The Yellow Man's Masculinity

For a long time, I didn’t understand the whole Asian male emasculation thing, because to me, yellow boys were as boyish as boys could get, and they were masculine not because they were tall (some are) or sporty (ditto) or charismatic (you guessed it), but because I wanted them. And I grew up with them. And I liked them and hated them and learned the big life revelations about them—boys are immature/need to grow up—just as well as anybody in paper-white Ohio or Kendrick’s Compton did. But that is real life, and society is a theoretical one.

Yellow men have historically been emasculated in the United States; here is a story. Ko Shigeta is 17 years old and arrives to work on a Hawaiian sugar plantation in 1903. Years later, he remembers this: bathing in the same place as other yellow men’s wives and feeling them step over him “as if [he] were a dog or cat in their path.” He remembers their indifference to his nakedness. This story describes a difficult emasculation, one created but not directly imposed by a white presence. It feels tragic because it speaks of helplessness. It is one thing to be hurt by someone who is supposed to hurt you. After a while, you build resistance to that kind of hurt. You find yourself. You learn to shrug.

But Shigeta’s story talks about a completely different kind of hurt: the hurt that comes from being ignored by the people who are supposed to notice you, if not love you. Yes, when you are a yellow male and “the people” you are referencing are yellow females, this sentiment may be a problematic seed of male entitlement. But that does not mean that it slips through fingers. This is the type of historicized emasculation The Yellow American Man comes from.

One product of this emasculation, Eddie Huang, is a “Big Dick Asian,” meaning he’s gone to jail; he calls himself Rich Homie Huang; the menu at his restaurant, Xiao Ye, features “Flat Taiwanese Bootycake;” he complains, “Asian people never get any pussy in movies;" and his response to feminists calling him out on misogyny is, “are we dating cause you wildin.” Maybe even more disturbing than Huang’s movement is the fact that it provokes almost no negative responses. Even if Huang is one of the most visible yellow people in America, no one believes that the militant language he uses poses a real threat to society.

There is no room in the racial equality movement for misogyny. But truthfully, saying that statement over and over again isn’t helpful. I don’t believe it is enough to call Huang out because his sexism runs too deeply. How does a boy become a man? Generally, by leaving his mother. Historically, he kills an animal. Traditionally, he has consensual or nonconsensual sex with a virgin. In every model of man-ing, the way a boy becomes a man is by hurting something, and usually, a female. This is why sexism is not just one aspect but rather the entirety of Eddie Huang’s racial identity. It is unfair to claim Huang chooses the “wrong way” to man himself when there are no other ways to do it right.

The dilemma of being both raced and gendered as a yellow American female does not lie in being called “eggroll” on the street. Instead, it lies here: Strengthening your race can mean weakening your sex. Which leads to other questions, questions we must answer not as yellow before female, or female before yellow, but yellow and female together, unapologetically. What does it mean for a race if its two genders do not and cannot get along? How can you love yourself when you are told to be disgusted by those who look like you? How can you, as a yellow American female, be viewed as strong when your male counterpart is viewed as weak?

This is not, of course, the first time people have remedied emasculation with hypermasculinity. Historically, black American males have done the same. But there are fundamental differences between yellow American and black American experiences that make yellow American feminism unique and not just a less developed version of the black American one. First, there is not and has never been a strong solidarity between yellow males and females. Instead, we repel each other. In Jenny An’s case, we quote Junot Diaz, New York Magazine, and the “bastions of liberal thought” to rationalize it. We know white supremacy when we see it. We know what Kool-Aid we’re drinking. But ironically, some of us will still claim that yellow men are patriarchal symbols, and white men are our saviors. Some of us will still hate ourselves enough to equate our skin inextricably with Ivy League mania, servility, filial piety, and hard working humility.

Second, while black people have identified with blackness, yellow people have not defined yellowness, in my experience. Dumplings, pandas, Amy Tan, JustKiddingNews, Dumbfoundead, and everybody’s Tiger Mom is not yellowness. Yellowness should be deep and vital and beautiful and complicated in order to be of use to its deep and vital and beautiful and complicated people. While black women are often resistant to identifying with white feminist agendas and concerns, yellow women are less resistant. Black women have argued for feminist theories that incorporate discussions about black lives, bringing items such as hip-hop and pleasure politics to the conversation. Yellow women do not. And it’s not because yellow women face the same issues as white women. That is untrue. Rather, I think it’s because we, yellow people, are more willing and able to separate our identities from our color.

I know that understanding your identity through your color is not inherently good. But it does give you a context, make you more aware of your personhood, which serves a purpose for some. And if you are both gendered and raced, the two work together to fumble up power structures, rendering strictly gendered conversations inadequate. This is true even if you are yellow. You don’t have to say anything. But still, if you choose to talk, talk right.

Christina M. Qiu '19 lives in Matthews Hall. Her column appears on alternate Mondays.