In reality, Asians are rarely considered white, and the model-minority myth obscures the vast differences among Asian-Americans. What’s more, the myth helped to strengthen America’s white liberal order, which claims to uphold diversity while also being anti-black. It legitimizes white America’s power to determine who is “good” and to offer basic dignity and equal rights.

The model-minority myth exists alongside another dangerous and limiting idea — one that is consistent with the alt-right’s misogyny and core anti-feminist values. The main problem with white women, as many alt-right Asian fetishists have noted, is they’ve become too feminist. By contrast, Asian women are seen as naturally inclined to serve men sexually and are also thought of as slim, light-skinned and small, in adherence to Western norms of femininity.

These stereotypes have roots in America’s postwar military incursions into Asia. In Japan, a network of brothels permitted by American officials opened as United States troops began arriving in August 1945. The brothels employed tens of thousands of women until Gen. Douglas MacArthur declared them off limits in 1946.

In South Korea, an estimated 300,000 women were working in the sex trade by 1958 (after the end of the Korean War), with more than half employed in the “camptowns” around the American bases. Vietnam’s sex industry, centered largely on American bars, thrived during the Vietnam War. And the stereotype of docile Asian women persists. Nowhere is this more explicit than in sex ads and online pornography.

Tila Tequila — Playboy model, reality show star, aspiring rapper and one of a handful of female Asian-American celebrities — is often seen through this trope. Does she resent being typecast as the hot, horny Asian as much as I resented being seen as a “model minority”?

Yet after I was called “white” at age 14, it felt, paradoxically, like a compliment to be nicknamed Geisha Girl by another friend, a well-meaning gay white boy. This was not because I was delicate. But the nickname became our inside joke, and it symbolized the kind of femininity that attracted the boys I liked, but that I have never really possessed. Being in on the joke meant I was accepted. Since then, I have acted out in all manner of ways to dispel the “model minority” image. Still, I have never fully extinguished the belief that racking up an impressive lineup of achievements is the only way to gain respect.

The stereotypes that feed the Asian-woman fetish are not exclusive to the far right. They exist across the political spectrum and infect every aspect of life — not just the bedroom — and manifest themselves in figures as distant from America as the blond-haired, blue-eyed heroes and hypersexualized heroines of Japanese anime.