I am a young woman of Korean decent living in the US. I enjoy going to comic/anime conventions. (I also enjoy cosplaying) And every year without fail I am subject to harassment and degradation. One specific convention I have attended the past 4 consecutive years. The first year I was 15 and a man lifted my skirt as I walked up the stairs, then he and his friends corners me and made lewd comments while pulling and prodding at me/my costume. I have been bowed to by white men, criticized for cosplaying non Asian characters. And even spoken to in broken Japanese by other attendees (I’m of Korean decent and was born in the US). People just throw me into a vague place of “Asian” rather than trying to understand the difference of my culture and heratige. The worst is the fetisization of East Asian women and how it surfaces within interactions during these events. Other attendees would never touch or harass another cosplayer because they hold cosplay in high regard as an art. But many of the see me and break boundaries that my friends say have never been crossed with them. I feel as though they see my handmade cosplay as a cheap costume in an Asian themed porno. Like I am there to cater to them instead of dressing up for fun and to express myself (like the other cosplayers)
It’s 2 A.M and my boyfriend and I are trying to head home after celebrating a friend visiting Houston. The surge pricing on car services was crazy. We live by the museum and haven’t taken the tram before so we bought two tickets and hopped on.
We sat by ourselves and we were thrilled about riding the tram, how cheap it was and it was mostly clean. I’m texting my friend to take the tram down to our stop and then call a car to head home because her Uber ride from downtown would have cost $60. We are sitting quietly when this black man boards at the next stop and starts saying very rude comments about me being an Asian woman. At first I ignored him because he was clearly I toxicated but also I was still messaging my friend to take the tram down and away from the downtown surge pricing.
This man told me how an Asian woman can’t compare to a black woman because we have small boobs, waist and butt. He said he didn’t have an Asian fetish. He continued on saying how my white boyfriend and I could never produce a black child, and that we were unintelligent and beneath him because he had a bachelors in English. I looked up from my phone and asked him if he was done with his disgusting and ridiculous comments. He called us a racist when I said something. I stood from my seat, laughed and told him he was the one making racial and sexist comments from the moment he boarded the tram. I told him I did nothing to him to warrant this behavior when Ive been sitting down quietly, minding my own business. I didn’t even notice he got on the train let alone register what he looked like. I told him he had no respect towards anyone, especially women and was an embarrassment to society. That this society didn’t need more people like him with his small minded hatred towards someone who looked different from him. I continued on to tell him we are all human and genetically we are identical but apparently his superior English degree didn’t teach him with the hateful comments he was directing at me.
When my boyfriend stood up, he’s over 6 feet tall, he stood more than a head taller than this man. He told him to get away from us and that he was an ignorant man. That’s when the conductor stopped the train and came out from his post. We looked at the conductor and tried to explain what’s been going on but he knew. He heard everything He told this man to exit the train. We thanked him and got off at our stop.
I was doorbelling for local candidates in a residential area in my city. A man in about his mid-30's crossed the street to block my path and demanded to know what I was doing. I told him I was distributing election information. He then demanded that I show hims some ID. I pointed out to him that I was standing in a public street and refused. He kept demanding that I show him my ID, and I kept refusing and referring to my First Amendment rights. I finally told him to "knock it off" and walked away. He seemed confused about what to do at that point, and did not follow me.
