Part 3. Elliot Rodger and Daniel Hortzclaw are not part of the Asian American community.

Ok, they’re half Asian and they live in America. But to use these two as examples of toxic masculinity manifesting in the Asian Community is something I absolutely condemn. I do not understand why 18 million rising sought to uses these two as examples of Asian toxic masculinity when the example of the death of Michael Deng is so much more of a manifestation of a problem inherent to the Asian American community.

Elliot Rodger and Daniel Hortzclaw are both half Asian born to white fathers. Neither of them neither identify with the Asian community, nor were raised with any Asian male figures. As a result, 100% of their misogyny is stemming from white masculinity, not Asian masculinity. Elliot Rodger spoke about hating his Asian side. He wanted to bleach his hair blonde. He literally wrote “How could an ugly Asian attract the attention of a white girl, while a beautiful Eurasian like myself never had any attention from them?” For a person who wanted to distance himself as far away from being Asian as possible, why are we focusing on him being an example of an Asian misogynist? Are we trying to say “look how bad Asian American men can get?”

Perhaps the 18 Million Rising chose Rodger Elliot and Daniel Hortzclaw to highlight how Toxic Masculinity hurts women, especially minority women. (Even though Elliot Rodger killed more men, and especially more Asian men…).

This problem of racializing when you shouldn’t be racializing is prevalent everywhere. When a white man rapes a woman, it’s a problem with Masculinity as a whole; but when an Asian man does the same, it turns into an Asian Masculinity problem. Is it not apparent the normalization of whiteness and the othering of Asianness?

So please stop claiming Elliot Rodger and Daniel Hortzclaw are evidence of Asian American toxic masculinity. While anyone is at it, stop using Peter Liang as evidence of Asian American police brutality too.

Part 4. The Irony of the Request to Change Masculinity

Here’s a little part that feels weird to me. Social Justice has always been pushing for freedom of identification of gender, sexual orientation, and who you love. Asian women are constantly telling other Asians to stop criticizing them for their dating choices. Yet the same group not only desires, but demands that men change their gender expression. It’s a bit rude for non-masculine expressing people to push their interpretations of masculinity and to tell masculine expressing people what they’re doing and how it’s wrong. It’s slightly insulting even to ask that not only do men decry masculinity but to actively rally against it.

I get it. Women, and non-binary/non-hetero/non-cis people are hurt by the actions of individual people because of their expression. Some of them are physically hurt or even killed because of extreme cases. But you’d think there would be a little bit more respect and attempt to understand the core issues that men are dealing with that turn them towards toxic masculinity?

Take a look at a few tweets here.

There’s pretty good reasons why men are uncomfortable in womxn dominated spaces. It’s hard enough to speak without being corrected about your vocabulary. Hard enough to say things without being called out for “transphobic speech” when there was no intent of it, but rather internalized speech patterns that manifests in what could be considered “transphobic speech”. For example, I call my friends dude because that’s simply how my friends call each other. If I were to call anyone “dude” in a womxn dominated space, I’d be immediately shot down for “normalizing maleness,” even though it isn’t my intent.

It takes a LOT of work to reach a point where you can participate in womxn dominated spaces without being shouted down on every single post. It took me a while to realize what things I was saying was transphobic when participating in feminist club discussions in college. I still get shouted down for things where I thought I said one thing, but was interpreted as another in /r/asianfeminism. But it’s hard, it’s frustrating.

Let me emphasize. It is not the job of feminist or womxn dominated space to change their speech patterns to be more inclusive of men. However, I think it’s important to be wary of the fact that a lot of discourse is not inviting or comfortable whatsoever to man. If education of men, and attempt to bridge gaps between cis-het-men is the goal, then a change in tone (and a lot more patience) is required to get things done.

Sean Miura hits the nail on the head here.