crossposted from Racialicious (Read the Comments too!)
by Guest Contributor (and regular commenter) Atlasien
Geisha cultists seriously disturb me.
Surprisingly enough, many of them are women. They love the geisha mystique, the tinge of nostalgia for a bygone era, the careful artifice, the idea of humans as living artwork.
I’ve enraged a few of them simply by dropping the “geishas are prostitutes” bomb. They tell me they know about Japan more than I do. I’m a lowly mixed-race Japanese-American. I don’t even speak Japanese. I’m pluralizing “geisha” wrong. I obviously have no respect for the traditions of my ancestors. Geisha = serious business. Ha!
Geisha are not very relevant in modern-day Japan. They’re a fossilized archetype, almost like ninja. If you asked a group of Japanese people the burning question, “are geisha prostitutes?” depending on region and generation, you would probably get a variety of answers: “that’s an insult, of course not!” “Well, it depends on your definition.” “Yes, they’re high-end prostitutes.” “I don’t really know.”
But a lot of people, especially white people, are invested in defending geisha, in putting them on a pedestal. And when they do that, it does harm to Japanese-American women and to all Asian-American women. Appropriation is almost too mild of a word. It’s not just theft, it’s domination. Imagine a young girl, on the verge of understanding herself as a sexual being, looking deeply in the mirror… and seeing her mirror image controlled by puppet masters.
… One thing I noticed that while the environment at the strip club was pretty racist, it wasn’t any more racist than the racial hierarchies at the regular restaurants I was used to working in. And this brought up a question I still wonder about today. Do the actions of Asian-American women have any impact at all on our sexual stereotypes? Does it matter if we look or act whorish or geisha-ish or virginal or nonsexual or work in the sex industry or refuse to work in it? Or will the predominantly white media continue to import and circulate our images, reading into them whatever gets them off, regardless of our reality and our choices? The thought of such powerlessness is really sad.
Thank you for this post. Geisha cultists have always creeped me out as well, both women and men. Of the women I’ve known who were all “oo, Geishas, exalted sexual power and intrigue and CLASSINESS!” about it, it seemed to be very much about stereotyping Japanese women (and in the ways that people stereotype all kinds of people into the generalized “Asian” woman as well), with a component too of fetishizing supposed extreme “femininity” and the supposed power it has over…whoever.
The idea that there are positions of sexual-social power that women are ever in, in a world of white male supremacy, that can be truly romantic - versus chock full of all the work that goes into not-rolling your eyes and snapping at people and punching people in the balls when they make you want to - is delusional at best. Mostly it’s grossly self-serving.
and i feel like the folks i know in the states who are all into geisha fetishization especially love the class aspect. when i was organizing in the sex work industry i would see this alot. that asian or white women would use the imagery of the geisha to be able to up their prices in the sex trade market. especially watching white women dress as geishas so that they could charge more than asian women dressing as geishas was an incredibly mind fuck moment. of course other women of color did not have access to the ‘geisha look’ and so could not charge as much.
i also hear the sadness. of knowing that no matter what one does as a woc one cannot change one’s image in the media. that all these people who arent you and arent you people have this incredible amount of control of how you are seen. do our actions have any impact at all on our stereotypes? at all? because i feel like in the communities of color i have been in there has been a very strong woman to woman culture of critiquing women for ‘making us all look bad’. like in the black community it is that woman who dresses ‘like that’ or ‘acts like a ho’ that is making us all look like ‘ho’s’. but is that true. even if we were all virginal soft spoken queen’s english girls … would we still be portrayed as we are in the media? if bet didnt exist would they/we just have to make it up. because the powers that be need that stereotype?
if the geisha didnt exist…would we just have to make her up?
the whole “making us look bad” thing is women blaming other women for patriarchy and racial oppression because it admits that we are all viewed the same, we can never be seen individuals, everything we do is seen as justifying the stereotype or some sort of rare exception to the stereotype
so yes if Geisha had never existed they would still find a away to invent it, just as long after circumstance that created the Sapphire and Jezzebel stereotypes have ended we now have the video ho and welfare queen stereotypes to replace it
mai’a (I think you are “admin”?) what you talk about with the whole she-makes-us-look-bad thing is such a fucking lightning rod for me. But I think my emotions around it are basically simple maybe partly because of being outside of it, too, privilege and stuff? But what I wanted to say was my heart just short-circuits with frustration that it never occurs to people who do the disassociating, I’m-not-like-her-she’s-making-us-look-bad thing (which I’ve experienced a lot in the sex industry in various ways) that no, it’s not supposed whores or all the other adjectives - trashy, skank, etc. - who make anybody look bad, it’s people looking at her, whoever she is, and seeing someone less-than, that is shameful to us all. Or that’s how I feel about it anyway. I used to feel like “damn I can’t believe other women in the sex industry (pro kink for example, which is what I do) look down their noses at escorts, that’s so extra awful!” But it’s not actually any worse or different than the men who start/ed it, and it’s not where it started, and although I dislike it, it’s not mainly who I’m the most angry with.