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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-50051575

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https://www.asianjunkie.com/2017/08/30/hyunas-babe-is-her-version-of-ius-twenty-th ree-and-it-makes-quite-the-statement/#:~:text=Through%20the%20lyrics%20and%2 0music,image%20with%20elements%20of%20maturity.

Hyuna's song 'babe'

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https://seoulbeats.com/2014/02/playboy-petrarch-racial-fetishism-k-pop/

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"Oh! could I throw aside these earthly bands/ That tie me down where wretched mortals sigh- To join blest spirits in celestial lands!" -Franceso Petrarch, To Laura in Death (Sonnet XLV)

The irrepressible desire to constantly think and fantasize about celestial spirits was not part of the fandom culture only in the Elizabethan Age; the eloquence of fanboys and fangirls may have waned but their obsession has spilled over time and cultures. Therefore, it is not a surprise that many of us have been (or still are) pining Petrarchs, fetishizing our beloved K-pop idols situated on a holy pedestal; unattainable yet insanely attractive.

From penning paragraphs, glorifying and glamorizing their bodies in fanfictions, to exploring dark corners of the worldwide web in the pursuit of confidential information, K-idols have been obsessed over and reduced to their beauty incessantly. Honestly, this sort of fetishization is inevitable. Not only does it take place as a reaction to different kinds of culture interacting, creating new grounds for old fights of power, but it is also a direct product of careful and crafty marketing; a promotion which perceives the idea of 'idols' literally as marble statues of perfection tempting onlookers to vandalize, or more appropriately, ravish them.

It starts out with apprehensive Google searches and soon descends to long, unending hours in the famous dark pits of tumblr; there is a sense of excess, of an overflow, of nausea, of an impending 'spill over' and soon enough, it happens. From relatively safe, confined and less damaging territories, there is a spilling of such festishized desires into the 'outer' world- this time claiming actual victims.

Before I further contemplate on this familiar trajectory, I would like to clarify that it is absolutely okay to have thoughts about fetishization; it is absolutely okay, normal and permissible to have any kind of sexual or romantic fantasy- It is OK to think anything. No one has the right to police your thoughts; you are their sole owner and controller. However, when thoughts transform into actions, or keeping with the spirit of the article, spills over into actions; when your right to think infringes upon people's right to dignified living that is when there is a need to review. And revise.

As the chants of "I love Koreans!" and "Asians are so cute" grow stronger and louder, racial fetishization as a direct result of K-idol fetishization becomes an alarmingly common phenomenon. An entire richly diverse continent is ignorantly grouped into one single race homogenizing cultures, histories and identities, along with being glorified to unrealistic proportions. Fans are on a constant hunt for anyone with 'Asian' features often as candidates for lovers, giving rise to two problems- Racial passing and normalization of such behavior.

The concept of 'racial passing' was " originally coined to define the experience of mixed raced individuals, particularly in America, who were accepted as a member of a different racial group, namely white." And hence, could avail the privileges of the dominant race (white) as long as their 'Other' identity wasn't revealed. However, I will take the liberty to reconstruct the concept within the K-pop context. Most fans, due to their K-idol fetishization have created a single and rigid concept of attractive Asians (because you know, "they all look the same!"). All Koreans are therefore, K-pop idols and if they are not, then " they are kind of ugly for a Korean". Similarly, if anyone East Asian fits their definition of the ultimate 'Asian' beauty then (s)he is the luckiest person on this planet because (s)he is officially South Korean just born by 'accident' in a different country, with a different culture, a different history, a different everything but with a quintessential South Korean face heart. This form of racial passing where one is acceptable and is bestowed with certain privileges by the more powerful race, only because they physically fit a preconceived and fetishized K-idol image, dehumanizes not only South Koreans but also the whole of East Asia. They are not privileges but are simply fetters of endless supplication to an alien notion of beauty and acceptability. Validation comes at a minimal cost: Look and perform South Korean.

Normalizing such behavior has been a tradition in the fandom. There has never been a dearth of semi-academic material trying to raise awareness about the wrongness of this tradition but the main issue is not the lack of an angered and a hurt voice but the lack of a concerned ear and an empathizing mind. It is as if the perpetrators are innately unable to understand the issue. After all, they believe they just love them - their almond shaped eyes, pale skin, their small physical stature, their food, and their culture - their monolithic existence is just so lovable! How can they ever be wrong in loving them?

This entire discourse of love for the monolithic people called Asians arises from a perception of dominance. Since time immemorial we have been fed with stereotypes of East Asian men as asexual nerds and East Asian women as docile and submissive. These stereotypes were created with the sole purpose of demeaning, and rousing mockery and condescension amongst most Non-East Asians. Therefore, when these very Non-East Asians come with open arms to embrace 'Asian' culture, it is seen as a hand of friendship when in reality, it is just another slave contract. This friendship treaty is built on a foundation of racial condescension and pity wherein love is given out as charity by agents of authority. "Aren't we greater people since we accept Asians?", "Aren't we greater because we exoticize your racial features and treasure them?", "Aren't we great that we treat you like objects of never-ending fascination?", "Shouldn't I be my country's ambassador to South Korea because I love them soooo much?" and "Aren't I so much better than those racists who persistently point you out for your physical features?"

A recent incident captured the very essence of the argument I am propounding and also extended the borders of potential harm emerging from indulging in such racist behavior.

The north-eastern part of India is not only geographically isolated from mainland India but is so socially and culturally as well. While there is a blatant political discord due to ineffective and invasive government policies, there is also a silent discord between north-easterners and the rest of India. Since they look distinctly different from conventional 'Indians', they are often subjected to racism with the small 'r' i.e., everyday racism in the form of staring, cracking racist jokes at the expense of their identity, poking fun and criticizing their traditional cuisine etc., and to racism with the capital 'R' i.e., blatant hate crimes. Relentlessly reminded about how "un-Indian" they are, how "Chinese", "Japanese" or "Korean" they are, how they do not have the right to create an identity, the north-easterners have turned to South Korean entertainment - a space where they can seek some sort of physical acceptance - for solace. It gets too tiring to assert your difference in a land which takes immense pride in its diversity but practices its 'homogeneity' with violent repression of the 'Others'.

However, a peculiar case had arisen when K-entertainment spread to different parts of India. K-Entertainment became a bridge between the isolated northeastern corner of India and the mainland. There was a concerted effort on both parts to interact with each other and create a great happy family of non-discriminatory K-pop lovers. However, it was all an ephemeral dream shattered too quickly because of a racist attack.

On Jan. 30, 2014, a 19-year-old student named Nido Tania from the northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh died from injuries he suffered from a beating allegedly administered to him by shopkeepers at a South Delhi market who had earlier mocked him for his East Asian physical features by reportedly calling him 'chinki' (a pejorative slang for 'Chinese'). The reporting of this news was followed by an unusual posting (now deleted) by a north-easterner on an Indian K-pop fanbase group which - reconstructed - said - "Why hate us? Even we look like Koreans."

Evidently he, along with several others, has internalized the neo-colonial discourse where acceptance comes only at the mercy of the neo-colonial lord. In this case, racial passing and normalization meet in terrifying harmony. Devoid of an identity the north-easterners may have turned to South Korean entertainment for refuge but that has always been temporary after all, why should they ever be denied the freedom to call themselves Indians? Armed with terms and conditions and a false contract of peace and acceptability, fellow Indians lured north-easterners with hopes of integration but instead managed to trap them in a web of deception wherein they adored them as long as they looked South Korean. The comments which followed the post majorly harped on the same argument: "We love South Koreans! How can we ever hate you?" and one even went on to donate a paragraph on the beauty of small eyes and small stature further exemplifying to what extent such a fetishized objectification harms people, their existence and their identities.

I do not wish to appropriate the pain and sufferings of the north-eastern people from India. It would be great if they could contribute their voice to the topic which directly affects them.

It is understandable that most of us do not intend to be racist but it is also important to understand that racism has nothing to do with your intention; it is in fact a result of the way you have been conditioned. However, that too is not an excuse to indulge in racial fetishism. There is no denying that perpetrators themselves are often victims of a consumer culture which thrives on racial objectification but at the end of the day, they are still the ones who inflict the harm, not receive it.

So fans, fans and more fans, lend me your ears , Petrarch was immortalized in history because he was a true fanboy of Laura, pining for her till his final days, and not because he projected his desire for Laura on every pretty woman he walked by.

( Beyond Hallyu, Womanist-Musings, ranierm, Seven Sisters Project, Everyday Feminism, The Hindu, The Guardian, Tumblr [ 1][ 2][ 3], Images via Poumainaga, Hindu Business Line)

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Playboy Petrarch: Racial Fetishism and K-pop

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"Oh! could I throw aside these earthly bands/ That tie me down where wretched mortals sigh- To join blest spirits in celestial lands!" -Franceso Petrarch, To Laura in Death (Sonnet XLV) The irrepressible desire to constantly think and fantasize about celestial spirits was not part of the fandom culture only in the Elizabethan Age; the eloquence of fanboys and fangirls may have waned but their obsession has spilled over time and cultures.

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https://www.shethepeople.tv/home-top-video/sexual-dolls-female-kpop-industry-sexualises-singers/

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‘Sexual Dolls’: How The K-Pop Industry Sexualises and Objectifies Its Female Singers - SheThePeople TV

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A glaring controversy that has always marred the exponential success of the K-pop industry is the sexualisation of female K-pop singers in videos, music posters, and performances.

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The sources revolve around the sexualisation on female KPop idols and how it may contribute to how women are being viewed and treated

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https://www.history.com/news/yellowface-whitewashing-in-film-america

'Yellowfacing' is using Asian caricutures by white actors in film

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https://digitalgallery.bgsu.edu/student/exhibits/show/race-in-us/asian-americans/asian-immigration-and-the--yel

Got additional info on yellow peril

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The Yellow Peril

The term "Yellow Peril" refers to Western fears that Asians, in particular the Chinese, would invade their lands and disrupt Western values, such as democracy, Christianity, and technological innovation. However, ideas about Western progress at the time also included beliefs that are recognized as problematic today, such as white supremacy and the virtue of colonizing non-Western lands.

In the mid-nineteenth century, many Americans began to feel threatened by an increase in immigration from China to the United States. Reasons for this included xenophobia, or dislike of foreigners, as well as more complex causes such as labor tensions and shifting national identities. Working-class Americans and European immigrants worried that Chinese immigrants would compete unfairly for their jobs by working for lower wages. Irish immigrant railroad laborers in particular found themselves in competition with Chinese workers, as both groups struggled at the lower end of the wage scale.

Some Americans also were uncomfortable with Chinese immigrants because their clothing (such as robes) and hairstyles (the queue) were unfamiliar, and because Chinese laborers seemed to defy Western gender roles. For instance, Chinese men were often willing to perform duties commonly delegated to women, such as working in laundries and food preparation. Furthermore, Chinese religious practices were considered "heathen" because they were outside of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Additionally, people who believed in white supremacy objected to the possibility that Chinese men might marry white women and have mixed-race children with them. These fears about Asian Americans led to discriminatory legislation that limited immigration, prevented Asian immigrants from seeking citizenship, and enacted unfair taxation on Chinese-owned small businesses.

Media portrayals of Asians and Asian Americans invoked "Yellow Peril" imagery as a sign of villainy, malevolence, or undesirability. Popular illustrations emphasized "exotic" features, such as eye shape (often rendered as narrow slits) and skin color (often exaggeratedly yellow).

The most recognizable "Yellow Peril" character is Dr. Fu Manchu, the villain of a series of crime novels published from 1913 onward by British author Sax Rohmer (Fig. 3). Fu Manchu was usually shown in traditional Chinese clothing, and wearing the distinctive style of mustache that has become associated with his name. Ming the Merciless, a villain from the Flash Gordon comic strip in the late 1930s, is similar to Fu Manchu in both appearance and his desire for world domination (Fig. 2). The cover illustration from a 1906 nickel weekly, or adventure magazine, features a Chinese man leaping on the back of a white youth and appearing to injure him, reflecting the general fear of domination by Asian immigrants and Asian Americans in the United States (Fig. 1).

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The term "Yellow Peril" refers to Western fears that Asians, in particular the Chinese, would invade their lands and disrupt Western values, such as democracy, Christianity, and technological innovation. However, ideas about Western progress at the time also included beliefs that are recognized as problematic today, such as white supremacy and the virtue of colonizing non-Western lands.

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https://coupdemainmagazine.com/rina-sawayama/16190 Rina Sawayama's talks about her single 'STFU'

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https://www.metopera.org/discover/synopses/madama-butterfly/

The operas that depicted the Lotus Blossom archtype

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https://archive.ph/20170602154455/http://www.columbia.edu/itc/music/NYCO/butterfly/luther.html

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Completing the CAPTCHA proves you are a human and gives you temporary access to the web property.

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https://www.history.com/news/yellowface-whitewashing-in-film-america

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On an unusually empty street in New York City, a single cab drops off a woman clad in diamonds and a Givenchy dress in front of Tiffany's & Co. As she casually gazes up, the iconic opening scene of Breakfast at Tiffany's is underway. But it's not long before many viewers are jolted out of the film's transporting charm with the introduction of Mr. Yunioshi, a bucktoothed man with a loud, thick Asian accent played by Mickey Rooney.

Rooney's portrayal of Yunioshi has come to epitomize ethnic stereotypes and often prompts protests whenever the film is screened. But, at the time of the classic film's release in 1961, Hollywood already had a long history of casting white actors in Asian roles-a tradition known as "yellowface."

Yellowface dates to early forms of minstrelsy when ethnic white actors would darken their faces and use prosthetics and costumes to appear Asian. The term itself came from similar acts of blackface that were popular, when white actors colored their skin to caricature black people and culture.

"In minstrelsy, that was part of the performance. Putting on a costume, and everyone knew you were in a costume, and then using that yellowface performance to ridicule or villainize Asians in a way that was entertaining for its audience," says Nancy Wang Yuen, Associate Professor at Biola University and author of Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism.

One of the earliest known performances of American yellowface comes from the theatrical show, An Orphan of China, performed in 1767 and based on a play by Voltaire. This early exposure of dramatized Asian culture would persist for centuries, particularly in film.

Among the first appearances of yellowface in film was in a work by D.W. Griffith, best known for The Birth of a Nation, a racially-charged epic featuring characters in blackface that became so popular it reignited the Klan. Before that film, Griffith targeted Asians through yellowface in his 1910 short, The Chink at Golden Gulch.

"Like a lot of Griffith's films at that period it was about a white woman in jeopardy and peril, and a white man coming to save them," says Dr. Daniel Bernardi, author of Classic Hollywood, Classic Whiteness.

Yellowface characters would persist through the 1930s, as contrarian and villainous characters in The Mask of Fu Manchu, or in meek and withdrawn roles as in Madam Butterfly. Even as Asian characters became more complex in the 1940s and 50s, the roles were still played by white actors, like Katherine Hepburn in the 1944 drama, Dragon Seed.

Why not cast ethnically Asian people in Asian roles? One reason was the Hays Code, an internal set of guidelines that major studios enforced before films could be distributed from 1930 to 1968. The code included an array of requirements that were indicative of society in America, including the prohibition of any sexual encounter between actors of different races. With that restriction, hiring an Asian person as a lead actor in a film would rule out that character having any sexual relations with another unless they were Asian as well.

This code could help explain why the 1937 film The Good Earth featured two white actors in the lead roles as Chinese farmers - Luise Rainer would become the first actor to win an Academy Award for a role in yellowface for her performance in the film.

Casting white actors was also part of a crude box office calculation. Jenn Fang, founder of the Asian-American blog Reappropriate, explains that since white actors were better-known and seen as more relatable to audiences, producers figured featuring them would generate more ticket sales. When white actor Warner Oland replaced Asian lead actors in the Charlie Chan films of the 1930s, the films skyrocketed to success, making it hard to argue with the results.

Until the mid to late-2000s, there was also no public outcry over yellowface roles, according to Fang. Actors saw chances to play different ethnicities as a challenge to be taken on and show their versatility, offensive or not. That creative liberty is something that Bernardi explains should be examined thoroughly.

"You cannot deny the history of yellowface being patently and overtly racist and painful to a host of people," says Bernardi. "And actors need to act. And that if we start drawing strict racial lines when it comes to casting, we only redefine the problem that exists now."

Instances of blatant yellowface have become scarcer in recent years, although it has been replaced with another strategy-altering lead characters to allow for white leads without the use of prosthetics and makeup. Whitewashing continues to be common, as in the casting of Scarlett Johansson in the 2017 film, Ghost in a Shell, which was based on a series made up entirely of Japanese characters.

(Credit: Sanja Bucko/Warner Bros Pictures/Everett)

The long history of erasing Asian actors in films makes the release of 2018's Crazy Rich Asians, which features an all-Asian cast, that much more significant. The film marks the first time that Hollywood has produced a movie with an all-Asian cast since the critically-acclaimed film, The Joy Luck Club, was released 25 years earlier. And with growing appetite for diverse representation in media, Crazy Rich Asians could represent just the beginning.

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Casting White People in Asian Roles Goes Back Centuries

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On an unusually empty street in New York City, a single cab drops off a woman clad in diamonds and a Givenchy dress in front of Tiffany's & Co. As she casually gazes up, the iconic opening scene of Breakfast at Tiffany's is underway.

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https://www.today.com/popculture/here-s-how-pop-culture-has-perpetuated-harmful-stereotypes-asian-t213676

looking into the stereotypes of Asian people

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https://www.dartmouth.edu/~hist32/History/S22%20-The%20Malleable%20Yet%20Undying%20Nature%20of%20the%20Yellow%20Peril.htm

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Tim Yang

Racial stereotypes don't die; they don't even fade away. Though Asian Americans today have "achieved" model minority status in the eyes of the white majority in America by "pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps" through our supposedly quiet, dignified demeanor and gritty, "overachieving" work ethic, the terms of the racial discrimination we face remain the same today as they have since the first Asians began settling en masse in the United States more than a century and a half ago. At the root of this discrimination is the idea of a "Yellow Peril," which, in the words of John Dower is "the core imagery of apes, lesser men, primitives, children, madmen, and beings who possessed special powers" amidst a fear of invasion from the sleeping giant of Asia. Since its inception in the late 19th century, the idea of the Yellow Peril has colored the discourse regarding Asian Americans and has changed back and forth from overt, "racist hate," to endearing terms of what Frank Chin describes as "racist love." In times of war, competition or economic strife, Asian Americans are the evil enemy; in times of ease, Asian Americans are the model minority able to assimilate into American society. What remains the same is that the discrimination, whether overt or not, is always there.

The Yellow Peril first became a major issue in the United States in California in the 1870s when white working-class laborers, fearful of losing their jobs amidst an economic decline, discriminated against the "filthy yellow hordes" from Asia, leading to the national Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which not only prohibited immigration from China but forbade legal residents from becoming citizens. According to the famed orator of the time, Horace Greeley, "The Chinese are uncivilized, unclean, and filthy beyond all conception without any of the higher domestic or social relations; lustful and sensual in their dispositions; every female is a prostitute of the basest order."
This idea of an "Asian menace" was later applied to the Japanese, particularly after Japan's victory over a Western power, Russia, in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5 after it had faced more than a half-century of Western imperialism. According to John Dower, "the vision of the menace from the East was always more racial rather than national. It derived not from concern with any one country or people in particular, but from a vague and ominous sense of the vast, faceless, nameless yellow horde: the rising tide, indeed, of color." This feeling of impending doom from the East led to the 1917 Immigration Restriction Act and the National Origins Act of 1924-two acts that prevented nearly all Asian immigrants from legally entering the United States and prohibited immigrants already in the United States from attaining citizenship.

The height of a fear of the Yellow Peril happened immediately after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, leading the United States to enter into the Pacific War. Popular imagery of the time, particularly through political cartoons (some done even by our beloved Dr. Seuss) debased the Japanese as subhuman apes and gorillas, treacherous in nature and though morally corrupt and mentally and physically lesser to the Americans, possessing in superhuman endurance, strength, sheer overwhelming numbers and mystical powers. This viewpoint of the Japanese as subhuman and treacherous not only led to a race war with Japan, allowing atrocities such as the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to happen, but also fueled the movement towards herding Japanese Americans into internment camps with Executive Order 9066, issued on February 19th, 1942.

While the Japanese and Japanese Americans faced the full wrath of the racism of the Yellow Peril, the Chinese (and the Chinese Americans by extension), the allies of the United States in the Asian theater, felt "racist love." Even though they still faced racial discrimination and were denied citizenship and barred from immigrating into the United States until 1943, they were seen as the good Asians compared to the Japanese. The problem for them, however, was that it is hard to distinguish a Chinese from a Japanese-they suffered from the stereotype that "all Asians look alike." Immediately after Pearl Harbor, Time magazine printed this helpful guide on how to distinguish between Chinese and Japanese:
Virtually all Japanese are short. Japanese are likely to be stockier and broader-hipped than short Chinese. Japanese are seldom fat; they often dry up and grow lean as they age. Although both have the typical epicanthic fold of the upper eyelid, Japanese eyes are usually set closer together. The Chinese expression is likely to be more placid, kindly, open; the Japanese more positive, dogmatic, arrogant. Japanese are hesitant, nervous in conversation, laugh out loud at the wrong time.

After World War II, however, the coming of the Cold War marked by the fall of China to Mao Tse-dong in 1949 and the breakout of the Korean War in 1950 made the Chinese and Chinese Americans enemies to American society while making Japanese and Japanese Americans allies and friends, respectively. The same stereotypes applied; what changed was that similar to World War II, the international situation caused them to be applied to different groups. With the American occupation in Japan, the Japanese were now the good, subservient pupils that could learn from the wise, brotherly whites of America. The Chinese and Chinese Americans were now the evil, treacherous, indigent communists that were ready to strike and destroy the fabric of American society. The times had changed but the stereotypes did not.

Even today, after immigration restricts have been lifted and almost forty years since the publication of William Petersen's article in The New York Times, "Success Story, Japanese-American Style," and of "Success Story of One Minority Group in U.S." in U.S. News an World Report in 1966 that coined Asian Americans as a model minority-a hardworking, intelligent and obedient minority that has made full use of the "American dream"-the racial stereotypes and the discrimination we face remain the same as they did throughout our history in the United States. Some of the very reasons that originally led to the discrimination against Asians in the past-namely the idea that Asians who were willing to work hard and for low wages would steal jobs from working class white Americans-now became reasons for praise. Yet no matter what, we are still seen as foreigners and not completely American. The more vicious forms of racism are simply waiting in the wings to spring up in times of competition and crisis.
As Dower writes regarding U.S.-Japan racial relations, "That vicious racial stereotypes were transformed, however, does not mean that they were dispelled. They remain latent, capable of being revised by both sides in times of crisis and tension." In the 1980s, racism against Asian Americans erupted when the threat of Japanese economic imperialism played into the psyche of Americas-particularly after Japanese interests bought landmarks such as Pebble Beach and Rockefeller Center. The 1982 murder of Vincent Chin by two unemployed auto workers in Detroit who had thought he was Japanese and blamed him for losing their jobs is the most salient example of the racist hate during this time. In 2001, the U.S.-China spy plane incident led some conservatives to argue for Chinese internment and on a more personal level, induced my father to tell me to avoid the rural areas of New Hampshire and to emphasize to people that I was Taiwanese and not a communist.

As Frank Chin writes, "conflict with Asia makes Asian Americans vulnerable, because there has been a history of anti-Asian moods leading to anti-Asian American actions. If ordinary people were to act out their aggressions toward Asia, they would hurt not Asians but Asian Americans. They cannot reach Asia, but they can easily hit Asian Americans." Indeed, the Yellow Peril remains alive and well today.

Reflection

It is sobering and somewhat scary for me that racial discrimination at its most basic level has not changed from the hysteria of the Yellow Peril that first began in the United States almost a century and a half ago. The idea that Asian Americans continue to face discrimination despite our "achievements" and are still susceptible to outright racist hate in times of competition and crisis in America is significant because it shows that however much American society has become more racially inclusive, in many ways, it remains the same closed society that our grandparents' generation faced. Laws barring discrimination are not enough; peoples' values still have to change.

The idea of racial stereotypes and hatred persisting from the Yellow Peril is shocking because I have always believed that I would be able to fit into American society. But after reading John Dower's War Without Mercy, after experiencing racist hate for the first time during the U.S.-China spy plane incident, and after attending the first few weeks of this Asian American History class, I am having doubts about my identity and I am questioning my beliefs. I doubt myself because I am a product of the "racist love," that Frank Chin talks about-I am basically the definition of a "model minority." I recognize how the way in which I have lived my life has simply played into the hands of white America. I definitely see how I am a banana-yellow on the outside and white on the inside-and it makes me ashamed.
As a second generation Asian American born in the United States, I grew up in an all-white suburb and have attended some of the most elite educational institutions in the United States-Phillips Exeter and now Dartmouth. As a result, my lifestyle and viewpoints have been those of white, suburban, northeast America: my friends have mostly always been white, I have almost always dated white girls and my heroes growing up were two white hockey players, Mark Messier and Brian Leetch. Though I have undoubtedly been made fun of and have felt out of place for being Asian, I have always believed that I would be able to fit in. Even though I heard the usual epithets of "gook" and "chink," I largely ignored them and tried to prove myself through my accomplishments. After all, if I could beat them on the ice rink, on the track, or in the classroom, I had nothing to be ashamed about. I never really questioned issues of race until I came to college. I have always been the respectable, well-mannered boy that parents (even white parents) simply adore. I am a product of white, suburban America and I have played my role as member of the model minority to a T.

Growing up, I simply had no idea how this model minority myth sprouted from the vicious stereotypes of Asians that has persisted in America and I truly believed that as long as I worked hard and acted responsibly, I could achieve anything that I wanted. I didn't believe in glass ceilings and I didn't believe that people could actually hate me only for my skin color and that I could be seen as a traitor in my own country. Now I do. The arguments that Dower and Wu make are too well-grounded for me to dispute.

It is scary thinking how I have benefited from stereotypes that had, in previous generations and in slightly different forms, barred my race from entering the United States and led to almost incomprehensible atrocities during World War II and now, as Vijay Prashad and Frank Wu argue, are being used to keep African Americans down. It is scary but race always is an issue and I was simply naïve for thinking anything different.

Works Cited

Chin, Frank and Chan, Jeffrey Paul. "Racist Love." In Richard Kostelanetz, Ed. Seeing Through Shuck. New York: Ballantine Books, 1972.

Dower, John. War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986.

Minear, Richard. Dr. Seuss Goes to War: The World War II Editorial Cartoons of Theodore Seuss Geisel. New York: New Press, 1999.

Petersen, William. "Success Story, Japanese-American Style." The New York Times. January 9, 1966.

"Success Story of One Minority Group in U.S." U.S. News and World Report. December 26, 1966.

Wu, Frank H. Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White. New York: Basic Books, 2002.

Zia, Helen. Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000.

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Tim Yang Racial stereotypes don't die; they don't even fade away. Though Asian Americans today have "achieved" model minority status in the eyes of the white majority in America by "pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps" through our supposedly quiet, dignified demeanor and gritty, "overachieving" work ethic, the terms of the racial discrimination we face remain the same today as they have since the first Asians began settling en masse in the United States more than a century and a half ago.

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I initally made a seperate progress map with my research as I wasn't to fond of the Padlet layout. However there were issues in the previous map that had made a mess of the layout and the date organisation, so i'm just reuploading the links of the sources it to here. The dates taken for the research ranges from months Oct -Jan. Gap in the summer months as I was away on holiday.

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Brief interview in regards to Asian microgression

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Brief interview in regards to Asian microgression

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I held a brief discussion with individuals of East & South East Asian descent who wanted to discuss their experience towards Anti-Asian sentiments
Participants requested to remain anonymous in this discussion and notes were taking.
Anonymous 1: “Working as a nurse, you’ll get to work and deal with various people; you will get some comments that will hurt you, often times from patients. Thankfully I don’t get them often but the comments I heard directed to me are ‘go back to your country’ and ‘you little people’ (these sort of comments are usually associated with SEA, in particular Filipinos). It’s difficult to not pay attention to these comments and feel negative about them, but at the end of the day I should carry on with what I have to do. "

Anonymous 2: “I don’t get any racism that are quite direct but they are more passive and just ignorance really. I don’t get as much when I’m working, just had one or two comments about my race but it was passive aggressive. Honestly it’s just annoying and I don’t care what they say, just trying to do my work and move on.”

Anonymous 3: “It doesn’t happen a lot but the comments are still there. There was this one girl in my class who made a few racist jokes about Asian people (as well as other minorites) and when she got confronted for her ‘jokes’ she turned it around by saying it was a joke and ‘don’t be sensitive about it’. It was really annoying how she acted as the victim. She even accused the class was bullying her even though it was a few classmates telling her not to make these comments. The teacher didn’t do much other than have an hour with the class dedicated in talking things out"

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20 May- How The Fetishization of Asian Women Leads to Violence

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20 May- How The Fetishization of Asian Women Leads to Violence

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https://womensmediacenter.com/fbomb/how-the-fetishization-of-asian-women-leads-to-violence

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As an Asian woman, I find it incredibly frustrating to talk about the fetishization of Asian women. Whenever I try to talk about things like the over-prevalence of Asian women in violent porn categories or the higher rates of sexual violence against Asian women, I get comments like, "Oh, you should be honored that men are attracted to your race!" or "You should just take it as a compliment!"

The reality is that the fetishization of Asian women isn't complimentary - it's a sick and twisted rationale for the mistreatment of Asian women. This group is the most trafficked group worldwide, and while, nationally, 21% of women experience rape or attempted rape in their lifetime, up to 61% of Asian women face physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner.

This ongoing sexual violence toward Asian women is undeniably linked to widespread, hypersexualized stereotypes that have stripped Asian women of their personhood and individuality, reducing them to exotic sex objects that are docile, sexually compliant, and submissive. These stereotypes are the residue of white imperialism through U.S. military presence in Asian countries in the twentieth century, alongside which emerged a prevalence of prostitution. These historical events configured Asian women in the national imagery as submissive sex objects conquered by the colonial white men and commodified for Western desire.

These hypersexualized stereotypes have continued through the decades as they were constantly re-ascribed through mass media. For instance, consider the hit Broadway musical Miss Saigon, which was first performed in 1989 and revered as a beautiful love story. The show centers on a 17-year-old Vietnamese girl who is forced into prostitution because of the Vietnam War, and falls in love with an older American GI after one night together. While this portrayal of brothel life was actually a reality for many Vietnamese prostitutes during the war, the play problematically glamorizes the war and romanticizes an imperialist romance. This show erases the plight of sexual violence against Vietnamese women during the Vietnam War and legitimizes harmful sexual stereotypes of Asian women as a whole.

Imagine if the roles were reversed, and the underage Asian girl was replaced with an underage white girl who was trafficked into sex work and fell in love with her abuser. The audience's assumptions would likely have been different; the story likely wouldn't have been glamorized or romanticized. That is because while white women are viewed as full human beings, as individuals outside of their race, Asian women still cannot escape the stain of white sexual imperialism, and are still viewed as sex toys to submit to white men's will.

These stereotypes have continued into modern-day pop culture as well. Take Day Above Ground's song "Asian Girlz" (2013), which describes a racialized fantasy of Asian women:

"I love your creamy yellow thighs

Ooh your slanted eyes ...

Baby, you're my Asian girl

You're here illegally (best kind) ...

Come on sit on my lap (right here baby)

Or we'll send you back

And you age so well

I can barely tell

17 or 23?"

As stereotypes like these continue to pervade our everyday cultural consumption, we must remain cognizant of the fetishization of Asian women. Stereotypes like these cause sexual violence against Asian women to be overlooked, erased, and legitimized.

More articles by Category:Feminism
More articles by Tag:Asian,Asian American/Pacific Islander,Sexualized violence,Sexual assault

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How The Fetishization of Asian Women Leads to Violence - Women's Media Center

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As an Asian woman, I find it incredibly frustrating to talk about the fetishization of Asian women. Whenever I try to talk about things like the over-prevalence of Asian women in violent porn categories or the higher rates of sexual violence against Asian women, I get comments like, "Oh, you should be honored that men are attracted to your race!"

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18 May- The Gendered Racialization of Asian Women as Villainous Temptresses

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18 May- The Gendered Racialization of Asian Women as Villainous Temptresses

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https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/08912432211029395

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18 May- A Sociologist's View On The Hyper-Sexualization Of Asian Women In American Society

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18 May- A Sociologist's View On The Hyper-Sexualization Of Asian Women In American Society

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https://www.npr.org/2021/03/19/979340013/a-sociologists-view-on-the-hyper-sexualization-of-asian-women-in-american-societ?t=1653351704949&t=1653786741642

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AILSA CHANG, HOST:

On Tuesday, a mass shooter drove into Atlanta and targeted three spots in the area. He killed eight people, six of whom were Asian women. Law enforcement officials have held off on calling the attack racially motivated. They say the perpetrator instead blamed his sex addiction. Well, experts and many others say it is damaging to separate race from this conversation because it ignores the history of hypersexualization and fetishization of Asian women in the U.S.

Nancy Wang Yuen is a professor of sociology at Biola University. She studies pop culture and specializes in race and ethnicity in media, particularly in Asian American representation. She joins us now to help provide some context to this whole conversation. And just a warning - this conversation contains content that may not be suitable for all listeners.

Welcome.

NANCY WANG YUEN: Thank you for having me.

CHANG: So when you first heard that authorities in Georgia were holding off on calling this a racially motivated attack and instead they focused on the suspect's, quote-unquote, "sex addiction," as if that were a separate, alternate explanation for these shootings, tell me what you first thought of that.

WANG YUEN: My first thought I don't think I can say on public radio. I was just so angry, and I just thought, you know - and I also thought, like, you know, they just - these police officers and maybe all of America just doesn't understand how racism and sexism intersect.

CHANG: And this man - I mean, let's get into it. This man, according to law enforcement, said that he committed what he did this week to, quote, "eliminate his temptations." Let me ask you, Nancy, how does that connect to your understanding of the way Asian women have been hypersexualized and fetishized in American society? Like, can we just take a moment for you and I to say out loud what those sexual stereotypes of Asian women are?

WANG YUEN: I think submissive. And I've actually gotten - this is, you know, really personal, but I've actually been asked if my anatomy is different. So a kind of very fetishized, exoticized - that we're somehow even physiologically different from other women.

CHANG: Yeah.

WANG YUEN: And I think that goes back to history of fetishization of women of color in this country. And servile - what else?

CHANG: Exotic lotus flowers.

WANG YUEN: Yes, dragon ladies.

CHANG: Temptresses.

WANG YUEN: Yes. And I think with the lotus blossom, like, death at the end of movies - like, they're - they never survive. So it's the kind of "Madame Butterfly," "Miss Saigon" thing where, you know, you want them, but then you also, you know, can't have them. They're - like, they're taboo. They're forbidden.

CHANG: And let's not forget "Full Metal Jacket."

WANG YUEN: Yes. So the prostitute - right? - the Asian prostitute - and that's a very common stereotype. And the kind of, I think, propositions that Asian women get in public all surround "Full Metal Jacket" quotes. And they're horrible, and everyone knows them even though the movie is rather old. But it's now part of society or culture in general, like life imitating art and imitating kind of an imagined life, right?

CHANG: Right. So when you heard reports that this man, this perpetrator, said that he committed these shootings to, quote, "eliminate his temptations," what did that say to you about his motivations?

WANG YUEN: First of all, I thought that he completely dehumanized these women, right? He labelled them as temptations to be excised, to be eliminated. I mean, these are human beings, right? He is the one - if he has an addiction, he has the problem. Why treat whatever fetish that he has, you know, with Asian women - why treat the women as the problem? I mean, this kind of externalization of his own issues is - it was so horrible to hear. And as an Asian woman, it felt, like, totally dehumanizing.

CHANG: Yeah. I just want to take a step back here for some context and talk about some of the larger institutions that play a role here and why this happens in American society. Can we just - let's talk first about the U.S. military. How do you think the military figures into this conversation?

WANG YUEN: So the U.S. military, you know, has had many wars with Asia. And so the kind of even rhetoric of thinking of Asia as a place that you want to take over - right? - to dominate, and so there is this kind of fetishization of Asia proper as a country. And then, of course, when the GIs are over there, they're participating in the sex industry. And as a result, there have been what are called camp towns that pop up around U.S. military bases. And those camp towns have sex workers. And so the GIs, I think, associate, you know, being in Asia with sex workers, even though Asians are not any more likely to be sex workers than any other, you know, race or culture.

CHANG: Exactly, which only further reinforces attitudes that permission is granted to Asian women's bodies.

WANG YUEN: That's right. So the kind of easy access and inexpensive access and continual access through those camp towns contributes to the idea that Asian women's bodies are just for white male pleasure.

CHANG: And there's some other history here, right? I mean, this wasn't exactly part of my U.S. history curriculum in high school, but I want to talk about with you some of the other ways Asian women have been targeted by specific laws and policies in this country. Let's talk about the Page Act.

WANG YUEN: So the Page Act of 1875 actually predates the Chinese Exclusion Act, and it was an act that particularly targeted East Asian women, and it was applied mostly to Chinese women. And they thought of Chinese women as all prostitutes, right? It was a way to exclude the Chinese population. And they were successful in enacting it against women because they perceived that or they constructed that they carried venereal diseases and, actually, that they were temptations for white men.

CHANG: So what do you think the legacy is of laws like the Page Act, legacies that you still feel resonate in American society today?

WANG YUEN: I think Asian women, particularly East women in this case, are still reeling from the perception that they are prostitutes and temptations, including to - you know, linking it back to the current Atlanta shootings, where Asian women are seen as temptations and yet deracialized. I mean, we have the Page Act just to prove that we have a history of racializing Asian women.

CHANG: I mean, I'll be honest. Like, I'm 45 years old. I've been an Asian woman, obviously, my entire life. This is the first time I can remember talking to anybody about the Page Act for this network as a journalist. And I'm just wondering if you feel - even though violence against Asian women has been happening for a very long time, if you feel the conversation is different in this moment. Does it feel like it's more robust now? And if so, why do you think that is?

WANG YUEN: I actually think that Black Lives Matter is part of it, that because our society is finally having a racial reckoning, that they're becoming aware that racism exists. And now we're able to nuance race and nuance race intersecting with sexism, that all of this is America coming to a greater understanding of all the layers of bigotry and discrimination that the various groups of color have experienced in this country.

CHANG: Yeah. Nancy Wang Yuen is a professor of sociology at Biola University. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with all of us today.

WANG YUEN: Thank you so much.

(SOUNDBITE OF LE WANSKI'S "LA COULEUR DU SON")

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A Sociologist's View On The Hyper-Sexualization Of Asian Women In American Society

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AILSA CHANG, HOST: On Tuesday, a mass shooter drove into Atlanta and targeted three spots in the area. He killed eight people, six of whom were Asian women. Law enforcement officials have held off on calling the attack racially motivated. They say the perpetrator instead blamed his sex addiction.

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I have found a website that provides a brief summary on what this book is about. I am currently getting an online version to read through it, however I do prefer to get the physical copy as it helps me better process reading through the material.
https://www.dukeupress.edu/The-Hypersexuality-of-Race

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" The Hypersexuality of Race demonstrates that though pleasure might mimic complicity, its radical unruliness is far from simple. Equipped with a filmmaker's sensitivity to the tangled and unstable desires of authors, directors, actors, and filmic personae . . . Shimizu provocatively addresses the provocations of Asian/American sex kittens, porn stars, and femme fatales who flaunt their brazen sexuality/or who have sex on screen." - Michelle Har Kim, Women's Studies

" The Hypersexuality of Race is a highly adventurous, interdisciplinary project that closely examines the racialized and sexualized representations of Asian and Asian American women in different genres of performance. . . . Shimizu engages complex problems in highly original and exciting ways, leaving many of the issues open for future contestation and critical inquiry. Such openness to alternative possibilities and new insights attests to her own artistic and political creativity, both on display in this refreshing and at times startling work." - Fei Shi, New England Theatre Journal

" The Hypersexuality of Race is an elegantly written, intellectually invigorating, and necessary addition to gender studies, Asian American studies, and moving images studies. Equally, as porn studies continues to gain serious academic interest, intelligent studies of race and sex like Parreñas-Shimizu's volume will become indispensable." - Jun Okada, Journal of Asian American Studies

"[I]t is a controversial [book]; scholars will want to weigh in on it. Recommended. Graduate students through professionals." - B. M. McNeal, Choice

"An intriguing examination of the Asian femme fatale in cinema. . . . Guiding readers on a well-documented foray into the world of erotic cinema, Shimizu argues that these representations are expressions of a desire for better, more realistic representations of race and gender." - Teresa Coates, Curve

"I found the book to be both bracing and disturbing, its central and overriding ambivalence about the representation of women's sexuality a mirror of my own soul in many ways..." - Adrienne L. McLean, Cinema Journal

"Instead of simply criticizing [sexualized depictions of Asian-American women] as degrading and insulting, Shimizu champions a more complex analysis of Asian-American women's representations that draws from queer theory and foregrounds the notion of 'productive perversity' through close readings, theoretical foreplay, and unexpected interviews. . . . [A]mbitious. . . ." - Kimberly Chun, Bitch

"The book is a rigorous and intriguing attempt to reframe and recapture the self-determination of Asian American women in film representations . . . . Parreñas-Shimizu should be commended for her bold attempt to relocate the debate on Asian American women in film." - Valerie Soe, Afterimage

"Where The Hypersexuality of Race succeeds most is in its attempts to complicate and compound the depictions of Asian/American women on screen with the experiences of Asian/American viewers. . . . The Hypersexuality of Race is a welcome addition to Asian/American and media studies, enabling future scholars to build on the author's germinal research and analysis." - Catherine Clepper, Jump Cut

" The Hypersexuality of Race promises to be an influential and perhaps notorious book. Refusing to shy away from the complexity of sexuality and its contradictory meanings, Celine Parreñas Shimizu does not distinguish between positive (or politically correct) and negative sex acts but rather situates Asian (American) women's expressions of sexuality in relation to racial formation, class consciousness, and other discourses of identity. She emphasizes context and contingency." - Peter X Feng, author of Identities in Motion: Asian American Film and Video

"I find The Hypersexuality of Race nothing short of brilliant, a rigorous and galvanizing scholarly endeavor that promises to make an immediate impact on the fields of Asian American studies, feminist theory, theater and performance studies, and film and cultural studies." - Daphne A. Brooks, author of Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850-1910

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" The Hypersexuality of Race demonstrates that though pleasure might mimic complicity, its radical unruliness is far from simple. Equipped with a filmmaker's sensitivity to the tangled and unstable desires of authors, directors, actors, and filmic personae . . .

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Atlanta spa shootings: Georgia man pleads guilty

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Atlanta spa shootings: Georgia man pleads guilty

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-57989425

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Atlanta spa shootings: Georgia man pleads guilty

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Robert Aaron Long, charged with killing eight people in March, says he murdered four of the victims.

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Atlanta spa shootings: suspect pleads guilty to four counts of murder

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Atlanta spa shootings: suspect pleads guilty to four counts of murder

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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/27/atlanta-spa-shootings-guilty-plea-deal-robert-aaron-long

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A Georgia man charged in the shooting deaths of eight people at three Atlanta-area massage businesses was pleading guilty in Cherokee county on Tuesday, hoping for a sentence of life without parole to the first four cases.

Robert Aaron Long faces still faces the death penalty if convicted in four more shooting deaths in Atlanta, and faces charges of domestic terrorism with a hate crime enhancement in addition to murder. Long is white. Six of the victims were women of Asian descent.

Long walked through the massage business in Woodstock "shooting anyone and everyone he saw", district attorney Shannon Wallace said on Tuesday.

A judge was hearing a prosecutor describe details of his crimes. The prosecutor said the 22-year-old defendant had signed a plea deal admitting to all of the charges in Cherokee county, where he was accused of malice murder, felony murder, attempt to commit murder and aggravated assault.

Police have said the attacks began when Long shot and killed four people, three of them women and two of Asian descent, at Youngs Asian Massage just before 5pm on 16 March 2020. He also shot and wounded a fifth person, they say.

Long then drove south to Atlanta, where he shot and killed three women at Gold Spa before going across the the street to Aromatherapy Spa and fatally shooting another woman, police have said. All of the Atlanta victims were women of Asian descent.

Those killed at the Cherokee county spa were: Xiaojie "Emily" Tan, 49; Daoyou Feng, 44; Delaina Yaun, 33; and Paul Michels, 54. The Atlanta victims were: Suncha Kim, 69; Soon Chung Park, 74; Hyun Jung Grant, 51; and Yong Ae Yue, 63.

Long is scheduled to appear again next month in Fulton county, where the district attorney, Fani Willis, filed notice that she intends to seek a hate crime sentence enhancement along with the death penalty, based on the actual or perceived race, national origin, sex and gender of the four women killed in Atlanta.

Robert Long in his police booking photo. Photograph: AP

Georgia's new hate crimes law does not provide for a stand-alone hate crime. After a person is convicted of an underlying crime, a jury must determine whether it's motivated by bias, which carries an additional penalty.

The 19-count Fulton county indictment includes charges of murder, felony murder, aggravated assault and domestic terrorism.

Police said that after the shootings at the two Atlanta spas, Long got back into his car and headed south. By then, his parents had called authorities to help after recognizing their son in still images from security video that the Cherokee county sheriff's office posted on social media. His parents were already tracking his movements through an application on his phone, the prosecutor said, and that enabled authorities to track their son down I-75.

State troopers and sheriff's deputies spotted his SUV, and one of them forced Long to spin to a stop by bumping his vehicle. Long then surrendered to authorities in rural Crisp county, about 140 miles south of Atlanta.

Long told police his attack was not racially motivated. A Cherokee sheriff's spokesman said it did not appear to be a hate crime, prompting widespread skepticism and outrage.

"He apparently has an issue, what he considers a sex addiction, and sees these locations as something that allows him to go to these places, and it's a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate," Capt Jay Baker of Cherokee sheriff's department initially told reporters.

Baker also drew criticism for saying Long had "a really bad day". He was removed from the case.

State representative Bee Nguyen, the first Vietnamese American to serve in the Georgia House and a frequent advocate for women and communities of color, said the shootings appeared to be at the "intersection of gender-based violence, misogyny and xenophobia". Atlanta's mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, said that regardless of the shooter's motivation, "it is unacceptable, it is hateful and it has to stop".

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Atlanta spa shootings: suspect pleads guilty to four counts of murder

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A Georgia man charged in the shooting deaths of eight people at three Atlanta-area massage businesses was pleading guilty in Cherokee county on Tuesday, hoping for a sentence of life without parole to the first four cases.

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The Atlanta shootings can’t be divorced from racism and misogyny

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The Atlanta shootings can’t be divorced from racism and misogyny

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https://www.vox.com/22336317/atlanta-georgia-shootings-racism-misogyny-targeting-asian-women

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The Atlanta shootings can’t be divorced from racism and misogyny

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The suspect has claimed that these attacks weren’t racially motivated even though they predominantly targeted women of Asian descent.

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17 May 2022- The history of fetishizing Asian women

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17 May 2022- The history of fetishizing Asian women

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https://www.vox.com/22338807/asian-fetish-racism-atlanta-shooting

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Lillian, a young Asian American woman, was fed up with the flurry of fetishizing messages white men were sending her on Tinder. In 2017, she decided to create a meme Instagram account to show how men would slide into her inbox with remarks such as "I want to try my first Asian woman" or "I need my yellow fever cured."

After more uncomfortable matches on the online dating app, Lillian used the account to speak out about the fetishization and intersection of racism and sexism that Asian women like her often face in real life. "I began to realize that these interactions on Tinder matched up with my lived experience of being an Asian woman," she told Vice's Broadly in 2018, "and I realized I could use this platform to talk about those experiences - and help others find validation through them, too." Although Lillian stopped posting that same year, the account still has more than 19,000 followers, many of whom are Asian women who have commented on similar experiences of being sexualized.

For Asian women, the Atlanta spa shootings hit close to home. When Robert Aaron Long - the white 21-year-old gunman who was arrested on Tuesday and charged with the killing of eight people, six of whom were Asian women - told the police he had a " sex addiction" and that the spas were a "temptation he wanted to eliminate," many were also quick to note the intersections between racism, misogyny, and racial fetishization. The stumbles of authorities and media outlets in distinguishing spas from massage parlors (the latter of which have a connotation of prostitution and sexualization) also showed that people were already viewing the case with certain tropes in mind without engaging in the vulnerable realities these workers face.

As Vox's Li Zhou reported, Long's statement about his "temptation" speaks to the longstanding stereotypes about not just the businesses, but also "Asian American women who have been exoticized and fetishized as sexual partners as far back as the 1800s," Zhou writes.

Even before the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned Chinese immigrants from becoming US citizens, the US had passed the Page Act of 1875, which ultimately banned the importation of Asian women, who were feared to be engaging in prostitution in the country, whether they were or not. And while many scholars point to different origins of Eastern fetishization, film scholar Celine Parreñas Shimizu, author of the book The Hypersexuality of Race, says the emergence of films and artwork after US-led wars in Asian countries is when the trope of the hypersexual but docile Asian woman really took hold in America.

With Asian women, "there's this construction of a being for others, and a being for the white man, usually, that were in these drawings and films and other cultural materials, that really extends to the way that we are capable of giving voice to this gunman who says that he was 'sexually addicted to the temptations' that [these Asian workers] offered," Parreñas Shimizutold Vox. Meanwhile, "the Asian women who were killed were essentially silenced."

I spoke with Shimizu about the history of fetishizing Asian women and how it translates to the shooting in Atlanta. Our interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

Rachel Ramirez

People seem quick to want to label the motives of the Atlanta shootings with one definitive answer - it's racism, it's misogyny, or it's " sex addiction," as the shooter claimed. But it's much more complicated than one thing. How do you see it?

Celine Parreñas Shimizu

This particular event of Asian American women who work in a place that's been attributed to sex work really hit me hard, because I'm a scholar that studies the representations and lives of Asian and Asian American women who are sex workers.

So for me, I could see their image and their identities catapulted into the national stage in a way that made it clear how much we lacked knowledge of how they got there. Why are they working there? Who are they? Are they immigrant women? What are their circumstances? What I'm thinking about is how their death has led to further silencing and burial - and how this killing has led to the amplification of the gunman's voice and the simplification of a "sex addiction," which further dehumanizes and decontextualizes the Asian women.

Rachel Ramirez

Talk to me more about this silencing and the intersection of a vulnerability and stigma of these workers. The shooter called these spas "a temptation he wanted to eliminate." What comes to mind when you hear these words?

Celine Parreñas Shimizu

So the arrival of Asian American women can really be captured as a genital event: The Page Act of 1875 reflected the fear of Chinese women as a source of contaminating sexuality. That they were possibly prostitutes.

That they were possibly going to introduce a polyamorous way of life into the United States at a time when there was a growing influx of Asians to the country. If you look at that law, it's revealing that race has always been tied to gender and sexual difference. That there's a fear of genital sex, and that there's a fear of new kinds of sexual culture that these racialized women were representing.

At the same time, there was also the beginning of a mass circulation of Asian women in plays; for example, The Good Woman of Szechuan in the 1880s, Madame Butterflyin 1904. These cultural productions were occurring at a time of Asian encounters with the West and Western invasions of Asia.

There was a production in the circulation of Asian women as sexually different and sexually excessive. They love you so much that they are going to be blinded [to] your lack of regard and how that love is not reciprocated. It's such a maddening, scary love and sex and feeling and desire that is contained in an Asian woman's body. So this is going on in history, in the law, and this is going on in popular culture.

When I hear those words, that the Asian women at those spas were "temptations" that he wanted to eliminate, it really captures the legacy of the history and the law and popular culture constructions of Asian women - that they are the vessels of excessive sexuality. For me, it captures producing otherness and the alienation and object status. It's really a dehumanizing move.

Rachel Ramirez

You mention The Good Woman of Szechuan and Madame Butterfly- is it with this kind of representation in art that the Western fetishization of Asian women really takes off?

Celine Parreñas Shimizu

My first book, The Hypersexuality of Race, chose to begin with Miss Saigon in 1989, which continues and really was one of the most lucrative Broadway productions. I wanted to begin there, because I was so arrested by the repetition of the same story - like what is so appealing about an Asian woman who loves a white man so much that she will choose to kill herself and give up her child and give it to him?

That was from 1904, so it's really almost 100 years, and it wasn't just repeated in Miss Saigon; there were other incarnations of it, like in the movies of Anna May Wong. One of her first films, Toll of the Sea, was the same story in 1920. So my book really concentrates on about 100 years of that repetition. Why are we addicted to that story? What is so arousing and pleasurable about that construction? Who does it serve? It isn't a happy romance; the man and woman's intimacy are torn apart. In the end, it's revealed that she has no value, that she is unimportant.

I don't know where fetishization began. I think there are many stories that we don't know about, regarding the colonial encounter between Asia and the West. But what I do know is that the hierarchy of value when we enter that relationship between a white man and an Asian woman, whether it's in the context of the military-industrial complex.

One recent story is the one of Jennifer Laude, the trans Filipinx sex worker, who was killed by an American GI in the Philippines. But the United States protected him as soon as he was pronounced guilty; they shuffled him out of the Philippine courthouse, and he was never imprisoned in the Philippines.

Most recently, President [Rodrigo] Duterte pardoned him. The movement of trans Filipinx women who mobilized in order to say her name - and to make sure that her story did not get buried - tell us that the status of Filipinx trans women sex workers reflects the colonial relationship between the Philippines and the United States and the power inequalities between the countries.

Rachel Ramirez

I want to stay on this, because I am also thinking of the massive US military presence in Asian countries - particularly in Vietnam, the Philippines, Korea, and Japan - and the immediate colonization of not just the lands but of Asian women's bodies. That Asian women's bodies are for Western men's taking.

How does this translate to the events in Atlanta, particularly that the suspect insinuated he wanted to eliminate these spas because he couldn't control his own addictions?

Celine Parreñas Shimizu

My research on The Hypersexuality of Race included uncovering some photographs that I found of women, photographs of the places where they worked, where they were enslaved, essentially. There were makeshift beds and a pile of towels to aid them in cleaning themselves - and there were cartoon images that attributed the slanted vagina onto Asian women.

There was pornography that eroticized the relationship between the war brides coming back to the US after the Korean War, for example. And this was the first time that Asian women were in pornography that I saw, versus white women in yellowface. They were romanticizing the compatibility of a docile war bride, as an ideal American wife, because she was sexually servile but also a domestic servant.

There's this construction of a being for others and a being for the white man, usually, that were in these drawings and films and other cultural materials, that really extends to the way that we are capable of giving voice to this gunman who says that he was "sexually addicted to the temptations" that they offered, and how the Asian women who were killed were essentially silenced.

It's stunning, too, that there's still this innocence that's being projected onto a man who killed so many people. How can that innocence not shatter? And how come that person is given the microphone in order to continue this narrative that relegates this sexuality that drives white men crazy? To say that these women hold in their bodies temptations that he can't resist, and using that as a reason to justify their killing.

Rachel Ramirez

As you mention, on one hand, Asian women are stereotyped as hypersexual; on the other, they are also seen as "submissive" or "docile." In fact, there was a study done in 2013, which basically found that Asian women are the most "desirable" racial group among white men and other races. How have these two different stereotypes contributed to Asian women being not just objectified but seen by white men as a more "desirable" race?

Celine Parreñas Shimizu

The polar way we understand gender as virginal equals good or hypersexual equals bad is particularly a prison for Asian American women, because representations in between are hardly in the movies or are hardly around.

So whenever we appear, we must contend with the inheritance of excessive sexuality, where you have to say I am not that, and in the act of saying I am not that, it's easier to go toward the place that says I am a good woman without that scary sexuality. So, it does not allow for Asian American women to define their own sexuality, which would most likely be in the vast expanse of the middle. We really have to live with those scary and very limited polar opposites.

Rachel Ramirez

Yes, it seems there is little imagination of Asian women outside of the binary subservient and overtly sexual. Relatedly, there has been some hesitancy to talk about the possibility of these spas in the Atlanta shooting being places of sex work. While we don't know much about the victims and would never want to assume or lean into stereotypes, are we also ignoring an important vulnerability these women faced, even if by connotation alone, one that is made worse the more we stigmatize it?

Celine Parreñas Shimizu

I definitely think that this must be an opportunity for us to educate on the plight of vulnerable, poor, working women in every industry, including the sex industry. While we don't know if there were indeed sexual transactions, what we do know is it is really important to highlight questions like: Are these women safe at work? What are their conditions of work? How can we improve them, so that they are not any longer some of the most vulnerable in our society?

I do see this definitely as an opportunity for us to educate ourselves on the plight that led these women to work there. And also how there is the accepted linkage between Asian and Asian American women and the sex industry, due to the various wars in Asia and the non-accidental ways that the cities and towns that flank the US military bases had a prostitution industry that was supported by the US military-industrial complex. We cannot normalize our ignorance around the conditions in which these women live and work. This is definitely an opportunity to improve their situations by finding out more about what we can do to help.

Rachel Ramirez

In your book, The Hypersexuality of Race, you encourage a shift in thinking about the way Asian women are sexually depicted. How canpeople move beyond that negative perception of Asian women as submissive sexual objects that have no agency? How should we be thinking about the nuance of Asian women and how does that nuance keep them safe?

Celine Parreñas Shimizu

Sexuality is a part of all of our lives - whether we love it or are ambivalent about it or don't want to participate in it. It can be a great life-giving source of physical and psychic pleasure of which we should not be deprived, if we wish to participate in it.

One fear that I have, in looking at over 100 years of representing Asian and Asian American women as a source of excessive sexuality, is that Asian American women should be encouraged to do the work of defining their sexuality in the face of this heavy truck that is trying to tell them that they are a particular way.

I concluded my book with a respectful, interrogative celebration of how Asian American women are using film precisely to explore their sexualities - and, of course, it includes their victimization, as well as their empowerment through sexuality.

We need to acknowledge this huge systemic force that relegates us into a particular kind of sexual role in society. We must take it in our own hands and really centralize our experiences and follow the lead of our foremothers, including Asian American women who worked in Hollywood and Broadway.

I do hope that we can look at the way Asian American women - whether actors, activists, or scholars - have confronted this infliction of perversity and not run away from our own sexualities, and really use it as a force, not only to feel good for ourselves, but as an opportunity to capture how we are not yet free and that we have so much possibility to create new narratives about ourselves.

Why did the killer keep going back to those spas? Why did these women continue to deepen into an object status for him? There's a pornography to this whole thing in terms of what he chose to see about them, and how he chose to narrate that encounter, in a way that continues their devaluation, so that in his mind, in his actions, their lives were not worth living or saving but instead had to be extinguished.

The long history of brutalization of Asian American women has been a part of this country inside and outside it. We need to question our capacity of repressing those stories - and instead, we need to cultivate the need to hear about them and to know them.

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Lillian, a young Asian American woman, was fed up with the flurry of fetishizing messages white men were sending her on Tinder. In 2017, she decided to create a meme Instagram account to show how men would slide into her inbox with remarks such as "I want to try my first Asian woman" or "I need my yellow fever cured."

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"Big Bad Chinese Mama": How Internet Humor Subverts Stereotypes about Asian American Women

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"Big Bad Chinese Mama": How Internet Humor Subverts Stereotypes about Asian American Women

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https://www.jstor.org/stable/23823982?saml_data=eyJzYW1sVG9rZW4iOiI2OGZmZDRkYS1lOTE4LTQ1NzEtYTc5My00M2NhNWRlNmM3YzkiLCJpbnN0aXR1dGlvbklkcyI6WyJlMmU3MGZjOS1jNTg4LTQzZWQtODk4Mi1jMzAxMmI0MjA3MTQiXX0&seq=1

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16 May 2022- Exhausted, Not Exotic: Dangers of Asian Fetishization | Molly Bui | TEDxYouth@Bloomington

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16 May 2022- Exhausted, Not Exotic: Dangers of Asian Fetishization | Molly Bui | TEDxYouth@Bloomington

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During this talk, Molly Bui discusses and explore the dangers of Asian Fetishization, containing references to sex and sexual violence against Asian women. Molly was a student at Bloomington High School South at the time of this talk.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srgwp9KivpU

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0:00 / 13:36•Watch full video

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Exhausted, Not Exotic: Dangers of Asian Fetishization | Molly Bui | TEDxYouth@Bloomington

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I am intending to purchase the physical copy of this book, whilst it is possible to find an online version a physical copy is nice to have
https://www.routledge.com/Women-Gender-and-Art-in-Asia-c-1500-1900/Bose/p/book/9781138353411

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Book Description

Women, Gender and Art in Asia, c. 1500-1900 brings women's engagements with art into a pan-Asian dialogue with essays that examine women as artists, commissioners, collectors, and subjects from India, Southeast Asia, Tibet, China, Korea, and Japan, from the sixteenth to the early twentieth century. The artistic media includes painting, sculpture, architecture, textiles, and photography. The book is broadly concerned with four salient questions: How unusual was it for women to engage directly with art? What factors precluded more women from doing so? In what ways did women's artwork or commissions differ from those of men? And, what were the range of meanings for woman as subject matter?

The chapters deal with historic individuals about whom there is considerable biographical information. Beyond locating these uncommon women within their socio-cultural milieux, contributors consider the multiple strands that twined to comprise their complex identities, and how these impacted their works of art. In many cases, the woman's status-as wife, mother, widow, ruler, or concubine (and multiple combinations thereof), as well as her religion and lineage-determined the media, style, and content of her art. Women, Gender and Art in Asia, c. 1500-1900 adds to our understanding of works of art, their meanings, and functions.

Table of Contents

Contents

List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements

Introduction: Queens, Courtesans, and Collectors: Women's Engagement with Art in Asia
Melia Belli Bose

PART 1
Matrons, Art, and Power

1 Mapping Holkar Identity and the Good Name of Ahilyabai
Cathleen Cummings

2 Royal Matronage and a Visual Vocabulary of Indian Queenship: Ahilyabai Holkar's Memorial Commissions
Melia Belli Bose

3 Heavenly Mistress and Bodhisattva: Visualizing the Divine Identities of Two Empresses in Ming China (1368-1644)
Luk Yu-Ping

4 A Very "Modern" Matron: Phra Rachaya Dara Rasami as Promoter and Preserver of Lan Na Culture in Early Twentieth-century Siam
Leslie Woodhouse

PART II
Women's Work and Working Women

5 Imagining Du Liniang in The Peony Pavilion: Female Painters, Self-portraiture, and Paintings of Beautiful Women in Late Ming China
Lara C.W. Blanchard

6 Creating Art in Japan's Imperial Buddhist Convents: Devotional Practice and Cultural Pastime
Patricia Fister

7 Women's Work: Phulkari, Flora Annie Steel, and Collecting Textiles in British India
Cristin McKnight Sethi

PART III
Depicting the Exemplary Woman

8. Defining a Woman: The Painting of Sin Saimdang
Sunglim Kim

9 Properly Female: Illustrated Books of Morals for Women in Edo Japan
Elizabeth Lillehoj

10 Absence and Presence: Representations of Human and Non-human Females in Tibetan Thangkas
Serinity Young

PART IV
Gender in Liminal Spaces
11 Reconsidering Gender Realms: The Garden as Site and Setting in Late Imperial Shanghai
Kristen Chiem

12 Women Who Crossed the Cordon
Ikumi Kaminishi

13 A Multi-gendered Scandal: The Survival of the Prostitute Meme, Asazuma Boat
Miriam Wittles

Index

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Women, Gender and Art in Asia, c. 1500-1900

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Women, Gender and Art in Asia, c. 1500-1900 brings women's engagements with art into a pan-Asian dialogue with essays that examine women as artists, commissioners, collectors, and subjects from India, Southeast Asia, Tibet, China, Korea, and Japan, from the sixteenth to the early twentieth century. The artistic media includes painting, sculpture, architecture, textiles, and photography.

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What is sexualisation and hypersexualisation?

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What is sexualisation and hypersexualisation?

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Sexualisation is to make something or someone sexual or considered in a sexual way.
Hypersexualisation in this context of the subject, is the dehumanising sexual objectification that affects women of colour.

https://www.quebec.ca/en/family-and-support-for-individuals/childhood/child-development/effects-stereotypes-personal-development/effects-hypersexualization#c60982

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/sexualize

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13 May 2022- Changed topic to hypersexualisation of Asian Women

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13 May 2022- Changed topic to hypersexualisation of Asian Women

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Didn't feel as engaged to the subject I had and getting a question that I would want answered was something I found difficulty in.
The topic on the hypersexualisation of Asian women is something I have more interest and is something I have a better grasp and familiarity to.

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Currently been looking through information on censorship around the female body, however I can't get a clear direction to what I want my lead question to be. There is an overlap of the sub themes in my topic however putting together on what I want out of the dissertation has been a struggle

All the research I've looked into were scattered and all over the place to form a set idea. Deciding in perhaps changing my idea to a topic that is more in my interest.

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“Instagram Has a Problem”: Betty Tompkins Sounds Off on Art and Censorship

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“Instagram Has a Problem”: Betty Tompkins Sounds Off on Art and Censorship

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Artist Betty Tompkins talks on Instagram's censorship on art
https://www.wmagazine.com/story/betty-tompkins-instagram-censorship

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It's been 30 years since the cancellation of a planned Robert Mapplethorpe retrospective over fears that a (federally funded) showcase of interracial relationships and nudity would prove too controversial. And while censorship in art might seem like a thing of the past-after all, the Guggenheim mounted a major two-part Mapplethorpe retrospective earlier this year-the threat is still very much real. Just ask Betty Tompkins, the pioneering feminist artist who's currently ruffling just as many-if not more-feathers as she was when the French government seized two of her works at customs in the '70s.

Between 2005, when the Japanese government pulled a similar move, and 2015, things were relatively calm for Tompkins. Then, she joined Instagram. According to Tompkins, the app has deleted more than a dozen posts featuring her artwork-a pattern that culminated in April when she posted a photo from a catalogue featuring her photorealistic, explicit work Fuck Painting #1, at which point Instagram deactivated her account.

Six months later, the app invited Tompkins, plus a number of art world figures including the photographer and painter Marilyn Minter, to a closed-door roundtable discussion about its content moderation. Unable to attend Monday's discussion, Tompkins instead wrote a statement to be read at the gathering. While researching the subject, she experienced a "total shock" of a discovery: She'd actually never actually violated any of the app's guidelines, which specifically state that "nudity in photos of paintings and sculptures is OK."

"Over a billion people use Instagram every month and operating at this size means that mistakes are made," Stephanie Otway, a Facebook company spokesperson, told W on Thursday. "It is never our intention to silence members of our community." The company also said that it has restored six of the posts that were at one point removed from Tompkins's account, upon realizing that they were in fact photorealistic paintings rather than photographs. This, the company added, was among several topics it raised to those who partook in Monday's roundtable discussion.

On Friday, Tompkins posted a portion of her statement to her account. (She'd planned to post it on Thursday, but her account was once again temporarily deleted-though, as she noted, "the people at Facebook and Instagram who got it back up they were humane, generous, and efficient.") Here, she shares more with W, from her feelings on NDAs to her love-hate relationship with the app.

Your statement is surprisingly short. How did you set about deciding what to write? When they invited me to the roundtable and I couldn't be there, I said I'd like to write a statement that would be read aloud, and they said sure. I spent like two weeks trying to figure out in my head how I would state this, basically stewing, before I realized that despite all the notices mentioning them, I'd never actually read the community guidelines. Most of them said what I expected them to, but there was this one little section that was a total shock to me-and I'm sure the thousands, millions of other artists who are on Instagram have never read it either. I mean, the sentence has no qualifier: It says "Nudity in photos of paintings and sculptures is OK, too." But apparently not if some ignoramus somewhere on the planet decides they don't like it, or if the algorithm is just off today or whatever. When I read it, I was laughing and I was furious at the same time. Instagram has a problem. They don't follow their own guidelines. I wanted someone from the gallery to read it at the roundtable in my place, but they wouldn't allow that. I keep thinking about it, especially because I wasn't there. I don't know if it would be more or less obvious to me if I had been, but meetings between people who run social media and people who are active on their social media, should not have NDAs.

I know that Facebook said it was standard procedure, but it still shocked me to hear about the NDAs. Me too. But since I wasn't there, I didn't have to sign one! [ Laughs.]

Betty Tompkins, *Censored Painting #1*, 2019. Acrylic on canvas.

Courtesy of Betty Tompkins and P·P·O·W, New York

Combined with the absence of the media, it made me wonder, Is there something you guys are trying to hide? Right. Two days after the meeting, they haven't announced any change-yet. Of course, they may never, but it seems to me that if they wanted this meeting to have a real impact, they would have made it public. [Artist] Michol Hebron said they should have livestreamed the whole thing, and I totally agree with her. They lost a wonderful opportunity. I know everybody had to sign, and so far people are not talking that I can see. But these are artists. My job as an artist is to break rules. And I really can't think that you could put 20 artists in a room, feed them a hot lunch and they'll stay shut up.

Have you spoken with anyone who attended the roundtable? Marilyn [Minter] said "Wish you were there" on Facebook, and I said "Me too." She's a rulebreaker, but no, I haven't gotten in touch with her to see what she would say. We'll have to see what happens. I suppose we have to be reasonable and say we'll see what they do, but I think from the beginning they just wanted to know what we thought. And as the days are passing, I'm beginning to think that they didn't have any intention to go further than Now we know what they think, and they don't like us, they're a pain. They know that we need Instagram, so basically all the power is with them. But they need us, too.

I do think it's important that they invited younger, up-and-coming artists, because they're the ones that this most affects. Absolutely. I can't tell you how many young artists-well, almost everybody's younger than me-I heard from who were worried they were going to lose their account when mine was deactivated. So many of them wrote to Instagram to complain about it, which was great, because I was-to put it mildly-hysterical. I was posting on Twitter and Facebook like every hour and a half, telling people to go on Instagram and complain. Because if you don't have an account on Instagram and if you're not posting your work for whatever for you is at a normal rate, it's hard to let people know what you're working on. For me it's like a meditation-I do it first thing I do in the morning, before I get up, and then I'm done with it for the day. I try not to spend too much time on social media during the day because I have a lot of work to do. But I paint wet over dry, so there's 10, 15 minutes. Sometimes I work on something else, but a lot of times I'll say okay, I'll go see what everybody's doing.

Were you hysterical just on principle, or because you missed using the app, too? It actually was both. I was really insulted, and really surprised. I was looking at my account, and what I had posted six months previous wasn't any different. It was like, Why is this stuff still up? And it had been months since they had taken anything down before they disabled my account, so I was like okay, they finally realized who I was and that this is what I do.

What's funny about the post that made them shut down my account-which was gone when they reactivated it-is that it was of a catalogue from Stadtgalerie Saarbrüken, this big feminist show I was in. I had opened it to my pages, so there was text about me on the lefthand side and a reproduction of Fuck Painting #1, which they had borrowed for the Centre Pompidou, on the right. It's a historically important painting, but I'm not even showing the painting. I was really clear that it was a printed page I was showing; you could see the fold. I mean, by that time, I was used to them taking my posts down, because they've taken down an awful lot. But that time, they took my account down.

It seems pretty arbitrary, too. In May, you posted that Instagram had taken one of your posts down, but that people could scroll back to see it when you first posted it, the previous October. Completely. I took a screenshot of the one I posted, edited it down to the piece, and put it up again, so it really was the same post. Thank god I hadn't taken down the original, because I tend to do that so if somebody is taking scrolling through they don't see the same images five times.

I'm surprised that you were so surprised when they deactivated your account, though. Haven't you often dealt with censorship over the course of your career? Yeah, and you know what? Each time it's like the first time-sort of like how you can remember a painful experience, but you can never relive the pain. Before Instagram, there were 15, 20 years between governments censoring me, so I was surprised each time there too. There are certain things I do when being censored to keep my sanity, and for Paris and for Japan, I did censored drawings of the pieces that were actually censored. So after I got my account back, I started to keep a list of what Instagram was taking down, so I'm now doing censored paintings. I'm on my fourth one, and I already have a list of at least 10 more images that I can go to work on. And enough's enough! I already have enough for the whole series; stop. [ Laughs.] And I am going to go through with them, because it keeps me pretty centered to do something positive out of an experience that was 100 percent negative.

Betty Tompkins, *Censored Grid #7*, 2008. Pencil and ink on paper.

Courtesy of Betty Tompkins and P·P·O·W, New York

If Instagram invited you to another roundtable, but you had to sign an NDA, would you accept? If I had to sign an NDA, I don't know that I would. Maybe I would as a pro forma thing and just do what I want to do. You know, when I first saw someone mention the NDA, it reminded me of the old days. When I taught at LaGuardia Community College, which is a part of CUNY, in the '80s, I actually needed to sign a loyalty pledge-an "I never did or will do anything against the United States," from the McCarthy days. You wouldn't get the job if you didn't sign it, and I was desperate for money. I really was instantly I was instantly reminded of the McCarthy era. And J. Edgar-let's not forget about him.

You offer two ideas for solutions in your statement. Do you have any other suggestions for Instagram going forward? I wish they did it more like Facebook, which owns the app. Facebook has taken down a couple of my things, but when they do it, they send you a notice citing their community guidelines, and you have to check one or two things: whether or not you accept the decision, and whether or not you would like it reviewed by a human being. I have several times now and it's always come back up, either between two hours and 24 hours, and I am sent a notice of apology-a We made a mistake and we're sorry. But when Instagram reactivated my account, all the sudden I could just log back in. There wasn't a word. Not one-excuse me-fucking word. They could give me the right to appeal the decision to a human being, and they could also offer an apology. After ruining my day, I would appreciate that.

Related: Accused of Censorship, Instagram Turns to Artists Like Betty Tompkins and Marilyn Minter for Help

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"Instagram Has a Problem": Betty Tompkins Sounds Off on Art and Censorship

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It's been 30 years since the cancellation of a planned Robert Mapplethorpe retrospective over fears that a (federally funded) showcase of interracial relationships and nudity would prove too controversial. And while censorship in art might seem like a thing of the past-after all, the Guggenheim mounted a major two-part Mapplethorpe retrospective earlier this year-the threat is still very much real.

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Hair, Blood and the NippleInstagram Censorship and the Female Body

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Hair, Blood and the NippleInstagram Censorship and the Female Body

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A document that disscusses on how social media censorship affects female identified bodies, specifically on Instagram

https://mediarep.org/bitstream/handle/doc/1978/Digital_Environments_159-170_Faust_Instagram.pdf?sequence=1

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https://www.queensjournal.ca/story/2013-06-26/editorials/censored-bodies/

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A sexual taboo now surrounds words like "vagina" and "breasts". My generation has trouble even saying these words aloud.

Recently, I was on an American Airlines flight watching an episode of Parks and Recreation and the aforementioned words were censored.

Censorship is a way of protecting the public from words and images that can cause harm. However, words like "vagina" and "breasts" represent body parts - they aren't verbal weapons, inappropriate
or vulgar.

The same week as my flight, a photo of a breastfeeding toddler and his mother was removed from Facebook for violating the website's policies. The group where the photo was posted - Breastfeeding Mama Talk - was subsequently banned for 24 hours.

When an influential social platform like Facebook allows for groups and photos that encourage the objectification of women's bodies and discourage a positive and educational understanding of them, there is no question that perceptions of women and sexuality will be affected.

An open letter to Facebook, published by holistic parenting website MotherWise on March 11, questioned the double standard. The letter pointed out that Facebook removes pictures of breastfeeding mothers and educational diagrams of the vagina but allows groups like "Let's Expose These Hoes" and "Big Boobs and Sex" to remain.

A clear message is being sent here, that it's unacceptable to look upon women's bodies in terms of female empowerment and education. If a photo or its context doesn't tend to male sexual desire or fantasy, it's inappropriate.

This concept is nothing new, but in an age coloured by feminism and sexual freedom, this ideology is obviously backwards.

Our censorship of body parts has created a damaging over-sexualization of the female body. The breast is no longer a breast - it's now, in all contexts, pornographic.

Facebook should not be marking the female body as pornographic. Censoring breastfeeding and educational diagrams while allowing overtly misogynist content sends the wrong signal to its
many users.

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A sexual taboo now surrounds words like "vagina" and "breasts". My generation has trouble even saying these words aloud. Recently, I was on an American Airlines flight watching an episode of Parks and Recreation and the aforementioned words were censored. Censorship is a way of protecting the public from words and images that can cause harm.

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In the Pages of Ms.: Sex Role Portrayals of Women in Advertising

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In the Pages of Ms.: Sex Role Portrayals of Women in Advertising

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https://www.jstor.org/stable/4188754?seq=1

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During the week I have been thinking up of possible ideas on what topic I can think of; I made a mind map of possible topics to look and research into.

Ideas that I have are:

Internet culture - This idea is on internet culture, in particular memes. How memes can be impactful on society and how it has affected language/communication between people. In regards to memes, I can look into how memes have been used as social protest especially during the Black Lives Matters/Pandemic and the Hong Kong riots.

Another look into internet culture would be stan/celebrity fan behaviour. The culture around this ‘stan culture’ has been prominent over the past years

Nostalgia - This idea is on nostalgia and how it brings comfort to people. This is a rather weak idea however it is enjoyable.

Censorship - This idea on censorship, is a broad topic on how censorship affects society especially in how one would express themselves in gender, sexuality or the censorship of the female anatomy. I looked into Ren Hang as an example of a Chinese photographer that took nude photographic portraits of his friends; his work is significant for its representation of Chinese sexuality within a heavily censored society.

There are three areas within censorship that I am going to look at; censorship and the female body, censorship in art and censorship in freedom of speech/politics.

With so many advances in media and society, there shouldn’t be guilt about how women (or those in general) feel about femininity. There are women who want to be unabashedly feminine and they deserve the right to do that. But there is a difficulty in doing so with censorship (algorithmic) happening on social media.

With these ideas out, I’m going to pick an idea I feel strongly about and begin research towards that topic.

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21 April 2022- Dissertation Introduction

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21 April 2022- Dissertation Introduction

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The dissertation is where I investigate a subject of interest that relates to my practice or main area of study. It is a critical, structured investigation of a topic or issue related to design, media and/or communication, demonstrating skills in research, analysis and presentation. It is a standard element of BA (Hons.) and BSc (Hons.) degrees in the UK, and demonstrates certain levels of independence in thought, research and time management.