“Eliminating Temptation”: Anti-Asian Fetishization, Criminalization, and Violence in America

Abstract

This project seeks to examine the ways in which the unique history of fetishization and criminalization of the Asian American body has been and continues to be used to justify violence against the Asian American community, especially those groups most marginalized, such as women, migrants, and sex workers. From early-held Western ideas of Asia as an exotic land ripe for conquest and resource extraction, to notions of early Asian American laborers as machine-like “coolies” who drove down wages and threatened white livelihoods, to the Atlanta tragedy against female spa workers being justified through “eliminating temptation” rhetoric, the desire to consume the Asian American body through labor and sex has been and continues to be used to justify and perpetuate violence and exclusion against the Asian diaspora in the United States.This paper will focus on how Asian and Asian American women exist at a unique intersection of labor and sex that leaves them particularly vulnerable to violence. In Part I, I will examine the development of the cultural and legal consciousness of the Asian woman in the United States and the impact of this construct upon the law. In Part II, I will explore non-carceral approaches to healing and forward movement for our communities.