I am submitting a comment in response to the article by Maggie Lam to contribute to the dialogue. The following are my thoughts:
As an Asian woman, I agree with many things that have been said in reaction to this article. Editors of The Daily Californian do have to be more careful about what they approve in the future. Maggie Lam has been unnecessarily explicit in her writing, and it’s not a particularly well-written piece at that either. There are issues with her potentially sexually assaulting the boy she was with. However, I do have to say, that this whole thing has been a huge misunderstanding. All racial generalizations aside, Maggie makes a very real point. Yes, her language was vulgar. Yes, her story made us all uncomfortable. And yes, her example was very poorly chosen. But she does make a very real point.
Looking at the whole article, 80 percent of it was a narration of Maggie’s hook up and she doesn’t make her point until the very end of the article. And even then, it was not very well expressed. At the core of the article, Maggie’s point is that Asian women feel marginalized, which is a completely fair point. Unfortunately, Maggie then decided to put in all that unnecessary stuff in her writing to cloud her central idea. It is impossible for anyone who does not already know what she’s trying to say to understand her point. The main reason why the point is unclear is that it does not follow from her story.
As an Asian woman who grew up in a community of white people, when it came to boys, there was always doubt of whether white boys would like me because I’m different and not white. If you go on any Internet forum, search: “I’m an Asian girl, would a white guy like me?” The forum would almost always tell you: “Yes, of course white boys would like you—– don’t think of being Asian as a flaw, think of it as an asset. Being Asian makes you exotic, and of course white boys would be attracted to that.” You might ask, what’s wrong with that answer? Well, what’s wrong with it is that, I, along with a bunch of other Asian girls, was taught and told, from a very young age, that white boys will like me because I am exotic. Not because I am intelligent or kind or independent, but because I’m exotic. Therefore, it has been ingrained in our minds that when white men pursue us, it is because we are exotic. I know this because whenever a white guy has expressed interest in me, I’ve always believed that it was because he thought I was exotic and not because I was worth loving the way I was. And exotic doesn’t seem to be the traditional trait to look for when it comes to seeking long-term partners or serious relationships.
Of course, there are white men who like Asian women because they think we are “exotic.” I’m not saying all of us are afraid that being exotic is our only asset or that we should be or that we are forced to feel this way. There are plenty of Asian women out there who are beautiful and confident and don’t think of themselves any less than a white girl, and I’ve had the pleasure to know a number of them. I wish I could be like them. But this is a very real fear among Asian women, and I am saying that a lot of us do feel this way. A lot of us, beneath it all, believe that if you are a white male, ultimately only a white woman would be good enough for you. To this end, Maggie actually puts it well: We are afraid that our “desirability was only a fleeting moment whereas a white girl was the one worth getting to know, the one worth bringing home to parents.” And what Maggie tried to say was that she felt only her white housemate’s feelings were being considered and not hers. I don’t think in her case it had anything to do with race, so the example doesn’t really apply, but I think that was what she was trying to say. We feel inferior to white women. Of course, we don’t have any real reason to feel inferior, and you might say it’s our own fault for feeling this way, but the truth is that we do feel this way and it’s harmful that we feel this way.
There will be women who objectify themselves before society does in every race, and there will be men who don’t treat women with respect in every race. Just because Maggie may have encountered one such boy and he happened to be white, does not give her the right to generalize all white boys as “f***boys” who objectify women. But her point remains.
Jessie Hwang is a UC Berkeley student.
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