Breaking Intersectional Stereotyping (“MisogynAsian” Racism)
Rev. Ha Na Park (The United Church of Canada)
Spoken at Breaking the Shackles of Racism Conference, hosted by Islamic Social Services Association of Manitoba, on Sept 30th, 2021
It was early Spring in Winnipeg, 2016. I attended a conference with the theme of Understanding the Transgender Community with my husband and two kids. My hair was fully black without a single gray hair (5 years ago), long, and tied in a ponytail. With two kids, five and ten years old, there was little time for ‘styling’ my hair; the best way to keep it was by pulling it back and tying it tight. If my hairstyle made me look younger than I was, or more feminine than I felt, that was in the eye of the beholder; it was simply what I did to keep my hair under control. At the conference, I met a transgender gay man who came as a guest speaker with his husband and two kids; I was immediately intrigued. I sensed that he might have a key to understanding the question I had been holding inside for years, since high school. I went to him during the lunch break, and asked my long-unspoken question. He looked at me and said, “You may be a non-binary gender.” I had never heard of the term. “Non-binary?” I googled it, and ta-dah! I joined the world of myriad non-binary gender identities (labels) shining like stars.
After a number of sleepless nights of searching website after website to learn about gender identities and labels, I found my identity. It stood out to me quite obviously: “Agender.” healthline.com says that agender is defined as not having a gender. Some agender people describe it as having a “lack of gender”, while others describe themselves as being gender neutral. Genderless. What agender means to me is that gender is a foreign concept to my body. Gender has never been necessary to understand myself, my feelings and my relationship with the world. However, the world put me in the check box of what gender I am, with only two options, in binary terms, of girl or boy, of woman or man. Growing up, gender only confused and disappointed me by assigning me with gender roles and gender-based expectations: “That’s not your place. Go to the girls’ side, and act like a nurse, not a doctor.” “That’s not where you should stand. Only boys can join the ritual. You stand with aunts.” “No, we do not put a girl’s name in our family’s genealogical record book.” “You can’t be a priest – that’s for boys only.” “Young Samonim (the honourary title for the wife of the ordained minister husband in Korean), we love you. You are a smiling angel.”
As an agender person, it is a burden to fit myself into this world with the wrapping of something that is not myself, called “gender”. The limitations of a gender-driven world meant that I had to undergo the painful process of experiencing what it is like to be dictated to by the will of others, marginalized in a patriarchal family and church system, trapped by predetermined roles and being unable to fully express myself.
In 2006, on the airplane destined for Vancouver International Airport, leaving Korea, holding my infant son in my arms, I prayed. “Creator, let me struggle to be the Sun again, the path of wholeness. I became the Moon which shines only by reflecting another’s light. Let me be an authentic person in my new path in Canada.”
The reason why I am sharing with you my story of coming out of a patriarchal culture, coming out of an assigned gender, in this conference (where I am supposed to talk more about racism) is because WE are from it. I cannot speak for all East Asian/Korean immigrant women - not everyone shares the same monolithic experience. But, in order to speak about racism in the way that I have experienced it, I must start with my story of coming away from a patriarchal society. I have earned my understanding of how patriarchy affects and impacts me and other racialized women by living under its rule. I know how it operates systemically, culturally, and very specifically on our daily lives, because it was, and is, my life. Canada is not a pure land, free from patriarchy, championing higher women’s rights. It has taken me a decade since I came to Canada to understand that. It was a very slow process to realize, pinpoint, and name the character of my personal lived experience. Racism and sexism come at me together. As an Asian immigrant woman, a female international student, a newcomer Mom with two children, who looks different and speaks differently, patriarchal assumptions from others have always been in the air I breathe, as Ha Na with black hair in a pony tail, regardless of whether I was a tired mom or an energetic young minister, whether I presented myself as a Christian minister or was just entering Superstore as a random customer.
At church, it was obvious from the beginning that the United Church, a mostly White Church, wanted male ethnic ministers. At least, I felt, the church was more interested in recruiting male racialized ministers to leadership (perhaps with the hope of diversifying the leadership). I, on the contrary, was not given the same exciting and curiosity-driven invitation to serve the church. At that time, (I was in my early thirties) I did not understand the metrics by which my potential, my competence, my style, and my personality were seen and measured by the existing church leadership.
A White retired male minister verbalized his doubt, “You? Will be a minister in the United Church of Canada?” A senior White female minister who served at a top-rank church in downtown Vancouver ignored my greeting, as if no one was talking to her at the lunch table. Some fellow-students talked among themselves in a small group during class as if I was an uninvited observer, with no opinion to offer, no insight to share. In the meantime, I saw my male racialized colleagues receiving invitations to join groups, engage in resume-building tasks. When I got my first full-time position in ministry, I later realized that I was called because I team-matched well with my counterpart — a senior White male minister who was called at the same time as me. When I left that congregation, the higher-level church staff informed me, “You were called, because you were cheap!”
In those days, my denomination, the United Church of Canada, was beginning to expand our vision of Intercultural ministry. Increasingly, more people started to talk about racism and white privilege. Racism was a useful tool to help us understand why some of us experienced certain things in certain ways, but just talking about racism ignored the full picture. The United Church of Canada’s best-intentioned talk about racism was missing the talk of sexism, gender, patriarchy - they more or less separated these topics from the conversation on racism. I was dismayed. Why are we not intentionally centering racialized women’s experiences of struggling both with racism and patriarchy – two things that crash on us simultaneously in their intersection? Patriarchy in the church was the elephant in the room… Everyone tiptoed around it, but no one wanted to talk about it.
That’s why I wrote on my Facebook page: “We are racialized because we are women; we are women, because we are racialized.”
I wrote that just a few days before six Asian American women and two others were killed at a spa in Atlanta last March – with the police describing the actions of the young, White killer as, “Yesterday was a really bad day for him, and this is what he did.”
My experience and observation over many years has shown me that the Anti-Asian racism experienced by women is different in many ways from that which is experienced by their male colleagues, and it’s minimized even more than racism against Asian men. Why does the racism experienced by racialized women seem to be considered a secondary subject, a specialized topic, categorized and highlighted only when “intersectionality” finally squeezes into the talk? Does the experience of racialized women fit better in gender studies, not race relations? Why is it that racialized men are considered to be the default, and therefore, the standard, when talking about race in general?
Racialized women experience double discrimination - as women and as racialized people - and they are treated differently: overlooked, disrespected, because of double marginalization. “We are racialized because we are women; We are women, because we are racialized.” This is what I say to people to help them understand. Some might believe that Canada has already passed the age of patriarchy, and moved on - advanced, compared to the rest of the world. Still, patriarchy affects our experience most sharply when we are racialized, and also women. Our experience is different from that of White women. Our experience is different from that of racialized men. I am impacted by patriarchy, here in Canada just as in Korea, because I am racialized.
Now, think about racialized women who are immigrants - racialized, newcomer women who speak English as a second or third language, who learned English after coming to Canada, or in adulthood. Now you have a triple barrier. Race, Gender, Language. The voices, perspectives, hopes, and work of racialized women should be more central to our work - why aren’t they? That is the question that I want to ask.
In 2017, I was having a very difficult time. I was going to be laid off. Due to financial stress at the church, the church couldn’t afford to keep two full-time ministers any more. Around that time, I knew I was ready to step away from my fears: not fitting in. The cost of being truly authentic. Over the years, I had tried to fit in the mostly White Canadian church, by being not-too-Korean, not-too-much of all the pieces of my authentic self. Those fears were not just self-doubt – I remember, one day, a church member telling me, “We don’t want to hear the self-discovery story of our minister.”
‘If trying to fit in does not make me safe’, I thought, ‘I will come out of it.’ I had my hair cut. Razor double-short cut. Some loved it and said I looked like a pixie; at a grocery store, clerks called me Mister. Sir. A child at a swimming pool asked: Are you a girl or boy? The haircut immediately made a huge, unexpected, difference in my life. It wasn’t just the satisfaction of the haircut fitting my authentic self as an agender person, but the fact that this mere physical alteration changed how others treated me, at church, at Sephora (a cosmetic shop), everywhere I went. People were more friendly, came up to me right away and asked what I needed, smiled and offered me an immediate welcome. What is happening? I’m the same East Asian, married mother, with the same accent and the same self-esteem – and yet, the world sees a different person.
Through a haircut, I had discovered Intersectional stereotyping.
Intersectional stereotyping operates on perceptions about the intersection of multiple identities (gender, race, class, sexuality, dis(ability), etc). Intersectional stereotyping predicts that certain combinations of attributes (i.e. Asian, young, immigrant, newcomer, feminine, non-binary, masculine, motherhood, language, class, etc.) lend themselves more readily to perceived suspicion, assumption, and judgement than others. Scholars note that groups at these intersections are often overlooked, and in overlooking them, we fail to see the ways that the power dynamics associated with these categories reinforce one another to create interlocking systems of advantages and disadvantages that extend to social, economic, and political institutions. Intersectional stereotypes are the set of stereotypes that occur at the nexus between multiple group categories. Rather than considering stereotypes associated with individual social groups in isolation (i.e. racial stereotypes vs. gender stereotypes), this perspective acknowledges that group-based characteristics must be considered conjointly as mutually constructing categories. What are typically considered “basic” categories, like race and gender, operate jointly in social perception to create distinct compound categories… as a “specific” set of stereotypes that are “unique” to the compound social group — here, with me, East Asian Immigrant Women. (Links: )
When you actually google “stereotyping” you will mostly find blogs which explain about the practice of stereotyping, focusing on what is going on in the minds of those who impose stereotypes, and their subsequent harm, on others.
But I am more interested in finding the research that tells me the psychological impact, the harm, being done to those who are stereotyped. To me, the psychological, spiritual impact - shame, anxiety, anger, depression - from being placed constantly on the receiving end of intersectional stereotyping - is one of the shackles of discrimination I hope to break.
When I am intersectionally stereotyped, I feel like I am a nail and a hammer hits me into the ground one more inch each time to feel:
invisible
unengaging
uninteresting
unimportant
dismissable
not possessing the leadership, skills, talents, (and language), to be treated and thought of as equal to those around me.
I have told you some of my stories, because stories and reflection can help us to understand how gendered racism and intersectional stereotyping affect Asian women when it is directed towards/against them. I followed the path towards my wholeness by leaving Korea, where the binary gender patriarchy harmed my sense of existence.
I left one patriarchy behind, only to find the patriarchy I wished to leave for good still affecting me, wrapped in the same box as racism.
When you open the box, there are always two things inside, racism and patriarchy, and more, in it; you cannot choose which one you will get – you always get them both. I hope my message can help shift the centre of learning and discussion on racism from the male-default talk to include patriarchy and misogyny. Racism and Gender, in the same sentence, not two. Racism and Gender, in one word, to imagify and verbalize two concepts - gender and race - in one word, such as “MisogynAsian”. We, collectively, need to challenge and break the shackles of institutional and structured gendered racism which, today, I call you to think about in the label of intersectional and patriarchal “mysogynasian racism.”
Q. I wonder if some of you would benefit from coining your own terms following these examples of misogynasian, misogynoir (the specific hatred, distrust, prejudice, directed toward Black women), transmisogyny (the intersection of transphobia and misogyny), around your lived experience?
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