Asian emasculation in The White Lotus Season 2

The White Lotus season 2 is overall well written, entertaining, compelling, and much better than season 1. There’s a lot of great things I could discuss: Aubrey Plaza in a dramatic role showing off her acting range, the beautifully shot scenes, great acting by so many of the actors, other complex storylines, toxic masculinity in each of the male characters, but I’ll let others discuss those topics and focus on what I see less discourse on: how Asian/Asian American men are portrayed in US media.

It would be difficult to preface and contextualize this without delving into the entire history of how white media, due to white male insecurity, has dehumanized and emasculated Asian men. It started out as intentional, and now it’s difficult to parse out with certainty whether it’s intentional or unconscious, lingering ideas from when it was intentional. However the dehumanization still happens regardless of intent. I wrote this which gives a bit of context. I don’t like the word “emasculation” because masculinity as a construct is fraught with toxicity, there are, and we still need a lot more new models of masculinity, but it’s easier to write “emasculation” than to write out “dehumanization of Asian men especially in regards to the erasure of the aspect of humanity involving romantic and sexual desirability.”

When there’s the rare occasion that Asian men exist in mainstream US stories, and even more rare, have a romance storyline, I ask: do they have lines that talk about their own journeys/arcs or are they just…