Orientalist scholarship and travel writing feminized the Orient as a submissive sexual fantasy

Evidence

Orientalism itself, furthermore, was an exclusively male province; like so many professional guilds during the modern period, it viewed itself and its subject matter with sexist blinders. This is especially evident in the writing of travelers and novelists: women are usually the creatures of a male power-fantasy. They express unlimited sensuality, they are more or less stupid, and above all they are willing. Flaubert’s Kuchuk Hanem is the prototype of such caricatures, which were common enough in pornographic novels (e.g., Pierre Louÿs’s Aphrodite) whose novelty draws on the Orient for their interest. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 517

Categorization

• XREF: This gendered Orientalist fantasy foreshadows later postcolonial feminist critiques and connects to how the ‘Other’ gets eroticized in colonial discourse. — connects to: Orientalist depictions eroticized the torture and death of Eastern women
• CANDY: Flaubert’s Kuchuk Hanem as ‘the prototype’ of the willing, sensual Oriental woman is a compact, nameable nugget for conversation.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 517