Defining normal: Asians and human sexuality

How do we define normal? That's a question we need to consider anytime we read newspaper articles or listen to reports. Are Asians and Africans--both nationals and ethnic communities--used in defining what is normal? Or are we allowing white Christian men and women to be the standard.

Recently I had a heated discussion regarding two Facebook postings of articles. One article was about Asian men and the other was not. Both articles were posted by white American women. Consider what both articles mean in regards to being normal. 

The first was a study conducted by the U.N. I don't fault the U.N. so much as the way journalists reported the study with catchy and sometimes misleading headlines. The resulting headlines I'm referring to included: "Nearly A quart of men in some Asian Countries admit to rape, study finds" or "1 in 4 men surveyed in Asia-Pacific say they committed rape" or "Rape widespread across Asia-Pacific, UN study says." The study itself is flawed, covering only six (Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Papua New Guinea.) out of 49 Asian countries. Notice that the study doesn't cover India or any country West of India such as Afghanistan. The study doesn't cover the economically powerful South Korea or Japan.

Yet there were other flaws to the study such as the respondents not being representative.  The title "Rape widespread across Asia-Pacific, UN Study Says" is from NPR and not some yellow journalism rag. Bloomberg.com used the headline "One in Four Men Surveyed in Asian Study Say They Raped." Imagine what kind of misinformation could be spread by other headlines and careless readers.

When a post by a white woman hit my Facebook page, I looked at the article and looked at the original source and made sure everyone commenting on that particular post knew that the study didn't represent Asia. Asian men are from one continent but they come from different cultures and different religious communities.

Limited research is always a problem but consider this: How many studies are Asians and Asian American left out of? Asians make up 60 percent of the world population, but we make up only 11 percent of the population in Los Angeles. Yet why wouldn't we want to add our voices to that 60 percent?

When discussing another recent issue brought up by an article posted (again by a white woman), research on mental health and human sexuality, I raised the lack of research into non-white communities such as Africa and Asia as problematic. I was told that this was a ridiculous concern. The study was reported by the Huffington Post as "BDSM Correlated with Better Health Mental Health, Says Study."  The Huffington Post writer cites other sources such as LiveScience and Reuters, but it doesn't seem that the study has anything to do with the United States. The study was done through online questionnaires using 902 BDSM practitioners and 434 people who practiced non-kinky sex, but it was done by a psychologist, Andreas Wismeijer,  at Nyenrode Business University in the Netherlands. As the lead author, Wismeijer admitted that the study was limited.

The study is somewhat limited by a self-selecting response pool and by the fact that BDSM practitioners could have been answering in ways to make themselves look better and avoid stigma, Wismeijer said — though the fact that the participants didn't know the reasons for the study ameliorates that concern somewhat. The findings are reason for mental health professionals to take an accepting approach to BDSM practitioners, Wismeijer said.--LiveScience.com.

The Netherlands has over 17 million people. As the Netherlands has that Black Peter tradition and the possible limitations of the language spoken, Dutch, I would question how representative this study was of Europe and then of the world in general. From the three articles I read, it wasn't clear that the study went beyond the borders of the Netherlands or hit any English-speaking communities. The study did use the largest BDSM forum in the Netherlands and the so-called vanilla sex practitioners were drawn from "a women's magazine website, a personal secret website and a university website." Using those three sources, they were only able to find 434 people, that's less than half of the BDSM practitioners. Not good.

Yet even if we consider the studies representative of Europe, just watching movies like "Stranger by the Lake" or "The Warmest Color Is Blue" should indicate European attitudes (French in the case of the movies) are different from American attitudes toward sex and nudity. Why should we believe that this small limited study done in the Netherlands has anything to do with the United States and anything to do worldwide attitudes?

My points are:

1. We shouldn't allow news items that roll up Asia into one monolithic culture to go by without comment. Six countries do not represent the 49 Asian countries and are less representative if you add the Pacific Islands. The concept that Asia and the Pacific (and sometimes North Africa) can be seen as one cohesive culture is Orientalism at its worst.
2. A study of white people by white people, particularly in a nation that is predominately Christian (Protestant or Catholic) is not representative of the world and does a disservice to the peoples of Africa and Asia as well as people of other world religions such as Islam, Hindu and Buddhism. While "The World Factbook" lists Christians as 30.59 percent of the world population, Muslims as 23.2 percent and Hindus are 15 percent. Together that's 33.2 percent. Buddhists are only 7 percent. The majority of the world isn't Christian (and doesn't celebrate Christmas).  The largest ethnic group  in the world is the Han Chinese (18 percent worldwide) and Mandarin Chinese is the most widely spoken language (14 percent to 5.52 percent for English).  The next most populous ethnic group is Arab. The Arabs are a panethnic group from West Asia and North Africa. As 1 out of 5 people in the world are Muslim and a large percentage of the world population is Arab, both Arabs and Muslims and even Arab Muslims should be included in any study that is meant to determine worldwide norms. 
3. If you want to claim that a small study of white people should apply to peoples of the world, then conversely a study about people in Asia or Africa should apply to all peoples of the world. That means instead of saying, Asian men, the headlines in the U.N. study should have said simply "1 out of 4 Men Surveyed Say They Raped."

Where we have seen movies such as "21" and "Emperor" whitewash East Asian Americans out of historical events--major and minor, we can also see Asians and Asian Americans being whitewashed out of research and data used to define normal. Minorities are part of normal in the United States. Asian Americans may only be 5.6 percent of the American population but we are the fastest growing ethnic group. There are cities in California where Asian Americans are a majority and citizens of those cities shouldn't be held to a measure of normality that was defined by research that excluded them. 

Moreover, Asia holds a little over 60 percent of the world population. If religion and culture define attitudes toward sex and other emotional issues, and the largest religion in Asia is Islam, followed by Hinduism and Buddhism, then sexual practices and attitudes of these populations should be part of any research on human beings so we understand what is average and what is normal. The true norms of the world may not be the norms of America or Europe. The true normal in this global community would best be defined by including research on Asia. 

Just as the U.N. research of 10,000 men in nine sites in six countries doesn't represent Asia or Pacific Asia as in the case of the rape, then less than 1,500 people in the Netherlands doesn't represent Europe, America, Africa or Asia in regards to sexual attitudes and mental health. 

According to world demographics, research on what is normal, mentally or physically, should include both Han Chinese and Arabs, Christians and Muslims as a significant percentage of the research subject pool. 

What we, as Asian ethnics, as Asian Americans, as non-Christians need to ask for is a new normal. 

Smithsonian exhibit on Asian Pacific Americans comes to L.A. in June

As part of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibit Service (SITES) and the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center opened a new exhibit at the American History Museum, "I Want the Wide American Earth: An Asian Pacific American Story." The exhibit runs until 18 June 2013 and then travels to the Japanese National Museum in Los Angeles.

The exhibit takes its name from a poem by Filipino American poet Carlos Bulosan (1913-1956):

Before the brave, before the proud builders and workers
I way I want the wide American earth
For all the free
I want the wide American earth for my people.
I want my beautiful land. 
I want it with my rippling strength and tenderness
Of love and light and truth
For all the free. 

The exhibit goes beyond the usual story about the railroads, immigration laws and representation and the search for identity. Did you know that Punjabi men were unable to bring Indian brides to America and so married female Mexican field workers? How about Chinese traders were making trips to Mexico City as early as 1635. New Orleans already had Filipino communities in the 1760s. Asian Americans also participated in the American Civil War on both sides.

To give you historical context, Jamestown was founded in 1607 with only 61 of the original 500 colonists surviving the starving time of 1609 to 1610. In 1635, Japan forbid merchants to sail abroad and particularly wanted those Portuguese ships destroyed. The Tokugawa shogunate began in 1603.

In 1760 George III ascended to the throne of Great Britain. In 1644, the Ming Dynasty ended and the Qing Dynasty began and lasted until 1912. The Great Wall of China was already in place with small portions build in 220 BC and in the 7th Century BC although the majority of the exiting wall was reconstructed during the Ming Dynasty. India was under the Moghul Empire (1526-1757).

Currently JANM doesn't list this as a coming exhibit so keep you eyes out for this.

Celebrating Asian Pacific American Heritage Month

What began as Asian/Pacific American Heritage Week in 1978, eventually became Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.

What better way to celebrate than to start a new blog.

Let's start with the history of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. You might be wondering why May? Because it was originally only one week, the date was chosen because the first week of May was when the first Japanese immigrants arrived in America (7 May 1843) and on 10 May (1869) was when the transcontinental railroad was completed.

The railroad was originally known as the Pacific Railroad (because the nation was very East Coast-centric). Later it was called the Overland Route. The 1,907-mile contiguous railroad line was begun in 1863 and connected the East U.S. at Bluffs, Iowa (on the Missouri River) with San Francisco.

At the start, many of the semi-skilled workers were former Union Army and Confederate Army vets and immigrants from Ireland. The Central Pacific Railroad Company of California (one of three private companies that built the line--the other two were Western Pacific Railroad Company and the Union Pacific Railroad Company). used slaves escaping during the Civil War and Chinese immigrants escaping the Taiping Revolution. Chinese manual laborers were the ones primarily responsible for the Central Pacific roadbed, bridges and tunnels.

However, the first Asians in North America was, according to the PBS documentary "Ancestors in Americas" Chinese Filipinos in Mexico. These Chinese Filipino sailors came to the U.S. in 1750 and other Asians were brought to the Caribbean islands and South America as slaves from China, India and the Philippines.

As slaves, then as laborers, then as menial workers, Asian immigrants came from countries that had unequal treaties with the U.S. and were often subjected to laws that prohibited them from becoming citizens, owning lands, marrying other races, etc.

Asian Americans have come a long way since then and so has Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. Stargin as Asian/Pacific American Heritage Week in 1978, by 1990, the week was expanded into a month. In 1992, the designation became permanent.

In Los Angeles, Asian Americans only make up 12 percent of the population. But Asia accounts for 60 percent of the world's current population. Judaism, Christianity, Islam and the Baha'i Faith originated in West Asia. The Hindu and Buddhist religions originated in Central Asia. Islam is the religion in Asia with the largest number of adherents. Hinduism is the second largest religion in Asia (25 percent).

This month, it's time to remember our historic roots as well as our accomplishments and history in the United States.