In March this year, a number of shootings occurred in the United States, eight of the victims were six Asian women, and the gunman has been arrested by the police. Although the suspect argued that his murder was not motivated by discrimination but by sex addiction, the "Stop Asian Hate" demonstrations in many places in the United States reflected the anxiety and fear that had been ignored in American society in the past. Racial discrimination against Asian Americans in the United States has a long history, which has been further intensified by the outbreak of the epidemic and some remarks by former President Trump. The discussion of this incident does not stop at racial discrimination, some scholars pointed out that this is the result of gender discrimination and racial discrimination interwoven. Asian women are often sexualized by white men, and some of the coverage of the shooting has backed up that view. This global spotlight will focus on this event, compile relevant reports, and analyze the oppression and harm of Asian women from the perspective of "intersectionality."
01. The Atlanta Shooting and the "Stop Hate Asians" campaign
On March 16, local time, eight people were killed in a series of shootings at three massage parlors in Acworth, a city northwest of Atlanta, Georgia. Six of the victims were Asian women, four were Korean and two were Chinese. On March 19, U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Harris visited Atlanta and condemned hate crimes against AsiAn-Americans. Biden said, "We are complicit if we are silent. We have to speak up. We have to do something." "Stop Asian Hate" rallies were held in many parts of the United States. On April 4, local time, about tens of thousands of people in New York City participated in a protest with the theme of "Stop hate crimes, oppose racial discrimination, and defend the rights of Asians." Discrimination and hatred against AsiAn-Americans in American society has a long history, and it has intensified under the catalysis of the COVID-19 pandemic. The organization To Stop Hate Against Asian Pacific Americans (Stop AAPI) documented 3,795 incidents received between March 19, 2020 and February 28, 2021. The report found that Chinese were the most hated ethnic group (42.2%), followed by Koreans (14.8%), Vietnamese (8.5%) and Filipinos (7.9%). Women reported 2.3 times more hate incidents than men.
02. Sexualized Asian women
The suspect in the Atlanta shooting has told police he was motivated not by race but by a sex addiction, according to Fox News. All three massage parlours appear on Rubmaps, a porn review site, and two of them each have about 100 reviews, including many recently posted. The reports either suggested that the suspects were motivated not by hatred but by sex addiction, or that the victims were sex workers. Many people of Asian descent resent this portrayal in the media. Jiayang Fan, a Chinese-American journalist, wrote in The New Yorker that "Asian women's bodies have long been objectified, hated, fetishized and exoticized." Fan said on Twitter: "I am an Asian and a woman. I am not a sin, I am not a temptation. I did not cause your crime. I am not and will not be your 'object of elimination.'" Jennifer Ho, director of the Center for Humanities and the Arts at the University of Colorado at Boulder, told CNN, "Being an Asian woman in America means you can't just be you: a fully entitled human being." That means you're a blank screen on which others can show their stories, especially the often sexualized fantasies - because American culture has long viewed Asian women as sexualized objects of white men, "he said, suggesting that misogyny and toxic masculinity killed the victims. Sexual objectification of Asian women has a special historical and cultural background in the United States. The number of Chinese women who immigrated to the United States in the early years was very small, and in the media reports of mainstream American culture, Chinese women were "sexy, obedient, mysterious and seductive dolls", who were described as "lotus flowers" and "dragon women" in the extreme. The two images of "lotus" and "dragon girl" respectively represent the two kinds of women who are obedient and dangerous, in which the ideology of patriarchy is hidden. The Page Act of 1875, though intended to prevent Chinese women from entering the United States and thus preventing an influx of Chinese immigrants, associated Chinese women with the stigma of prostitutes and prostitution. A study of discrimination against Asian American women found that sexism against Asian American women included exotic references, sexual objectification, or references to fetishes specific to Asian American women. Asian women's experiences of sexism are often linked to race, body, and, mostly, strangers. The term "yellow fever," which originally referred to an acute infectious disease spread by the bite of the Aedes mosquito, now refers to a white male obsession with Asian women that is not based on individual traits but is essentially a race-based sexual fantasy.
03. Asian racial discrimination since the COVID-19 pandemic
Since the outbreak of the new coronavirus in 2020, the rejection of Chinese and even Asian Americans in the United States has become more and more serious, and even escalated into violence. At the beginning of the outbreak, Chinese students and Chinese Americans were subjected to serious racial discrimination and hatred - false news that Chinese girls ate bat soup to spread the virus spread across the Internet, Chinese passengers wearing masks on the subway were denounced as "viruses", Chinese restaurant Windows were broken or painted with Nazi symbols... Former US President Donald Trump has stressed the "China virus" and "Kung Flu" on various occasions, which has also made this hatred burn until now. With the development of the epidemic, this differential treatment of individual ethnic groups was quickly covered by comprehensive discrimination against Asians, and even escalated into violence. In addition to the Atlanta shooting, on January 28 this year, an 84-year-old Thai man was pushed to the ground by a man while walking and later died; On March 17, a 75-year-old Chinese woman was attacked by a white man in an unprovoked attack on San Francisco's Market Street, leaving her with a severe blow to the head. Various incidents show that Asian people are suffering from serious racial discrimination. Simplification, labeling, and essentialization are the most powerful weapons of racism. For a long time, mainstream American society not only treated different groups of people from Asia ethnically indiscriminately, but also often turned a blind eye to the huge historical, cultural, linguistic, class and other differences within Asian people. At the same time, myths about Asian labels such as "model minority" and "Ivy League elite" continue to flatten Asian internal differences. Under the influence of a long policy of assimilation, many Asians also naively believe that they are "almost" white. But in fact, "almost" is essentially equivalent to "disappearance", which includes the disappearance of history, the disappearance of sound, the disappearance of the body, and even the disappearance of emotions.
04. Asian women from an intersecting perspective
Back to the Atlanta shooting, early police reports explaining the intent of the crime as "sex addiction" and "eliminate temptation" obscured the gender and race factors behind the incident, and thus became the target of criticism from the Asian American community.
Nancy Wang Yuen, a sociology professor at Biola University, wrote on NBC that Asian women are saddled with the double shackles of racism and misogyny, and are stuck in the gap between non-white and non-black ethnic groups, lacking their own voice. As the Anti-Defamation League reports, there is a powerful symbiotic relationship between misogyny and white supremacy, with the two ideologies powerfully intertwined.
Therefore, to change the disadvantage of Asians, we must recognize the intersectionality of race, gender, and class, and increase our sensitivity to the complexity of identity. The concept of "intersectionality" originated from the black feminist movement, and gradually formed the "intersectionality" school in practice.
The term "intersection" was first used by black feminist jurist Kimberle Crenshaw as a metaphor for how racial and sexism interact and work together to shape the lived experiences of black women, This concept was further developed by Patrica Hill Collins, She coined the terms "matrix of domination" and "situated standpoint" to describe the interweaving of three systems of oppression - race, class, and gender - that shape the micro-empirical mechanisms of a group by influencing its macro-position in the social structure.
Placing the victim in this case, the Asian female employee of the massage shop, in the context of the situation, it can be found that these missing Asian female voices are actually hurt by the interlocking of three oppression systems, and are further deepened by historical factors and media presentation to a large extent.
Therefore, not only the American society needs to face up to the estrangement and prejudice caused by racial discrimination, and actively take countermeasures to effectively protect the safety and legitimate rights and interests of the Asian community. In addition, Asians themselves also need to make certain efforts to unite, actively voice their own voices, and actively reverse the stereotype of "dumb people". For example, Asian individuals can share their personal experiences on social media, support and participate in Asian rights organizations, and respond to their experiences and appeals to their schools or institutions to cultivate the identity of the next generation. The Asian community can organize a defense system and publicize it in the community and on the Internet. The anti-Asian hate march carried out all over the United States also shows the importance and urgency of the Asian hate issue at present to a certain extent. Finally, we should also be aware of the differences within Asian people, and an intersectional perspective can help us understand different demands.
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