West VS East. Racial And Gender Stereotypes And Power Relationships Research Paper

West VS East. Racial And Gender Stereotypes And Power Relationships - Research Paper Example Thus, this flow seems unstoppable on the example of Europeans and Asians. David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly is an applicable example of those fallacies white supremacist promoted about underdeveloped Asians. Turning up to this topic, the world knows many examples when cultural misconception brought a host of social, political, and economical conflicts based on the racial and ethnical difference. This popular trend in the East-West debate was broken down by means of Hwang’s M. Butterfly. Thus, Western influences on Asian culture refer to the imperial dominance, while Eastern identity cannot be trite even after the period of colonization. First and foremost, representatives from Asian countries and with Asian descent were always an object for Western mockery and humiliation. This trend is historically grounded. The question is that Asian people are quite different in their sets of virtues and values they carry on in terms of religion, society, money-making, and the like. O nce, it became annoying for the white supremacists that colonized much of the South-East Asian countries. The pressure started growing since that time. Hence, it overgrew into inequality and prejudices. Asian men and women were not considered equal with European men and women due to the higher, so to speak, status and position of the latter descent. Taking a look at the Hwang’s work, Rene Gallimard is an unhappy white man to be trapped into his own fallacy on Asian women. He fell in love with blindness in his eyes regarding the gender of an Asian woman he loved. The idea is that Asian men as well as Asian women were not considered sexually attractive for white people. Their asexual identity was another reason why they were mistrusted and discriminated by the white majority. Oriental sexuality bore a mark of impossibility. This bias embraced the cultural vision of Caucasian people worldwide. Hence, a host of different stereotypes is the reason why East-West discourse fell shor t of further clarifications. Misogyny referred to Asian men along with feminization referred to Asian women in a wider look at the Western imaginary are the main drives to declare inability of Asians to be attractive to white people. This is why Asians seem to be cast adrift far from where whites gathered. On the other hand, Asian women were considered incapable of their female potential so as to impress Europeans. Thus, East-West racial and gender stereotypes were well grounded on extrapolation of power relations with a century-long continuation. When Gallimard says: â€Å"I’m a man who loved a woman created by a man† – it is a justification of narrow-mindedness he possessed before which was imposed by the rest of his own society in Paris (Hwang ii). It is a remarkable episode depicting the way Rene Gallimard erred during his visit of China. On the other hand, framing Asian men as dangerous for women at large was another stereotype by the Western theorists. One can see it through the way Gallimard behaved in the first days of his trip to China. Frankly speaking, it is all about the way two cultures differ in their understanding of social equilibrium and harmony. Sorrentino points out in his study the following idea: â€Å"Most relevant in this case is the way the West has been described as having an individualistic culture with relatively â€Å"loose† social norms whereas the East has been described as having a collectivistic culture with â€Å"tight† social norms that emphasize social harmony† (51). This is the sticking point highlighting the point of misunderstanding between two cultures. Drawing the images of Asian people in strict accordance to the prejudices and stereotypes illustrating the Western supremacy over the rest of the world, asexual Asian men and hypersexual Asian women seem to