By 1907, white masculinity’s fear of its own emasculation produced anti-miscegenation laws that promised to revoke citizenship from any white woman who married an Asian American. White masculinity depended on the sexual and economic possession of white women. Specifically, to rape white women and pillage white men’s jobs. Leading up to the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned Chinese immigration completely, much of the propaganda depicted Chinese men as out to rape and pillage. The current stereotype of Asian American men as 'emasculated', 'weak', and 'effeminate' can be traced back to white insecurities Out of this context, two different stereotypes of Asian American men emerged: emasculation and hypermasculinity (two sides of the same racist, misogynist, homophobic coin).
By 1880, there were 27 Chinese men for every one Chinese woman, and with the railroad completed, the economic value of Chinese masculinity decreased while white fear of Chinese masculinity increased. In addition, it was cheapest to prohibit wives and children from joining them, which also conveniently limited population growth (the 1875 Page Act legalized this prohibition). Railroad work was seen as exclusively male, and Chinese men were expected to work more, in more dangerous situations, and take less pay than white counterparts. The current stereotype of Asian American men as “emasculated”, “weak”, and “effeminate” can be traced back to white insecurities over the male Chinese labor force during and after the construction of the transcontinental railroad in the late 19th century.Ĭhinese railroad workers were both valued and devalued as men. In other words, the story of how we view Asian American masculinity can be understood as a story about white male insecurity. In fact, Kim found that one other group of writers also symbolized white women as access to American masculinity: straight white male writers writing about Asian male characters. If the terms of masculinity are white, women of color are excluded. As early as 1982, scholar Elaine Kim noted this trope in Asian American literature, where the symbol of the white woman indicates an Asian American male character has been accepted into society or not. In the face of their disappointment, he demands to know why they immigrated in the first place if they didn’t want him to become “American”, completing his association of Americanness with whiteness.Īs an isolated case, the film would still be problematic, but what really frustrates critics like Tanzila Ahmed and Amil Niazi is how frequently stories about Asian American masculinity rely on sex with a white woman. He hides his relationship with Emily from his parents, and when he finally tells them about her, he is the one who connects his love for Emily to his nationality. The film heavily links Kumail’s masculinity to the performance of race and sexuality – he picks up Emily after she jokes that he might be good in bed and he writes her name in Urdu. It’s a striking sequence, making literal Kumail’s rejection of brown women in exchange for whiteness. The most difficult sequence to watch is a montage that switches back and forth between shots of Kumail – the main character – courting a white woman, Emily, and shots of him tossing images of brown women into a cigar box one after the other, each deemed unworthy by comparison. W hen the film The Big Sick, starring Kumail Nanjiani, came out in 2017, it seemed like progress for Asian American representation – yet it received mixed reactions from Asian American critics, especially south Asian American women who wrote about the film’s stereotypes of brown women.
Desire is a story in which you are a character. That is the thing about desire: it comes from the outside. It wasn’t my gaze with which I looked, of course.