Reproductive Anxieties in the Racial Politics of the Asian American Manosphere

• In Event: Asia and Asian American Section Roundtables Session
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 10: Asia and Asian America Section Roundtable - Race and Racism

Abstract

This paper examines “Men’s Rights Asians” (MRAsians), an online subculture organized around challenging the racial emasculation of Asian men. MRAsians critique white supremacy’s gendered social order, but their critique takes the form of a misogynistic discourse against Asian women, particularly those that date white men. I use data collected through four months of non-participant observation of a MRAsian public online forum to show how the subculture blends anti-racist critique with male grievance to frame Asian women in interracial relationships with white men as existential threats to racial survival and family formation. Drawing from conjunctural approaches within political sociology and building on theorists of neoliberal social reproduction like Nancy Fraser and Alessandra Mezzadri, I argue that this mixture reflects broader anxieties about reproductive futures, nuclear family formation, and racial demographic continuity under conditions of neoliberal austerity. By situating the MRAsian phenomenon within this broader context, this paper contributes to emerging scholarship on the manosphere and the Multiracial Right that highlight the shifting racial logics of the current conjuncture. 

Author

• Apimanee Jalene Bulsombut, University of Californa, Santa Cruz