Hyper-sexualisation, objectification and dehumanisation of East and Southeast Asian women is an under-reported topic in the Netherlands. When someone once told me, “You are my first Asian” and “You are so beautiful because you are Asian”, I did not know whether to laugh or to cry. It seems harmless, but such comments are symptomatic of a structural pattern of sexism and racism lurking in Dutch society. This contributes to the dehumanisation of East and Southeast Asian women, which can lead to violence against them.
Header photo: Rui Jun Luong
Google ‘Asian women’ and you quickly see that there are a huge number of different dating sites available that claim you can find a ‘beautiful, submissive Asian woman’ there.
If we zoom in on specific countries, and you type, for example, ‘Indonesian women’, ‘Vietnamese women’ or ‘Chinese women’ into the search engine, several dating ads come up as well. This does not happen if you search for ‘Western women’ or ‘Dutch women’.
Such websites offer not only ‘exotic’ Asian, but also African, Eastern European, Ukrainian and Russian women. For example, Asian women are described on dating and pornographic platforms as obedient and subservient, while Eastern European women are often portrayed as seductive and smart. These are racist and sexist stereotypes that turn these women into caricatures. These websites are not innocent, but places where unequal power relations are perpetuated, as if women are for sale. The target audience of these websites is often white men.
Generalising, stereotyping and racist patterns are ubiquitous on these websites. Women of colour are presented as if they were products, with categories such as ‘exotic’ or ‘loyal’. Time and again, these women are reduced to objects of lust.
The structural dehumanisation of Asian women can lead to serious problems. For instance, they are at increased risk of sexual harassment and violence because people think they conform to the stereotype, the idea that they are ‘available’ or ‘submissive’. It also hinders their opportunities in the labour market and in care, where prejudice undermines their professionalism or autonomy. In addition, reducing Asian women to a stereotype and treating them accordingly negatively affects their mental health.
Even with the search term ‘Asian Raisins’ or any other term containing ‘Asian’, you will come across porn websites after just a few pages of search results. Search engines strongly associate the word ‘Asian’ with sexually oriented content, even if the subject you search for has nothing to do with it at all. As a result, often unwanted and sexually tinged results are seen.
This is not a coincidence, but has to do with the way search engines work. Search engines like Google use algorithms that determine which results appear at the top, based on popularity, user search behaviour and backlinks. Because there is a huge amount of content worldwide in which Asian people are sexually stereotyped, and because many people search for those terms in that context, the algorithms reinforce those associations. In other words, the system itself reinforces sexist and racist stereotypes by showing them more often.
These problems are further perpetuated by commercial parties who deliberately capitalise on these stereotypes, such as owners of erotic websites and pornographic platforms. They deliberately use terms like ‘Asian’ to attract visitors, contributing to these distorted perceptions. It is not only the public that feeds these associations, but also the designers and owners of digital platforms and search engines, who do not take sufficient measures to counter this harmful stereotyping. The result is a normalisation of the hyper-sexualisation and objectification of Asian people in the digital world.
Stock photo websites also have many problematic descriptions accompanying images, including those of Asian women. These texts are often sexist, exoticising or racist. The descriptions are usually added by the photographer himself, who uses as many keywords as possible to be easier to find and therefore make more money. Since the revenue per photo is often low, they try every possible way to get their photos to show up in search results, even if that means using harmful and sexist terms. For example, the above picture has the description: “Asian women get horny from the online movies they watch”.
Çiğdem Yüksel is a photographer and researcher who conducted a study on representation of Muslim women in the ANP’s image database in 2020. You can read their research here: Muslim women. In it, Yüksel writes: “Here, in the example, the photographer has used the words ‘burqa ban’, ‘bill’ and ‘oppression’ to accompany a photograph of three women wearing a niqaab, talking to each other in a market. In this case, the photographer looks beyond the actual context of the photo and attaches words to it that have to do with a wider social and political debate about face-covering clothing and frames used in this context. We find this problematic. Adding the word oppression is an interpretation of the photographer, it is a word that is not neutral. It implies that these women are oppressed, while the reality is more nuanced.”
As with Çiğdem Yüksel’s study, we see that Asian women are also trapped in problematic images that say more about the photographer’s gaze than about reality.
Blogs full of disgusting derogatory texts abound. For instance, Eddy called “Social Pro” on the free blogging platforms Yoo.rs, which has since been removed, wrote that women from Asia are very petite, feminine, and caring. A “special exotic beauty” who takes care of her family, is very sensitive and despite working full-time, manages to keep the house clean and cook delicious meals.
It is also claimed that “almost all white men are attracted to the “yellowish skin and cuteness in these girls’ faces’”. It is disgusting how Eddy writes about East and Southeast Asian women.
Besides problematic blogs contributing to this picture, problematic reactions are also posted under news media coverage on social media. Here is a small selection of reactions that can be found under news articles about the terrorist racist hate crime in Atlanta (USA) at three different massage parlours, where eight women of East and Southeast descent were shot in March 2021.
Similar racist comments were posted in the Netherlands, below NU.nl’s Facebook post reading “He certainly didn’t get a happy ending after a massage” and “Puts happy ending in a different light”.
Such comments ensure that racism is normalised. It is downplayed as ‘funny’ and ‘Dutch humour’. It is also visible in posts that feature people that pass as East and Southeast Asian. What is extra worrisome is that these platforms hardly take responsibility. They leave up such comments and rarely intervene, actively contributing to an online environment where racism is allowed and normalised.
After the 2013 film Ushi Must Marry — which revolves around Wendy van Dijk’s racist caricatures Ushi and Dushi — was released, Van Dijk reacted to the bad reviews the film received. She said the film was mainly meant for children, “they do find it fun”.
To this day, this racist film is still on sale at bol.com and other retailers. Until recently, the film was available at Pathé Thuis, Videoland and Netflix. The ridiculing and sexualising of East Asian women is frequently observed in both the TV show’s many episodes and the subsequent movie. For instance, at one point, a character says: “There are two words for a successful marriage” to which Ushi replies: “Sex and money”. Also, the stereotype that everything East Asian people do is either ‘crazy’ or ‘weird’ is repeated when a character in the firm says: “No one wants you, you’re crazy”.
In a 2019 interview, Wendy van Dijk says: “Whatever you do these days, you are racist. The world has become very sensitive. Dushi was already borderline. Problems had already arisen from that.” The character Dushi, described as “an Antillean TV host from TeleCuraçao”, was created after Ushi’s so-called ‘success’. This character is an example of blackface. Blackface is when someone with a white or lighter skin tone puts on makeup to portray a Black person. It is often accompanied by an exaggerated accent, stereotypical clothing and caricatured behaviour. There is a long, painful history of Black people being depicted by such dehumanising characterisations. Think of the 19th century minstrel shows in which white actors dressed up as Black people for the entertainment of a white audience, purely with the aim to ridicule the ‘Other’. Ushi and Dushi aired every Sunday on RTL4.
Rundfunk, a KRO-NCRV TV show, is an absurd comedy set in a secondary school. In one episode, a female student tells her teacher that she wants to learn Chinese. The teacher responds by saying: “You want [to learn] Chinese? Here’s Chinese”, after which she slaps the table and a Chinese delivery woman from a takeaway restaurant appears. Her orange t-shirt reads, in broken Dutch, “Wat Woi, we make sad people happy,” along with two racist drawings of faces with rice hats and lines for eyes, one happy, one angry.
From then on, the situation becomes even more uncomfortable. The teacher talks to the pictures on the woman’s t-shirt, and starts touching her breasts. The woman remains still and says nothing while this happens, as does the student. In this scene, sexual harassment is used as a joke, effectively normalising sexual violence, and particularly reiterating the idea that Asian women are ‘available’ and ‘submissive’.
In addition, it is worrying that this is being broadcasted by KRO-NCRV, a Dutch public broadcaster partly funded by taxpayer money. A public institution should be expected to contribute to a safe and inclusive society, instead of spreading harmful stereotypes as well as minimising sexist and sexual violence.
The delivery woman is presented as an object: she is referred to only as “the Chinese,” she has no name or identity, and is treated like a commodity ordered for someone’s pleasure.
The scene from Rundfunk contributes to the normalisation of racism and sexism towards East Asian women. This has dire consequences. One example is the terrorist attack that occurred in Atlanta (USA) on March 17th, 2021. 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long shot dead eight people in three Asian massage parlours. Among the victims, seven of whom were women, six of were of Asian descent. Long explained to the police that he had no racist motives, but that he considered himself a sex addict and “wanted to remove temptations”. In other words, he did not see these women as people, but as obstacles to resolving his own problem. As objects to be removed.
If we go back in history, there are some works like the classic opera Madama Butterfly where sexism and racism are visible. Composed by Giacomo Puccini and first performed in 1904, it is one of the most performed operas in the world. It tells the story of Cio-Cio-san (from the Japanese word for ‘lady butterfly’), a 15-year-old girl bought by a US naval officer named Pinkerton. She becomes pregnant and marries him, waiting faithfully for his return for years. When he finally returns, with an American woman, the story ends in tragedy: Cio-Cio-san commits suicide.
In the story, American officer Pinkerton is hardly condemned. His colonial attitude, in which he ‘buys’ a young woman for his own pleasure and leaves her when done with her, goes largely unpunished. This not only reflects colonial power relations, but also normalises sexual and emotional abuse of Asian women by Western men.
In many performances of Madama Butterfly, stereotypes are further reinforced: Asian roles are often played by non-Asian actors in ‘yellow face’, with exaggerated make-up, wigs and caricatured accents.
In 2025, Theater Oostpool (a long-standing Arnhem-based theatre company) brought a revamped version of Madama Butterfly, written by Sun Li and Vera Morina and directed by theatre-maker Charli-Chung (Banana Generation’s director). Through their reinterpretation, they challenged the original colonial narrative. Making room for an East and Southeast Asian perspective, it explored what it means for your culture to be repeatedly portrayed in a singular, dehumanising way. Rather than showing Cio-Cio-san as passive to her own life, Oostpool’s version gives her agency—a voice, a background, and a story of her own.
This production makes audiences think about how persistent racist depictions are, as well as how important it is to revisit old stories in order to decolonise their roots.
The fetishisation of East and Southeast Asian women is no accident. It is a direct result of the sexist and racist orientalist ideologies propagated during colonial times, which are maintained and reproduced in Western societies to this day. As was demonstrated here, the portrayal of Asian women as submissive, exotic, and sexually available is reaffirmed time and again.
Institutions consciously and subconsciously keep these harmful images alive. They reflect a systematic thinking that ensures Asian women and girls are perceived as objects, not fully human beings.
Such thinking is normalised, as well as internalised. As long as we keep pretending these racist jokes are funny or innocent, we too participate in normalising imagery capable of producing violence. It affects how people perceive and treat us, and most importantly, it affects how we see ourselves. Internalised racism and sexism are not abstract terms but daily realities for many of us. And until this ideology is exposed and fought, it will remain.
As a society, as viewers, and creators, it is time we take this issue seriously. Not by silencing Asian women, but by listening to their stories, making space for their perspectives, actively naming and fighting sexism and racism.
Sexist and racist jokes and content are not harmless, they cost lives. We are not a fetish, we are human beings.
Rui Jun Luong (1996), raised in Friesland, has faced discrimination and racism. As a multidisciplinary designer, photographer, videographer, creator of Guess Who: Asian Edition, and founder of Asian Raisins, she works to raise awareness of injustice, racism, and discrimination. Through the creation of this platform, she hopes to prevent others from experiencing what she went through.
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