CVK
An article in AsianWeek questions why everyone is so blase about the recent attacks at Princeton University, in which 28-year-old doctoral student Michael Lohman (pictured) surreptitiously cut locks of hair from at least nine Asian women, poured his urine and semen into the drinks of Asian women more than 50 times, and stole Asian women’s underwear and mittens.

The incident has caused barely more than a ripple on the campus, and remarkably, Lohman is not being pressed with any criminal charges. (Click here for Purifying Flames’s excellent look at the double standards implicit in this case, contrasted to a similar one involving white female victims.)

Yin Ling Leung, organizational director of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF) makes some excellent points in the article:

Part of the problem is a widespread belief that men who have a fetish for Asian women are harmless. “Asian fetish is seen as a tongue-in-cheek thing, like ‘We just happen to like Asian women,’” Leung said. “It’s not as innocent as it looks…”

“It goes so deep,” Leung explained. “We have to end the militarization of the sex industry, the proliferation of porn, and the marketing of Asian women as mail order brides and the Internet catalog industry. We have huge work to do.”

“It’s really hard for Asian Pacific American women to come forward because there’s a ton of shame, self-blame and embarrassment,” Leung said. She says campus health and safety groups must also become more culturally competent. “In American and European culture, there’s a lot more of ‘It’s not my fault, and I’m gonna make a big stink about it.’”

“It is a form of hate crime,” Leung said. “There’s racist hate and racist love — this is a distorted form of racist love.”