Lisa Nakamura believes that the prevalence of fetishized Asian sterotypes on LambdaMOO supresses the enactment of non-stereotyped Asian roles. Carolyn disagrees:

I really don’t buy Nakamura’s claim that Asianness is particularly restricted or contained within the world of the MUD. I think that fantasy gamers are choosing to embrace a variety of tired stereotypes, just as they always do, and some of those stereotypes happen to be Asian. I bet you that if Nakamura took time to logon to LambdaMOO as a nuanced, non-stereotyped Asian character, she’d be treated fine in the MUD, and people probably wouldn’t make much of an issue of her race.

While I agree with Carolyn that most MUD characters are stereotyped, I think she is missing the point that Ms. Nakamura is trying to make. While wizards and swordsmen may be convential Anglo-Saxon types, I doubt that other MUDders attach a set of assumptions about wizardlyness or swordsmanship to a profile marked as Anglo-Saxon. Yet doesn’t seem unlikely that a profile marked as Japanese may be seen as erotic, zen-like, or inscrutable. Or more in keeping with recent trends, kitschy or kinky.

Carolyn is correct that Japan is awash in kitsch, but she seems to forget (as most white Americans do) that Japan != Japanese America. I would guess that Lisa Nakamura grew up in the latter, and is no more enamored of samurai and geisha than I am of cowboys and or Carolyn is of cheerleaders. Our stereotypes about Japanese culture circumscribe the roles which Japanese-Americans can take on. I suspect that this is really what Ms. Nakamura is taking issue with. She must either hide part of her identity or take on a set of characteristics totally alien to her.

I also have to take issue with Carolyn’s statement that “It’s the Japanese themselves who promote the samurai and geisha stereotypes.” Who are “the Japanese”? Certainly the rich old men who control the Japanese media love the myths of the steely samurai and the lovely geisha, just as our American rich old men love the myths of the cowboy and Mom baking apple pie. National stereotypes are sustained in curious and complex ways, and we shouldn’t saddle an entire population with them, even though they may originate in their own culture.

Finally, I should point out that this sort of sterotyping cuts both ways. In a Japanese MUD, a profile marked as “American female” would undoubtedly have “Amazonian nymphomaniac” attached. The same old men who promote the Japanese national myths are generally only exposed to American women through pornography, strip clubs, and hostess bars, so you can imagine the sterotypes they’ve developed… let’s just say that Carolyn’s observation that “non-small white girls in the far east are simply not appreciated as sexual objects” definitely does not hold in Japan. As many American women who work in Japan find out to their dismay, these sterotypes tend to suppress attempts to play other roles like “boss.”