Nuit Violette Winter 2016

NUIT VIOLETTE ÉDITION HIVERNALE 1

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I WOULD LIKE TO LEAVE THIS PLACE L. GAHWI

I would like to leave this place.

Where the sky is blue, And the grass is green.

When it rains, droplets of water fall to the ground And when it snows they’re frozen.

I would like to be able to say that I messed up.

And apologize to all that shattered.

I would like to live for the now.

To never think about tomorrow.

And to wish upon a star.

I want to wake up one morning crying And go to sleep laughing that night.

I would like to fall in love, And have my heart broken into pieces Then put them back together using nothing but myself as the glue.

I would like to see people I’ve never seen And read books that I know I will hate and hate them.

I want to dream while awake And live while I’m asleep.

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I want to drink until my mind is numb And regret it the next day.

I would like to perfectly mess everything up.

I would like to do something perfectly right.

But most of all I would like to live somewhere, Where the sky is blue, And the grass is green.

When it rains, droplets of water fall to the ground And when it snows they’re frozen.

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PROTECTING THE HOMELAND AT ALL COSTS AMAL MATAN

In a post 9/11 world where countries are engaged in a war on terror, the stakes couldn’t be any higher according to Showtime’s Homeland. The show stars Claire Danes as agent Carrie Mathison, a blonde-haired, blue eyed American CIA agent hell bent on stopping the sinister plots of turban donning, bearded Palestinian terrorist Abu Nazir.

Among the pleasant jazzy sequences of mystery solving, Homeland is filled with perceptions and misconceptions of the Arab world and Islam. It is only through Stuart Hall’s theories of representation and race in media, Showtime’s Homeland can be analyzed as a reflection of a post 9/11 world, popular western sentiments and post colonial narratives in the Arab and Muslim world.

Homeland reflects the world passively by mirroring the heightened sense of paranoia and surveillance after 9/11. Carrie Mathison is the embodiment of this hyper vigilance. She picks up the subtlest of signs otherwise missed by the viewer and everyone else in the show. From the first episode, she recalls a haunting encounter with an Iraqi prisoner who warns that an American prisoner of war has become the ultimate Trojan horse.

Mathieson doesn’t let go of this warning for 8 years, and connects it with the newly rescued POW Sargent Brody.

In a compilation of imagery, Mathieson spies on the Brody household illegally against the advice of her superiors who doubt her claims. During this surveillance, she discovers that Brody has come back a different man. He’s gruffer, he’s tougher, and she’s right about him being the foreshadowed terrorist. This wild slippery slope of a connection is made through religion. “Nazir …

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along with all the other ‘bad guys’ [on] the show… are Muslims…Through flashbacks the audience sees these terrorists in only two settings–torturing Brody and praying. In this portrayal of prayer and violence, Homeland connects Islam and terrorism.

The audience begins to discover that Brody is a terrorist at the same time that Brody’s religious conversion to Islam comes to light. .” (Aucoin, n.d.)

Brody’s conversion to Islam from Christianity is the catalyst in his transformation from loyal American war hero to a treacherous terrorist. By becoming a Muslim, Brody essentially betrays his nation, his family and the basic forces of good. His journey into Islam automatically draws him into the realm of extremist ideology and as a result he is a threat to his fellow American citizens.

When Brody’s wife finds out he’s become a Muslim, she’s outraged. She desecrates an English translation of the Quran and enters a fit of rage.

Mrs Brody shrieks, asking, “how he could have converted to a religion whose adherents would ‘stone’ his daughter ‘to death in a soccer stadium’ if they found out she was having sex with her boyfriend.”(Massad, 2012) Brody, although a white male, is now subject to the stereotypes of Arab and Muslim men. In Homeland, Islam is associated with barbaric rituals of punishment such as stoning, whipping and other forms of torture. It’s shown as a patriarchal, misogynistic and oppressive regime for women. This flows into a dangerous white saviour narrative, where Carrie, the liberated white feminist crusades to free Muslim women from the chains of their barbaric religion and oppressive husbands.

Homeland is quick to bring race and gender into the mix of its islamophobic and racist messages.

Before gender is tackled, race becomes a serious part of the series especially in season two.

Although Islam serves as a unifying connection between its followers, Homeland separates types of Muslims. It generalizes Muslims, while using race as a hierarchy of villainy. “In the context of searching for Brody’s Al-Qaida contact among hundreds of people [Berenson, a superior says that] ‘We [need to] prioritize. First the dark skinned ones’ should be watched… [then] a white colleague objects that this is ‘straight up racial profiling,’…Berenson responds that it is ‘actual profiling’ [since]…Most Al-Qaida operatives are going to be Middle Eastern or African.’ … [all the] while the main Al-Qaida CIA target on the show is a white marine.” (Massad, 2012) In the hierarchy of skin tone, different groups are more frequently focused on. Topping the list are Abu Nazir and the Palestinians who head the conglomerate of Islaminspired terrorism. Next to them are the darker skinned muslims who are supposedly more prone to violence than their lighter counterparts who’s role lie mainly in infiltration and strategy. Later in the series, Arab and Muslim women are finally brought into the story in more prominent roles.

The first of these women is an abuse second wife of a Hezbollah leader who is so graciously saved rom the clutches of oppression by Carrie. Another woman is the “wife of a local DC imam who also collaborates with Carrie, but this time out of love for her husband who seems to be surprisingly unabusive.” (Massad, 2012) Unfortunately the only reason why the healthy relationship is surprising is because of the overwhelming number of Muslim centric abusive relationships that occur in the show.

prestigious journalist named Roya Hammad.

“Hammad seems relentless in her pursuit of AlQaida’s goals. We are even told that her family and Abu Nazir’s ‘have been close since 1947…[because] …they were refugees from Palestine together!’”

(Massad, 2012) This character’s station in class and education makes her more dangerous if not just as dangerous as the men. She’s complicit through her own terms and loyal through ethnic and religious ties. Roya’s position as a first generation woman Palestinian Muslim only adds to her villainy because it increases her ability to do damage through her ability to navigate through both cultures seamlessly.

Even when an Arab woman seems to be independent, strong and liberated, she’s part of the conspiracy against the state. Brody’s contact turns out to be a secular looking, highly educated,

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ALEX PRONG

A Decree From the Czar of Global Communications This decree is declared in the name of peace among the world’s cultures. It is professed with the intention of introducing two major changes regarding: 1. The way time and space is organized and 2. The organizations that hold power in each sovereign country. If carried out properly, an emphasis on time that has previously been neglected will modify our relationship with consumerism and the environment towards one that is sustainable and egalitarian. Additionally, the structural power that now lies in the hands of international corporations will return to the nationstate.

The Organization of Time and Space Time and space are the two indices of human life, so it is logical that their organization has power implications. Ignorance to time has given power to those who can conquer space: multi-national corporations. This decree will address the power of corporations further in the sections to follow, but here the goal is to address time and space specifically. We have conquered space using maps, communication technologies, transportation innovations, and the like. Yet time seems to have eluded us. We perceive time as linear and erratic, mechanizing our time and becoming obsessed with the present. We have neglected the cyclical way that time is continuous and that we are a part of that continuity. Neglected still is the endurance of time, the ecological element that should be experienced rather than mechanized. To realize the proper treatment of time this decree demands that the media (broadly defined) that shape the way we think properly recognize the cyclical and enduring elements of time.

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This ideological shift I am demanding can be conceptualized more clearly through analysis of time in relation to money. The mechanization of time lets producers get more efficiency out of their workers, and thus more profit, meanwhile our obsession with the present encourages constant consumption. Money is used to control time, and power rests with those who have money.

But Harvey explains that “command of time and space can be converted back into command over money” (263, c.p). By taking back command over time, our relationship with consumerism will inevitably change. If we see time as cyclical and enduring we can look into the future and see that buying things that don’t last over time, or whose environmental impact makes time more fleeting, can not be the right choice.

Gardner and Assadourian give us a model for rethinking our relationship with consumerism to consider a shift from quantitative to qualitative measurement of growth. Emphasizing their “infrastructures of well-being” (181, c.p) will provide tangible change in the way we organize time. The key to infrastructures of well-being is choosing public investment over private consumption. In this way not only will we be considering the endurance of time, but our relationship with the physical environment will strengthen. Respect for the environment can be achieved through distancing from private over-consumption, and through respecting time as ecological. The world’s cultures can find peace through the respect of a shared environment and through the higher quality of life that comes from public investment.

The Power Shift from Corporations to NationStates The first change, as I briefly mentioned earlier, is

contingent on the second. As Harvey points out, “those who define the material practices, forms, and meanings of money, time, or space fix certain basic rules of the social game” (263, c.p). The rules of the game are currently being set and reset by the multinational corporations who tell us that space is to be conquered and time is to be mechanized. In order to make people think differently, the motivation of the organizations that are setting the rules of the game will either have to change, or the organizations themselves will have to change. Because the corporations setting the rules have been motivated by profit since their conception, the owners have profit engrained too deeply in their biases to change their motivation. For that reason a shift in power from the corporations who currently set the rules of the game to the sovereign nation-state is necessary.

The threat of cultural imperialism will be nearly eradicated with this new shift. When imperialism was just beginning to enter academic consciousness in 1993, Schiller suggested that American broadcasters had “vast capabilities… to define reality” (46, c.p). It is debatable weather America’s global mass distribution of cultural products is in the name of profit or power, but with each nation-state determining the flows of information within that nation, imperialism is dismissible. Cultural vibrancy will remain, and nation-states will focus on enduring time and will define reality in a way that is closer to natural authenticity.

One particular institution will facilitate the shift in power: news media. According to Gitlin, corporations maintain power “through the dissemination of information through news and advertising” (133, c.p). The news, however, is most

people’s main source for global events. How can we have peace when the information we receive about other countries is constantly being filtered through a commercial lens? When that lens is using framing techniques to maximize commercial profit rather than peace? The nation-state will subsidize and control the news for each nation; meaning that the country itself will decide what information is produced and circulated. Encoding the news in ways that the consumers of news can decode through mutual biases will reduce misunderstandings and therefore increase peace.

It will be the responsibility of the nation-state to ensure equal access to the news, and to ensure that change number one is carried out by the news: an emphasis on enduring and cyclical time.

For those skeptical of the nation-state’s ability to make decisions in the public interest- you are right to be skeptical. It will take collective action and excellent leadership to make this move, but I have faith that the intellectual capacities of people can be realized and their reality can become the basis for action rather than inaction. It just takes one excellent Czar to change what people know.

Summary This decree will ensure cultural vibrancy, a more sustainable relationship with the environment, and peace among cultures. This will be achieved through two fundamental changes. Firstly, our relationship with time and incidentally our relationship with consumerism will need to change. Currently, we focus on linear time, the mechanization and monetization of time. We focus on erratic time, a focus on the present that feeds the ideology of consumerism. Instead, our relationship with time will recognize cyclical and enduring elements that will make our relationship

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with consumerism seem evermore arbitrary.

As consumerism dies down our respect for the environment will grow, and with it our quality of life.

Secondly, power over reality will shift from corporations to the nation-state. Corporations are major proprietors of the relationship with time that we are attempting to eradicate. By giving this power to nation-states through control over news institutions, cultural vibrancy will flourish.

Each nation will shape their reality in a way that makes sense to their own biases, and the threat of imperialism will fade. Through collective action and excellent leadership we will promote peace among the world’s different cultures.

Part 2 Williams’s Democratic Communication System Today More than fifty years ago, Raymond Williams conceptualized a democratic communication system in which “all men have the right to offer what they choose and to receive what they choose” (319, c.p). Today, a democratic communication system is more likely to emerge in the midst of crisis in the current commercial system. The democratic failure of unidirectional commercial media such as the television demonstrates the need for a new system. The active participation and free contribution of members is conceivable through the democratic potential of the internet. The allocation of considerable resources for individual contributors is necessary, as seen in the restructuring of journalism. Today, we are in the midst of a crisis that “consists precisely in the fact that

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the old is dying and the new cannot be born” (Gramci). Now is the time for a revolution in how we communicate, while the old is dying and opportunity is ours.

Unidirectional commercial media dominated when Williams wrote about democratic communication in 1966. The television had become central in the organization of the family just recently, in the 50s, and there was very little discussion about weather it would be a commercial system. It wasn’t until the 90s that academics began to see the failure of television in facilitating democracy. Morgan, Lewis, and Jhally found that during the Gulf War the more television viewing a person undertook, the less they actually knew about the specifics of the war. The media helped maintain support for the war from the US public, without giving them relevant facts on which to base their support. This is a problem for a democratic system because “the quality of our democratic decisions depends on the quality of the information on which those decisions are based” (149, c.p). If Williams had developed the democratic communication system after the problems of the commercial system had been identified rather than during a period when the commercial system was seen as utopian, it would have been more likely to emerge.

If television was the utopian commercial system, then the internet would appear to be the utopian democratic system. With the internet comes the opportunity for anyone to offer what they would like and the opportunity for anyone to receive what they want. Fenton annihilates this utopia by pointing out that: “The multiplicity of groups and ideologies present online allows the growth of much broader networks

creating a vast web of oppositional politics. But… for political efficacy there must be more than the apparent freedom that comes with embracing difference and diversity” (297, c.p).

The internet is a system where online politics are fragmented, and ease of use undermines temporal commitment. It is still dominated by rules of the game and commercial interests, and access is not quite universal. Nevertheless the democratic potential of the internet cannot be ignored.

For Fenton, oppositional ideologies can only emerge if solidarity on the real world of poverty and inequality becomes the focus. If Williams’s democratic model is considered, it is more likely to be put in place today because a medium exists that has the potential to carry out the system with great efficacy.

When Williams describes the democratic system, he mentions that the only way to make it work is to create a new kind of institution. This would be an institution with no governmental control and with a contractual system that ensures creators are guaranteed resources for the work they do.

Although we haven’t seen the emergence of an institution like this, we can see the necessity for its emergence. Nowhere is this clearer than in the restructuring of the commercial system of journalism. Compton and Benedetti describe the disappearance of traditional (commercial) journalism due, in part, to the invention of the internet. They describe the way that internet optimists see new journalism as “a world of abundant, accurate and timely information provided by an army of workers populating the web with endless reportage” (163, c.p). This

resembles the democratic system so perfectly: information for the people, by the people. Yet Compton and Benedetti notice what element of Williams’s system is missing: “a model predicated on unpaid labour is not sustainable” (168, c.p).

The allocation of resources is absent in the restructuring of journalism. Additionally, with citizen journalism there is no guarantee that high culture content is being reported on, an aspect that is of utmost importance for Williams. What we can learn from citizen journalism is that the demand for democratic reporting exists. The fact that some version of Williams’s system exists demonstrates the capacity we have to implement it in its entirety today.

Aside from the potential of the internet, there is a larger, less technocentric reason that democratic communication is more plausible today. The timeline of regime theory places Williams’s work in 1966 in the middle of a period of stability, the regime of Fordism. Williams anticipated the crisis that in the 70s would become Post-Fordism by four years, meaning that he simply missed the mark. It is during times of crisis that we experience turmoil and opportunity, meaning if Williams had waited four years and produced his answer when people were beginning to question capitalism, then maybe his system would have been put in place.

Now, Post-Fordism has met its inevitable demise and we find ourselves once again in crisis. The consumption problem that Fordism left behind was covered with the band-aid of loose credit terms.

The band-aid ripped off during the 2008 financial crisis and the collapse of Post-Fordism began.

Because of our transitioning position, the new system is much more likely to emerge today. Amid this transition period is the opportunity to bring

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Williams’s system to the forefront, to ensure that whichever “ism” is next, it involves the democratic communication system that was envisioned over fifty years ago.

We are now more prepared than ever before for Williams’s democratic communication system.

When Williams first presented the system, the popularity of commercial media was at its peak and the Fordist regime was in a period of general stability. Today, we are aware of the democratic failure of commercial media. With solidarity on global issues such as poverty and inequality, the internet has the potential for democratic triumph. And the restructuring of journalism shows democratic potential and reiterates the need for a new institution to allocate resources for creators. The collapse of Post-Fordism puts us in a transition period where there is maximum opportunity for a new communication system. The old communication system is dying and Williams’s democratic communication system is within our capacity, if only we can assemble together, gather resources, and create it.

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A REASON ASHARA MEIDELL

No light left in her eyes

I look over her body

An expressionless face

Seeing her blonde hair I recall

Yet, even with blood frozen inside

Last week at the corner store

She has a calm look of grace

I worked at the one outside the mall

No ID, unknown name

I had a late shift that night

Bruises cover her arms

11pm ‘till 6

Her face looks familiar

She had on a black dress

My mind fills with alarm

And a hat supporting the Knicks

Where’ve I seen her before?

She bought bandages for her arm

I call 911

Makeup for her black eye

But for her it’s too late

Advil for her pain

My mind tells me to run

And a boxed chicken stir-fry

Will they find me suspicious?

I followed my script

Should I leave while I can?

How are you tonight ma’am?

I can’t leave her just lying here

How she responded was odd

I’m not that kind of man

I didn’t quite understand

She looks so innocent and sweet

I’m alright I think sir,

Who’d want to cause her such pain?

I mean things could be worse

This woman here, lifeless

I thought she was looking for cash

This world is insane

But she took something else from her purse

I’m afraid to step closer

She pulled out a photo

But I reach out, close her eyes

And passed it to me

Why didn’t anyone help her?

This is my boy,

I imagine her cries

His name’s Jackson, here he’s 3

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He’s the reason I fight

Because I want to be alive

And why I haven’t given up

I look deeper into the alley

But his dad’s a tough guy

And see her purse from that day

So right now I am stuck

I pull out the photo

But it takes much more strength

And wipe the blood drops away

To have will to survive

Yes I did know this woman

Than to just throw a punch

Well, as an acquaintance I guess

That’s why I’m still alive

She was just a stranger that day

I stared at her confused

In her one shoulder black dress

I gave her the receipt

She had fought all she could

But I continued to listen

Never gave up for her son

As she continued to speak

But I guess even love won’t protect you

Okay I’m sure this seems strange

From a man and his gun

It’s just, talking to someone is nice

Sirens approach from the distance

And I know I don’t know you

I look over her once again

But here’s some advice

I hear a small whimper

Things in life may get bad

From beside a large garbage bin

It’s up to you how you react

I turn my head ‘round the corner

But to get through, you just need a reason

To see Jackson once more

To want to make an impact

Except now he looks a bit older Perhaps five, maybe four

My son is my reason

Arms wrapped tight round his knees

He is why I survive

He sobs, gasping for breath

So I can take any punch

He screams as I move closer

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This child has nobody left

Had a message to send

It’s okay, I won’t hurt you

I barely knew this woman

Everything will be alright

So I don’t understand why

People are coming to help you

As they move out her still body

I can’t imagine his fright

I uncontrollably cry

I feel a hand on my shoulder

I walk away from the scene

You the guy who called 911?

Dizzier with each stride

He looks towards Jackson

When I realize my life has been saved

You’re coming with me now son

By this woman who has died

He reaches for Jackson

When I found her in the ally

Who grabs on to me

I was not just out for a stroll

Don’t let them take me home!

I was there to take my life

Please not back to daddy!

Because my life had taken its toll

He clenches my hand

It could have been me

Refusing to release

Laying there silently dead

I promise I won’t let you go back

Because with the gun in my jacket

You’ll be safe now with the police

I planned to shoot my own head

I watch as a woman

But this woman made me see

Carries Jackson away

It can always be worse

And as I stand frozen in place

And as I reach into my pocket

I hear a police officer say

I find the photo from her purse

Her name’s Kelsey Jess Richards

Things in life may get bad

Shot dead at 5:10 am

It’s up to you how you react

Seems her abusive husband

But to get through, you just need a reason

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To want to make an impact For me it is Kelsey She is why I survive And though I barely knew her She’s why I want to be alive Because she was stronger Than both her husband and me For she had a reason to live, And she’s passed that reason to me I turn to follow the cars Unsure of what to do now All I know is I will keep my promise To take care of Jackson somehow Leaving the scene The sun starts to rise Stronger than ever before I wipe the tears from my eyes

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INSTAGRAM AS AN EXTENSION OF EYES, SPACE AND TIME BRIENNA FRENCH

Much technological advancement has happened since Marshall McLuhan created his extension theory about the tools we use being extensions of ourselves (Mahal, 2005). This includes the advent of social media. Social media is easily accessible and widely used, allowing users to document and share their thoughts and experiences. Through the lens of McLuhan’s extension theory, Instagram can be classified as an extension of our eyes, and as such, also an extension of space and time.

Instagram is a social networking application with over 400 million active users (Instagram, 2015). It was created as a tool to share photos and short videos easily as “it provides users an instantaneous way to share their life moments with friends” (Manikonda, Hu, Kambhampati, 2014).

Users upload images onto their accounts, which gives followers the opportunity to see select pieces of other users’ lives. Users of Instagram are using it as an extension of their eyes, as it allows them to capture and preserve their experiences.

Instagram users process their experiences through the perspective of the pictures they create, revealing Instagram as an extension of the eyes.

However, this is different than McLuhan’s example of a car being an extension of the foot because the experience of driving the car is tangible (McLuhan, Fiore, 1967). The driver feels the car accelerate, hears the wheels plow through gravel and can smell the gasoline. Instagram is different because a person viewing another Instagrammer’s image only experiences the images through their eyes. They cannot feel, smell or taste the content, and yet it is still an effective way to preserve and enable memories. Instagram extends the viewer’s eyes and allows them to witness experiences other than their own through the images posted.

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When seeing an image on Instagram, the viewer lives vicariously through the person who posted the image. Instagram is an extension of the eyes for the creator of an image, as well. A recent study conducted by The Sparkler found that “the environment in which content is viewed affects the way people perceive and experience that content” (Fabcebook IQ, 2015). The act of using Instagram changes the environment of a situation, as users are interacting with their electronic device, thus altering the experience of that situation. Likewise, when users upload pictures onto Instagram they are cropped and polished with filters to enhance the image and the experience surrounding that image. This new and sophisticated view alters the memory of the experience (Fabcebook IQ, 2015). Research claims that often people who want to preserve a memory do not add filters to “remember the subject in its original way” (Bakhshi, Shamma, Kennedy, Gilbert, 2015). This indicates that by altering images through Instagram, users are changing how they view and remember their experiences, extending their eyes to see more than usually expected.

Instagram users are exposed to a variety of different lifestyles and places as they view other accounts (Manikonda, Hu, Kambhampati, 2014).

This is done through the platform application of Instagram allowing users to view images of places they do not physically have experience with.

However, the virtual experience users receive from an Instagram image is similar to physically living through the experience, creating memories associated with places and objects that users have not experienced in the physical world. This means that through viewing other people’s images—the extension of the eyes—users also extend their space. This extension of space allows users to

mentally experience a variety of locations while physically staying in one location, making the user feel personally involved with the subject. A lot of people relive their memories by sharing an image on Instagram, which allows their followers to live it with them as well. For example, imagine an Instagram user who has not travelled but follows the account of a person who travels and posts constant updates. This allows them to live through the travelling experience while not physically travelling to these places. Now this user will have modified memories associated with these places without actually travelling to them, giving them experiences they would not have had under these circumstances without Instagram. The limitations of space have always hindered people from various experiences. Instagram’s extension of space allows us to more easily break through these barriers. Some could argue that before Instagram people experienced similar extensions of space through looking at photographs and through language communication, however with Instagram we have access to a much larger quantity of images to create the extension of space. Now, we can experience a variety of different cultures and places in one location within moments of each other, extending space and time.

Photographs help people relive past experiences.

The human mind has tendency to remember select parts of an experience, creating limited and unreliable memories (Miller, 2010). However, with a photograph to refer to, we can extend time as we relive past experiences, clarifying the memories of that experience (Miller, 2010). Instagram users document and preserve their images in their profiles, where they can easily access their memory-provoking images. The images posted on Instagram are time stamped and set in a specific

location, extending both time and space of the experience to the viewer. This feature allows users virtual transport of the original time and place of the experience into the present, therefore extending the time and place of that experience.

Instagram also gives its viewers the opportunity to easily relive past experiences in a short amount of time. For example, a mother who posts images of her child aging over a time span of five years can relive the process of that childhood quickly by browsing her past Instagram posts (Berglund, 2015). Instagram allows users to carry images with them on multiple handheld devices such as an IPhone or tablet, making those images very accessible. This allows the user to access those images whenever they want, and in doing so, they are partially transferred back to the time of the original experience.

The success of Instagram has allowed for the easy access, manipulation and sharing of images, extending our eyes, time and space. McLuhan anticipated this affect long before social media became the phenomenon it is today, when he created his extension theories. His theories can be easily applied to our newest technological mediums, such as Instagram. As Instagram continues to extend the experiences of our eyes through both space and time, media will continue to shape our perceptions.

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OH DARLING CAMILLE INTSON

oh, darling — let's (start a literary movement plunge our minds into sweet anarchy and our words to chasms, mountains? that — define the very crevices of your lips so that all of heaven or hell spurs within the bounds, the corners of the mouth i know well, the mind, the soul and generations will weep for our words, our wounds, our catacombs of figurative chaos and we will die perhaps madden, with passion and existentialism and philosophical nonsense and blanch in years making art and rebel, and the cynics will hate us for we will have made something worthwhile)

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go out somewhere and have strictly non platonic surface level conversation over dark-roasted bottomless pits of artificial energy, stimulus in a plastic cup. and after coy touch and superfluous eye contact, you'll get the idea to kiss me like men do or fuck me, i guess making love is for pussies. (words never did us any good anyway)

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RACHEL KNOWS BEST KATE HALL

Rachel Dolezal outraged the Internet with her proclamation that she identifies as black. (Levine 2015). From her mastery of Black hair (such as dreadlocks and box braids), extensive knowledge of Black history and work for social justice through her position on the NAACP, Dolezal truly embraced her perception of black identity (Samuels 2015).

However, it was just that – her perception of an identity and its accompanying experiences – that are not really her experiences to claim. Rachel Dolezal exemplified White Fragility in that she avoided race-based tensions through claiming black identity, so that she did not have to grapple with the messiness that would come along with theorizing as a white woman about black lives.

She claimed an essentialist understanding of black identity and easily extracted herself from her compliance in racist systems in claiming oppression as a black woman, arguably with no regard for its implications, as an extreme defense mechanism in response to challenges to her whiteness.

Robin DiAngelo, in her work White Fragility, states “white people in North America live in a social environment that protects and insulates them from race based stress” (DiAngelo 2011: 55). Katerina Deliovsky, in her work on White Femininity, refers to the concept of the “habitus”, or, the set of rules, rituals, and general social environment in which one is raised. (Deliovsky 2010: 1). Thus, white people are born into a “habitus” in which they are generally sheltered from challenges to white privilege and power. This, DiAngelo argues, leads to White Fragility - “a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves” (DiAngelo 2011: 54). These moves include “anger, withdrawal, emotional incapacitation,

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guilt, argumentation, and cognitive dissonance” (DiAngelo 2011: 55).

The Los Angeles Times bluntly describes Rachel Dolezal as “ a white woman posing as black” (La Ganga and Pearce 2015). Photos of Dolezal’s childhood show her as “a fair-skinned blonde”, yet “[t]oday, you see a woman with a darker complexion and curly hair” (Botelho and Ford 2015). When accused of participating in blackface in an interview, Dolezal insisted that she does not “put on blackface as a performance”, but that her skin tone “depends on the season” and that she sometimes uses bronzer (Ford and Botelho 2015). She “commands an impressive knowledge of African American literature, its writers, and the history of the Civil Rights Movement”, attended Howard University, a historically black institution, and is an “expert in black hair” (Samuels 2015).

Dolezal was the President of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP, but stepped down after her parents exposed her white childhood (Parry 2015). Even amidst the controversy, Dolezal maintains that she really feels black. In an interview with Vanity Fair, she explains: “‘It’s not a costume,’ she says.

‘I don’t know spiritually and metaphysically how this goes, but I do know that from my earliest memories I have awareness and connection with the black experience, and that’s never left me.’”

(Samuels 2015). Dolezal also alleged that she was the target of racial harassment, including finding a noose on the porch of her Spokane home, which she alleged was burglarized shortly thereafter, however no arrests were made (Ford and Botelho 2015). She also reported that she received hate mail to her mailbox at the NAACP. There have been allegations supported by evidence that she may have planted it herself, but she calls those allegations “bulls—“ (Osborn 2015).

While Dolezal differs from DiAngelo’s archetype of White Fragility, in that she is acutely aware of racial inequalities as demonstrated by her role at NAACP, and DiAngelo claims most white people have only experienced limited multicultural training or education (DiAngelo 2011: 55), she also shows striking similarities. For example, “so-called progressive whites may not respond with anger but may still insulate themselves via claims that they are beyond the need for engaging with the content because they ‘already had a class on this’ or ‘already know this’” (DiAngelo 2011: 55). Dolezal, while presenting as black, claimed experiences of racism such as those of the noose and hate mail allegations, along with other unproven claims such as harassing phone calls and racial slurs being uttered at her son (Herbst 2015). Can a woman who was raised white really claim experiences of racism that she has not experienced for the majority or all of her life? Certainly, if in a leadership position at any sort of social rights organization there could very well be instances of threat and danger, but the volume of her claims and lack of proof suggest there is more to the story. During graduate school at Howard University, Dolezal was perceived as a white woman and thus, her thesis where in she presented paintings meant to be from the perspective of a black man was met with contention (Coker 2015). The link is clear: Rather than grapple with the fact that as a white woman with white experiences, she cannot claim a racism and oppression that is not hers, she claimed black identity. Instead of genuinely listening to black voices, she felt that she already knew everything about black experience and thus, can claim the identity based upon her white understanding of black lives – one that just so happens to be based largely upon hair, oppression, and little else.

Triggers for White Fragility, as outlined by DiAngelo, include “suggesting that a white person’s viewpoint comes from a racialized frame of reference” and “people of color not willing to tell their stories or answer questions about their racial experiences” (DiAngelo 2011: 57). Perhaps she knew from her time at Howard that white people are and should be expected to take on the role of “listener” in conversations of racism; that black people may not want to answer interrogations about their experiences from a white ally for fear of reinforcing power dynamics; that as a white person, her contribution to the production of knowledge about black lives would be limited due to her white perspective – the effect her “habitus” had on her viewpoint. Perhaps to avoid these and other triggers, she simply “became” black.

However, what is blackness?

In his article From Jenner to Dolezal: One Trans Good, the Other Not So Much, Adolph Reed Jr. highlights the illogicality behind North America’s support of Caitlyn Jenner’s transition and denouncement of Rachel Dolezal’s “transracial” identity. The overarching goal of Reed’s piece is to point out how the transgender-transracial debate rests upon essentialism (Reed 2015). The argument that Dolezal cannot be black raises questions of what it means to be black, and what “authentic” blackness really is (Reed 2015). Ironically, the exact reasons that Dolezal cannot be black in the public’s view are the reasons why she feels she can be black. As Reed articulates it, “she seems to have embraced an essentialist version of being black no less than do her outraged critics” (Reed 2015). Dolezal decided that using toner to darken her complexion, sporting black hair, and touting racism made her black. Rather than engaging in continual meaningful conversation with black

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people about the intricacies of blackness today, she succumbed to White Fragility and relied upon essentialist, arguably white understandings of racialized experiences and performed black femininity in a very specific way that served to reinforce traditional notions of black femininity that focuses primarily on oppression and hair.

In his work Whiteness as Insidious: On the Embedded and Opaque White Racist Self, George Yancy focuses on his experiences speaking about racism to white students who are quick to jump to their defense and distance themselves from the tension – students who are exhibiting White Fragility (106). He says that white people uttering phrases such as “you leave us with no hope” in response to his lectures can be a way of the “good whites” distancing themselves from the “really racist whites” (Yancy 2015: 106-107). In the same way that these students show White Fragility in their inability to grapple with their compliance in larger racist structures and very individualistic understanding of their existence, Rachel Dolezal exhibits hers in her twistedly remarkable ability to simply detach from her involvement in a white supremacist society. Dolezal did not even claim a “transracial” identity or a “white ally” identity. She simply lied. In stark contrast with what the author suggests – “I encourage whites to dwell within spaces that make them deeply uncomfortable, to stay with the multiple forms of agony that black people endure from them, especially those whites who deny the ways in which they are complicit in the operations of white racism” (Yancy 2015: 107) – Dolezal dwelled in spaces that would make a white person uncomfortable, such as when her thesis was met with dissent, but started presenting as black so that she would not have to negotiate the discomfort that accompanies her positionality as a

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white woman in a black space.

Yancy stresses the consequence of whites perceiving themselves as autonomous agents that are “beyond the fray of white privilege and power”, seeing themselves as “raceless” and “free from the power of white racist effective history” (Yancy 2015: 109). When white people perceive themselves as the neutral being, they begin to see racism as a problem reserved for people of color. Dolezal embodies exactly this concept in that she felt she could not participate in talks of racism and social justice as a white person, but had to “become” a person of color and claim oppression in order to do so. Rather than unpacking white history and working as a white ally with black groups to move towards a more equitable future, she sees racism as an issue that only people of color should be participating in and perpetuates the idea that white people need not participate in conversations of race, and especially need not listen. She need not listen because, according to her, she already knows.

In one class where Yancy spoke about bell hooks’ conception of whiteness as terror, a white student expressed that she does not see how her whiteness could be a site of terror if “she did not own any black people as slaves and was not violent toward black people” (Yancy 2015: 108).

In response, a black student shared that she had attended an all-white school and been referred to as “the black girl”, stressing the damage done through actually being treated as such, after which a white student said that they understand exactly how she feels – “’I live in a black neighborhood and they referred to me as ‘the white girl’” (Yancy 2015: 108). This rush to appear victimized and thus erase the lived experience of her classmate is

yet another embodiment of White Fragility. Yancy states the “I am just like you” response, “suggested that there is nothing specifically special about being white (or black for that matter) in America” (Yancy 2015: 109). In the same way, Dolezal coopted black experiences for herself through “becoming” black without truly having lived it.

Rather than accepting that her experiences being raised as white were vastly different from black experiences she simply said “Me too”.

To avoid the hard work and critical self-reflection that would come along with being a white ally to social causes, Dolezal simply “became” black, without regard for its implications. She distanced herself from whiteness and its history and embraced an essentialist understanding of black identity that ultimately enabled her to claim an oppression that was not hers. Dolezal embodied White Fragility through her claiming of black identity in order to avoid the complexities that accompany interracial conversations on racism and justice. In this way, she could present “her” conception of blackness, or rather, a white perception of black experiences that hinged largely and almost exclusively on oppression, and sometimes, hair.

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GLASS STEFANIE TOM

I look through the glass and see her staring back Her eyes are puffy And her hair is wild And I wonder to myself, “What does she have to cry about?”

I look through the glass and she does not break my stare Her lips tremble And suddenly, I am angry Doesn’t she know how weak she looks?

How weak she looks When she bites her lip to hold in her sobs When she hunches her shoulders so no one will notice her When she clasps her own hands so that she does not feel so alone.

I look through the glass and she is still there Her tears blur my vision And her chest moves up and down with each heavy breath that I take I look at her Look at me Look at us In the mirror and I know I have to embrace her Because her skin is made of the same glass that separates us And I don’t want to see myself shatter.

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THE EXOTIC VAGINA: UNPACK THE ‘ASIAN WOMAN WHITE MAN’ DATING SCENE - RACE, GENDER AND HYPERSEXUALITY OF ASIAN1 WOMEN ON TINDER GUANHUA ZHU In 2006, New York University conducted a study called the “Implicit Association Test” (IAT) with over 150 white university students to detect automatic associations with certain racial groups (Greenwald 1464). Before the task began, the students were shown black or white faces and then they were asked to use words such as either “pleasant” or “unpleasant” to categorize the black or white images (Greenwald 1464). The results showed that most people associated “black” with “bad” and this suggests that implicit racial bias is ingrained in all of our brains and affects our behaviors and ways of thinking (Greenwald & Schwartz, 1480).

Six years later, a smartphone dating app called “Tinder” uses a rating system similar to that of the IAT test: it shows users an image of a person and allows users to ‘like’ or ‘reject’ a profile based on first impressions and matches people based on their physical attraction to one another by swiping the person you like to the ‘right’ of your screen (“Tinder”). This fast growing app alerts you to other Tinder users who fall within certain age, gender, and location ranges based on your specified settings (“Tinder”). While The IAT was used for scientific research, Tinder is used within a romantic social sphere; however, they both prove racial bias by revealing our deep, unconscious attitudes towards other ethnicities. In an attempt to unpack the rampant racism in the social-networking era through a feminist lens in the analysis of colonial discourse, this essay highlights the devastating reality that the Asian women’s stereotype of exoticism and submissiveness based on gender and sexuality are perpetuated on Tinder. More

frustratingly, sexual fetishism towards Asian women and stereotypes about Asian women are legacies from the time of colonialization and World War II, and are largely influenced and reinforced by the representation of Asian women in Western media and literature. By examining the role of gender and ethnicity in online dating culture, it is clear that there is an overriding narrative of sexpositivity in a conversation overwhelmed with mindless exploitation of sex, and positioning the female Asian body as the recipient of fetishizing desires. In short, Tinder, and by a larger extent all online dating sites, is gendered and racialized, and epitomizes our real society’s interest in reinforcing white male supremacy and the white male gaze.

I was brought to Tinder when I saw an anonymous post on the “Yik Yak” app that read, “I wish Tinder could filter by race.” I was completely shocked by the amount of racism in that post and decided to try Tinder as a young Asian woman who lives in Canada. Tinder does not set out to give users choices on racial preference, but OkCupid, another popular online dating site does. Thus, the OkCupid dating scene encourages racial segregation and even endorses such racial discrimination by filtering certain people out of searches in the name of “personal preference”.

This, in the world of Internet dating, is considered a perfectly acceptable behavior. Online dating racism runs rampant in a similar way when white people in suburban America try to segregate black communities by increasing the price of private property so black people cannot afford housing

1. In this essay, the term “Asian” only refer to East Asians and Southeast Asians, specifically Taiwanese, Japanese, Korean, Chinese (and so on) due to the space limitation. However, I am fully aware that the term can also refer to the entire continent. Also please keep in mind I am only taking about North American context (with exception of how Asian women are represented in Western media in general).

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in their neighborhood – and indeed, “whiteness is a property” (Harris 1725). “Whiteness is not simply and solely a legally recognized property interest. It is simultaneously an aspect of self-identity and of personhood,” because like all property, whiteness is based on the absolute right to exclude, and thus on the right to deny others self-identity and personhood (Harris 1725). The suburb, and in this case Tinder, is not only “an engine of selfinterest, but also a place that has come to be imbued with a particular moral value consistent with deeply rooted historical ideals and illusions” (Lipsitz 29). Dating services that allow users to sort others using racial categories increase the bar requirement for racialized people to find partners, and “encourage the belief that [racial categories] are useful, natural or appropriate for defining individuals and sexual (dis)interest” (Callander 1994).

Although Tinder does not allow filtering by race.

Nevertheless, racism is wild there, as phrases like “No Blacks and no Asians” and/or “Whites only” on users’ profiles are commonplace and dismissed because it is perceived as a sexual preference rather than a form of racism. Sexual racism, on a certain level, refers to sex preferences and prejudices that occur when someone discriminates against another person sexually, based solely upon their race and perceived ethnicity, and this is the old racism repacked in the contemporary social-networking dating language (Callander 1991). Sexual racism is extensively practiced by the “good, racist people” (Coates 1) who reinforce racism through microaggressions and cultural insensitivity. They may not say racist things to racialized people in everyday life, in fact they may have lots of non-white friends. But ultimately, there is no major difference between denying someone

for a promotion because of their skin color and refusing to date someone because of their race – since each is an instance of racism. As Callander says, “Sexual racism … is closely associated with generic racist attitudes, which challenges the idea of racial attraction as solely a matter of personal preference” (1999). By excluding one or more than one racial group on a profile, certain racial groups of people are being avoided sexually.

Such racist text displayed on Tinder constitutes prejudice and racism, regardless of the context of the app itself. Thus, users on Tinder may find their racist beliefs confirmed and reinforced in “an environment that appears conducive to sexual racism” (Callander 1994). Sexual racism is more than just a racial preference; it is the very lived experience of racism that racialized people have to face on a daily basis. It also promotes the idea that microaggression is acceptable because many do not see it as overt racism. In this sense, sexual racism and microaggression have been normalized so that we are no longer questioning it. Samhita Mukhopadhyay writes on how dating racism reflects societal racism (34): Attraction is not just about a feeling. It [i] s a heavily mediated experience and part of an industry that pumps billions into creating images of what women should look like. It can be hard to decipher what you are attracted to versus what you have internalized as attractive. This goes for both how we see ourselves and how we see others, and it leaves a lot of room to fester for some really messed up ideology about size, race, and sexuality. White standards of beauty get conflated with romantic ideals and create Cinderella-esque ideas of what romantic femininity should look like, all serving to uphold a certain standard of

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beauty. This impacts our self-esteem, the kind of energy we put out there, the types of people that are drawn to us, and ultimately who we end up dating.

To this end, I set up a profile on Tinder by using my Facebook profile and wrote a little biography about myself as well as attached some personal photographs, in order to try and humanize myself as a distinct individual to see if people would still reduce me to certain stereotypes that are associated with my skin color and gender. As expected, I received explicit racist and sexist messages, almost exclusively from white males, such as “I have a ‘thing’ for Asians, because they’re tighter.” I also recalled trolling pick-up lines that were insulting and derogatory, such as “You’re very pretty and tall for Asians”, or "Have you ever dated a white guy? Would you like to?" Sometimes I also got comments on the “slant” Asian eyes I have and how they adore them. Some men have also said seemingly innocuous but actually racist statements, such as a mocking sound of mandarin: “ching-chong-chang,” which is not an actual Chinese word. What is even worse is that sometimes men on Tinder sent me random words and lines in Thai, Japanese, Korean, and many other so-called exotic languages they think I might speak. Shallowness in online dating manifests in different ways, but is mostly about appearance, and race and ethnicity always come into play. In his new book, Dataclysm, OkCupid’s co-founder Christian Rudder states, “When you [a]re looking at how two American strangers behave in a romantic context, race is the ultimate confounding factor”.2

Tinder provides fertile ground for appearancebased racial biases to take place, and Tindersphere has no tolerance for ugliness either. When our beauty standard is based on a white beauty standard, ‘ugliness’ is seamlessly tied to the very idea of race. Some racial groups are ridiculed and excluded all the time, such as black women and Asian men, who are consistently ranked at the bottom of dating sites (Lewis 8815); in the same way that Asian male bodies have been distorted to reflect femininity, so too have black female bodies become masculinized. The fact that race is a sexual factor for so many individuals, and in such an over-emphasizing and consistent way, shows how the very idea of race is gendered and gender racialized.

Undeniably, white women on Tinder share the burden of suffering from the consequences of white men’s sexual aggressions, but there is a huge tension on Tinder created by white men’s exploitation of racialized women through sexual fetishism. What I heard most frequently on Tinder was when someone making a comment says “You’re so cute!” In terms of the cultural context the word “cute” was used in, it was neither a positive term nor a compliment as it seemed to be; rather, it was offensive, insidious and condescending.

The word “cute” has the tone one would use when describing a creature inferior to him or her and places Asian women in a disadvantaged position on the same level as puppies, babies and fictional Asian anime characters, in which calling someone ‘cute’ is essentially looking down on someone.

Being ‘cute’ implies innocence, subordination,

2 I could not go in depth to unpack the image of the “otherness”, in particular how Asian men are over-feminized and black women are over-masculinized due to the space limit. This might be what is missing the most in this essay but my primary focus is on Asian female.

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and obedience, and Asian women are placed in a non-threatening position to please white male expectations. By infantilizing Asian women to something ‘cute’, white men also extends to them notions of submission and docility, which reinforce two known stereotypes about Asian identity.

“Cute” is a word that needs to be destroyed in order to dispel the stereotypes about Asian women, for when the “linguistic manifestation of racist ideas has become so familiar, recurring, and generalizable that it hardly seems to count as racist” (Davis 2). Calling me ‘cute’ is one way to make me powerless and seize power and control over my sexuality. Asian women are always referred to as ‘Asian girls’, but never ‘Asian women’ in everyday conversation due to the myth that they will never age, but at the same time their womanhood is denied, as well as gender equality, to serve the white male fantasy. By linking Asian women to adorableness, it contributes to the institutionalized racism set up against Asian women in North American society. Throughout my experience on Tinder, the word ‘cute’ constantly reminded me of how my Asian-ness inherently failed to fit into white, dominant standards of attractiveness, beauty and sexiness — other girls were attractive, I was only cute. As an Asian, I have to conform to Westernized white beauty ideals, with a little fetishized Orientalism thrown in for that ‘exotic’ flavor to win the ‘love’ competition. Indeed, these standards of beauty often result from racism.

I would be called ‘cute’ in a strange romantic context by white men who grew up watching anime and manga, which led me to despair in and sometimes distrust any possible relationship. The idea of cuteness is not only dangerous in keeping Asian women from being taken seriously, but it also continues to perpetuate stereotypes in sexual

terms. The Asian woman is generally trapped in a dichotomy of representations: she is dehumanized to a lifeless sex doll for the bedroom, which reduces her to a hypersexual being existing only to please men, and fetishized as the adorable, innocent and submissive woman, sometimes manifesting as a fetishized Japanese schoolgirl.

Meanwhile, the word ‘cute’ is also frequently used to desexualize Asian men while Asian women are being hypersexualized by the same word. For instance, Asian men are solely used as comical fodder and cheap laughs in Western media and the context of romance, which exemplified by Matthew Moy’s Han Lee in comedy show 2 Broke Girls.

While Asian men are being rejected due to sexual racism and the emasculated Asian male stereotype, Asian women are considered as ‘desirable’ for their exoticism. The sexual appeal of the ‘exotic’ otherness is not only due to a fasciation based on novelty, but fascinations with other cultural groups in sexual terms. In fact, Asian women are the most ‘desirable’ racial group on online dating sites, and for men it was undoubtedly white males (Lewis 8814). A study shows Asian women receive a disproportionate number of messages on online dating sites (Lewis 8814). The way white men often dehumanize and sexualize Asian bodies into something unequal has everything to do with racial fetishization, which refers to fetishizing a particular race or culture that is not one’s own, through objectification and subscribing to stereotypes of that race (Mercer 23).

For instance, Robert Mapplethorpe portrayed black men as sexualized objects rather than human beings in his photographic art show in 1986 titled Black Males and the nudity of black bodies created a fetishization (Mercer 5). At the same time, a white

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person cannot be fetishized because white beauty standards and white culture are already the predominant values in our society. There are people who fetishize any ethnic group through objectifying those bodies who are stereotyped. As Cox points out, “Fetishising someone because of their race is not a compliment. It assumes a monolithic identity and evidences that what is truly desired is not an equal relationship, but a caricature of what is understood to be natural based in race” (2).

Sexual fetishism, aside from the racism and trading on sexual stereotypes, is a result of the strong racial preferences. On Tinder, racial fetishization is presented when a white male only swipes ‘right’ for Asian women, and in a dating context, cultural assumptions based on skin color and looking is purely objectification. In other words, Asian women are being objectified, sexualized, and dehumanized because of their skin color. The fetishization of Asian women is characterized as the slang term “yellow fever,” meaning white males find Asian women more desirable than women of other ethnicities based on Asian stereotypes (Lum, Seeking Asian Female). This type of racial fetishization often lumps every East Asian identity into one, fetishized, “Asian” race: “an entire richly diverse continent is ignorantly grouped into one single race homogenizing cultures, histories and identities, along with being glorified to unrealistic proportions” (Alolika 1). Racial fetishization, or more specifically yellow fever, has become an alarmingly common phenomenon in our society as the words “You should find an Asian girlfriend!”, “I love Asians!” and “Asians are so cute!” grow stronger and louder. Those white men pay no attention to my profile when they message me: those who fetishize Asian women are fetishizing an idea that all Asian women are docile and submissive.

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Instead, the stereotypes of being considered ‘desirable” reduce Asian women from individuals to a collection of stereotypes based on skin color.

In essence, a stereotype declares “this is what you are, and this is all you are” (Hall 34), and what that stereotype really does is exclude the “Other” as unacceptable and inferior. Sometimes, white males even use food as metaphors for entire ethnic groups, and in my case, foods such as “rice” and “chow-mein.” In some cases, I was compared to cute animals such as “panda”, or “kung-fu panda,” which is even worse.

Racial fetishism has been theorized in academic discourse in relation to Freudian sexual fetishism.

Frantz Fanon once said, “If one wants to understand the racial situation psychoanalytically… considerable importance must be given to sexual phenomena” (59). In the context of Freudian psychoanalysis and studies of sexuality, the notion of sexual fetishism involves a "meaning and purpose" that is “always a replacement for the fantasy penis that the little boy believed that his mother once had, but when he first encounters female genitalia, he thinks she has been castrated” (Freud 20). This becomes the cause of his “castration anxiety”, and thus a fetish is formed by some men to cope with this anxiety – the “female’s imaginary phallus” (Freud 20). However, as a white male scholar, Freud does not address ‘race’ in his theories of fetishism, and fails to elaborate racial fetishism as a version of racist stereotyping, which is related to colonial discourse and based on splitting beliefs (Bhabha 20). Bhabha defines “colonial discourse” as that which activates the simultaneous “recognition and disavowal of racial/ cultural/historical differences” and whose goal is to define the colonized as ‘other,’ through fixed and knowable stereotypes (30). Racial fetishism thus

involves contradictory belief systems where the ‘Other’ is both demonized and idolized (Bhabha 25). In other words, racial fascism is what happens when a group and nation runs on a broken, fragile ego. Here, the Asian woman’s body still resembles her whole community and race, and by getting an Asian woman, it is believed that you also get the men behind her. Similarly, Anne McClintock does not see racial fetishism as a mere result of the “castration anxiety,” rather she thinks, "reducing racial fetishism to the phallic drama runs the risk of flattening out the hierarchies of social difference, thereby relegating race and class to secondary status along a primarily sexual signifying chain" (56).

In order to dismantle the harmful effects of sexual racism and stereotypes about Asian women (and men), one has to unpack the colonial history and the decolonization process. As Davis said, to think race and racism do not matter anymore is delusional neoliberal thinking, because “both race and racism are profoundly historical” (3).

Presumptive stereotypes about racialized people are sexual in nature according to Edward Said in Orientalism. According to Said, orientalism refers to the manner in which “West interprets or comes to terms with their experiences and encounters with the foreign, unfamiliar Orient, or the East” (25). The ‘Orient’ was a “European invention to denote East Asia as a place of exoticism, romance, and remarkable experiences and also as a concept to contrast against Western civilization,” which represents the ‘Orient’ as an object for investigation and control, and how Orientalist texts constitute the Orient as a racial, cultural, political, and geographical unity (Said 30). Orientalism has “informed and shaped the colonial enterprise” (qtd. in Jacques, 125). Tinder, therefore is one of

those lenses through which “Western fantasies of penetration into the mysteries of the orient and access to the interiority of the other are fantamatically achieved” (Yegenoglu 39).

In a nutshell, racial fetishism is entitlement, and the idea itself is deeply rooted in colonialization: the white male earned his accomplishments, which included being white itself, and so ‘deserves’ an exotic Asian beauty as a ‘prize’. This kind of behavior derives from historical entitlement to Asian female bodies during colonialization and specifically American soldiers in Japan and Korea. In recent times, America’s wars in Korea and Vietnam have also influenced the popular American psyche, spawning operas such as Madame Butterfly and its modern adaptation Miss Saigon. All the language and legacy from colonialization still tell white men they are entitled to an Asian woman who will defer to them. White men perpetuating aggression on Tinder mirrors the way other white men predated Asian women during the war.

Asian women are the trophies of white male supremacists and fetishists, as they are exoticized and sexualized as a subordinate partner who is submissive, accommodating, and has a magic, exotic vagina. The fetistization of Asian female bodies also comes with the myth of Asian female genitals, either circulated by the Hentai pornography genre, or the stereotypes of Asian women being petite, so Asian women’s vaginas should be smaller or tighter due to their proportion to Asian bodies. The idea of wanting a “tighter vagina” is sordid: it desires sexual arousal, strives to maximize male organism and pleasure, and achieves male dominance and masculinity by conquering the female body. The idea of

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‘submissiveness’ has been used to explain white men’s fetish for Asian women and white men’s sex tourism in Asian countries. Asian women are seen as more passive, feminine and deferential than women of other ethnicities. This stereotype was an open invitation for white men and ‘conquerors’ to explore their fantasies by ‘taking’ Asian women without real punishment. Being an Asian woman on Tinder is dangerous and unpleasant because you are giving the message that “I am here for your taking” by just being on the app. Asian women being submissive sex slaves is a fallacy perpetrated by white supremacist thinking. Since white supremacy still exists, white men who think that Asian women have no use outside the bedroom still exist. To them, an Asian woman is not a person but a sex toy that will give her male partner blowjobs anytime on demand. The distaste for ‘petite’ body types that is associated with exoticism also puts Asian men down for their ‘lack’ of masculinity due to the Western delusional belief of the correlation between body size and penis size.

The stereotype of the hypersexual and primitive ‘fetish’ of subservience and sexual pleasing of Asian women, circulated by media representation and operas such as in Madame Butterfly, has continued to damage Asian women and their gender equality. In her book The Asian Mystique, Sheridan Prasso traced the “exoticism” of East Asian women as far back as Marco Polo’s travels along the Silk Road in the 1200s (23). Hence, the racist sexist colonialist hypersexuality of Asian women in the Western imagination is prevalent, pervasive, and historically-rooted. The geishalike, subservient, doting wife, the exotic China doll are the white man’s pathological fantasies, and, as Lacan writes, “The phantasy is the support of

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desire; it is not the object that is the support of desire. The subject sustains himself as desiring in relation to an even more complex signifying ensemble” (24). Asian women became the epitome of a feminine, family-oriented, obedient woman who embraces the patriarchal male control. In addition, the adaptation of Japanese geisha CioCio-San in Puccini’s 1904 opera Madame Butterfly and numerous other contemporary films continue to set the racial undertone: a hopeless submissive Asian woman who is in need of assistance or a rescuer, as Gallimard describes (qtd. in Eng, 138): There is a vision of the Orient that I have.

Of slender women in chong sams and kimonos who die for the love of unworthy foreign devils. Who are born and raised to be the perfect women. Who take whatever punishment we give them, and bounce back, strengthened by love, unconditionally. It is a vison that has become my life.

It is impossible for many white males like Gallimard to imagine an alternative outcome to Cio-CioSan’s story of heterosexual domination and white supremacy as long as they have the fantasy of “the submissive Oriental woman and the cruel white man” (Prasso 87). In contemporary times, Asian women have been portrayed as either submissive, man-pleasing sexual beings or aggressive, predatory “gold diggers” that use their sexuality.

They are either the "Dragon Ladies” or the "Lotus Blossom Babies"; "China dolls", or prostitutes (Prasso 30). Those stereotypes are often manifest in Western media, literature, theater and so on.

The tokenism that is sometimes extended to Asian women “is not an invitation to join power” due to our racial ‘otherness,’ which is illustrated by the absolute marginalization of Asian characters in the media (Crenshaw 3). In this sense, white privilege

is also the privilege that white people “can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of [their] race widely represented” (McIntosh 130). Asian actresses never speak (or do not speak English) in movies and they are always the first ones to die. Their role is to play the Asian whore who offers the movie a “silent exoticism” (Prasso 30). For instance, in Skyfall, the only female Asian character was an imported prostitute who rarely spoke a word and died in the first thirty minutes of the movie. Furthermore, stereotypes around shyness, not being outspoken or politically active, also makes people think such representations of Asian women in media will not generate backlash. Thus, Asian female voices are ignored, silent, and passive. Asian women remain in the background with absolute silence and invisibility; however, “to finally recognize our own invisibility is to finally be on the path toward visibility. Invisibility is not a natural state for anyone” (Yamada 40).

When men on Tinder embedded with the thinking that Asian women exemplify the old stereotypes, they think everything about Asian women’s bodies is turned into fetishism on display. The image of an Asian woman on Tinder exists as a resource to be exploited, and her image is hypersexulized to fit into the voyeuristic white male gaze; therefore, she becomes a fetish object for the pleasure of whiteness. Thus, when I am on Tinder, I am an object only viewed through a sexual lens. Tinder has a fundamental hookup and rape culture in this sense. A woman cannot simply own her sexuality in its purest form and men’s enjoyment, fantasy, desire, sexual acculturation, abuse and domination are naturalized as “causal sex” (and this applies to all women). In doing so, white males need to target the ‘submissive’ Asian ‘girl’ and use their penises

as weapons to dominate and control what they see as the Asian female sex slave. Asian women are being treated like sex objects based on their appearance, and unfortunately, these appearances are, more often than not, based on the worst sort of ‘Othering’, which is a process that objectifies, stigmatizes, exoticzies and dehumanizes Asian women based on racist stereotypes. She is reduced to the more common status of “whore,” and once again negative associations with that term are reinforced. Meaning an Asian woman on Tinder is a ‘whore’ waiting to be chosen as kind of public property based on the Asian ‘prostitute’ stereotype, only the nature of sex work in this case has no monetary value. As Audre Lorde puts it, “Rape is not aggressive sexuality, it is sexualized aggression” (Lorde 5), and there is no part of white male supremacist culture that does not believe that Asian women owe them free sex, by which it usually means she owes him sexual subservience and arousal, with or without the use of force or coercion, which in other words, means the idea of entitlement and conquering that is a carry-over from colonialization. As long as male domination exists, and by this I mean the white male power dynamic exists, “rape will exist. Only women revolting and men made conscious of their responsibility to fight sexism can collectively stop rape” (Lorde 5).

Pornography and films that feature Asian women are simply the most prominent outlets for this depraved view: It is all about rape culture. “The singular focus on rape as a manifestation of male power over female sexuality tends to eclipse the use of rape as a weapon of racial terror” Crenshaw warns, “[racialized women’s] femaleness made them sexually vulnerable to racist domination, while their [skin colors] effectively denied them any

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protection (3). Some white men are entertained by the idea of destroying and having sex with Asian women’s bodies, in particular the idea of ‘conquering’ the exotic Asian vagina. This “deviant sexuality” is what makes Asian women desirable on Tinder: their desirability is tied to some inherent “fuckable-ness” of the Asian female body (Nguyen 185). The racial fetishizing belief that Asian women make better sexual lovers than women of other ethnicities makes sexism and racism work hand in hand on Tinder. Of course, featuring Asian women in pornography makes “[v]isibility is a trap… it summons surveillance and the law; it provokes voyeurism, fetishism, the colonialist/ imperialist appetite for possession” (Nguyen 185).

Moreover, the Asian female presence in Western pornography and films emphasizes hypersexual elements of Asians as sex workers, as Shimuzu notes the cinematographic techniques used in shooting Asian/white sex in pornography (117): Asian-white sex necessitated a close-up of the [Asian] female face so as to include her hair and features against [the white male’s] hair and features… Omitting the meat shot, the Asian face stands in for genitals.

This idea of fetishization creates a pressure for racialized people to conform to white supremacy through internalized racism. Indeed, I have noticed that some Asian women play up to the stereotypes or embody such fetishes in order to marry into the dominant culture and sometimes even devaluating their own ethnicity. There are even websites to assist white males in finding Asian brides. Some Asian women wrote in their profiles on Tinder lines such as “I am a banana: yellow in the outside, white on the inside.” Some of them frequently used the phrase “whitewashed” to describe themselves in order to worship whiteness. Asian women

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sometimes are taught to date White men for the power and dominance attached to white skin color.

When there is a notion of “worshipping at the throne of whiteness” (hooks 151) that is internalized by racialized people, racism is self-perpetuated and reinforced through unconscious engagement with pre-existing racist and sexist beliefs on Tinder.

Being on Tinder is marketing oneself as a product to be used, and sometimes racialized women mark their ‘whiteness’ in order to have a (sexual) partner. The conformity to whiteness reinforces the stereotype as a submissive Asian woman, someone you sleep with at night and do not need to talk to in the morning. White males are thus granted the ‘best’ part of both worlds: racialized people’s cultural identities and backgrounds, and their adaptations and internalizing of the western culture. By exploiting racialized people’s races and stereotypes that go along with their cultural backgrounds, and asking them to ‘act’ white in order to be consumed, while looking still exotically Asian, they ensure that this thinking is still deeply rooted in the colonialist thinking that conquers women and lands. And women in this case, are just resources. A woman on Tinder stands as a resource to be exploited, and a man exploits that resource for his own fetishism in order to sustain the patriarchal white supremacist system.

As Edwards testifies in her essay “Sleeping with Enemy,” this rapey attitude towards black women could also be applied to the sexual fetishism white males have for Asian women (qtd. in Kennedy, 162163): Of all the ways a white man can get to know a black woman, fucking is clearly the route he has taken most. Sex blazes through the landscapes of America’s racial history as hot and heavy as the lash of slavery. It is slavery,

with its legacy of rape … that has traditionally defined and colored much of black women’s relationships with white men.

Predominantly, white males fit the dominant paradigm of normality, and recognize themselves as the definition of 'human', and thus the nonwhite group as ‘inferior’. Whiteness is not just a social fact, it is “an identity created and continued with all-too-real consequences for the distribution of wealth, prestige, and opportunity” (Lipsitz 1).

“Whiteness has a cash value” (Lipsitz 1), thus white men generally have more choices and are seen as the most desirable partner on Tinder by virtue of their skin color and high social standing.

Sometimes Asian women will reject other nonwhite racial groups and reinforce the stigmatic racial hierarchies on Tinder. To differentiate themselves from ‘other’ Asian women, some women try to ‘act’ and perform whiteness to elevate themselves above other Asian women. In fact, adding “whiteness” always helps to get the person swept to the right on Tinder. Such process of “subjection” signifies “the process of becoming subordinated by power as well the process of becoming a subject [because we are subjected to power]” (Butler 2). Butler talks about how someone who used to be oppressed becomes an oppressor by subjecting to the very power structure that oppresses he or she, “The form this power takes is relentlessly marked by a figure of turning, a turning back upon oneself [self-recognition], or even a turning on oneself [self-loathing]” (2).

This not only causes the rejection of racialized people in employments, opportunities, dating, and so on, but also cause deep self-hatred and poor self-esteem for racialized people in terms of internalizing racism. In the dating scene, when racialized people are rejected, then ‘naturalized’

racism and ingrained a psychological belief that they are not attractive enough because of their skin color, this might ultimately lead to denials of their own heritage. I, as an Asian woman, am very insecure about male attention by heterosexual men because I am often unsure if he is primarily interested in my race or my personality. As a result, I constantly feel a sense of self-objectification, identity formation and appearance anxiety as an Asian woman when I date white guys.

On this note, the practice of “passing as white,” in which one chooses to identify oneself as ‘white’, not only signifies a rejection of one’s racialized community, but also a desire to be “accepted by a group that has legally excluded and oppressed them in the past” (Piper 10). But in order to do so, one has to betray one’s own identity to embrace the notion of white supremacy, and deny one’s ethnic background for the sake of “fitting in”. “Since whiteness does not refer to some fixed, ethnic or physical characteristics, it should come as no surprise to find that its boundaries of inclusion and exclusion have shifted over time” (Gabriel 185); in this sense ‘passing’ helps one to ‘move up’ in the racial hierarchy, but also requires absolute betrayal of one’s previous identity. After all, “under the operative racial hierarchy, passing is the ultimate assimilationist move — the submergence of a subordinate cultural identity in favor of dominant identity, assumed to achieve better societal fit within prevailing norms” (Harris 1730). Piper writes, in order to for one to ‘pass’ for white, one must: [S]acrifice the history, wisdom, connectedness and moral solidarity with [one’s] family and community…It requires so much severing and forgetting, so much disowning and distancing, not simply from one's shared past, but from one's former

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self–as though one had cauterized one's long-term memory at the moment of entry into the white community (6).

Tinder is self-identified as a dating app, but it has been used as an online database for hookups based on geographic location. The fundamental difference between dating apps and ‘hookup’ apps is that on dating apps most people feel the pressure to maintain certain formalities, cultural awareness and ‘political correctness’; but with hookup apps, when everything is strictly about sex, people do not feel the need to be respectful to other people they consider “inferior” and “unequal.” It seems hard to overcome the sexualizing of individuals when the medium itself is created for that purpose. The fact is that whether swiping ‘left’ or ‘right’, individuals on Tinder, in particular with women and most importantly racialized women, are sexualized. A predominant male presence on Tinder manifested the white male gaze – a source of constant looking that is an explicit form of control based on the individual images and face value. Tinder is complicit in continuing the projection of the sexist, submissive stigma of Asian woman, and therefore even contributing to the sexism from Asians’ own racial group. Some Asian men seek to reaffirm their own masculinity by practicing “manhood” through the objectification, violation, and conquest of women in the same way that white males affirm hegemonic masculinity by shaming women. I have encountered many Asian men asked me, “Are you a traditional Chinese girl?” with the hope of finding a submissive, conservative, and ‘traditional’ Asian partner.

I rarely responded to the messages I got, especially the majority of those messages that

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are explicitly sexist or asking for sex. There is a group mentality on Tinder that nothing should be taken seriously. In fact, when I sometimes call a person out for being a racist and/or sexist, I am ‘unmatched’ immediately. If I chose to remain silent to those racially fuelled messages that I got on Tinder, this would also add to that “quiet, submissive, non-threating, shy” Asian stereotype.

I thought I composed my profile to show my personality, but men frequently chose to connect with me merely because of my race. Meanwhile, making racist and offensive comments to racialized women can be excused or justified as a "joke" on Tinder. This demonstrates not only the reality that racialized women are not seen as respectful, decent women or even as equal human beings, but the ways in which white men feel entitled to make these comments, and this results in devastating consequences due to daily reinforced racial microaggressions.

Over time, whiteness is used as the lens to define who we should and should not date.

Racial discrimination on dating apps can be attributed to racist attitudes rather than ‘natural’ sexual preferences. Many defend themselves from accusations of “racism” by claiming that they merely have “aesthetic preferences” for certain races over others. Many also are reluctant to perceive sexual racism as ‘racist’ because that term is a strong label. The heavy social condemnation attached to the word “racism” prevents many from being identified as a ‘racist’, because most people understand the term ‘racist’ as it only applies to those who support the Ku Klux Klan. But displaying racial sexism by making statements like, “Whites only or no non-whites” in one’s profile is not a sexual preference but plain racism. As Callander condemns, “sexual racism

[…] is probably just plain old racism disguised in the language of desire. While it may feel like our desires are our own, in reality they are influenced heavily by social norms” (1996). In other words, sexual racism on Tinder is self-perpetuating by its users and by virtue of human nature’s very need for social validation. Anonymity on Tinder, similar with any social media site, provides a 'safe' place for these males to express their hatred and racist speech that they would not dare to say in person.

Essentially, Tinder protects the white man’s ‘rights’ to be racist. Tinder, like many other places, is a good place to use one’s white privilege.

Racism is not just confined to online dating platforms like Tinder. I was socialized into ignoring similar microaggressions in daily life for a long time. I was taught by my mother that if you worked harder than everyone else, no one will be racist to you. I was catcalled by many creepy men on the street and heard “Ni hao ma!” all the time from males who thought I would be impressed by their appropriation of my so-called exotic language.

Digital pick-up lines were just equally bad as in-person. However, discussing sexual racism and stereotyping of Asian women on Tinder is not about making white people or anyone feel guilty, but about understanding the upfront nature of sexism and racism on dating platforms since racism seems to get a ‘pass’ when it comes to love or the love industry; indeed, love and relationships are sometimes racism’s alibi. “While society is generally pretty comfortable condemning racism, there has been a surprising reluctance among people […] to challenge racialized sex and dating practices,” Callander said (1995). When exploring the idea of ‘desire’ and ‘fetishism’ through the lens of online dating apps, what you can see is the unfiltered racism in North America.

Prioritizing my own experiences as a straight Asian woman on Tinder, and analyzing the ways in which colonialism, exotification, fetishization and white supremacy have conditioned racial fetishism and sexual racism on online dating sites as well as in real life, I came to the conclusion that Tinder is the epitome of what white males want in our society – you have racialized people come to you to serve white males’ needs and whites are given absolute control by selecting things based on images and objects. The typical white male who swipes Asian women to the ‘right’ is the one who wants to have sex with an exotic Asian woman but does not want to commit to any emotional attachment: someone you can ditch the next morning. This stereotype continues to perpetuate the image of Asian women as subservient and devoted subjects to their men, and this makes Asian women a fantasy of white males and unfortunately the reason Asian women are so desirable on dating sites. Swiping right or left is now the new racism in the online dating era because the idea of finding a partner is never a freedom of choice for racialized people – for Asian women, Tinder creates a spectrum, not a binary – it is never simply swiping left or right – It is not simply “yes I do” or “No I don’t”. Tinder is racist, but so is society, we are all residents of a damaged world.

Note: Please keep in mind that this essay only looks at the heterosexual relationship on Tinder, and since the essay primarily focuses on the idea of fetishization and stereotyping, it has to be limited to the ‘Asian woman, white man’ dating dynamic.

Considering online dating is pre-dominated by white male users as well, there is a reason that I

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did not cover other racialized male users on Tinder that much in this essay. If I have more space and time though, I would hope to talk more about how Asian people are being over-feminized and black people are being over-masculinized. Since I am half-Chinese half-Thai, and this essay is based on my personal experience, I only unpack the East Asian women stereotypes. I also believe I cannot vocalize for anyone else and I can only tell my own story. That being said, this essay is not an attack on white people, nor do I believe that white people are all evil; what is problematic is the institutionalized white supremacy and the endorsement of whiteness, not white skin itself as a race.

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