52.
ARTWORK: Yige Xu
not your china doll: on the hypersexualisation of asian women YIGE XU
CW: racism, sexism, hate crimes, sexual violence, rape, death, pornography Five months ago, a twenty-one-year-old white male gunman drove to a strip mall in the northern Atlanta suburbs and entered Young’s Asian Massage parlour, where he killed four people, two of them Asian women. After leaving he headed south, killing four more Asian women at a pair of spas situated across the street from each other. When he was apprehended he was on route to Florida, where he had planned to continue his shooting rampage. I’m sure we all remember the sheriff’s words in infamy. The murderer’s actions were the result of “a really bad day.” The disbelief as these senseless massacres were chalked up to a “sex addiction.” He wanted to “eliminate” his “temptations”. He was just “fed up”. Seeing this headline I felt a mess of rage, paranoia, hurt and grief. But exhaustion came out on top. To say the year that had passed had been an
uncertain one for all would be an understatement. But for the Asian diaspora, 2020 was also one of endurance. We armoured ourselves just to step outside, to face the inevitable stream of slurs hurled by strangers, politicians, and friends alike. Reported incidents of hate crimes against Asians surged parallel to COVID cases. I was plunged into reflection, wanting to understand my place in the world as a Chinese-Australian woman, to prescribe reason to a reality that felt unexplainable. Fast forward to a year later, March 16, 2021. That white supremacist, justified in his murder. His voiceless victims, dehumanised. The hypersexualisation of Asian women, especially East and South-East Asian (ESEA) women, lies within the nexus of intersecting racism, white supremacy, misogyny, and Orientalism. Our ‘othering’ can be traced to 18thcentury colonialism, where the term ‘yellow fever’ first originated.
