Gendered Violence

 

It is impossible to talk about anti-AHPID racism and violence without addressing the gendered nature of this hatred. Out of the 3,800 anti-AHPID incidents reported (this number does not reflect the number of every incident, just those reported) in the US over the course of this past year, 68% of the victims who reported were women. The issues found on OSU’s campus are ones that stem from misunderstandings about AHPID people, heritage, culture, language, etc.—misunderstandings that we sometimes inadvertently tolerate or teach our students at OSU. The violence and hatred AHPID people face is often directly connected to gendered issues.

For instance, few articles regarding the Atlanta shooting (which incited the OSU protests and groups like Stop Hate OSU) connected the dangerous exoticization and fetishization that AHPID women face every day to such acts of violence, which are seen as random. We have normalized seeing AHPID women as either dominatrixes or temptresses (“tigresses”) or as docile, subservient, ultra-feminine girls. The hyper-sexualization of the cheongsam, the persistent myths about AHPID women’s genitals, and the fetishization of AHPID women in porn (specific torture porn) are only a few examples. White Americans simply refuse to see the rise in violence against AHPID persons as connected to longer-standing issues.

Furthermore, anxieties about prostitution in the U.S., specifically in massage parlors, have led to stigmatizations against sex workers generally. Such sexual fears, sexual violence, and racist dehumanization against AHPID women in this country can be traced back to the Page Law of 1875, which banned the immigration of Chinese prostitutes or second wives (in polygamous marriages). We have been radicalized to resent AHPID people in this country alongside the rest of white America via the Page Law, the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), Japanese Internment (starting in 1942), the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945), the Vietnam War (1955–1975), the demonization and deportation of South Asians considered “terrorists” after 9/11 and anti-Muslim discrimination, and even Trump calling COVID-19 the “Chinese virus.” Ultimately, the interplay of class, respectability politics, and the history (and continuation) of the sexualization of AHPID women cannot continue to be ignored. We must better understand the roots of violence against Asian women and this long-standing, well-supported dehumanization to break the cycle.

Students, faculty, and staff at OSU have been combatting this cycle for decades through support groups, awareness, and discussion. A rape workshop specifically geared towards Asian women was held in 1991, according to a Lantern article on April 16th (“Rape workshop focuses on Asian women”): “Asian women have historically been highly, sexually stereotyped in the United States” –Chikako I. Cox. A few years later, in 1995, the Lantern reported that Asian and Asian-American women were discussing how they are most likely to be sexually assaulted (“Asian women discuss risks of being sexually assaulted”). This is, unfortunately, still relevant today. A third of AHPID female college students have reported sexual assault while at school, and this also might not reflect the true statistics, as many women do not report. But graduation doesn’t mean leaving what is perhaps a toxic campus environment behind—AHPID women will go on to face greater rates of workplace racism and sexual harassment than their white co-workers. Furthermore, they are less likely to report when they are victims of sexual violence, so these statistics may be grossly underrepresenting the severity of this problem.