Assembling Asian American Men in Pornography: Shattering the Self toward Ethical Manhoods

Abstract

In recent years, Darrell Hamamoto's political pornography Yellowcaust (2004) and James Hou's Masters of the Pillow (2004) present an Asian American anxiety regarding castrated heterosexual manhood which they propose to solve with the making of racially politicized pornography. In defining sexuality as a site of racial injury, their solution privileges gender hierarchy and heteronormative phallic power. Aiming to free our conceptions of manhood from the poles of vilified lack and valorized macho, I look to how sexual screens provide opportunities for the formulation of ethical manhoods—where sex expresses not only pleasure and power but care for self and others.