Exotic Enemy: The Impact of Anti-AAPI Violence on AAPI Sexuality (Transcript from Sugar & Spice Asia Event; April 28, 2021)
The following is the recording and transcript of my presentation for the Sugar & Spice event on Wednesday, April 28, 2021.
Synopsis:
Statistics have shown that hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have risen 150% since March 2020, but this is just a steep rise in the long history of anti-Asian rhetoric and violence in the United States. It’s been trauma after trauma for the AAPI community. Though there is more information available about mental health within the community, there’s a lack of conversation about how this all affects our sexuality. Goddess Cecilia will speak about how our sexuality continues to be impacted by the rise in anti-AAPI hate, and shares some thoughts about where we go from here.
INTRO
When I was 4 years old, my mother and I moved from the Philippines to Los Angeles, California, to join my father. At the time of our big move, the Philippines was just coming out of martial law and the Marcos Era. I know my parents wanted to make sure that I had more opportunities available to me, and the United States seemed to promise that American Dream of prosperity to all those who landed on its shores.
I found that I was still able to be surrounded by Philippine culture, because of my large extended family and other Filipinos living in Los Angeles. But, at school, I was teased for having an accent. I remember making the conscious decision to stop speaking Tagalog so that I could lose the accent faster. As a little kid, I didn’t know that being teased for it was not okay. Nor did I know back then that this simple choice was a way that internalized white supremacy began, and that assimilation can only go so far if you don’t share the same phenotype as the oppressors in the society.
Now, what does white supremacy mean? White skin is certainly not specific to people in the United States and Europe. But in this talk, when I talk about white supremacy, I am referring specifically to the belief that the white race is inherently superior to other races and that white people should have control over people of other races, including but not limited to Black and Jewish peoples.
Historically, I feel like we in the United States think of white supremacy as being part of large events, like the slave trade or the Holocaust. But white supremacy is sneaky, and not always overt. It could look like comparing one ethnic group’s abilities to another. Or incarcerating a higher rate of one group versus others. Or making an assumption about the kind of job that a person has based on their ethnic group. It could look like someone wanting to only date someone within their racial or ethnic group to maintain the “purity” of their race. Or it’s stating that you would never date someone from a specific race or ethnic group, because “that’s just not your type.”
I use these examples because at one point or another, some of these thoughts have definitely gone through my head. Specifically, when I was much younger, I used to say that I wasn’t really attracted to Asian folks. I would joke about it saying that we would have too many similarities. But I recognize and know now that that is another way I internalized white supremacy. My desire to fit into United States culture meant that I would attempt to adopt a point of view that is promoted by mainstream (aka white) culture, which placed my cultural identity at a lower level of importance and attractiveness. It meant subscribing and not questioning how society operated.
I knew there were some things that were not acceptable, like being teased about the shape of my eyes over and over again by different people. And it wasn’t really until adulthood that I began to examine how I internalized white supremacy and to slowly work my way out of that way of thinking.
My lived experience is only one small example of how assimilation into a white supremacist culture might look like. There are countless examples not just of immigrants, but even of children of immigrants who were born in this country. Because of the white supremacy built into the governing and culture of the United States, there will always be an assumption that anyone who isn’t white isn’t “from here.” That they didn’t grow up in the same neighborhoods or attend the same schools or understand the same pop culture references. One glaring example of this is how so many people questioned the legitimacy of Barack Obama’s Presidency because they questioned where he was born. That same attitude extends to all other non-white People of Color, including Indigenous folks who were here long before white Europeans sailed over.
White supremacy branches into colonialism, when one group of people attempt to overtake another group for the purposes of political, social, and economic gain. Certainly, I could use examples of the systematic genocide committed against Indigenous Tribes here in the US. However, I am certain that you could all point out one moment in the history of your country and/or culture where colonization took place.
The attitudes against Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color in the United States affect all of us. They have historically pit us against each other within the United States, but it also extends to how they treat other cultures around the world.
For this talk, let me lay out the various, and unfortunately not well-publicized history of white supremacy directed at Asians in the United States.
HISTORY
Anti-Asian hate truly began during the Gold Rush and railroad era. Companies started hiring Asian immigrants because they could pay them far less than poor working-class white folks and white European immigrants who were also looking for work. Because of this, Asian immigrants, the majority of whom were from China, were used as a scapegoat for their lack of employment.
In 1875, the US wrote it’s first ever federal law that restricted immigration, and it was directed at Asian immigrants. Specifically, it was directed at Asian women. The Page Act basically stated that Chinese, Japanese, or any “Oriental” women were prohibited from entering the country because they may be engaging in “undesirable” behavior - namely sex work.
Think about that for a second. Not only did they see Asian immigrants as a threat for their jobs, but they also saw them as a sexual threat. They claimed that the law was to prevent sex work, but what it actually did was prevent Asian men from bringing their families or from finding partners.
Between the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, and World War II, there were many instances of anti-Asian hate and discrimination, some of which included rioting against specific groups of Asian folks. For example, there were the 1907 Bellingham Riots in Washington state, which targeted South Asians, and the Watsonville Riots in 1930 in California which targeted Filipinos.
In the late 1960’s, the concept of the “Model Minority” began to surface. The model minority myth was framed positively by highlighting Asian and Jewish “work ethic” and the importance placed on education as a reason for their relative successes. But what it was really saying was that Latino and Black folks did not have a work ethic or care about education. It also lumped everyone into a single category of “Asian,” not recognizing that there were variations in socioeconomic status between the various ethnic groups.
This also ignores the bias that people have, which is perpetuated in how different ethnic groups are portrayed in the media and how their family members might have talked about them in the past.
This is why, when Trump started referring to Covid-19 as the “China Virus” or “Kung Flu”, it wasn’t a surprise to me that anti-Asian hate crimes began to increase in frequency and violence. To have a president utilize racial stereotypes in this manner, it seemed to put the focus on a group of people, instead of on the virus itself. It gave his followers permission to be open about any stereotypes or biases about Asian folks that they already believed.
People became very comfortable with blaming the pandemic on anyone who looked Asian, and unfortunately it resulted in more than 37 hundred incidents being reported from March 2020 to February 2021 on StopAAPIHate.org.
The problem is that we know that these numbers are probably lower than what is realistically happening. People are underreporting, or they don’t feel like it’s worth reporting. We have seen that the police and justice systems don’t often do enough even after an incident has been reported. And how are you supposed to report someone yelling a racial slur from their moving vehicle?
It’s a systematic issue that affects the everyday lives of Black, Indigenous, Latino, Asian and Pacific Islanders living in the United States, whether they realize it or not. This isn’t to take away from those who have worked hard and established themselves in this country. But, because of the color of our skin or the texture of our hair or the slant of our eyes, the larger society will continue to weaponize our ethnicity to benefit white supremacy.
HOW DOES IT AFFECT OUR SEXUALITY
So now that I’ve taken the time to detail the larger examples of anti-Asian sentiments in the United States, let me talk about how all of this affects our sexuality.
Now, historically, many of the restrictions in immigration directly affected the sexuality of Asian immigrants. By forbidding the immigration of Chinese women, Chinese men were not often going to find a partner or were limited in how often they could see their families back home. The Page Act also highlighted the sexuality factor as well. By associating sex work with Asian women, they created an image of Asian women being promiscuous and carrying sexually transmitted infections.
There were also anti-miscegenation laws that were already in existence, which further barred any non-white person from having a relationship or marrying a white person. In fact, part of the reason the Watsonville Riots happened was because Filipino bachelors were hosting dance hall events, and white women were attending. White men were so angry at this that they proceeded to attack Filipinos and burn down their establishments.
In the most recent large-scale attack against Asian folks, a shooter drove to 3 different massage and spa locations that were owned or staffed by Asians. He said he wanted to “eliminate a temptation.” Why were these specific people in these specific spas a temptation? As of now, there is still no proof that anything sexual was actually occurring at those locations. Yet, they were a source of his supposed sexual temptation. And if there was something sexual occurring, the fact that he believed that the staff and patrons were expendable shows how much value he placed on their lives.
When this occurred, there was massive grieving throughout the United States among the Asian and Pacific Islander community. Many of the women already knew what it was like to be reduced to a sex object because of our ethnicities.
As a Filipina, I’ve been told about people being a US Soldier stationed in the Philippines and how Filipina women were “really good at sex.” Cis men in the United States constantly want to show how much they know about our cultures by trying to lecture us about our customs, cuisines, martial arts, and languages. The amount of times some random man tried to say “maganda” or “beautiful” to me and other Filipina women I know, in order to impress us, is countless.
Knowing that we can easily be reduced to a sexual plaything is exhausting. We cannot walk the streets without this stereotype potentially following us, literally, as we are just trying to do simple things like shop for food or ride public transportation. If we do express our sexual selves, it’s looked at as an opportunity to support a stereotype or to take advantage of us.
Humans have some basic needs - to be fed, housed, clothed. All of it is so that we can feel safe. Safe in our bodies, safe around the people we interact with, and definitely safe with lovers.
If we don’t feel safe, or if we’re always at a heightened level of alertness or even if we choose to shrink ourselves to minimize how much space we take up in the world, all of that affects our sexuality, and definitely affects how we feel pleasure. We may question whether we’re engaging in certain sexual acts because we want to or because it’s what we’ve been told to enjoy. We might also never question this, and might end up missing out on a whole world of potential pleasure. There isn’t really one way that it affects all of the Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, especially since there’s so much variation in the way we were raised and our individual cultures.
Sure, sex can also be a way to relieve stress, and some folks will use it that way. But if the stress outweighs the pleasure, then it’s quite possible that it isn’t really that pleasurable. Also the potential for a whole host of other issues come up, like having difficulty reaching orgasm.
I say this often when I do pleasure workshops. There’s a direct line from our brains to our buttholes. We’ve watched our elders, our neighbors, our community members be attacked time and time again. Some did not survive those attacks.
Because of all that’s happening, there has been a collective grieving that has been happening on top of fear and worry for ourselves and our loved ones. It continues to rob us of the time we could be feeling joy and pleasure.
So, I try to remind my clients and my followers of the fact that our joy and pleasure is a way that we can change the narrative. We deserve to claim our spaces, and live as full human beings no matter how white supremacy tries to take that away. The fight continues, of course. Until we are recognized as full citizens and full human beings in addition to how our cultures influence our presence, then the fight has to continue.
In the meantime, making room for extra pleasure can only make us more whole with ourselves.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
Now, where do we go from here?
I recognize that I am speaking to you from my particular lens of being a 1.5 Filipina immigrant raised in the United States. But I do believe we all could take steps forward together, as a people within our homelands and a diaspora.
Examine our own biases and colonized mentality. This is a toughie, I recognize that. I think that history being what it was, we all could do our own individual work of recognizing whether we carry any biases within us. Perhaps we learned it from our parents, grandparents, or media, or societal norms. What are our initial thoughts about different groups of people? People with different abilities? People in different socioeconomic statuses? People with different body types? Recognizing what our biases may or may not be is a step towards then examining how colonization has impacted us. That’s honestly a whole different conversation for another time.
Recognize that white supremacy needs to be abolished as it affects not just the folks in the United States, but all the people of the world. White supremacy doesn’t want any of us to survive, much less feel joy and pleasure. But we deserve to thrive. We deserve to have all the pleasure and all the orgasms we want. We deserve to have families, if we wanted, to have children and descendants grow up in a world where we wouldn’t have to fear for their survival.
Lastly, part of abolishing white supremacy is abolishing the belief that we’re just supposed to “get over” any trauma we may have experienced. As we learned from our previous presenters, trauma affects so much of our lives even though it doesn’t have to define us. Understand that trauma and healing are different for everyone, and sexuality and pleasure can be affected by trauma and can also be part of the healing.
At the end of the day, our sexuality and our pleasure are ours. They are part of who we are, and we carry them with us even when we’re not always fully aware of it. I know that I and other Asian American and Pacific Islanders will continue to fight towards justice and equity and the abolition of white supremacy. And you better believe that we’re going to continue living our full sexual lives while we’re doing it.