Not Your Fetish: Broaching Racialized Sexual Harassment Against Asian Women

Abstract

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.