Category: Feminism

Delaware State Representative Who Used Anti-Asian, Misogynistic Slurs in Email Won’t Seek Re-election

State House Representative Gerald Brady at a press conference. Screenshot of footage by NBC10.

Posted By Jenn

Content warning: Racist and sexist slurs

In late June, Delaware State Representative Gerald Brady (D) sparked backlash after an email he wrote was published by Delaware Online / The News Journal. In the email (which Brady sent from his official government email address to the email sender rather than to its intended recipient), Brady criticized efforts to protect sex workers using racist and sexist slurs referring to Asian women.

The email sender had forwarded to Brady a Princeton study that had found that decriminalization of sex work in New York City had led to a reduction in sex crimes, and had called on Brady to support efforts to decriminalize sex work in Delaware. Neither the original email nor the attached study made any mention of Asian or Asian American women.

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I am a (Southeast) Asian American Woman

Woman in silhouette in a field against the setting sun.

Posted By Jenn

By Guest Contributor: Mandy Diec

Trigger warning: this blog post discusses sexual harassment and assault.

It has been over three months since the series of mass shootings in Atlanta, Georgia that killed eight people, six of whom were Asian American women. I am still tired, I am still processing, and I am still in pain.

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Report: Asian American Women Twice as Likely to Be Targets of Anti-Asian Hate

Photograph of the NYC public art installation "I Still Believe in Our City" featuring artwork by Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya.

Posted By Jenn

A joint study by the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF) and Stop AAPI Hate finds that Asian American women are twice as likely as Asian American men to self-report being targeted in anti-Asian hate incidents. Further, NAPAWF reports that in a separate poll surveying 3,500 Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) women, nearly four out of five Asian American women say that anti-Asian racism has affected their lives – for many, the impact has been significant.

Most strikingly, that survey found that half of all Asian American and Pacific Islander women have personally experienced a specific incident of anti-Asian racism in the last two years.

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I Am An Asian American Woman

A woman looks out the window, with her back against a bed.

Posted By Jenn

By Guest Contributor: San-Pei Lee

I am a woman born by a woman and so many women before. I come from a legacy of womanhood, of creation from love, the reason for both women and men on Earth.

But I can’t walk in broad daylight in the streets of Los Angeles without a man peering at me with predatory eyes and remarking that he “likes him some sweet Asian”. I can’t even walk in my own birth country without a man of my own race harassing me on the subway. Was it just an accident in the crowd? But that definitely felt like groping, lingering longer than an accidental touch. No, I can’t stay out alone late at night without the fear of adding to a statistic.

Will women ever stop being blamed for and forced to experience harassment, rape, and prostitution?

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Solidarity is Love: Taking Asian Diasporic Feminists Back to Black and Asian Feminism in the ’60s

The cover of the Sept-Oct 1972 issue of 'Triple Jeopardy'.

Posted By Jenn

By: Victoria M. Huỳnh

Nearly eight months into 2020, and there is so much to grieve. We are amidst a global pandemic leaving Black, Indigenous, incarcerated, and immigrant communities most vulnerable. Black-led uprisings in the imperial core enraged by the white supremacist murder of George Floyd should have shaken the world awake again: the US internally robs and exploits Black life in duty of its imperialist project that is the US empire. Worldwide, the US empire continues to manifest its devastation in crippling US economic sanctions amidst the bombing of Lebanon, ongoing US-backed Israeli occupation of Palestine, impending US imperialist aggression to China towards a Cold War 2.0, and more. 

To locate this moment, as non-Black Asian diasporas in the imperial core seeking solidarity with Black and other Third Worlded peoples, is to know this moment is fraught with deep struggle since times before ours. It is also yet a testimony to the urgency of committing to Black revolutionary praxis in their fight for a new world— knowing no Black life should have been lost to US empire in the first place. If we fall back on bell hooks’ reminder that, “love is profoundly political. Our deepest revolution will come when we understand this truth,” we are forced to rethink what is so necessarily meant by “love” in and beyond these times. And if solidarity is love, we should be pushed to pursue a solidarity that is not just conscious of being against white supremacy, US imperialism, patriarchy, or global capitalism [wrongfully marketed] as separate systems– but a solidarity for an anti-imperialist, socialist, decolonized world that necessitates Black liberation– and which knows we must take down the US empire in its entirety to achieve so. 

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