The Fight or the Suicide: the Relationship between the Korean Trans Woman and the Western Doll

As white femininity has occupied the most iconic position in the global discourse and culture, the Korean trans woman must at some point deal with the question of the white femininity in relation to their own Asian femininity. This question is summarized by the western doll, which clash with the Korean trans woman for dominance and control in the psychological realm. The woman seeks to protect her own racial identity by observing the white doll as an external object, yet she also reinforces her gender identity by simulating the white doll’s subjecthood as a real-life woman that she might represent. Or she may abandon her own Asian identity and identify with the whiteness of the western doll, in which case there is no clash between the woman and the doll, yet what remains is the violent act of self-erasure and whitewashing. In either case, scars of pain and violence emerge in the psychology between the Korean trans woman and the western doll, despite their outwardly loving and accepting interaction/play. An originally male person can become a woman, but a Korean or an Asian woman can never become a white woman without committing suicide at a psychological level.