Inspired by the fact that I cried over cut fruit last week
^^This resonates.
Love,
Jamie & Melinda
News
We're keeping this section a little less heavy today because there's been a lot of grief and fear around. I'm still feeling really drained and down in spirits ☹️
📣 "Asian Americans seek greater political power after shootings": As Georgia state senator Michelle Au said recently, "People in our communities are hungry for representation that looks like them." Currently, there are 160 AAPI legislators in 33 states; 51 of those are in Hawaii. Now, looking at the U.S. government, only 17 of the 535 members of Congress are AAPI (+ 3 nonvoting delegates, probably from U.S. territories).
Tammy Duckworth and Mazie Hirono (both Democratic Senators) have been pressing Biden to include Asian Americans in his cabinet. Last week, Katherine Tai was confirmed last week as the top U.S. trade envoy, while Vivek Murthy has been confirmed for surgeon general.
🖼️ Two sophomores from Villanova, who are part of the Pan-Asian Business society, created a mural in one of their school buildings to speak up about anti-Asian hate.
Source: @villanovabusiness Instagram
🗽Andrew Yang is looking at a mayoral bid in NYC. However, he's been criticized by his response to the hate crimes. For example, he called "for more funding for the NYPD Asian Hate Crime Task Force." (sigh..... no.) He also appeared at the Columbus Park rally this weekend, where apparently he wasn't on the original speaker list. During his speech, he said that items on his agenda as the next mayor of NYC are "fully fund the Asian Hate Crimes Task Force and the NYPD and label a hate crime a hate crime." This was met with mixed reactions. (Also, is it OK to use this rally to "help him" for his mayoral run? Idk.)
👗 British actress Simone Ashley will be in season 2 of Bridgerton. Her appearance as a South Asian woman in this series is historically accurate - Professor Durba Ghosh of Cornell University said that "during the Regency, which lasted from 1811 to 1820, many British officials from the East India Company had families with Indian women and often brought those children back to England during this period." (Anyhow, I remember this actress from when I watched the show Sex Education!)
💌 The Chinese grandma who was attacked recently in San Francisco and fought the attacker off wants to give all $900K from her GoFundMe back to the Asian community.
Source: Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya via Time.com
🎨 The work of Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya, an artist-in-residence of NYC Commission on Human Rights, is on the cover of Time magazine this week. Her public art pieces are already all around NYC, in subways and more. She's made her art available to download under her initiative, I Still Believe in Our City (I printed some out for the vigils I've gone to). " 'I Still Believe in Our City' affirms that Black lives matter, and that East and Southeast Asians refuse to be vilified or denigrated. No matter what comes our way. New Yorkers don’t succumb to cynicism or defeat. We choose to believe in and fight for ourselves, our home, and our shared future."
Source: Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya via I Still Believe in Our City
Asian Americans, Sex Work, and Fetishization
In the wake of the Atlanta spa shootings, we were thinking about the relationship and the long history of sexualization & Asian women. TBH I don't think sex (certainly not sex work) is something that is discussed much in my AAPI spaces, so we wanted to learn a bit more about it.
The first thing we learned - not unexpected - was that information and stories about sex work are hard to find. Criminalization, social stigma, and also the inherent dangers of the occupation make reporting and collection unreliable. The history and statistics around AAPI sex work are further complicated by immigration history, colonization, policy, and racialized misogyny.
Personally speaking, I'm a supporter of decriminalization of sex work (this is a whole other topic that we haven't covered YET) but also super aware of the marginalization and exploitation of people in it. Idk, I think it's kind of a difficult topic to approach, but then again, I have little actual knowledge of how it works. The weird thing about writing and researching this piece was that on one hand, while we want to talk about Asian sex workers and support them, on the other, we also want to talk about how Asian women have been hypersexualized and fetishized (which feels a little counterintuitive to the first part [tho idt it is]).
Interesting thing is, in the context of early immigration history, Asian women have long been denied entry into the US. Back when the US was importing laborers, many laws made it so that only Asian men were allowed in the country. These large "bachelor societies" generated "a need for legitimate sex work". Women were effectively banned, and early racist rumors around "illegitimate marriages" and concubinage contributed to the 1870 Anti-Prostitution Act that allowed "immigration officials complete authority to deem any Asian woman a prostitute and forbid her entry". The Page Act officially banned all entry of Chinese women under the notion that they were all prostitutes. Many of the ones that stayed were often "undocumented, forced to work for low wages, and often pushed into sex work", a dynamic far too often seen today still.
Japanese immigration policy at the time allowed for family reunification, and the loophole let women come to the US for arranged marriages through the "picture brides" system. Picture brides, who were primarily thought of as trafficked women, were later banned under the Ladies Agreement of 1921. (Though there is a deeper history about Japanese imperialism, especially in Korea, and sex slavery).
Sex trafficking (which is distinct from sex work) and exclusion of Asian women under premises of moral purity were the basis of much of early immigration policy. That, and of course, colonialism.
From the sexual exploitation of Vietnamese people in French Indochine; to WWII comfort women kidnapped from China, Korea and the Philippines being transferred from Japanese soldiers to the U.S. military; to sex work industries surrounding U.S. bases throughout Asia, Asian sex labor has always followed militarism. - Diana Lu, Hyphen
The back and forth between victim and prostitute has a complicated history, but both are connected to power dynamics still present today.
"White supremacy and domination of the Asian body are inherently connected", experts say. It ties into white sexual imperialism, Sunny Woan writes—the sexual gender dynamic that involves a white man and a non-white woman who “descends from a culture or community that has been historically colonized by European or Anglican nations.” - Shawna Chen, The Yappie
COVID and the demonization of Asian Americans as a result have only made things worse. Asian women were 2.3 times more reported cases of hate incidents than Asian men were.
Fetishization of Asian women lies "at the intersection of two myths: the model minority...and the submissive, hypersexualized Asian woman." At best, it is present in the dating lives of me and my friends, and at worst, it pushes vulnerable people into unsafe situations and is a direct factor in the deaths of people like Yang Song in 2017 and the women who were murdered in Atlanta.
Idk… why we don’t talk about the safety and livelihoods of those who work at massage parlors and those who do sex work? I guess that’s what we’re trying to do - like learn more about and uncover Asian American women’s experiences and find the stories that aren’t being told.
Small Feelings
How do you process emotions?
I hate being publicly vulnerable (especially on social media) and tend not to want to share my feelings with other people/people around me. I know they mean well, but I personally find it pretty annoying when people are like "how are you?" or tiptoe around me. Before, I used to be a huge sharer/processed emotions with other people but have since stopped.
Hm well I recently have chatted through things with my sister, and only in bits and pieces will I bring it up to friends, but yeah I don't usually process stuff with other people. I should probably write some more reflections down soon to get it "out of me" if that makes sense.
also, I was pleasantly surprised by the 2 community vigils I attended with my family in NJ; certain towns here have a noticeable AAPI population, but even so, I was surprised by the number of people who came - anytime I saw a non-Asian person, I was like wow :O
Spotlight AND Podcast Rec
✨ Sohla El-Waylly ✨
Culinary Creator, Writer, Community Advocate
(I admire her!!!)
Chef’s Specials
Events
Thursday, March 25: Real Mental Health presents a free, therapist-led roundtable on “Staying Afloat While Staying Informed” in response to the Atlanta shootings.
Saturday, March 27: Muslim Girl presents their first-ever digital summit in celebration of #MuslimWomensDay; more info here!