East Asian American Asexualities: Intersectionalities and Stereotypes

• In Event: Sociology of Sexualities Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 1: Sexuality, Dating, and Partnerships

Abstract

This research explores how the forces of sexualization, racialization, and gendering intertwine and interact with one another for asexual East Asian Americans.

Asexuality, or the absence of sexual attraction, disrupts stereotyped conceptions of East Asian Americans’ sexualities by questioning sex’s normativity and how its structures support hegemonic ideas about a “correct” sexuality. Asexual scholars focus on the pervasive nature of compulsory sexuality and acephobia, which assumes the belief that everyone desires sex and those who do not are abnormal. Few scholars have addressed asexuality among East Asian American identities, demonstrating a significant gap in the literature because of hypersexualization of Asian women and the desexualization of Asian men. Theory on the gendered nature of Asian American sexualities, such as Celine Parreñas Shimizu's bind of representation and straitjacket sexualities and Anne Anlin Cheng's ornamentalism, identifies stereotypes and explains strategies for reacting to sexualization.

In this presentation, I will discuss the findings of twenty-three in-depth interviews, in which participants reported that their asexual identities were not as salient in everyday life. Instead, Asian Americans reported that their gendered and queer identities exerted a more overarching influence. Additionally, although all of the interviewees were aware of racial stereotypes about Asians, the majority of participants expressed a lack of stereotyping in their lived experiences. I argue that these emerging findings offer surprising insights into the intersection between asexuality and East Asian American identities, with implications for our understandings of sexuality, racialized genders, and the salience of identities in everyday life.

Author

• Katelyn Liu, Oberlin College