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Asian Women: Rape And Hate Crimes
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African Americans, Anime, Asian Americans, Asian Fetish, Asian Women, Asians, Bias Crime, Bigotry, Black People, Caucasians, Chinese, Dating, Defamer, Ethnicity, Fetish, Gawker, Gawker Media, Gawker.Com, Hate Crimes, Interracial Dating, Interracial Relationships, Japanese, Justice, Korean, Laws, Legal, Living News, Los Angeles, Media Bias, Media Responsibility, Michael Phelps, Nerds, Prejudice, Prosecution, Rachel Getting Married, Racial Stereotypes, Racism, Rape, Salon.Com, Sex Crimes, Sexism, Sexual Assault, Sexual Violence, Sexuality, Spokane, Stereotypes, Videogames, Violence Against Women, Washington State, White People, Women,
Living News
"Older, White Critics ... Missed the Boat" by making an issue of the interracial relationship in the movie Rachel Getting Married, posted Defamer.com last October. In rare form, the popular blog site -- known for mercilessly ridiculing celebrities and media players -- took a principled stance.
The posting chided well-known film critics for focusing on race when reviewing the film. The critics were preoccupied with the fact that white Rachel was marrying a black man. In the film, however, the couple's ethnicities go unmentioned. And this is the way a "cultural melting pot" should be, Defamer rhapsodized.
"[W]hite people can marry black people in 2008 without someone giving a speech about it," Defamer moralized.
But one month later, Gawker, their New York-based sister site, turned its back on racial sensitivity. "Following Hallowed Nerd Tradition, Michael Phelps Dates Asian Chick," blasted the Nov. 29, 2008 headline. In stark contrast to Defamer's impassioned call for the acceptance and respect of white/black couples, Gawker offered a lecture debasing Caucasian/Asian couples and dehumanizing Asian women.
"Michael Phelps is kind of a dweeb," Gawker wrote. "So it's funny that he's gone and done what so many newly-rich, videogame-anime-lady-obsessed nerds have done before him: he's found himself an Asian girlfriend."
In a link, Gawker then "outed" a list of other famous and very powerful Caucasian men romantically involved with women of Asian descent. The men - although widely perceived as Masters of the Universe -- are mocked as "nerds." But the truly troubling aspect of the Gawker story, and many of the discussion posts it spawned, is how they demean and commoditize all Asian women.
Indicative of where society stands today, the postings are racially inflammatory. The participants of one thread theorized Asian women have different gynecological anatomy than other human beings. Others repeat racist beliefs that this entire ethnic category of women are "submissive" and mindless, sexual playthings to be bought and sold.
Normal attraction, love and respect cannot exist in such pairings, implied the Gawker writer who started the discussion. "[L]ook at all these rich nerds with fetching Asian ladies on their arms. We don't want to sound 'offensive' but it's just a thing, you know?" he wrote. " ... a cliche ..."
The inapposite nature of Gawker and Defamer's two pieces about interracial dating is telling. Asian-American women suffer a stunning exception to hard-fought notions about racial equality applied to other minority groups. It is a societal norm to reduce an Asian woman to a sexualized stereotype, a one-faceted "thing" that is exclusively an object of desire. It is with breathtaking ease that even Gawker -- read and written by an educated, urbane class -- thinks nothing of endorsing this dangerous bigotry.
I repeat: these stereotypes are dangerous. Reducing Asian women into a sexual object is not funny, it is not flattering. It is perilous. We can see this when Asian women are subject to race-targeted sexual violence. The racist nature of the crimes go unrecognized and unpunished, as if there is nothing wrong with choosing a rape victim because she is Asian.
In Spokane, Washington, two white men and a woman specifically hunted random Japanese women in an elaborately planned scheme to kidnap, rape, sodomize, torture and videotape them. Their motivation? According to police reports, the rapists had a sexual "fantasy" and "fixation" about young Japanese women, who they believed were "submissive." (The very same beliefs so blatantly bandied about by Gawker and some of its readers.)
During a one month period in Autumn 2000, the predators abducted five Japanese exchange students, ranging from age 18 to 20. Motivated by their sexual biases about Asian women, all three used both their bodies and objects to repeatedly rape - vaginally, anally and orally -- two of the young women over a seven hour ordeal.
In Spokane, one of the attackers immediately confessed to searching only for Japanese women to torture and rape -- and eventually all pled guilty and were convicted. It clearly was a racially-motivated criminal case. The victims also believed they were attacked because of their race, the prosecutor told me.
What is astonishing, however, is that the district attorney failed to bring an additional charge that would have tagged the crimes as motivated by racial bias. The police also neglected to report the crime as a "hate crime," as demanded by the Justice Department to keep accurate statistics of all bias-driven crimes. Although the attackers all received long sentences, an important opportunity to raise the nation's consciousness was lost. We, as a society, were told that it's not a hate crime to rape an Asian woman because of her race.
In most states, as well as the federal justice system, crimes committed against a person because of the victim's race, ethnicity or national origin (as well as other protected classes) are considered "hate crimes" or "bias crimes." Such a label doesn't always add much to a sentence, but this enhancement to the charges is considered an important public policy matter and receives greater press coverage than standard crimes. A bias-driven crime is particularly egregious, say the laws, and must be defined as such.
But in rapes and sexual assaults targeting Asian women, I can find no instance of prosecutors or police bringing "hate crime" charges. It seems our society frowns on the rape itself, but accepts the racial motivation behind it. Mainstream society simply is blind to this type of racism. Indeed, the Spokane police detective handling the case wrote in an email to me: "It was felt that there was no hate involved instead he [the lead rapist] was very infatuated with the Japanese race." (sic).
Another stunning case of authorities failing to properly apply a "bias crime" label to race-based rapes took place in Los Angeles. In 2005, the LAPD arrested a serial rapist who explicitly only sought Asian-looking women, particularly Koreans, to rape, assault and rob. The man, who was not Asian, was charged with attacking seven women. But the violence extended to more: 13 known women were attacked, all Asian, and 11 of whom were of Korean descent. Police suspected more women were raped, but didn't come forward.
Nobody in the police department or District Attorneys office would speak to me about their inability to recognize the attacks as "hate crimes." A secretary in the press office, however, flat-out dismissed my queries by telling me the rapes were "not a hate crime."
I am Korean-American. If I was chosen to be raped because of that fact, I would expect the world to recognize it as a hate crime -- regardless of whether the attacker said he selected me because of a racial "infatuation." When such a belief is used to rape, kill or beat, it is a hate crime. The law is on my side; the law needs to be utilized.
In California, a "hate crime" includes a criminal act, such as rape, committed in whole, or in part, because of the victim's actual or perceived race or ethnicity. The bias need not be the only motivation. Hateful words, or epithets, are not required. Then why is this clear case of a rapist targeting Korean women not prosecuted as a bias crime? Why weren't the Spokane rapes recognized for their racist motivation?
The Associated Press reported on Jan. 2, 2009 that a "hate crime" label indeed accompanied the arrest of four people for gang-raping a woman in the San Francisco Bay Area. In that case, the attackers taunted the woman for being a lesbian, and the woman was raped shortly after getting out of a car that bore a rainbow gay pride sticker. The authorities' branding of that rape as a "hate crime" stems from the attackers using epithets and slurs that showed their literal hatred against gays. This type of "proof" fits the widely-accepted model of "hate crime" evidence: a white gang spewing racist words as they run down a black person; or black attackers yelling anti-Jewish words as they beat a Hasidic person.
The attackers in the L.A. and Spokane rape cases did not use typical "hate speech." But the biggest obstacle to bias crime charges in those cases is that society at large thinks it benign to hold sexualized stereotypes about Asian women. The woeful abandonment of "hate crime" categorization when Asian women are sexually attacked comes from the mistaken belief that weight should be attached to the attacker's claim to an "attraction" or "fetish" for the victim's Asian race. There is a disconnect: while authorities do not see the "fetish" as an excuse for the rape, they see it as an excuse from hate crime labeling. Like society at large, they fail to see that this is a form of racial discrimination.
Until we see a change in how these types of sexual attacks are perceived, Asian women in particular remain vulnerable. Unlike any other racial group in America today, Asian women routinely are dehumanized in popular culture as sexualized, meek and voiceless objects. These very stereotypes have led to violent attacks. Let's call it what it is: a hate crime.
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Brilliantly composed piece.
Substantively, I would ask whether seeking to delve into the likes and dislikes, i.e. fetishes, of the attackers mentioned does not lead down the path to criminalizing thought.
The attacks - despicable and horrific. The motive - clear for the purposes of proving the crime. Let's stick to stiffly sanctioning the conduct, yes. But this seems to border on criminalizing thought. Its true we're already there in a number of areas - hello George W. Bush's War on Terra. But at the risk of losing some additional life sentences for "hate" for these lowlifes, I'd reject any further use of the hate crimes statutes that catapults us toward the criminalization of thought.
Astute and well articulated. Thanks for calling out the hypocrisy.
Rape, sexual assault and domestic violence perpetrated against women should be classified as hate crimes. Hates crimes cover race, religion and sexuality not gender. Domestic violence perpetrated against women should be renamed gendered violence or hate crimes.
Gendered violence is certainly a serious issue. However, domestic violence perpetrated by women against men, or by men against each other, or by women against each other, still carry similar pathological reasonings behind them, and cannot be considered lesser crimes.
Thank you for shedding light on a very important issue.
"Asian-American women suffer a stunning exception to hard-fought notions about racial equality applied to other minority groups."
I'm confused. What does this mean?
75% of new rape cases happen to black women, and the 2nd leading causes of death for black women is homicide. In addition, the stereotypes of black women as loud, willing to fight, aggressive, and sexually available means rape against us is "trivialized" since we can "handle it". In addition to all of this, it is completely acceptable to hate/hurt/rape black women because we are "strong", and sexually immoral. Society views it entirely acceptable to hate, degrade, dehumanize and exploit black women. Black women walk down the street and face a barrage of sexual threats and verbal assault daily in communities of color. We also do not have a male community to turn to, since black men benefit from our exploitation and push the same stereotypes-therefore we have no protection.
Have you ever heard Hip Hop and how the entire society sing's along to songs that show how low black womens humanity is held in regard? And no, we don't have the "luxury" of it being listed "hate crime beneficiaries". In general we are not considered "submissive" and therefore we aren't deemed vulnerable and "worthy" of the status of "victim" and are somehow more deserving.
That's my piece, thanks for the read I guess.
I think that quote is meant to express almost exactly what you're saying. Asian-American women don't attract the public sympathy that blacks or Hispanics do. Part of this is probably due to, as you suggest, they do not encounter as much overt/severe racism. It probably also has something to do with the fact that American-born Asian-American women do as well (or better, depending on the state) as white women in terms of average income and educational attainment. The fact that 41% of American-born Asian-American women marry white men also might have something to do with it--Asian-American women are seen as a successfully assimilated group that does not need to be classified as a protected minority group.
That being said, just because Asian-American women do not suffer the same extent of racial oppression of other minority groups, that does not mean society's discrimination toward them should be overlooked. I don't think Gawker would have dared make such an objectifying statement about black or Latina women.
See Jaemin Kim's Profile
"Archaia": thank you so much for your comments shedding light on issues black women in this country face. These issues deserve their own articles, studies and awareness -- and are fascinating.
My quote (which you highlight) should be taken in context with the article. It specifically is about how in the established, mainstream media today -- issues of race involving Asian women are many, many steps behind the accepted standard of sensitivity toward other races and ethnic groups. In no way would I engage in any type of competition setting minority groups against each other in some contest of who suffers the most in this country -- in fact, it is so important that we see each other as brothers and sisters in the fight to uphold the principles of civil rights and equality in this country.
Also, the "submissive" stereotype against Asian women do NOT help them gain "victim-hood" status -- rather my article highlights how it demeans them by discounting individuality in favor of insidious racial profiling.
As a Japanese woman who used to study and live in LA, not going into "Hate crime" dispute here, but I was quite shocked to witness so many guys went after Japanese girls for same reasons written in Ms. Kim's the article.
One of those guys told me that he loved Japanese girls because of "cool stories" he heard from his friend who stationed in the Okinawa base and bragged about his dream life with Japanese girls.
Some rebuke the article here but I just want to thank Ms. Kim for bringing up the topic. If i had been able to speak English fluent, that's exactlly what i would've said to this guys who took my Japanese girl friend, with little bit of English skills, out on a date and raped her in the park. She told me the guy said to her, " You Guys are so cool"
Way to call out Gawker, Ms. Kim. Putting these seemingly benign stereotypes in the context of violent crimes hammers home the point that ALL race-based stereotypes are ultimately dangerous. But the stereotype is just as insulting to the non-Asian men who date them -- the implication being that they'd rather have a barnacle attached to them than a real partner. Whereas the white person who couples with a black person would be praised for looking past insidious stereotypes, the white person who couples with an asian person gets termed as a socially inept geek. The Gawker post was definitely a double sided slap.
Great article, and important topic - I hope your piece reaches many readers. I hadn't heard about the Spokane case, and you frame that horrible incident with very astute commentary about a bias I'd never considered the extent of. I felt astounded reading the response from the Spokane detective: ' "It was felt that there was no hate involved instead he [the lead rapist] was very infatuated with the Japanese race." (sic).' I think the prior poster made a wonderful point about semantics, and agree that simply replacing the phrase "hate crime" with "bias crime" might increase [hate crime] prosecution (and I think "bias crime" covers more ground than "racially motivated"). Investigators wouldn't then be muddling about with "I only hurt you because I love you" reasoning.
Eex, with your focus on social groups, rather than the crime victim herself, you're on a VERY slipperly (and dangerous) slope there. If the fetish determines the choice of a victim for a violent crime (how can you dispute that rape is a violent crime?), then it is a hate crime, regardless of how many victims there were or the extent to which it strikes fear in the hearts of other members of the racial/ethnic/religious/social group to which the victim is a member.
Is the desecration of a synagogue or another place of worship more sinister than a rape because the former makes "more" people scared or angry that someone has expressed hatred toward their religious grouping, whereas the latter has a fewer victims? That's a ridiculous question to even ask given the violence inherent in rape and the scars and psychological damage inflicted upon a rape victim.
If a woman is raped because she is Asian, she is the victim of a hate crime. What do we stand to gain by not accepting that and applying the law accordingly? Nothing.
The distinction between damage done to direct victims and society is crucial in understanding the genesis of hate crime legislation in the United States. Borrowing language from Ms. Kim, adding the 'hate crime' (or 'bias crime') label is an 'enhancement' to an already criminal act--hate crimes, at least in New York, carry harsher penalties for non-hate crimes. It is my understanding that the justification for this enhancement lies in the additional damage done to society (NOT the victim) as a result of these crimes. When I say society, I do not merely mean the relevant 'protected group,' but society as a whole--we are all negatively affected by racism.
For accuracy's sake, I NEVER said rape was not a violent crime (in fact, I said the opposite), nor did I attempt to compare the desecration of a synagogue to a rape. The synagogue example was meant to be use as an analogy which, more explicitly, goes as follows:
Defacing a synagogue with swastikas is a 'hate crime' and it carries a more severe punishment than defacing a phone booth with smiley faces. The reason it is considered a more severe crime is because it carries with it the intent to intimidate an entire segment of the population. The same distinction can be made between a typical murder and a lynching.
While I think these examples are very clear, I think trying to apply the same logic to the rape crimes written about in this article is far trickier.
My bad, in that I did not mean to imply that you took the view that rape is not a violent crime.
However, my point, is that if rapist selects his victim or victims based on her or their race, then the rapist is perpetrating a (violent) crime that is very comparable to a lynching. Both are, to papraphrase your words, "damaging to society;" both are violent crimes directed at a victim because of her or his race or ethnicity.
RE: The rape of the young lesbian in California, only one of her attackers was charged with a "hate crime" enhancement. All four men have pleaded not guilty after turning themselves in.
My real question is why is rape itself not considered a hate crime?
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Many people have this question. Please see my reply to "seaship" below.
If you're asking why shouldn't every single rape be considered an additional "hate crime" or "bias crime" -- I think the answer lies in proving every element of a crime. The bias crimes laws as they stand (every state writes it a bit differently) do require that the victim be part of a listed, protected class (i.e. race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation) and that the victim was sought out at least partly because of his/her inclusion in a protected class. So, if gender is included as a protected class, perhaps more female rape victims should insist their prosecutors add a "hate crime" charge (absolutely no one has tried, as far as I know, but why not test the limits of the law?)
And if a man is raped, say by a gang of women looking to make an example of a man, or another man who only seeks men, I'd also argue that if a hate crime includes "gender" as a protected class, that male victim should get full rights to a "hate crime" prosecution.
Realistically, I think for a lot of reasons making every rape a "hate crime" may be hard. I think the big issue is when a protected class always is left out of hate crime protection, and here, I think it's clear Asian women, unlike other groups, are left out.
3) Is fettishizing a person based on their race a racist act? If so, is it the type of racism that 'hate crimes' were meant to avert? These are important questions when considering rape as a 'hate crime.' Harsher punishments for Klansmen hanging black people are justified because most would agree that that type of hatred causes increased societal harm--aside from simply breeding more hate, it also serves as a type of racial terrorism. Another common example is harsher punishments for defacing synagogues with swastikas--again, because that type of property destruction is designed specifically to terrify and torment an entire group of people. I don't think these rapists above are striking the same kind of fear into Asian women around the country, nor do I think their crimes lead to proportionally negative collateral damage to society.
4) I think it's racist to assume that Asian women are more docile or submissive than women of other races. However, if you're looking for someone to blame for this, I think it probably has a lot more to do with the pornography industry than anything else (certainly more than the serial rapists written about above). The entire POINT of porn is to fettishize people--either as submissives, or harlots, or whatever. Whereas the only objective of the rapists above was to seek pleasure by raping Asian women--not to produce stereotypes or induce fear in an entire race. Surely there is a difference.
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eex: If you're making the point that "bias crime" labeling is too difficult to use in rape because there's always some sort of bias/fetish involved: I disagree, and believe lawmakers were right to enact bias crime legislation. Excluding rape would be extraordinarily unfair.
"Bias crimes" specifically were enacted as a public policy measure to keep better track of when an individual or an institution is singled out to be a victim of a crime because they belong to a "group" -- i.e. a religion, a race, sexual orientation. The extent of such discrimination needs to be fully understood, recognized and rectified, according to the policy behind the bias laws.
All acts classified as "crimes" are considered terrible under the law. "Bias crime" laws simply are trying to add an "enhancement" charge to not only understand & keep track of the extent of biases, but tell the people of this country that it is especially wrong, and must be prevented and eradicated, to hold a stereotype or biased belief that leads to an actual crime.
So, should "hate crime" only be applied to proven historical problems that also impact great numbers of people: NO. That is not the intent or the wording of bias crime laws.
While you may be right--it may be unfair to exclude rape (and I'm not saying we should)--my worry is that this kind of thinking will severely dilute the meaning of what a hate crime truly is, thereby diminishing the severity of what I could consider a 'true' hate crime. If we can agree that rape usually involves some type of fetish or preference, isn't there a danger of identifying most rapes as 'hate crimes'? It seems to me there would be an especially high amount of same race 'hate rapes,' since most rapists attack victims of the same race.
I'm going to take your following statement as an answer to my first point (if this is wrong, please correct me):
"The extent of such discrimination needs to be fully understood, recognized and rectified, according to the policy behind the bias laws."
The skinhead writing the swastika fits these criteria much better than the white man with a Japanese fetish--the skinhead HATES Jews, while the man with the ethnic fetish PREFERS Japanese women. While they both discriminate, I do not think they should be put in the same boat.
My Vassar education exposed me to these kinds of racial sensitivities, as well as the kind of elitism used to write off an under educated Washington detective who, at least to me, makes a bit of sense.
A few thoughts of mine:
1) Serial rapists usually attack victims of their own race. Can Ms. Kim, or anyone else who has a legal background or heightened understanding of 'hate crime' law, explain whether or not a 'hate crime' would be committed if a white man serially raped a dozen white women. Perhaps the essential difference is that the rapists mentioned in this article were deliberately seeking out, and raping, asian women (?) I guess my question is: is that deliberate selection viewed differently, under the law, than a subconscious selection? Ethically, does it matter?
2) While rape is certainly a violent crime, i don't think the police officer from Washington's comment should be put aside so quickly. Should people who rape amputees be charged as hate criminals? What about men who rape only women with big breasts? Don't most rapists attack women who meet their specific sexual preferences? Where should society draw the line?
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I can't emphasize enough how even "smart", mainstream media accepts dehumanizing stereotypes of Asian women. See the following Salon.com article: http://www.salon.com/col/weav/1998/05/06weav.html
The white woman journalist writes about one white man's racist reasons for dating Asian women, and stunningly endorses this man's view by writing that "American women" (i.e. Caucasians) are: "strong, independent, assertive, equal." She then writes: "We assume that guys who date Asians are looking for a little docile maid." Instead of debunking this theory, she perpetuates this dangerous stereotype -- that Asian women just don't count as normal human beings (i.e. white ones).
Great article. This works both ways as well. I travel internationally a lot. Many foreign men think of American woman as being promiscuous (largely because of how they are portrayed in our entertainment/media exports) or more likely to participate in more "kinky" sexual activities. Myself and female friends traveling abroad have been singled out for sexual harassment in many places, being told that "we know what you American girls are like." Just as Asian woman are considered a sexual prize here by some, so white women (especially American) are considered sexual prizes abroad by some.
Both the Asian entertainment world and the American entertainment world are very big on depicting women as sexual objects and nothing else. Their personalities, intelligence, capabilities, etc, are irrelevent and undiscussed. The only purpose they serve is being bed mates to the male lead characters.
This is a riveting, powerful article on racism in the U.S. today. It is absolutely amazing that in 2009, some folks still insist that people of different races are fundamentally "different," not worthy of respect or equal treatment, etc. Although things are getting better, as Americans we have a long history of drawing conclusions about people based solely/largely on their race or nationality. This unfortunate legacy is reinforced by mainstream media, which prefers to portray minorities in their stereotypical roles, and will not be easily overcome, especially in non-diverse areas where racial assumptions remain largely unchallenged.
Thank you Ms Kim for your much needed insight. Our society is so messed up. Rape is a violent crime, and directed at a specific race, no matter what the apparent reason, makes it a "hate crime"! It is incredible how backwards so many people still are in this country.
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