Sexualised Part Two

I said before that Nick Carter was brought up in a rather sexualised environment at a young age that made him think he could sex any time he wanted, not helped by that he lost his virginity to someone when he was in his teens while it’s not true for everybody else it did condition him into thinking this way. Same thing for Leonardo diCaprio, in light of him dumping women after they reach a certain age. Now when it comes to the sexualisation of Howie Dorough and AJ McLean, you’d have to realise how they’re pegged as the Latin Lover and the Bad Boy respectively even though in reality AJ might be a nicer person than that.

Sort of like how I feel Harry Styles, for all his bad boy reputation, is probably a much more vanilla person in bed than what fans and people make him out to be. Much like McLean, he’s very in touch with his feminine side. Also like McLean, he’s probably a much nicer person than what his reputation suggests. But then again Mr McLean has the additional baggage of not being a WASP, so he isn’t just merely sexualised he’s also othered. The same goes for Howie when you think about and consider this: because he’s not a WASP, he got othered in a way that the others aren’t. No wonder why he was made to dance suggestively in Quit Playing Games With My Heart.

Compared to Nick Carter, who lost his virginity to somebody else in his teens, Howie Dorough only started dating later than that. But the way that he was shown gyrating suggestively and got pegged as the Latin Lover made me think that due to him being Puerto Rican, he was going to be othered big time with the Cuban American AJ McLean pegged as the Bad Boy. Because they’re not WASPs, they’ll be pigeonholed in ways they truly aren’t. For those who don’t know, the Latin Lover is something that stereotypes both Latin European and Latin American men as sexually available and seductive.

It’s not a good stereotype, especially if it objectifies men like them. To the point where they’re not even human, just walking and talking sex dolls at that. I don’t think Backstreet Boys fans, especially WASP ones, will be comfortable confronting this way. If they’re uncomfortable with being told that they are complicit in sexualising a minor like Nick Carter was at the time, they’ll be uncomfortable if they’re told that they objectify men of colour. I was guilty of doing the same thing with black men at some point, so I learnt my lesson and realised that when you objectify somebody you dehumanise them.

Mr Dorough, to my knowledge, isn’t that wasn’t anywhere as promiscuous as Nick Carter was. Contrary to the seductive Latin Lover stereotype, he has never dated that many women in his life. He is also never saddled with rape accusations the way Carter got, so much for the predatory nonwhite (often black or generally nonwhite in general) man stereotype. I guess when it comes to falling for stereotypes like Latin Lover, it’s often predicated on the belief that these people are so sexually easy that they become easier to objectify and dehumanise. But that also goes with desexualising them a lot, as it is with East Asian men until recently.

Even then, it’s still predicated on othering the person a lot. As if they’re not fully human, even though they legally and pretty much are. As for AJ McLean, he was saddled with the Bad Boy persona even though in reality he is contrary to it. But because he’s of Cuban descent, there’s the risk of dehumanising him a lot. So much so that he could’ve internalised it at one point, much to his detriment later on in life. When it comes to the way Latinx men are portrayed in the Anglo-American imagination, they’re often portrayed as wanton and prone to criminality. Even if that’s not true for all portrayals, it does colour the way others view them not helped by things like confirmation bias.

Much like how Latin Lover reduces Latin American and Latin European men to their sexuality, the Criminal stereotype reduces them to what most don’t do often: criminal activity. AJ McLean, despite the Bad Boy persona, is reportedly a nice fellow (according to Burk Parsons) and a law-abiding citizen. But I wouldn’t doubt if he did try to live up to the Bad Boy persona, even if it harmed him in the long run because it was and still is contrary to his true nature. There goes the harm of internalised stereotypes: the more people try to live up to it, the more it hurts them because it doesn’t reflect who they really are.

This goes double if these have a racist nature, such as linking Latin American cultures to criminality. Like I said, McLean may’ve internalised the persona even though it’s something that went against his fundamental personality. It may not be true for Howie Dorough, but AJ McLean was the younger and more impressionable of the two so he was more malleable in this regard and for the worst. I don’t think Backstreet Boys fans will admit that there’s a whiff of racism to it, not that all BSB fans are white but many of them in the Western world are. So much so they’ll probably ignore or overlook the racist nature of this typecasting.

Even if it has hurt McLean in the long run, the older he got the worse the stereotype took its toll on him.

Indigenous misrepresentations

When it comes to Pocahontas, she’s commonly (mis)represented as being in love with John Smith even though in reality that wouldn’t have happened even if she were older and she was married to Kocoum with a child even. Not to mention she was younger than traditionally presented as, which makes one wonder if some people see black people as less infantilised and more sexualised than white people are would some of the same things be said about Native Americans who are also subjected to this?

It’s like if somebody made a movie about Anne Frank falling in love with somebody despite being a victim of the Holocaust, a lot of Jews will find this disrespectful to her memory and the fact that she got killed and never fell in love with her captors. That’s the situation Pocahontas is in, and it is damning why the Disney animators knew she was really a young girl at the time decided to reimagine her as an adult falling in love with a man she never was infatuated with in reality.

Likewise there’s a tendency to misrepresent indigenous folk beliefs, usually as something to be appropriated by white people regardless of the intense importance it has to some indigenous people and that not all indigenous people as necessarily this spiritual. The 1990s programme The Sentinel is one example of this phenomenon that not only has a white character appropriate the beliefs of an indigenous group but also misrepresents what indigenous Amazonians believe in.

There’s also a tendency to treat indigenous people as homogeneous (which’s also the same for Africans and Asians to varying degrees), for instance not all Native Americans highly esteem dogs. It could be personal opinion and experience, but it could also be a cultural phenomenon as with the Guaja foragers where they value monkeys over dogs a lot. Likewise, the Navajo people greatly fear wolves and coyotes as they associate them with witchcraft though not all Native American tribes share this sentiment.

When it comes to indigenous misrepresentations, it could be ignorance but also a possible ingrained stereotypical expectation that even if they’ve met and encountered Native Americans they still have stereotypical expectations of them. I do know somebody who despite being meeting and observing black people had stereotypes of them, so this might be a barrier to overcoming stereotypes about Native Americans and anybody else in general.

If there are blacks who object this to stereotypes about them in bed (this is true for any gay black man, I observed this online), there are Native Americans who object to similar things as well. They’re not necessarily promiscuous, easy or seductive despite not always being pure and clean themselves. (Actually this other Native American I know doesn’t do a lot of porny fan art as far as I know about it.) It’s not just enough to observe them, but to be this close to them to know what they object to and why they do this.

That’s necessary for not only getting over racist stereotypes, but also to understanding them as a people and to stop misrepresenting them and anybody else at all.

Mukokuseki

The Japanese word for stateless but in the sense that when it comes to the way people of their own ethnicity portray themselves they see themselves as unmarked whereas they other those of different nationalities and ethnicities, which sometimes leads to facial profiling. Anime characters aren’t necessarily white just as The Simpsons aren’t necessarily Asian in that if they’re the default ethnicity, they can’t be stereotyped in any way. Those of other ethnicities tend to be marked, for instance a black person would be stereotyped as oversexed, well-endowed, thuggish or animalistic whereas white people aren’t (in white made media).

I suspect this extends to writing where it’s like how black people would be stereotyped and described as either Mandingos, sambos, mammies, Sapphires, Jezebels, animals (often simian or primate) and thugs. If it were written by a black person, because blackness would be the default here black characters wouldn’t be portrayed that stereotypically unless if that black person has internalised racism and projects it onto women (from my personal experience). If a Nigerian did Nigerian stories, their ethnicity and nationality would be the default and this extends to how ethnicities see each other where a Yoruba sees themselves as unmarked but the Igbo and Hausa are.

This also extends to gender where if men are the default, women are the marked other or for another matter sexuality where if homosexuality’s other, heterosexuality would be default. When it comes to mukokuseki for black people, that’s only when blackness’s made default that we get less stereotypical depictions of black people (though it’s possible to have non-stereotypical black characters in a white-majority or multicultural setting). But it becomes less stereotypical in the sense that if a Nigerian did a black character, that would be the default ethnicity (no special markers needed). It’s not so much of a matter of ethnic and racial differences but rather the perception where if your race’s default it wouldn’t be stereotyped in any way unless if self-hate issues are present (which do exist among some black people).

It’s actually telling with the Milestone comics that the characters are portrayed in a less stereotypical manner than they would be in most other superhero comics at the time, though if it were coming from let’s say a black person (or if that black person’s not that misogynistic and full of self-hate) we’d get a lot of non-stereotypical black characters. When it comes to African comics, this becomes more telling that on one hand they don’t stereotype blackness but on the other hand they’d stereotype African nationalities and ethnicities. Even without comics, this becomes telling in the way they perceive themselves and each other.

A white German wouldn’t see themselves as a stereotype, just the default ethnicity but they’re going to mark Italians, blacks, Turks and Moroccans as the other. It may not always be obvious in writing but it does play off that way, for instance Italians would be stereotyped as lusty, emotional and dark-haired. The more different the ethnicity is, the likelier they are to be othered. The more default the ethnicity is, the less likely they’ll be stereotyped. It does make sense this and why it does deconstruct racism to some extent when it comes to seeing whichever ethnicity’s default.

It may not always be the case but it does make sense that in anime if Japanese people are the default, they wouldn’t be stereotyped in any way but the Chinese and Americans usually get stereotyped and othered in ways they wouldn’t be in their own media and soils. It could apply to any ethnicity and still prove my point right about whichever ethnicity’s predominant.

Othering the Native American

When it comes to Native Americans, there’s a tendency to other them whether by romanticisation (which’s something some Europeans and White Americans do) or through demeaning stereotypes like Tonto speak where Native Americans speak in broken English. Never mind that their own languages are in decline so it’s much more realistic and likelier for them to speak in broken Lakota, Navajo or Sioux and they’d be much more familiar with the English language due to the marginalisation of their own languages for generations.

Blue Corn Comics extensively documents the various Native American stereotypes that have appeared in over the years, where you go from sexualised Native Americans (not just the women, it’s also a staple in heterosexual romance novels where you have exotic, sexualised Native American men) to Native Americans and their casinos as well as criticisms about Pocahontas. The real Pocahontas was probably a pre-teen or early teenager, by modern standards she’d be too young to have consensual sex with and too young to drink either.

That makes the romanticisation of her relationship with John Smith more unsettling in that he’s older than her and he has power over her. Another thing’s that there’s the tendency to appropriate parts of Native American cultures without the full immersion in that culture, which necessitates much more experience with Native Americans in addition to having considerable knowledge of their cultures and languages. There’s also a tendency to stereotype Native Americans as lazy, close to nature, humourless or drunk (the Native Americans I know of are geeks and aren’t drunk).

Until recently with Marvel’s Indigenous Voices as well as Peace Party and other comics written and drawn by Native Americans, unless if they did their research or better yet have any real experience with those characters Native Americans will often be stereotyped and portrayed in a cliched manner. They will often be othered, made exotic or very different from their white counterparts even when Native Americans themselves don’t differ much in overall behaviour. (I can say the same things about Asians, Latinos and blacks.)

Not to mention the inability to understand foreign cultures can make it hard to do authentic portrayals of Native Americans, not just by doing research but also having any real experience with that makes it more authentic. The same can be said of any other culture really.

Some realisations

To be fair, I sometimes do succumb to black stereotypes but generally from knowing more (and even having some personal experiences with a few of them) that makes me think of them as people first. In the sense that you can’t generalise all of them. Some of them are accepting, some of them are rejecting or discriminatory (I know from experience and from what I’ve read). Some are bullies, some are bullied. Some are nice, some are bad. Some are exciting, some are boring.

Some are understanding and supportive of women, some are misogynistic. Ad infinitum. But that would mean black people are still people all the way the more you know and learn about them whether personally or from reading a lot. I even remember reading a few studies implying that black men may not be that well-endowed. If they use drugs to make themselves seem more well-endowed, then they’re not that naturally well-endowed.

It’s like dyeing your hair colour because it’s obviously not what you really look like even if hair colour does change at will over time (and repeated exposure to the sun). If a future study states that most Sub-Saharan African men have penises of around 3-4 inches when flaccid, then most of them aren’t well-endowed either. It’s analogous to a boob job really at times. You coveted it because you don’t really have it.

That’s still down to realising that black people aren’t monolithic but the same can be said of everybody and anybody.