Discriminating Sex : White Leisure and the Making of the American "Oriental" / Amy Sueyoshi.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sueyoshi, Amy Haruko, 1971- author.

Series:

Asian American experience.

The Asian American experience

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Japanese Americans--California--San Francisco--History--19th century.

Japanese Americans.

Chinese Americans--California--San Francisco--History--19th century.

Chinese Americans.

Leisure--California--San Francisco--History--19th century.

Leisure.

Marginality, Social--California--San Francisco--History--19th century.

Marginality, Social.

Sex role--California--San Francisco--History--19th century.

Sex role.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

[Urbana] : University of Illinois Press, [2018]

Summary:

"In the late 1890s, San Francisco -- a town reputed to be "wide and open"--appeared to be a place where men and women could configure their intimate lives in ways not permissible in other parts of America. Conversations on high rates of divorce, an open rejection of marriage, mannish women, and extramarital sex proliferated throughout the local newspapers, magazines, and theaters without condemnation. Yet as white people in the city explored and enacted new norms of romance and womanhood, increasing freedoms would be less accessible for Asians in America. White writers, lyricists, illustrators, and other producers of leisure culture projected anxieties of their own middle class gender and sexuality upon specifically Chinese and Japanese in news reports, short stories, and musicals. These characterizations would then conflate Chinese and Japanese, previously perceived as two separate races, into a single group. Amy Sueyoshi details how middle class white expansion of their own gender and sexual norms marked the formation of the pan-Asian "Oriental," a deeply sexual racialized stereotype, more than a hundred years ago" -- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

A peculiar obsession : the Chinese and Japanese problem in the "international city"

A wide-open town? White and heterosexual supremacy in permissive San Francisco

"Deliver me from the brainy woman" : the modern woman and the geisha

Prostitution proliferates : "Mrs. Flirty" and the willing Chinese slaves

Managing masculinity : the heathen, the samurai, and the "best Oriental"

Mindful masquerades: white privilege and the politics of dress

"Conscience aroused" : gender and sexual disinterest and the rise of the oriental

Epilogue : homosexuality as Asian.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Includes index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780252050268

0252050266

OCLC:

1015279545