AsianActivist
Member
When Asian Women Are Harassed for Marrying Non-Asian Men
Racism is rampant among the East Asian community when it comes to interracial marriages. The majority of East Asian men, no matter where they live are stuck in a perpetual time warp, thinking it's the 1900's when they can still dictate who women are allowed to be attracted to. This is highly problematic and leads to harassment against Asian women who are married to non-Asian men.
The men who harass me know three things: I’m Chinese-American, my husband is white, and our son is multiracial. You hate Asian men, they insist; you hate your own child. You hate yourself. I once received 27 tweets — calling me everything from “irrelevant” to “liar” to “coward” to “neglectful gaslighting mother” — in 48 hours, from one person. I save these messages in a folder on my computer to document the abuse. Whenever I upgrade my laptop, I copy them over, little packets of poison I must keep and carry forever.
I’ve gotten messages like this for more than four years, ever since my first novel — featuring a family with an Asian father and a white mother — was published and my own mixed family became public knowledge. But this message arrived in August — #AsianAugust, some were calling it, because of the huge success of Asian-centered films like Crazy Rich Asians, Searching, and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. It was a moment when Asian-Americans were celebrating as a community, yet here was a hate message plummeting out of the blue into my inbox. And like most of the harassing messages I receive, it came from an Asian man.
Racism is rampant among the East Asian community when it comes to interracial marriages. The majority of East Asian men, no matter where they live are stuck in a perpetual time warp, thinking it's the 1900's when they can still dictate who women are allowed to be attracted to. This is highly problematic and leads to harassment against Asian women who are married to non-Asian men.