Thinking a lot this week about what it’s like to navigate being an Asian American woman who is passionate and outspoken about racism and sexism, and how racialized and gendered stereotypes mean that this is so often misread as just mean or nasty.
It’s like as Asian American women (and other non-men), we are especially pigeon-holed by expectation that we always be nice and kind — even when this is a cartoon, even when it is to our own detriment.
This past week in the class I’m teaching, we talked a bit about ways women in STEM navigate stereotype, which is really a conversation about survival.
At work, I’m a capable, driven, and no-nonsense. I have fun and am approachable, but am also A-type. One thing I find myself doing is introducing myself as “intense”. It’s sort of a self-effacing joke, but also a survival strategy to offset racialized and gendered expectations.
The thing about stereotypes is that they don’t give space for people to embody the broad ranges of the human experience. They don’t give us space to be normal, flawed, complicated humans.
Also thinking about how these reinforce white supremacy and patriarchy. The same traits, for example, that make me “intense” are those that one needs to excel in my field — and that no cishet white man would feel the need to apologize for having.
And yet, to a person, my women mentors have all had these capable, driven, no-nonsense personalities; and, to a person, they have been judged for them.
Anyways, just thinking a bit today about the penalties we endure as Asian American women/non-men for being who we are, yet having to carry the weight of society’s racialized and gendered expectations of who we should be.
Society, it feels like, always expects us to be the supporting characters in our own stories.
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