Why I don't like to be called docile

[terriko]

Some time ago, my sister and I raised a stink with my online gaming friends after one of the guys said that the Japanese were docile. Half Japanese ourselves, we reacted by being anything but docile, and in the end the dude left the group (permanently). Despite our attempts to educate, I doubt if he ever really understood why we were so upset by his casual racism or even that it was casual racism.

I read this article today that really resonated with me about the historical reasons why calling Asian women docile is so offensive, and I want to share this quote which puts the problem in some crude but clear focus.

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.

[...]

This particular form of racism has myriad consequences for Asian-American women. A significant amount of the attention we receive from non-Asian men is in the form of creepy, excessive enthusiasm… as if they grew up at Pappy’s knee listening to legends of how Asian women will do anything to your penis that you want them to. Then there is the offensive assumption that anyone who is half Asian is the product of an American GI and an Asian woman he met standing on the corner saying “me love you long time.”

-- "Asian Women, American GIs, and Modern Rape Culture"

I have other, more personal and Canadian-context-sensitive reasons for disliking the stereotype too. As if the reasons above weren't enough!

The saddest part of my online gaming story is that the guy is married to a Japanese woman and has kids. His daughter(s) will be exposed to this kind of crud regularly as she grows up. I certainly hit terrible variations of this stuff as a young teenager (amplified by the "geeks love Asian women" meme). I hope by then he's a little bit more understanding as to how an offhand generalization can be part of a pattern of internalized racism.