TW: RACIST MISOGYNY/ SEXUALIZED RACISM… It is no surprise that Asian women are the most popular women of color in porn, given the long-standing stereotypes of them as sexually servile geishas, lotus blossoms, and China dolls. Depicted as perfect sex objects with well-honed sexual skills, Asian women come to porn with a baggage of stereotypes that makes them the idealized women of the porn world. In most sites and movies specializing in Asian women (“Asian” being used in porn as a shorthand for a whole range of ethnicities), we see a mind-numbing replaying of the image of Asian women as sexually exotic, enticing, and submissive in both the text and pictures. Using words such as naïve, obedient, petite, cute, and innocent, the Web sites are full of images of Asian women, who, we are told, will do anything to please a man, since this is what they are bred for. It seems from these sites, however, that Asian women are interested in pleasing only white men because Asian men are almost completely absent as sex partners.

The introductory text on Hustler’s Web site Asian Fever sums up the way Asian women are caricatured in porn: “Asian Fever features scorching scenes of the sexual excesses these submissive Far East nymphos are famous for. No one knows how to please a man like an Asian slut can, and these exotic beauties prove it.” Notice here how Asian women are defined as being super slutty thanks to their assumed sexual excesses, submissiveness, skill, and beauty. Their supposed submissiveness is eroticized as they are presented as completely powerless to resist any sexual demands men may have. Their powerlessness is further enhanced by the way these children are “childified” – they are presented as naïve, innocent, and lacking any adult agency. The more childish the woman seems, the greater the ability of the male to exploit and manipulate.

The bodies of these women are similarly described as immature and of course, given that this is porn, it is always their vaginas that are constructed as the most childlike. Words like “tiny,” “little,” and “tight” are used as a way to develop an image of a vagina that seems more like a child’s than a woman’s. Many of these sites promise the viewer the pleasure of seeing a “tight Asian cunt filled with a huge cock,” thereby sexualizing female discomfort. In keeping with the gonzo script, these women are depicted as loving rough sex and are happy to take the abuse handed out to them.

For “authenticity,” the Web sites often write the English text in chopstick font, play Asian-sounding music in the background, and have the women speaking in broken English. While all of these sites are deeply racist in the way they caricature Asian cultures, one of the worst offenders is a site called Me Fuck You Long Time (a spoof of a line borrowed from Full Metal Jacket), which offers the viewer movies of “Asian Sluts Getting Fucked By American Cocks.” Referring to the women as “fuckbuckets,” this site has multiple images of women being gagged by so called American cocks. On the right-hand side of the site is an American flag, a tank, and the Statue of Liberty, and on the left is an Asian woman holding a Chinese flag. Just below her is a streaming video of an Asian women having ejaculate squirted on her face. The not-so-subtle message here is that no matter what really happened in past wars, today the Americans are the real winners as they get to fuck Asian women any way they want. To the winner goes utter and complete access to the losing side’s women, and what better way to represent this than to have a continuous video of the losing side’s woman being degraded in the best way porn knows: a face covered in ejaculate.

Sometimes the industries of trafficking and sex tourism, which supply Western men with cut-rate women and girls, are referenced for an extra thrill. The text promoting the film Asian Street Hookers advertises “real Asian freaks from southeast Asia,” and to make really sure that the user knows that they are talking about trafficking in women, they boast: “The Oriental Express flies to Thailand and the Philippines – and once again imports the sexiest dolls around.” Indeed, if the pleasure in porn is watching a woman rendered powerless, then trafficked women are about as powerless as you can get. They are in a foreign country with no support systems, their passport is usually confiscated by the pimp, they have no money, often they can’t speak the language, and they are at the mercy of the sex traffickers who would just as soon kill them as let them leave. In this subordinated state, a woman has to submit to any sexual use and abuse brought to bear on her body. In Pornland sex, this state of utter oppression is about as hot as you can get.