We are strong women, relentless in our advocacy for justice. We speak up, stand up, and challenge oppressive systems. We write articles identifying the oppression. We speak up at school boards and City Council meetings. We speak to the press. We advocate in court, challenging injustice, and we have scored victories for justice. We know this work is not easy and that opposition comes in many forms, some highly aggressive, as we push for more equitable structures. However, in addition to the resistance to anti-racist anti-oppressive work is the constant racialized misogyny we confront.
Asian American women are forced to navigate a paradox shaped by two opposing stereotypes. In films and popular media we are cast as either the Lotus Flower or the Dragon Lady – demure, obedient, quiet, and desirable, or, as dangerous, hypersexualized villains. In both cases, Asian American women are rendered flat, unidimensional, and stripped of emotional complexity and humanity. When society encounters us, if we deviate from the Lotus Flower, we are cast in the role of the villain.
These stereotypes position Asian women as the antithesis of the macho, masculine “military man,” defining us only through our proximity to men—most often white men. We are not seen as fully realized human beings but are reduced to caricatures, valued or vilified depending on how well we serve someone else’s narrative. Those not served by our ideas and actions then vilify and attack us, with societal license to diminish us in ways that are invisible to most of society because the attacks are so commonplace and socially acceptable. Men often unleash their fury, frustration, or personal inadequacies onto us.
This dynamic is reinforced at the highest levels of power. When a nation’s leader openly engages in and promotes misogyny and racism, he models and legitimizes such behavior everywhere else. Trump’s public attacks on women journalists are one example. In one instance, he berated CBS News chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes, repeatedly calling her “stupid” during a press exchange. When the leader of one of the most powerful countries in the world uses demeaning, aggressive language toward a woman he disagrees with, is it any wonder that other men feel emboldened to do the same?
This pattern is not new.
Misogyny kept women from exerting influence through voting for centuries. The actual movement towards women having the right to vote is widely known as having built momentum in the 1840s, several decades after the founding of the United States with a constitutional amendment not being proposed until 1878. It took 42 years (1920) for women to have the right to vote. Even then, it wasn’t until the three decades after the 19th Amendment was ratified that the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 granted Asian immigrants the right to naturalize, gain full citizenship, and participate in elections.
But citizenship was also conditional. The Expatriation Act of 1907 stripped women of U.S. citizenship if they married non-citizens. White women could regain citizenship if their husbands later naturalized. But Asian American women (and men) were barred from this pathway due to racist exclusion laws. White men, by contrast, could marry non-citizens without any threat to their citizenship. The law made clear whose belonging was conditional and whose was not.
Today, the legacy of this racism and sexism persists, as the current administration has made blatantly clear.
In an ongoing anti-harassment case, we, along with a group of women pro bono advocates, have been supporting Asian immigrant women. Throughout the proceedings, we have witnessed outright examples of racialized misogyny. One judge, an Asian American man, in a court hearing, repeatedly and impatiently ordered an Asian American women attorney, Joyce, to “sit down” in open court, visibly agitated by the perception that she was interrupting him (when she spoke during silences she reasonably interpreted as an opportunity to advocate). Notably, the male judge did not respond the same way when a white woman engaged in actual interruption.
Opposing counsel, a white man defending the harasser, has alternated between presenting himself as a reasonable, competent attorney and erupting into aggression when outcomes do not immediately favor him. In pages of accusatory filings, he has sought sanctions against Joyce for daring to point out that he made legal errors. Notably, when a white woman counsel pointed out his misreading of a statute, he did not come after the white woman.
This same white male attorney has also accused Jamie of acting in “bad faith” for correcting his erroneous claims and for refusing to influence negotiations in an unrelated case. The term “bad faith” falsely implies deception and dishonesty, when in reality it is he who engaged in performative negotiations without any genuine intent to resolve the matter.
The ease with which men (and women) attack Asian American women for the (apparently not-so) simple act of advocating for the underrepresented results is reflected in innumerable other examples.
When Joyce, who was elected to and served on a school board, made the difficult decision, along with two fellow board members to vote in favor of the superintendent’s recommendation to close two low-enrolled elementary schools (one at 48% enrollment) rather than terminate the employment of 60 teachers, she received a death threat, and her children were targeted in online posts. None of the other two board members who voted in favor of the budget recommendation or their children were attacked. The superintendent said it was the first time in his 40 years of K-12 education experience that he had seen that happen. As more women of color are elected and serving in public roles, there appears to be a rise in aggressive and threatening harassment. In Joyce’s example, the FBI agent ultimately found the perpetrator (after multiple months) but concluded, on no basis other than the perpetrator was a suburban woman, and his gut that she was harmless and had learned her lesson, that the threatening words: “You know what happened to Marie Antoinette. We know where you live,” was not a death threat. Institutional gaslighting pairs with individual aggression and violence to endanger Asian American women on a daily basis.
In addition, there are individuals charged with upholding rules of fairness who undermine our work and character. In one instance, while we were advocating for an Asian immigrant woman seeking to rent out her home to escape harassment from a racist neighbor, a request blocked by her condominium association, the white male management company agent adamantly refused to communicate with us, was defensive about his complicity in racism and would not answer our calls. An HOA president, a man of color, after years of being informed of the racialized harassment, said “he would take a stand if he saw racism,” making the event hypothetical despite years of documented abuse. Even people who claim to be on the side of justice have cast aspersions on our judgment, motives, or character, with thoughtless rants about being “not credible,” “obnoxious,” or other pejorative adjectives, rather than calling out the injustice of a situation.
Not all violence is loud. When Jamie began a new job, she was told that she would work closely with the finance director. However, he refused to answer her emails, declined meetings, and responded curtly when she asked questions in person. She questioned herself and whether she had done something wrong. She became even more meticulous, overly polite, careful, and restrained in communications, hoping to avoid provoking further hostility. This quiet dismissal and withholding of cooperation, institutionalized and normalized, was its own form of aggression.
There are also moments when men express support for our work only when they believe it might lead to romantic access. And we are in a position of trying to “politely decline” to try to keep ourselves safe – from violence and from retaliation. The sexualized and racialized treatment of Asian American women is not limited to white men, though white men often enact it with particular entitlement.
This is the burden Asian American women carry: being constantly judged and punished through the contradictory lenses of the Lotus Flower and the Dragon Lady. There is no winning. Any choice we make can be framed as the wrong one. Boldness invites backlash; kindness invites erasure.
As advocates, we labor over every email, every document, every conversation. We write, rewrite, read, and reread, calibrating our words so they are firm yet polite, clear yet non-threatening. People judge us for the amount of work we put in, arguing that we can’t possibly have been as impacted to the extent we accurately and resolutely describe we have been impacted (often even downplaying and diminishing the impact to our time, health, and families in an effort to not look incompetent or weak). We strive to communicate with professionalism and relational care, knowing that a misstep, real or imagined, can grant others permission to unleash emotional violence against us.
Over and over again, we are treated as if we are stupid, disruptive, or deceitful and then punished for refusing to be silent. Yet we persist.
This is where responsibility lies, not just with those who act with obvious hostility, but with anyone who communicates with us. It is time for people to examine their responses to Asian American women: the tone they take, the assumptions they make, the impatience they express, and the ease with which they question our motives or integrity. These moments matter. They accumulate. And they either reinforce harm or interrupt it.
Asian American women are not abstractions, stereotypes, or convenient targets for misplaced anger. We are human beings with real feelings, professional expertise, and a deep commitment to doing good work in the world. Many of us are advocating not for ourselves, but for communities who have even less power and protection.
We should not have to contort ourselves to be heard, respected, or treated with basic dignity. We should not have to choose between being ignored or being punished for speaking up.
If you are unwilling to support Asian American women in this work, then the least you can do is stop standing in our way. Listen more carefully. Communicate more thoughtfully. And recognize that how you treat us is not incidental—it is part of the system we are trying to change.
