soulsoaker: Eating Our Own: Deconstructing the Misogynistic Myths of Asian American AntifeminismTo
soulsoaker: Eating Our Own: Deconstructing the Misogynistic Myths of Asian American Antifeminism To begin, there is almost no examination of why Asian people’s ability or inability to marry White people should matter in the first place. Framing the conversation in this manner constructs a vision of liberation that is based entirely on White approval and acceptance. After all, if the problem is that more Asian American women are marrying White people than Asian American men, what is the solution? If Asian American men marry White people at the same rate as Asian American women, is the problem solved? Many antifeminists that seek to “reclaim” Asian American masculinity seem to think so.This is contrary to the goals of an anticolonial and antiracist politic because it upholds the idea of White people as arbiters of belonging and desirability. By espousing a politics founded on aspirations for White approval and acceptance, writers who engage in this rhetoric are actively perpetuating a form of White supremacy… Looking at the six largest Asian American national origin groups, it becomes clear that there are multiple factors informing Asian American intermarriage. Strikingly, more than 90% of Indian Americans and more than 80% of Chinese Americans – together representing the two largest Asian national subgroups in America — marry other Asian people. Meanwhile, the three subgroups with the highest intermarriage rates –Filipino, Korean, and Japanese American — also have the longest histories of US military occupation in their countries. Although further research is definitely needed, it would seem that military ties and colonial histories play a powerful role in influencing rates of Asian intermarriage. Many inferences could be drawn from these data, but what is certain is that Asian intermarriage is the result of a variety of political, economic, and sociocultural factors that vary according to the specific histories of different Asian populations. The data further reveal that regardless of national origin, the majority of Asian American men and women marry other Asian people, and that both Asian men and women who marry a non-Asian person are most likely to marry a White person. The obsessive policing of Asian women’s dating choices is borne of statistical misrepresentation and dubious politics. It is one thing to talk about the costs of loving White people in a racist society and the relative, circumstantial privilege anyone can acquire through proximity, it is quite another to exclusively focus on Asian American women’s sexual and romantic choices as the litmus test of their politics. Sexual and romantic partners are not credentials to be displayed or scrutinized as determinants of authenticity or authority—the only metric of anyone’s integrity should be the actions they take in service of our struggle. I’m not a woman, but I am Asian, and the arguments made that this is countering about interracial dating are both “racial purity” (aka Nazi) arguments and “you oppress yourself so I have a free pass to dehumanise you” arguments, and people who argue that are steaming turds. -- source link
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