Week 8_Christine Chau_A04

Teaching Justice and Living Peace: Body, Sexuality, and Religious Education in Asian-American Communities highlighted the difficulties Asian American women go through everyday in our lives. All the expectations that are to be maintained puts a strain on a woman because these value contradict to what she freely wants to do (in general, with the examples provided). The topic of "restoring virginities" were highlighted halfway in the article. Asian American women usually grow up in a different environment than where their parents had come from. Often times, older generations were either arranged marriages, or didn't date or have sexual intercourse as often as the newer generations now. Because of that, Asian parents would not understand the meaning of Tinder, or those websites where they can match people. They believe in virgins until marriage in order to maintain their family honor, in hopes to bring in a worthy man and good family. Asian American women would go to lengths in order to maintain this honor by having their hymen restored. Failing to be a virgin could result in tragic events such as public humility or even being killed. Although that is not as common here in America, those methods are still largely used in other Asian countries. To make things worse, males in the Asian community are free to do whatever they want. By any means, they can have multiple wives (as long as they have the money or charm for it), they can commit adultery and not have punishment against them, and plenty of other things. Not only do Asian Americans go through a lot with cultural identity struggles, intergenerational trauma, forms of racism, and other barriers, Asian American women specifically face more adversity and oppression due to the cultural values Asian communities uphold. Makes you think, if they will ever abolish those restrictions placed on women, will they ever learn or let women be freely independent of their bodies and sexuality? Probably not, if you really think about it, because who will be able to influence and change the of women that have been passed down generations for hundreds of years? 

I chose this image because I feel like this is how some Asian parents view the generations nowadays. 

References: 

- R/virginvschad - The Virgin Asian Waifu vs the Chad White Roastie. (n.d.). Retrieved from

https://www.reddit.com/r/virginvschad/comments/8f12id/the_virgin_asian_waifu_vs_the_chad_white_roastie/

- Lee, Boyung. "Teaching Justice and Living Peace: Body, Sexuality, and Religious Education in Asian-American Communities". Religious Education, 22 September, 2006.