faces regional income disparities. But China IS approaching US levels of wealth inequality if it doesn’t reassess its policies, so it isn’t perfect.

I would say labour protections and policies are more progressive in China especially with socialist laws in place, Australia is second place with its labour-focused policies, and America is so incomparably neglectful of its labour force, it’s not even funny.

So when the West stereotypes something in China is made by child labour, it’s ironically less accurate than saying something in the West was made by underpaid wage slaves, minors and imprisoned peoples usually of colour.

If the means of production was truly the moral issue they are arguing, then they should look into their own exploitative systems first and foremost and how this outsources cheap labour from the global south. They should investigate how they humanise labourers.

But so far it strikes me as a shaming and victim-blaming tactic to deflect from the issue of imperialism as rooted in the West. Thus they stigmatise against Asian-made products, businesses and peoples.

This is anti-Asianness and Sinophobic. This is Global North Privilege, Anti-Global South, Imperialism, Consumerism and Capitalism.

The way it prizes brand names and social status as purchased through Western-backed brands is an imperialist attitude that has it looking down on counterfeit or similar items made by China. If this makes it “fake”, what is authenticity? It’s a garbage consumerist mindset.

Plus since when is cheap ever a bad thing 🤔 I think the West has grown so distorted in its imperialist and consumerist notions that it no longer recognises a well-priced item for its quality.

I have something to say about how this translates to how the West treats Asian peoples in general, in the same way they treat our goods, but I’ll save this hot take for my personal blog.

[this-is-sinosexism]

Justice for YuQi Luo and Hyun Sook Jeon

More cases of the murders and sexual violence against Asian women and SW in Australia, constituting Femicide, SWERF / violence against SW, anti-Asianness, Sinomisogyny, Sinophobia, Xenophobia, Anti-Immigrant violence.

Credits: scarlet_alliance

[this-is-sinophobia-orientalism]

SINOPHOBIA RESOURCES

🔗📁GoogleDrive Compilation: All of the below essays + books

🔗📄International MasterDoc: Resources, Donations & Resistance [Gaza, DRC, Sudan, Haiti, Yemen, Hawaii, Lebanon] by @seaweedlagoon on X.

🔗📌Anti-Asian Intersection of Race & Queerness

🔗📌Invisibilisation of Asian Struggles & Activism

🔗🧵Quicklinks on Sinophobia History & Struggles

🔗📚 Resources: Intersectional Asian Feminism 

🔗📚 Resources: Invisibilisation of Asian Activism

🔗📚 Resources: Afro-Asian Solidarity Activism Drive 

🔗📚 Resources: West Asian & Islamophobic Racism Drive

[this-is-sinophobia-orientalism]

We Are Not and Have Never Been Silent: Invisibilisation of Asian Struggles & Activism

#yellow NOT mellow

#We are NOT and have NEVER been silent

#Stop Asian Hate

#The Invisible Race

MORE RESOURCES > GOOGLE FILE: INVISIBILISATION OF ASIAN ACTIVISM

Of Asian Struggles against Racism

Confronting the invisibility of anti-Asian racism. Brookings

From Exotic to Invisible: Asian American Women's Experiences of Discrimination

Making Waves: An anthology of writings by and about Asian American women

The Rising Tide of Violence and Discrimination Against Asian American and Pacific Islander Women and Girls.

Beyond Black and White: The Model Minority Myth and the Invisibility of Asian American Students

Asian American Attacks: New survey finds Asian American remains largely invisible in society

South Asian Invisibility in the Asian American Narrative

Asian Americans Aren’t ‘Basically White’ – Here Are 5 Ways Racism Hurts Us

Battling Structural Racism Against Asians in the United States: Call for Public Health to Make the ‘Invisible’ Visible

When Anti-Asian Racism Feels Invisible

20 Years of Experiencing Asian Invisibility in Academe

The Invisible Me, an Excerpt from "Invisible"

The challenges of being Asian in a Western World

Confronting the invisibility of anti-Asian racism

The Invisible Race: Unconscious Bias and the Bamboo Ceiling

The Invisible Asian

The Invisibility of Being Asian American

Rendered Invisible: Are Asian Americans a Model or a Marginalized Minority?

Countering Marginalization and Invisibility Among Asian American Youth

The Invisible Asian Americans

Of Asian Activism

Haunani-Kay Trask, Kiyoshi Kuromiya, Rushan Abbas And 5 More AAPI Activists That They Didn't Teach You About In School (But Should Have)

A Young Organizer's Guide to Asian American Activists

‘We Are Always Waiting Our Turn to Be Important.’ A Love Letter to Asian Americans

‘Our community was so invisible’: Activist and journalist Helen Zia speaks at roundtable and panel

Why East-Asian Interest Groups Remain Invisible in the US Lobbyist System: An Analysis of Political Participation through the Lens of Confucianism

Asian Americans Can No Longer Be Silent, and Neither Should You

A ‘History of Exclusion, of Erasure, of Invisibility.’ Why the Asian-American Story Is Missing From Many U.S. Classrooms

I Am an Asian American, but Invisible

[this-is-sinophobia-orientalism]

asking on anon bc why not. as a west asian, i feel overwhelmingly disgusted by the fact that people are culture appropriating of yaoi and yuri. western queer relationships are not yuri/yaoi, they’re queer and theres nothing wrong with that. being queer isnt a bad thing, stop appropriating terms thats never belonged to you because you’re feeling guilty of your whiteness

I agree with this.

Not to mention there’s been some contention even amongst Japanese peoples on whether Yuri and Yaoi are focused on pacifying white cishet audiences, from some articles I’ve read, so there is that extant layer of white assimilationism and the commodification of Japanese-ness for the sake of the white gaze.

And this also explains why some artists have voiced that Anime characters are typically either ethnically ambiguous, white, or East Asian, while other BIPOC characters are poorly portrayed.

And when non-Japanese audiences use it to reference non-Japanese things, it removes it further and further away from the culture and instead turns Japanese-ness into an aesthetic consideration.

Another factor is that the attention such art receives is from white-dominant audiences, which tells you how/who these are geared to already. Many narratives featuring East Asians especially feature graphic violence, abuse and control over hyperfeminised East Asian bodies, which slides into Sinomisogyny and Sinomisandry. ( @this-is-sinomisogyny )

There’s definitely a way to go about Yaoi/Yuri which involves more well-balanced narratives that do not continuously feed the hyperfeminised sinomisogynistic and sinomisandristic stereotypes, as well as respectfully portray a diversity of BIPOC characters without tokenising.

All in all, I believe this is the fetishising of Japanese art, cultures, bodies and qualities. This constitutes Orientalism and Sinophobia. At the same time it’s also against the backdrop of more race-based bigotries.

[this-is-sinophobia-orientalism]

Not sure if this is the right place to post, sorta newish to tumblr so pls bear with me.

I go by he/them, identifies as pansexual, and am mainland Chinese by nationality and don’t have any residencies elsewhere. I spent a couple of years in New Zealand for primary school before moving back to China for middle school due to bullying partially caused by racism. I’m currently in the US for college as an intl student, and I generally have a friend group that leans more to the American nationals side rather than fellow intl students.

I often feel left out in my interactions because I don’t know how to present myself. I’m constantly afraid that people will judge me by my nationality and race by some stereotypes or prior impression, and I don’t know what is appropriate for me to do or say, as if my nationality and race is a mark that I have to bear.

To be clear, my friends are very understanding and openminded people that won’t skip to conclusions, and I personally love my Chinese culture and identity. However it just seems so hard to live with it here in the states, constantly trying not to present myself as conforming to negative stereotypes of a Chinese international student, avoiding all conversation certain matters, feeling as if I have to signal that no I am not a bad person TM despite me knowing clearly that those stereotypes are just bigoted bs. It’s just so hard to always live like this.

I guess this isn’t a question, but yeah.

You’re good to share your story/experiences here ☺️ Thank you for sending this in.

I’m deeply sorry to hear about your experiences and I can only imagine how bad it was in NZ, and how bad it is now in the States.

Anti-Immigration has always been bad, even though the last couple of years was where it became harder to ignore by the mainstream [remember that Obama deported like 3 million US migrant peoples which is record breaking numbers and very few of the mainstream left broke a fucking sweat up till now].

Having personally migrated in my teens and been residing on white-colonised lands in Oceania for a long time now, I can confirm the racism towards Asians is off the charts. I’m genuinely sorry that you had to leave NZ due to the hostility of the place.

There is a lot of self-negotiation that must happen in order to have and maintain friendships with people outside of Asian queers in the first place.

I can confidently say this as someone who has friends from all groups, and know exactly around whom I can feel a lot more natural and free to discuss topics even the taboo ones like Chinese politics, without immediately axing my membership to society and social protections, having ABF/ICE called on me and having society cast blame and aspersion onto others who look like me.

There’s always a certain amount of work and tolerance just to be around others—even the most leftist tolerant non-Asian will need us to self-explain just so they won’t look at us sideways.

We already have been seen as forever foreigners and the yellow peril, and the media has strategically painted us as broadly complicit in the white-dominant capitalist class while still being the anti-immigrant targets of that class—when Asians have intracultural AND intraracial class and global South struggles too. The pan-Asian identity is weaponised against us and invites some white and non-Asian POCs, to participate in anti-Asianness by stereotyping and resenting us.

The efforts to maintain presence for ourselves that our elders have continuously fought for within leftist politics and grassroots organisation, is continually overlooked. Our participation in ANY sphere, including in leftist resistance, is made peripheral or else tokenised.

Being of multiple intersections of a minority identity, narrows down exactly around whom you can be yourself without feeling the pressures to police your self-expression.

[ and being born/raised Chinese, we know exactly how policing our own self-expressions have that additional layer of communal responsibility from our own community, which makes breaking out of this mental script even harder ].

Presenting yourself becomes a project of passing or failing, where the “right” script and steps will cement your belonging around others. The “wrong” one kicks you out.

This also fragments your self-identity and self-perception more than the average person.

“For the first time, I was experiencing what W. E. B. Du Bois famously called “double consciousness,” that sense of “always looking at oneself through the eyes of others” experienced by people of color in a white supremacist society. It’s an odd feeling of dissociation and splitting, of being trapped between the white gaze and your own.

For Du Bois, the white world saw him as “Black,” a distillation of racial stereotypes and presumed inferiority entirely at odds with his own”“sense of self and humanity. I was not Black, but I, too, had been slotted in a category of racial other, and I, too, felt a splitting, a fault line in my sense of self. Who was I? Or rather, what was I? What did white people see when they looked at me?” —Excerpt from Biting the Hand Julia Lee.

Your fear of being judged, seen as a stereotype and then treated inhumanely because of it is valid and heard. And especially given your past traumatic experiences with race-based bullying in NZ that did in fact force you to go into a big upheaval of your life—your anxieties around the “wrong steps” makes a LOT of sense.

Race & Nationality

I will say that race and nationality is our mark to bear. Apart from there being no use to fight that without falling into dysphoria, we are navigating a world that is not going to lighten up on us or our descendants unless we take action by first acknowledging how a group of us are targeted based on systemic categorisation.

It is unjust that we have to. Our ancestors and ourselves do not deserve to be treated this way. Shift the script. The way we are treated is NOT just because we were born Asian within Asia, but because WHITE SUPREMACIST SOCIETY is intolerant towards Asians.

Other non-Asian and Asian POCs have internalised that hatred to varying degrees, and some of it might not manifest as explicit hatred but as microaggressions and propaganda about Asians.

If we are reclaiming cultural pride then we have to hold that we ARE Asians from Asia, and never try to forget or distance us from ourselves.

Otherwise it would lead to more tensions and compartments between our conscious self and the parts we suppress, which will only heighten your mental stress and ability to interact without constantly worrying about whether you’re going to “let slip” that you’re an “outsider”.

There is no safety to be found in the “colourlessness” of white supremacy, just continued self-erasure. I repeat.

There is no safety to be found in the “colourlessness” of white supremacy, just continued self-erasure.

Early Chinese immigrants to the US, fought against the impositions of whiteness onto them. In their rebellion, they denounced what whiteness wanted from them [their children, their legacy, their cultural erasure and commodification, their submission and slavery]. They became “darker” in category and is why we are we called Yellow today. This is also why the US then began to grow suspicious and wanted to turn us out with Exclusion Acts because we REFUSED to play into their plan for white integration.

This is a story many of us and others have forgotten. But it is one we must remember; that our ancestors refused whiteness and to be seen as white so as to preserve their Chinese cultures and pride.

Our elders didn’t leave us a world where we didn’t have to suffer this. The best we can do is to ensure one for our descendants.

Suggestions

Face up to your worst fear. Nobody else can do it for you, but you.

I know you’re afraid of the negative stereotypes of the international Asians specifically because of the treatments that international Asians receive. But think of how many other Asians might not want to associate and stand with FOB Asians, because of this internalised fear, and how alienating that must be.

This fear of being seen as the “bad Asian” has also led to Asians voting AGAINST our interests, throwing international and lowerclass Asians under the bus, abandoning other POCs just to have more proximity to whiteness and class security. Ie DEI, putting 🍊 in office, and more decisions made on the basis of fear and self-interest.

If more Asians stood together and challenge these ideas, we close that gap of the “good” vs the “bad” Asians. And this doesn’t just affect the international Asians, but the people we surround ourselves with, and ultimately how we look at ourselves as Asians.

It will make sure that your memberships to society aren’t all placed in one basket. And there is strength in our numbers.

Let’s say if you did reach out to more international students, FOBs and adjusted to codeswitching around Asians. If you did find some Asian community activities to get involved with. And your worst fear is confirmed when anyone of your friends or peers look at you “differently” for reclaiming this part of you and the community it is rooted in.

How would you deal with realising that their acceptance was always conditional anyways? This would be not just fulfilling but also practical social exposure for you. And it should be every Asian’s vetting process before we allow people to get close to us and build ties with us.

Hold your identity of being an international Asian and a “naturalised one” in both hands. Question exactly why you should be “naturalised” and naturalised to what? Who made those standards up? How much of one identity are you stealing from in time, authenticity, reconciliation and memory to feed to the other?

Also I’d encourage reading up on Asian American perspectives and our history of activism. I assure you there are MANY instances of our Asian predecessors fighting against white supremacy and these will teach you a thing or two on how to navigate Black & white America.

It is imperative that you learn that the struggle you are facing isn’t new, it is centuries old and in the making, and while there are people who have chose to hide and submit, there are many of us who have always been fighting back.

Learn of our figures and organisations like The Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (AKA The Chinese Six Companies), the Wong Family Association, the Tongs. Those who back in the day, rallied everyone in the Chinatowns to sue the US 100,000 times back when there were just 150,000 Asians in the US. Our strategies of resistance weren’t as visible as other POCs, being more on the court side of things, but they were there. You can also look into the public resources available on the legal precedents from the cases back then, that have been built into the US right now and how they perceive Asian immigrants.

Learn about the San Francisco Red Guard, Laundromat Alliances and other organisations that contributed to the Labour Radical movement (together with Black Radicals, and the Jewish, Polish and Italian working class) that formed the Civil Rights Movement in especially the migrant rights part.

Yeah I know a lot of people might think the CRM and Hart-Celler Act had little to do with the Asians pushing it, but we did. How? Because it wasn’t just the Asian Americans challenging this status quo, it was Asians EVERYWHERE. The ties between China and US at the time ALSO pushed this.

Especially learn about how this connected Sinodiasporas across Asia, and how the West’s Red Scare and McCarthyism engineered movements by corrupt SEAsian governments, leading to the massacre of MILLIONS of Chinese people to prevent socialist labour radical uprisings. We were that much of a threat to white imperialist supremacy when we utilised our intersectionality AND internationality.

Yuri Kochiyama, Grace Lee Boggs, Richard Aoki, and Daryl J. Maeda are great for looking into Afro-Asian solidarity.

Autobiographies make me feel less alone. I especially like Julia Lee’s “Biting the Hand: Growing up Asian in Black & White America”.

It highlights exactly the positions we exist in, in white-colonised society. This is also where the quote/excerpt I posed above comes from.

We have more potential to power than we are even aware of and what you’re feeling now? The fear and anxiety that you might be caught and singled out as a foreigner, and left without social protection? That’s disempowerment.

Get empowered. Use the resources and strength from communities and our predecessors to get there.

edit: Here's a good summary of AsAm in civil rights. I'd still encourage personal study, but this is a great place to start.