The New Traditional Man: The Construction of a New Asian American Masculinity

• In Event: 115 - Section on Asia and Asian America Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 10. The Sociology of Gender and Work across Asia and Asian America

Abstract

Although Asian-descent men in the U.S. have been subject to negative race-gender stereotyping from a history of exclusion and anti-“foreigner” campaigns, evidence suggests that mainstream perceptions and Asian American men’s self-definitions are dramatically in flux. . Drawing on in-depth interviews of U.S.-raised heterosexual East and Southeast Asian American men in the metropolitan U.S., supplemented by popular media textual analysis, the authors examine how these men respond to being emasculated vis-à-vis dominant, White hegemonic masculinity while simultaneously being held to dutiful model minority expectations. Unlike what Chen’s (1999) landmark study found, the Asian American men in this article do not engage in one uniform strategy to deal with societal denigration and gender pressures, rather, they are engaged in an attempt to ascend a White-led masculinity hierarchy by crafting what we call, “The New Traditional Man.” A key feature of this gendered alternative is the centrality of the model minority stereotype to its formation. On the one hand, the Asian American men seek to compensate for, or belie, its depiction of them as nerdy, passive, and asexual while, on the other, they use it to beat White hegemonic masculinity at its own game by way of “good” racial stereotypes and ethnic cultural norms that set them apart as the masculine ideal. In doing so, however, the men ultimately reify the unequal racialized masculinity order that spawned the model minority discourse in the first place.

Authors

• Kelly Haesung Chong, University of Kansas

• Nadia Y. Kim, Loyola Marymount University