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Must Asian Masculinity Be Anti-Feminist?

This has been particularly true of the controversy over Maxine Hong Kingston's book "The Woman Warrior." Authors and critics Frank Chin and Jeffrey Paul Chan, among others, have condemned Kingston as putting down Asian men while implicitly begging for white acceptance. In contrast — and like more recent advocates of any depiction of Asian men as traditionally "masculine" — Chin and Chan assert a different Asian American aesthetic, one that champions the tradition of "heroism" in Asian literature as a model for Asian American writers. They advocate Asian "heroism" over what they see as the self-abasement of the autobiography and other writings by Asian American women.

However, Chin and Chan's male-centered ideal of Asian American "heroism" has critics of its own. One critic is Professor King-Kok Cheung, an immigrant woman from Hong Kong, who wrote a very powerful rebuttal to Chin and Chan. Cheung's article, "The Woman Warrior vs. the Chinaman [sic] Pacific: Must a Chinese American Critic Choose Between Feminism and Heroism?," deals specifically with Chinese American literature, but the issues that it raises are just as applicable to those who champion aggressive, violent Asian male characters in such problematic films as "Rising Sun" and "The Fast and the Furious" merely because they differ from the popular perception of Asian "emasculation." The words remind us that — as desirable as it is to increase the number of traditionally "masculine" Asian male characters in the media — this society ultimately needs to move beyond traditional concepts of "masculinity" and the perceptual confines that they impose. Cheung writes in part:

"In the last two decades, many Chinese American men — especially such writers and editors as Chin and Chan — have begun to correct the distorted images of Asian males projected by the dominant culture. Astute, eloquent, and incisive as they are in debunking racist myths, they are often blind to the biases resulting from their own acceptance of the patriarchal construct of masculinity. In Chin's discussion of Fu Manchu and Charlie Chan and in the perceptive contrast he draws between the stock images of Asian men and those of other men of color, one can detect not only homophobia but perhaps also a sexist preference for [Asian male] stereotypes that imply predatory violence against women to 'effeminate' ones. Granted that the position taken by Chin may be little more than a polemicist stance to combat white patronage, it is disturbing that he should lend credence to the conventional association of physical strength with manly valor....

"While acquaintance with some Chinese folk heroes may induce the American public to acknowledge that Chinese culture, too, has its Robin Hood and John Wayne, I remain uneasy about the masculinist orientation of the heroic tradition, especially as expounded by by the editors who see loyalty, revenge, and individual honor as the overriding ethos that should be inculcated in (if not already absorbed by) Chinese Americans. If white media have chosen to highlight and applaud the submissive and nonthreatening characteristics of Asians, the Asian American editors are equally tendentious in underscoring the militant strain of the Asian American heritage. The refutation of effeminate stereotypes through the glorification of machismo merely perpetuates patriarchal terms and assumptions....

"If Chinese American men use the heroic dispensation to promote male aggression, they may risk remaking themselves in the image of their oppressors — albeit under the guise of Asian panopoly. Precisely because the racist treatment of Asians [in America] has taken the peculiar form of sexism — insofar as the indignities suffered by men of Chinese descent are analogous to those traditionally suffered by women — we must refrain from seeking antifeminist solutions to racism. To do otherwise reinforces not only patriarchy but white supremacism.

"Well worth heeding is [French philosopher Louis] Althusser's caveat that when a dominant ideology is integrated as common sense into the consciousness of the dominated, the dominant class will continue to prevail. Instead of tailoring ourselves to white ideals, of drumming up support for Asian American 'manhood,' we may consider demystifying popular stereotypes while reappropriating what Stanford Lyman calls the 'kernels of truth' in them that are indeed part of our ethnic heritage. For instance, we need not accept the Western association of Asian self-restraint with passivity and femininity. I, for one, believe that the respectful demeanor of many an Asian and Asian American indicates, among other things, a willingness to listen to others and to resolve conflicts rationally or tactfully. Such a collaborative disposition — be it Asian or non-Asian, feminine or masculine — is surely no less valid and viable than one that is vociferous and confrontational."

From King-Kok Cheung, "The Woman Warrior vs. the Chinaman Pacific: Must a Chinese American Critic Choose Between Feminism and Heroism?" in "Conflicts in Feminism," eds. Marianne Hirsch and Evelyn Fox Keller (New York: Routledge, 1990), pp. 236-37, 244-45. Reprinted in Jean Yu-Wen Shen Wu and Min Song "Asian American Studies: A Reader" (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2000), pp. 310, 317. The term "Chinaman Pacific" refers to the title of one of Chin's books. Chin regards "Chinaman" as a positive term and "Asian American" as a somewhat co-opted label.