White Men, Asian Women, and Feminism

For some reason, William Sparrow, the editor of the Asian Sex Gazette, has an occasional column at Asia Times Online. I suppose I should expect this from the editor of such a fine publication, but Sparrow's piece today was particularly loathsome.

Sparrow argues that women are gaining power in Asian countries while still recognizing the proper differences between men and women. The first part of the equation may well be true. Women do seem to be playing a bigger role in the public sphere at least in many Asian countries. But for Sparrow and other white men who go to Asia for the women, women's sexual prowess is their ultimate value. Those differences for Sparrow are about sex.

For Sparrow and his ilk, feminism has always been a repudiation of sex, despite the vast amount of feminists who no one could legitimately ever accuse of being opposed to sex. He writes: "I've heard countless men expressed how nice it is to be somewhere that they can tell a woman that she is "beautiful" or "sexy" and have it taken as a compliment rather than a lawsuit." Yes, in my experience, men who say these things are often total fucking assholes who claim that they are just telling women how beautiful they are. In reality, they may be going way over the line, sexually harassing women in really bad ways.

When I lived in Asia in the mid 90s, I knew men who had come to Asia for the women. They said things like this all the time. And you know what? They had almost no respect for women at all. Many seemed to outright hate women. They liked Asia because there one could supposedly find a submissive woman that would have sex whenever you wanted and not talk back to you. They wanted the myth of the patriarchal past, when men dominated the household and the bedroom.

Sparrow also talks about "angry feminist protests in the West - the type typified by anti-male rhetoric ("Use condoms or beat it") and signs about male oppression ("Keep your laws off my body") and empowerment ("Riots not diets")." Funny, I've hardly seen any anti-male rhetoric in years, at least among anyone under the age of 50. I guess demanding safe sex means that you hate men. Huh. Also, fighting for abortion rights is hardly the same as being "angry" about "male oppression." And I guess women's empowerment sucks or something. What a jerk.

Sparrow's views about feminism become crystal clear when he reports on what one female working at a Bangkok bar thought about his description of western-style feminism. Her response:

"Do women in your country - these 'feminists' - actually do what you're saying? (bold face added)" she asked. "[They] get angry for men looking at sexy women? They cut off their hair, don't wear make-up and dress like men?"

"No wonder [foreigners] like Asia so much."

Hmmm...so for Sparrow, all feminists hate men and sex. Really? Because most of the feminists I know talk way more about sex than I ever do. They quite often wear makeup. They rarely "dress like men," whatever the hell that even means today. I guess Sparrow hasn't been in the United States since 1975.

It's also worth wondering, as is often the case in some Asian countries and certainly in Thailand, if these female bar workers he talked to were also sex workers. Naturally, we don't know that from the article.

Sparrow's attack on those man-hating feminazis totally ignores the real oppression that many Asian women face. We'll leave the sex industry out of this. Domestic violence is an epidemic in many Asian countries. When I lived in South Korea, you saw women with black eyes way too often. They had a saying that was something like (and to get this you have to know that it references some sort of fish dish where you pound the fish) "Women and fish need to be beaten twice a week." I was teaching elementary school teachers English at that time, preparing them to teach their kids. So I brought this up to them. They were mortified that I knew this. I got called into the state education board the next day and was asked why I was teaching communism. The reaction against me telling them that beating women was wrong was sharp and swift.

But I guess issues like domestic violence, not to mention unequal wages, rape, high rates of childbirth, and the rising tide of fundamentalism don't play a role in Sparrow's ideal Asian feminism. Rather, Sparrow is much more comfortable with women who are just happily pro-sex. What else matters? He closes with an appeal to support feminist NGOs, but it really feels like a non-sequiter thrown on by an editor to make the piece more palatable.