On Asian American Sexual Politics 

U.C. Davis Professor Darrell Hamamoto is the creator of Skin on Skin and Yellocaust: A Patriot Act, erotic films that aim to reclaim the masculinity of Asian men.

In mid-August 2005 my most recent work on Asian American sexuality came under attack by conservative pundit Mike S. Adams. He writes a column for the website Townhall.com and is a professor of criminology at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington. In his first piece titled “University of Nude Copulating Asians”, Adams interviewed the father of a prospective student at UNC-Asheville who had attended a “diversity” event while visiting the campus. Mark Ruscoe was his name and he was appalled by the premise of a documentary (Masters of the Pillow) that featured me and the ideas that I have been propagating for the last several years. Not an unintelligent man, as some are wont to characterize cultural conservatives like Ruscoe, he understood fully my argument that Asian Americans needed to put themselves out there and bring about “sexual healing” through direct erotic expression.

Professor Adams shared with the aggrieved father a sense of outrage at my “in your face” (in Ruscoe’s words) ideas. According to Adams, the documentary screening incident ranked right up there with the time that UNC feminists blocked the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders from appearing on campus. Outrage notwithstanding, Adams got another two titillating columns out of the brouhaha before he was utterly spent and could spew invective no more. Much to his credit, Adams took the time to wade through a theoretical essay I had written some years ago that lays bare the material history of an Asian American sexuality that I argue had been warped by Euro-American colonization, occupation, and genocide in Asian countries; exclusion, expulsion, incarceration in the United States. (See “The Joy Fuck Club: Prolegomena to An Asian American Porno Practice” in Countervisions: Asian American Independent Film Criticism.) Adams rejected out of hand the idea that White supremacy had anything to do with shaping Asian American sexuality and, in his columns, could only mock that which he could not accept.

The administration at UNC-Asheville can be proud that it stood in support of the screening on campus. Ruscoe himself reported that the audience at the venue was demonstrably excited at the prospect of viewing the documentary, although he did not indicate how it was received. I suspect, however, that the audience response was more than favorable. For at every screening that I have attended, the reaction to Masters of the Pillow has been overwhelmingly positive and enthusiastically in favor of the goals I have set forth. At the San Diego Asian American Film Festival a couple of years ago, for example, over two hundred primed and pumped attendees gathered on a Saturday morning at the ungodly hour of 9:30 a.m. for a screening of both the documentary and my experimental video Yellocaust, which was followed by an energetic discussion. This was repeated at the Hawaii International Film Festival, San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, and numerous other events I personally attended.

Perhaps what most alarmed both Adams and Ruscoe was learning that Asian Americans—whom they most likely took for granted as being harmless and non-threatening to White Power—could feel so passionately about their social subordination down to the depths of their sexuality. They probably were shocked by being exposed to the deep and abiding resentment that many, if not most, younger Asian Americans harbor in being taken so cheaply by the larger White-ruled dominant society.

I say this because even the most sympathetic, generous, and intellectually receptive White people I have known (and often alienated) will deny that Asian Americans have any reason at all for raising their voice against the various and sundry overt and subtle expressions of White supremacy. From their liberal/progressive perspective, only African Americans and perhaps Latinos are objects worthy of concern and pity. No matter that most of the major military campaigns since World War II have been waged in Asia resulting in countless numbers of dead and displaced. And it is irrelevant in their view that the U.S. military troops are heavily concentrated in Asian countries like South Korea, Japan, and increasingly in the Philippines once more; or that the U.S. government plays a determinate role in nations like Pakistan or Indonesia. For the majority of Asian Americans today who either have emigrated from or had to flee this part of the world as refugees, this is their reality.

Beyond summarily acknowledging the history, liberals/progressives do not appear to recognize that ever since the first large scale arrival of immigrants from Asia, we have been under continuous siege domestically by racist demagogues, police agencies, elected officials, business and labor leaders, military authorities, jurists, and entertainment media. More recently, Chinese children (females only) are being snatched by middle-aged liberal/progressive White women under the humanitarian pretext of “saving” these cuddly commodities from a life of misery within a supposedly “patriarchal” society that values them so little. (See "Child-Theft Racket Growing in China," Los Angeles Times, June 1, 2006). If White liberal/progressive types can live oblivious to such examples of racial supremacist entitlement, then just imagine what difficulty bedrock conservatives like Adams and Ruscoe are experiencing in being confronted with Asian Americans with attitude. ‘What happened to those quiescent and well behaved Asian Americans we could always depend upon to keep their proper place as handmaidens to White Power?’ Adams and Ruscoe seem to ask.

Shortly after the articles by Adams began to appear on his website, I received email correspondence from individuals who could be characterized as “conservative.” A Christian fundamentalist sort kindly informed me that I was on the path to perdition. But reading between the lines, it seemed that the email message was meant to be more self-congratulatory than condemnatory of me. For the writer proudly declaimed that her children were being home schooled so that they would not be tainted by harmful ideas such as those spread by the likes of my doomed self. This message in particular gave me an insight into the psychology of moralists: The moralist is not so much concerned over the perceived transgressions of others as she is attempting to summon the necessary courage to stave off the existential fright caused by a world inhabited and controlled by demons, witches, and creepy crawlies; the forces of darkness. Where it concerns the matter of sexuality, the moralist is gripped by a basic panic owing to the sheer majesty and oceanic pleasure that lies in potentia within this boundless realm of fundamental human expression. She reflexively slips into a ritualistic incantation of denial to somehow stay in control of the Self and not lose grip on a supernatural worldview that many such as I do not share. Yet by the mere acting of writing, she betrays a perverse excitement in staving off debasement, corruption, and pollution at the temptingly hot hands of the devil’s emissary.

On a more serious note, it would be easy to dismiss the disapproval described above as laughable and undeserving of attention other than mockery. This would be a mistake. For individuals such as these serve to remind that the struggle for human freedom as expressed via our sexuality is ongoing and without end. More importantly, the lessons of history teach us that political agendas inimical to human liberation and democratic society often worm their way into being by first burrowing deeply and destructively into this fundamental aspect of our species-being. The control of sexual behavior whether by police agencies, the church, or other sites of putative authority dovetail neatly with politically repressive measures imposed by the State.

The so-called “culture wars” declared about three decades ago by a mixed-bag of neo-conservative think-tankers, academic Straussians, religious fundamentalists, and grumpy old White men and women began innocently enough with its attacks on “values” and ideals they viewed as being corrupting to the body politic. Once having attained actual political power with the apotheosis of the current Bush regime, they plunged the nation into war and set us on the course to ruin. The rise to power of neocons and their ideological bedfellows teach us that ideas do indeed matter, including those pertaining to human sexuality. As such, we have an obligation to contest ruling ideas that serve only the base interests of those in power. And if it takes producing Asian American erotica to get some crucially important points across concerning White power, U.S. colonialism, and anti-Asian racism, then I cannot but accept the challenge of meeting this obligation.

Darrell Y. Hamamoto is Professor of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Davis. His all-Asian American erotic feature titled Skin On Skin drew the attention of both satirists (The Tonight Show; The Daily Show) and national news organs (FoxTelevision; Los Angeles Times). The political “remix” of Skin On Skin titled Yellocaust has been screened extensively in the United States and Canada.