A long thread about Asians being fetishized

  • relay
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    10 months ago

    I read that chapter of Fannon.

    https://monoskop.org/images/a/a5/Fanon_Frantz_Black_Skin_White_Masks_1986.pdf

    It certainly does highlight how women of color hate themselves and other people of color of their own race. They should kill the white man that criticizes them in their own head and look at themselves as fully human. Various friends of POC friends of mine tell me when they underestimate their capabilities in front of white people. Certainly people of color should be encouraged to give the same empathy that they have for white people to all people regardless of their race, especially themselves. Fannon talk about lynchings and double standards which I agree should be discouraged to the point of annhilation. People should not be disrespected on account of their heritage to the point that they develop a complex about it.

    I think this would be a more relevant article: https://www.npr.org/2021/03/19/979340013/a-sociologists-view-on-the-hyper-sexualization-of-asian-women-in-american-societ

    What can be done to undermine this hypersexualization of east Asian women?

    • GreatSquare
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      10 months ago

      They should kill the white man that criticizes them in their own head and look at themselves as fully human.

      What? It’s not coming from their own head.

      You literally said the Asian man has to improve themself culturally because they are less than ideal. Fanon was talking about how white society paints people of color as inferiors who are tainted by their backwards culture. The white man saves the woman of color by civilizing her. It’s not her race that is the issue: She can reject her own culture to become better than her peers. The same does not apply when flipping the genders as mentioned in the next chapter “The Man of Color and the White Woman”.

      In the same way, you claimed Japanese culture was inferior to the “first world” and Japanese women were better off in this first world. You gave the example of anime, when actually you could be a much bigger anime fan than the average Japanese.

      That’s the same as sexpat talk which is why it’s cringe.

      • relay
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        10 months ago

        It is the Japanese people’s responsibility to sort out how their culture evolves themselves, not western opinion. I know Japan is not what is depicted in Anime. however https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/The-Big-Story/Inside-Japan-s-gender-problem-The-men-tasked-with-empowering-women

        I’m generally supportive of feminist movements, and I know holding back economic development and social development is generally what imperialism does. Imperialist superpowers take out progressive/communists out of power and put in conservatives/fascists. The people domestically still can fight back for justice, then things improve. Some cultures may be socially backwards in some manner now, but that can and will change over time. It is not the responsibility of westerners to civilize socially backward countries. It is the responsibility of the people to domestically push progressive policy into their socially backwards country.

        Also note that I’m not saying that Japanese women are better off if they move to the european/colonizer countries by all standards. I also think Japan is a particular Asian country with a particular situation that does not necessarily map for all Asian countries. Japan seems more like an imperial core country than a periphery country in terms of imperialism, but politically a puppet of the USA.

        I’m not sure to what degree the African diaspora experience matches with the Asian diaspora experience. I suspect that’s going to change soon with the rise of China.

        I’m not speaking normatively about sexpats. I’m just saying that they are doing what they can get away with in a global imperialist capitalist system. I personally think it is REALLY UNBELIEVABLY shitty to treat one’s romantic partner as less than human. I generally assume there is often some form of exploitation with every sexpat relationship, so I’m not arguing with you on that point.

        • GreatSquare
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          10 months ago

          In neocolonialism, the colonized women oppresses themselves. This is what Fanon described. They considered that being in a relationship with a white man was being elevated because they considered their own race and society as socially backwards. Hence they aren’t exploited.

          • relay
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            10 months ago

            That part is in their heads is it not? A whiteness within themselves to distance themselves from other colored people like them is within the responsibility of themselves.

            On one hand people are responsible interrogate their own biases created by their material and social conditions. On the other hand our collective responsibility is to work to promote policy that undermines racism by changing those material and social conditions.

            Whiteness and coloredness are social constructs contingent on the movement of history. To insist that this racism is not ephemeral is anti revolutionary. I’m not saying it is solved at the moment mind you, but as communists we must do our part to make racial hierarchies a thing of the past.

            If you are talking about white men in general being passport bros being shitty and probably leads to a miserable marriage, yea they suck.

            • GreatSquare
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              10 months ago

              That part is in their heads is it not? A whiteness within themselves to distance themselves from other colored people like them is within the responsibility of themselves.

              They didn’t create the racial hierarchy. That was the colonizer. Don’t blame the victim for following the rules created by the rule makers. A white man is placed higher in Western society so it’s not their personal bias at all.

              as communists we must do our part to make racial hierarchies a thing of the past.

              Then don’t call other countries socially backwards when you are using a capitalist measuring stick to compare them to the West. Just because there are more girlbosses in Western countries doesn’t make up for the exploitation of a far greater number of underclass women. As Fanon pointed out, the more “liberated” bourgeois white French woman lived off the back of exploited French black colonial servants. That doesn’t make France the more forward society at all.