This ignores the extensive and once notorious legacy of the rape, trafficking and forced sexual exploitation of women of color – and of Asian women in particular – by American soldiers abroad. For nearly half of the 20th century (from roughly 1939 to 1980), America maintained an enormous military presence throughout the Pacific Rim, initially to counterbalance Japanese imperialist aims. During this forty-year period a steady deluge of all-male American troops were stationed in Hawaii, Guam, the Phillipine Islands, Okinawa and Taiwan and during wartime formally occupied the Japanese Islands, Korea, and Vietnam.
Millions of women who lived in these countries became collateral damage in the military and political conflicts that dominated the regions, left to the mercy of whatever men were in power at the time. Before the Americans arrived the Japanese military had already instituted a formal policy of using rape as a war tactic, forcing an estimated 200,000 primarily Filipino, Korean, Chinese and Japanese women (as well as women in Japanese-occupied parts of Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan, Burma, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Macau) into prostitution as “comfort women” to serve the sexual proclivities of Japanese troops.
Much of the concept of Asian women as sexually submissive comes from the victimized condition in which American soldiers found these women when they arrived in combat zones throughout the Pacific. And many took full advantage:
This.
I don’t have the luxury of eloquent rage right now, so let me just say: Yes. And from the same article:
The dynamic was, however, inherently and overwhelmingly unequal. On the one hand, a woman at the mercy of an unstable government in a war-torn country, facing starvation, forced prostitution and possibly death as a casualty of war. On the other hand, an American service man with a gun, a steady paycheck and the promise of protection, liberation and a better life… maybe even one as a comfortable housewife in that far away promised land called America.
This dynamic doesn’t exist in the past. It’s taken on other forms, and it is still here.
So please don’t talk to me about the “submissive Filipina” stereotype as if it’s a neutral thing; as if it’s solely the fruit of how we were ~socialized by our ~Maria Clara-idealizing society; as if it’s anything close to our (gritty, contradictory, cruel, unfair, beautiful, painful, surviving, hopeful) reality. Matter of fact is, a great and overwhelming majority of the Filipinas I know are incredibly strong, resilient, independent women who have made their own choices and are quite capable of breaking convention and pressure if they feel it’s the right thing to do. Not the pliant obedient mindless women-as-vessels-of-masculine-desire willing to do ~anything their man wants~! so nauseatingly advertised by online dating sites. Not women who will take insult or injury lying down. (I will never cease to stop rolling my eyes at Westerners who think silence in response to their horribly offensive statements is acquiescence or agreement. Silence is not submission. Also, I value civility undeserved though it may be.)
Another tangential thing: Maria Clara? Was no wilting violet. Oh, please.
(via jazzysophist)
