Asian women’s paradoxical position of hypervisbility and invisibility is a result of society caricaturing and fetishizing their sexuality and bodies while simultaneously denying their humanity and personhood. Despite the long history of objectification and fetishization of Asian women in the United States, extant mental health counseling training programs and literature offer limited guidance to counselors on this concern, perpetuating an epistemic lapse in mental health counselors’ competency. With rising anti-Asian hate, the racialized COVID-19 pandemic, and anti-Chinese sentiment in the United States, there exist increased threats to Asian women’s mental health. Responding to a paucity of counseling literature, this article offers strategies grounded in the multidimensional model of broaching behavior to broach racialized sexual harassment experienced by Asian women. Implications for counselor training and future research are also offered.
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October 2022
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October 04 2022
Not Your Fetish: Broaching Racialized Sexual Harassment Against Asian Women
S Anandavalli
Clinical Mental Health Counseling, Southern Oregon University
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to S Anandavalli, Clinical Mental Health Counseling, Southern Oregon University, Ashland, OR 97520. Email:anandavas@sou.edu
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Journal of Mental Health Counseling (2022) 44 (4): 297–311.
Citation
S Anandavalli; Not Your Fetish: Broaching Racialized Sexual Harassment Against Asian Women. Journal of Mental Health Counseling 1 October 2022; 44 (4): 297–311. doi: https://doi.org/10.17744/mehc.44.4.02
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