Brothers, Sisters, & Outsiders
The adage goes: Love your family first, before others. So as brothers we should love our sisters first right? Some of you may be thinking, “Maybe you can forgive the sisters, but I’ve had too many bad experiences with Asian girls” to ever trust the sisters again. You are right. It hurts when blood betrays you because blood is thicken then the water you share with strangers. When blood betrays you, it is a pain that you cannot grasp. But not all of us have those experiences. Some of us Asian dudes have had all their romantic relationships with Asian girls. For some of us, the girls that have given the most love are our fellow sisters, while other girls from other races frown at our face. So, don’t categorize our sisters, because most of them are cool, fun, smart, and sweet and probably have our backs first before the other girls out there. If you are an Asian girl reading this: we love you, but as Asian men it really hurts when we see our sisters kick us while we are down.
White Fever?
Let’s get down to business though. There’s a name for those sisters who stomp on you when you are down. Yeah, Anna Lu, I’m looking at you! The first question to ask: Do white men really have a fetish for our sisters? Or do our sisters have a fetish for them? Let’s look at study:
After two years of serving as academic love brokers, we had data on thousands of decisions made by more than 400 daters from Columbia University’s various graduate and professional schools. By combining all our choice and ratings data with separately collected background information on the daters, we could figure out what made someone desirable by comparing the attributes of daters that attracted a lot of interest for future dates with those that were less popular.
We found no evidence of the stereotype of a white male preference for East Asian women. However, we also found that East Asian women did not discriminate against white men (only against black and Hispanic men). Thus, the white man-Asian woman pairing was the most common form of interracial dating — but because of the women’s neutrality, not the men pronounced preference. We also found that regional differences mattered. Daters of both sexes from south of the Mason-Dixon Line revealed much stronger same-race preferences than Northern daters.
An economist from Columbia with way too much time on his hands studied the speed dating behaviors of 400 students at a local bar for two years, and came to the same conclusion most of us know: YELLOW FEVER DOESN’T EXIST, IT’S WHITE FEVER THAT’S THE PROBLEM. But this is only one study though! How can that mean anything? Well here’s another one. The following is from: Coffee Meets Bagel : Dating Myths Exposed: Do Jewish Men Really Have a Thing for Asian Women?
Among women who only wanted one ethnicity, 100% of White women only wanted White men. Most Asian women only wanted Asian men, however, a full 34% of them (and 16% of South Asian women) also only wanted White men. Looks like it’s good to be a white man…still.
Yellow Fever
The term “yellow fever” was coined by David Henry Hwang. Who is David Henry Hwang? Well, he’s the writer of that the play M. Butterfly.
In the Broadway production M. Butterfly, the effeminate image of Asian American men became intertwined with issues of sexuality when the lead character was a cross-dressing Chinese male spy who falls in love with a British male spy (J. Chan). South Asian American men became equated with turbans, mystics, and quickie-marts in shows such as The Simpsons and the film The Guru (Joshi, n.d.; Prashad, 2000). The Joy Luck Club became a mainstream Asian American movie that had very few, if any, redeeming Asian and Asian American men (J. W. Chan, 1998). They were portrayed as misogynistic and cheap, and their Asian American women love interests turned to relationships with White men. Asian American Masculinity: A Review of the Literature
The term “yellow fever” comes from the writer of a play that was co-opted by White supremacy as part of their racist agenda to emasculate us. There are creepy white losers who fetishize Asian women (so-called “Asiaphiles”), but there’s no evil conspiracy of mustachioed propeller bowtie wearing white neckbeards out to take advantage of naive, unsuspecting Asian sisters. The data shows its Asian women who chase white men, often to the exclusion of Black, Hispanic, and Asian men.
Asian Women often protest that the only reason they’ve dated exclusively white is because “That’s all I know!” or “That’s all I grew up around!” Professor Fisman says you’re full of shit though. From the actual study:
Our results are as follows. First, we observe a strong asymmetry across genders in racial preferences: women of all races exhibit strong same-race preferences, while men of no race exhibit a statistically significant same-race preference. We are able to document convincingly that same-race pairings are the result of preferences rather than exposure to dating opportunities and, more interestingly, that there is a stark gender asymmetry in these revealed preferences. Source.
Most same-race pairings occur DESPITE the availability of other dating options. When they don’t, it’s often because of a gender asymmetry in preference. Anna Lus often give this nonsense that “they never had a choice” but the vast majority have always had a fucking choice. They just chose not to date non-White. Most asian men don’t care if our sisters date out. But we hate it when we see out sisters with inferior dudes. Furthermore, Anna Lus hide behind the whole “preferences” argument. But that argument is also full of shit.
This was exactly Nolan’s response when I suggested that his attitude reeked of racism. Like so many men with the no-Asians dating and hooking-up policies, Nolan hid behind the old “That’s just my preference” excuse. He compared his not being attracted to Asians to his preferring men over women. I let that one slide because it was such a ridiculous argument. It was as misguided as equating it to digging brunettes over blondes. Both rationalizations were irrelevant. All sexual preferences are not created equal, and for Nolan to so glibly simplify human sexuality just for the sake of his weak defense against my charge of racism just made him seem deluded times two.
‘Sorry, I Don’t Do Asians’: The Dangers of Racial Discrimination in Dating
In his outright dismissal of Asian men, he was forming a sexual hierarchy based on race, while basically saying that all Asian men are created physically equal with little variation: “A few undesirable physical qualities fit all. I’ll put the entire Asian population in a box and remove them from my dating and sexing pool.” Never mind that eye shape aside, there’s little physical similarity among the men of, say, Thailand, China and the Philippines, and even less among those of Israel, Lebanon, India and Anatolian Turkey (all of which are part of the Asian continent, making their natives just as Asian as the ones to whom Nolan was referring). Shoving them into one box of physical attributes and labeling it “Do not touch” is tantamount to saying that all black people look alike. Sure, we have no control over what we’re attracted to, but we can control whether we see people as individuals or merely as belonging to groups that are determined by ethnicity and race. And does rigid adherence in your head to a supposed “preference” (which, as expressed, often sounds more like a rule: “I don’t date [insert ethnicity, race or nationality here]”) become almost self-fulfilling in practice, to the point of exclusion?
Can an employer who will only hire white employees because he or she prefers to work with them, or a landlord who will only rent to white tenants because he or she prefers to live with them, use “preference” as a loophole to sidestep charges of racism? Of course, not. Why, then, do people think the rules of racism don’t apply to them when they’re eliminating entire continents from their romantic prospects based entirely on ethnicity and race? Because they can’t face legal charges of discrimination for their preference? But if we are going to assign labels to what Nolan considered to be preferences, regardless of what determines a person’s sexuality (nature vs. nurture), there is already a term in use for guys who prefer men to women — a word as objectionable for many as being called “racist.” And if there were a catchy term to describe blond-chasers, I would have coined it. “Racist” is the operative word to describe someone who would exclude someone from housing, from jobs, from sex, from love, based on ethnicity. Furthermore, no matter how people want to spin it, rejection for being of a certain race stings so much more than being overlooked because of your hair or eye color, or even your gender. Because you can change all of those, but how is it possible to change your race?
“Preferences” are not created equal. They absolutely can be a result of racist attitudes, engendered by 100 years of social engineering by White supremacy. Preferences can be created as the result of an agenda. Asian men must not take excuses such as these from white girls, and especially from our own sisters. The history of Asian men in this country has been the result of attempted genocide of Asian men through the desexualisation and emasculation.
We’ve been treated like this from the times when we first arrived on these shores to this very day. Do not live under the shackles of white supremacy and the sisters that we have lost to them. The first rule of dating for Asian Men is this: Do not ever date an Asian Women whose dating history is all white. She has a white fetish, and she is using you. Think about it. If she was successfully with a white guy, why would she go for you? That is, unless she wants something from you, it is highly suspicious that she specifically finds an Asian guy. Woman and Men do not like being used, so why is it okay for you, an Asian man to be used by evil sisters such as these who spend their entire twenties fooling around with the white men, ignoring us until they need us? Family does ignore Family until they need something. Family is there through thick and thin. Sisters who do this are not family.
What’s an Anna Lu?
The following is from a podcast. This podcast specifically. Listen to how the host Stephanie describes the FEVER:
STEPHANIE: Yeah, precisely. I mean, I get that not every (white) guy who’s dated an Asian girl is a jerk, right. Not every (white) guy is dating a flock of us at a time. But take for example my OkCupid inbox. Like a huge portion of my messages are from (white) guys going on about my race and my exotic looks and my almond eyes. And then on top of that there are all these strangers messaging me, trying to warn me about other (white) guys with yellow fever. Just like Suzanne and those other girls did. A few months ago, a woman I didn’t know saw an innocuous interaction I had with a (white) guy on Twitter. She wrote to me to tell me to watch out, that the (white) guy had yellow fever and would try to hit on me. And he did. And soon after, I matched with another (white) dude on a dating website, who messaged me that he had to warn me about something and told me to call him. So, I did. He asked me to modify his voice for this story.
We put (white) in front of every mention of “guy” in her quote, because that’s clearly who she was referring to. Stephanie thinks (white) guys are the only ones with “yellow fever”. This begs the question: Why is she only dating white guys when she knows that they are the ones showing these behaviours? Another word for this: Stockholm Syndrome — a psychological phenomenon in which hostage’s express empathy and sympathy and have positive feelings toward their captors, sometimes to the point of defending and identifying with the captors. We aren’t here to police anybody’s sexuality, but it’s very dishonest to constantly complain about “yellow fever” from white guys, when all she is white guys.
What is an Anna Lu really? It is clear as day that Anna Lus are just self-interested shills actively engaging in racist dating preferences, but crying when they are victims of racist preferences themselves. Racism and fetishization is wrong, period, but it’s hard for our Asian brothers not to feel a bit of schadenfreude when the same sisters that constantly mock and dismiss the very real racist agenda of white supremacy to emasculate Asian men, go on crocodile tear laced tirades about how their “preferences” are biting them in the ass. Self-hate never resulted in anything good. So, what’s the solution? The gender divide in our communities seems insurmountable given the tensions that exist between some of our sisters and the brothers that hate them. But, given the tons of ink that’s been spilled on the internet blogosphere bout how “misogynistic” and “patriarchal” we are, how about some sympathy and understanding? We aren’t calling for affirmative action in dating, but it would be great if our sisters could join the fight against social engineering by White supremacy to show they support our brothers.
The True Anna Lu
What is an Anna Lu? How can you tell if you’ve met an Asian girl who is an Anna Lu? An Anna Lu is the blind equal of her brother, Uncle Chan. Anna Lu participates in the White Supremacy by willingly putting down Asian Males. There are differing degrees of Anna Lu’s. The worst type of Anna Lu is the Asian girl who participates in putting down Asian males with her white boyfriend. She is often an avid Feminist that blames the Asian Male Patriarchy for the treatment that Asian women face in America, but she does not realize that the true patriarchy is white. Anna Lu’s are often brainwashed by the white supremacy image that is promoted in Hollywood: that white males are superior, whilst buying into the broken image of Asian Men that is controlled by the latter group. When she is presented with an White and an Asian guy, she picks the white dude, even if he is less attractive, able then the Asian guy. She hides behind the excuse of “That is just my preference” when she is accused of only dating white guys. She is implicit in the white supremacy. She complains about suffering from yellow fever; yet her dating history is all white. Anna Lu’s are brainwashed. The only way for an Anna Lu to redeem herself is to fight against the White supremacy, but is she willing to do that and lose all her privileges.
A Family Broken
So, what plays a key role in the Asian American narrative to marry interracially? Obviously, there is something deep at work here, or else the marriage rates would not have such a big discrepancy. For most, it is the significance of growing in in predominantly white neighbourhoods that lead to a powerful desire for whiteness, and white racial privilege. These powerful desires shape, fantasies, and intimate desires of Asian Americans from a young age.
So, what shapes the desires for Asian men to date inter racially? We are influenced by the Hegemonic masculinity that has been the focus of the American society. The typical northern, heterosexual, protestant father of college education, fully employed, and unblushing male in America. This is an ideal that few white men can attain, but it is an even harder deal for Asian men to attain, because society has been against us from the onset. But what about the female ideal? There is also a hegemonic femininity, an ideal that arguably much easier for an Asian female to attain, since she has no cultural penalties imposed on her.
In both cases, these hegemonic gender ideals have a large imposing force on the identities of those growing up. In males and females, it influences both sexes to see the opposite white sex as a trophy to attain. So, what influences both sexes to marry inter-racially? It seems that experiences during the teenage years where individuals who experienced as strong sense of racial, ethnic, or cultural difference made these individuals self-conscious about their culture, producing desires to whiten. It’s just that we are dating out, we are doing so against a power structure, but when AF do so, it’s with the power structure.
The following is from Relevance of Race : A study that explores the reasons why interracial marriages happen in both sexes in Asian Americans: It discusses the reasons why AM/AF date outside the race — i.e.)white supremacy. Yes, we’ve discussed this study before, but it is again relevant here. You can make the typical accusations that: AF are evil and all that stuff, but what is really at play? Think carefully. You can hate them all you want, but the real enemy is white supremacy.
A common denominator among men and women of this study who eventually chose to marry interracially included those who felt a powerful desire to assimilate. a.k.a uncle Chans. It is worthwhile noting the reasons that the female respondents gave for not finding Asian males appealing. The simple “numbers” explanation, such as that given by Kira, was belied by other reasons offered; for most of the women, not surprisingly, they viewed Asian men they knew or grew up with as falling short of the ideal American masculinity. The respondents uniformly referred to the widely-held stereotypes of Asian men as being “geeky” and seemed to buy into it.
We’ve talked about stereotypes 100s of times, but it must be drilled into your head: Stereotypes do have a legitimate effect on the relationships that Asian Men are a part of. Despite what people may say, or excuses that may be brought up, the hegemonic masculinity that is a part of American society affect the real lives of Asian men.
However, another woman made an intriguing comment that in college, she did notice one Chinese boy who was “very handsome, athletic, tall,” but that he was the “type of boy who was not dating an Asian girl. He only dated very blond girls at school. . . He was very non-Asian.” In her view, it is not that all Asian men are unable to attain the ideal hegemonic American masculinity, but that achieving the hegemonic ideal went in tandem with complete assimilation and Angloconformity, including using their superior physical capital to date white women exclusively and reject Asian women. Those are able to overcome stereotypes, or have the ability to do so to attain the ideal hegemonic American masculinity also go hand in hand with full assimilation and anglo(white)conformity.
Therefore, the question becomes: Is it better to assimilate and conform to white standards, beauty, etc to attain a white partner, or is it better to keep your culture?
In contrast to the women who frequently alluded to the nerdy qualities of Asian males as reasons for these men’s undesirability, interracially married Asian American men in my study rarely mentioned explicitly the physical shortcomings of Asian females as reasons for not marrying or dating them. However, men who grew up finding non-Asian women, especially white ethnic women, more desirable did tend to elevate white females as paragons of ideal femininity in terms of physical appearance, and even personality and character. One interesting quality that rendered
You often hear Asian women shitting on Asian Men, but it seems that Asian men do not do this. Rather, they tend to elevate white females as paragons of ideal femininity; or putting white women on a pedestal.
Asian American women less desirable, mentioned most frequently by Chinese American men in the study, is that Asian women reminded them of their mothers or sisters, being “overbearing and possessive.” One man, Matt, explicitly contrasted his “easygoing” and “sunny” white American wife with Chinese American women he dated, presenting his wife as everything they were not. Even though Matt did not talk of Asian women in a negative way in any general terms, his comparison implicitly placed Asian women and white women in two contrasting and separate categories: Asian women as accomplished and smart but possessive and emasculating, and white women as more free-spirited, progressive, and somehow more “evolved” in their dealings with men.
We often hear Asian females making excuses when excluding Asian males from their dating pool, but it seems some Asian men also do the same.
In general, my finding is that interracially married second-generation Asian American men generally fell into a category of those who engaged in a strategy of either “denial” or “compensation” regarding dominant American masculinity ideal. That is, they, though not all, tended to be “compensators,” highly assimilated individuals who saw themselves as people who either transcended the negative Asian male stereotype by trying hard to achieve the hegemonic masculinity, or “deniers” people who did not believe that negative stereotypes existed or that these stereotypes applied to themselves since they were really “white.” Such assimilative tendencies often went hand in hand with a desire for women of the dominant group in society, white females, whose approval provided these men with a sense that they are successfully approximating the American middleclass hegemonic masculinity and winning societal acceptance.
Self-improvement is a great thing, right? It seems that most of us are either in the mindset of denial or compensation. Those of us who deny the fact that this hegemonic masculinity exists tend to compensate for their denial by not believing in stereotypes, or that the stereotype would apply to themselves, believing that they are white. Then there are those who believe in compensation. These individuals are highly assimilated individuals who see themselves as people who were above the hegemonic masculinity, who were not part of the negative Asian male stereotype, i.e.) not believing that racism exists.
Not surprisingly, some interracially partnered Asian American men seemed to harbor submerged feelings of gratitude to their white ethnic partners. The men often confessed not only that winning approval of white ethnic females provided them with a boost in self-esteem and confidence, but also that they were grateful to them for being willing to date or marry across racial lines. Jason, a Korean American, denied that he saw his white ethnic wife as a “trophy,” but admitted nonetheless, “You think more of the person you are dating because she’s open-minded enough to go out with someone like me.”
White women are not trophies. Don’t put them on a pedestal. It’s the male equivalent of AF seeking out WM for status purposes. You are forgetting one thing when you do this; you are propping and supporting the white supremacy.
AMWF vs WMAF: The difference
For most white ethnic husbands, downplaying “differences” of their wives and children involved stressing similarity of values with Asian “culture” that their wives and their families represented, including emphasis on education and high expectations regarding scholarly and other types of endeavors for kids.
Another notable aspect of the white partners’ narratives regarding their children is their generally laissez-faire attitude toward the transmission of the spouse’s ethnic culture, which contrasted sharply with their Asian spouse’s far more concerned attitude. Although most of the white ethnic spouses expressed approval, even enthusiasm, of their kids learning aspects of their spouse’s ethnic culture since it made them “different” and “special” in a way that was advantageous in the current global and multicultural environment, almost all admitted that they were fine with it only as long as their spouses took the lead. When asked how important it was for the kids to know about their Chinese culture and heritage,
Luke put it this way: “Okay, so I think if there is anything I can do to open up their minds, that’s good, difference is really good. So, it’s the Chinese part they get because Kira is Chinese and I also find it really interesting. So, I don’t really have any issues with it. If Kira didn’t push it though, I wouldn’t be the one to push it.” What seems to be implied in these comments is that the kids learning Chinese culture is almost an accidental benefit that comes from having a Chinese American spouse, but what is important is that the kids receive “global” education, including different languages and ethnic culture, and if it is Chinese, the better. Luke even confessed that if it were twenty years ago, he would probably not have been happy about his wife pushing Chinese language on the kids since he would have seen no use for it except as ethnic transmission.
Many of the Euro ethnic wives in my study were distinctive in that most of them appeared to be more cognizant about the issue of ethnic identity about their children than were the Euro-American husbands in the study and, for the most part, were enthusiastic about helping their children engage it in some form. Many such wives, for example, were keen on having their kids learn the language of their husbands, and took an active interest in maintaining some of the major ethnic rituals of their husbands’ families, and instilling awareness about their children’s ethnic identity.
Susan explained that in her family they now try to emphasize the “Chinese side of things.” She relayed a disturbing incident that made her realize the need for this: “One day at Walmart, when my daughter was about four, a big banner went up with different children’s faces and she said ‘Look mommy, that girl looks like me!’ and I said, ‘She does. She’s Chinese just like you,’ and she said ‘I’m not Chinese!’ So, she visibly identified with an Asian child but that was it. That’s when I realized oh my gosh, we’re doing something wrong!” After that, Susan and her husband made a concerted effort to transmit to her kid’s knowledge about their Chinese identity and culture, and “really encouraged them to know that they’re different and special and be proud of who they are.”30 Even in these discourses, what is interesting is the extent to which the racial/ethnic distinctiveness of their children is framed in terms of benign “difference” that adds “specialness” and “interest” to their identity. When asked why she emphasizes the Chinese side more, Susan commented, “Well, because there is something to emphasize. There is a cultural difference, there is different food, there’s different clothing, and there are different stories whereas I feel like with my own background, there is not a cultural difference. . . . It’s really important to me that they [her kids] know their cultural background, to know the historical background. And you know, it’s fun — it’s fun to have something different.”
The one difference between AMWF and WMAF, is that in AMWF relationships care about the passing of culture, even though that culture may not necessarily be theirs, but their husbands. But lovingly, they spend the time to pass on a culture that is not theirs, encouraging their children to take in their husband’s culture. Whereas in WMAF couples, this does not occur. Rather, the white man sees no use for passing of his wife’s “ethnic” culture.
Realistically, White Men don’t prefer Asian Women. They don’t have “yellow fever.” So why do we see so many Asian Women with white men? Who really prefers who? Of the white women in this study, 0% of them preferred Asian Men. For us Asian men, many of us know this sad fact. If white men aren’t interested in Asian woman, is it possible that the reverse is true? That the Asian women have a white fetish?
Credit: Worpzorp (Editor) , Disciple888(Source Material), Neonfuzion(Writer)
