Dear Robert G. Lee,

Your exploration of the “Chinaman” as a “third gender” interests me as it seems to relate to the even larger picture you paint as Chinese and Asian Americans as outside the sphere of other non-white Americans and immigrants. You place this third gender next to the practice of Chinese men in America being treated like children, and this in particular seems to be a compelling if somewhat confusing piece of evidence for the place that Asian Americans assumed and were part of since their arrival in America. How were Chinese immigrants both feared and belittled in the 19th century? It seems contradictory that they were treated as children, that the men were emasculated and considered to be good for women's work, but that they were also feared as competition for white women, and that their relationships with white women were so despised. This seems to indicate that not everyone – at the very least, not all white women – viewed Chinese as a “third gender” or as feminine, because some women were marrying them. I'm curious about these particular Chinese and their relationships – you discuss how they were reacted to, and how some accounts were told, but I'm left wondering about the lived reality of those particular men and women.



1)Why did no other minority ever compete with Asian Americans as the “model” minority?

2) Why were interracial relationships between Chinese men and white women in the West particularly disapproved of? How did the “Chinaman” or the “coolie” presence in the West in particular relate to how these interracial relationships were viewed and judged?