Filipino women, sexual politics and the gendered racist discourse of the mail order bride

"Mail order bride" has become a powerful signifier of the identity and culture of the Filipina in popular Australian imaginings and representations of the "Asian" Other. This paper examines the media construction of the "Filipino mail order bride." It argues that the discourse of the mail order bride opens up a space in which acts of a dangerous sexual politics become normalised and naturalised. Empirical evidence is provided by an analysis of five media texts with a particular focus on the reporting of instances of violence against Filipinas: although the reporting may seem sympathetic, the media nevertheless create a reverse discourse of the Filipina as victim and locate the key to violence within her presumed culture by not moving beyond the discourse of "mail order bride" and its orientalist and culturalist cognates. The article examines the organised resistance of Filipinas, and shows that such resistance involves a rejection of the "truth" of those patriarchal discourses that undermine their basic human rights and a claim to identity and citizenship in terms of the classic Western discourse of liberty and equality.