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The term "Asian fetish" is a colloquialism used in the English-speaking world, which represents an intense sexual attraction of a non-Asian, typically a white man, to Asian women, primarily East Asians (such as Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Taiwanese), to such an extent that it is difficult or impossible for him to form healthy, meaningful relationships with women of his own race, or even non-Asian women in general.

This situation can also be called "yellow fever," and a heterosexual man who has an Asian fetish may be referred to as a "rice king" or "rice lover" (a homosexual man, a "rice queen"). More recently, the term "Asiaphilia" (although it could have positive connotations as well) has increasingly come to be used as a synonym for "Asian fetish"; and "Asiaphile" for an Asian fetishist. The term "white-worshipping" is the main colloquial term used for the reverse situation, the fetishism of white males by Asian females, who are most often called "sellouts." All these terms are considered highly derogatory when used seriously.

There is a great deal of controversy surrounding the issue. The main proponents of the term "Asian fetish" regard the underlying situation as a form of racism and an expression of white supremacy on the part of white men who are attracted to Asian women, and partly even of the Asian women themselves (racism against their own cultures). On the other hand, the contrary position is that the term "Asian fetishist" is a racist stereotype of white males perpetuated mainly by angry Asian men, in which they regard all possible cases of sexual attraction as a form of objectification or fetishism to some degree.

Terminology

Asian fetish is not a fetish in the strict Freudian definition of the word, i.e. a situation wherein the object of affection is an inanimate object or a specific part of a person, nor is it usually used to describe a fetish in the medical definition of the word (ie. a person who can only achieve orgasm or sexual satisfaction exclusively from Asians). Individuals with Asian fetish are supposedly sexually interested in Asians because of stereotypical qualities the individuals believe to be true amongst the Asian people, such as innocence, submissiveness, promiscuity, or sexual prowess (although some qualities are contradictory; presumably the individuals do not believe in all stereotypes at the same time). Many Asians and some non-Asians accuse that American popular culture, Hollywood in particular, has promoted such stereotypes of Asians, and that such stereotypes would not persist if there were not a mass audience for them. They consider the alleged fetishization of Asians based on those stereotypes and the generalizations about the physical appearance of Asians to be a form of racism and objectification.

This term has also increasingly come to be used as a strictly pejorative label for white males in any relationships with Asian females in the United States. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, there are 2.5 times more marriages between white men and Asian women than between white women and Asian men in the USA. Asian fetish is suggested as an explanation for the huge disparity. Therefore, the term is usually applied in a gendered sense: white female and Asian male couples are not usually described as examples of Asian fetish. On the other hand, it is thought this pejorative sense is used primarily by Asian males, therefore is why this gendered sense persists.

Other people, particularly those accused of having Asian fetish, argue that there is a distinction between individuals who are attracted to Asians for those stereotypes and individuals who are attracted to Asian culture. Many Asians find that to be a dubious explanation of a generalized and gender-specific attraction toward Asian women, given the diversity of Asian cultures and different degrees of acculturation among Asians, particularly Asian Americans. Some Asians also argue that the interest among white males in Asian culture is confined to the most palatable aspectsof the culture -- cuisine, mysticism, martial arts, and female sexuality -- and is rarely accompanied by an equally enthusiastic interest in the equality or perspectives of Asian Americans in American politics or society.

Physical anthropology

One line of reasoning about the sexual attraction of Asian women has been developed by the German anthropologists, led by Rainer Knußmann (1996) at the University of Hamburg, building on the earlier manual of Rudolf Martin and Karl Saller (1956, rev. ed., 1st ed. 1914). (This manual, the fourth edition of which Knußmann has edited, is the oldest classical anthropological manual that is still used.) Knußmann categorizes 36 distinct human races and some subraces according to physical traits (chapter "Spezielle Rassenkunde(Rassensytematik)",pp.429-448), and concludes that the Paleomongolid (southern Mongolid) race is an example of paedomorphosis,(i.e., childlike concerning facial traits and body type), while the Nordic race is a typical masculine one ["Es gibt Rassen, die einen mehr kindhaften (pädomorphen)Habitus bewahrt haben (z.B. Palämongolide,Abb.308),und solche, die in der Ontogenese stärker vorprellen, so daß sie mehr das typische Erwachsenenbild repräsentieren (...)"; "Manche Rassen sind als ganze mehr dem männlichen (z.B. Nordide,Dinaride), andere dem weiblichen Pol (z.B. Mediterranide,Palämongolide) angenähert."p.407.].

John Randal Baker for his part arrives at the same conclusion of paedomorphosis in the Palaemongolids of southeastern Asia (1974)["The somewhat paedomorphous peoples grouped together by Eickstedt as Palaemongolids have a very wide distribution (...)",p.538]. Baker provides a detailed description of the Mongoliform Sanid bushmen [chapter "The Sanids (Bushmen)",pp.303-325], and argues that their physical and psychological paedomorphosis hindered them from establishing a more advanced civilization ["Although mankind as a whole is paedomorphous,those ethnic taxa (the Sanids among them) that are markedly more paedomorphous than the rest have never achieved the status of civilization, or anything approaching it, by their own initiative.It would seem that when carried beyond a certain point, paedomorphosis is antagonistic to purely intellectual advance.",p.324]. The Boasian Ashley Montagu notes in his work that "One result of this is the high frequency of beauty among mongoloid males and females, a beauty of great delicacy (see Table I, page 21). The differential action of neoteny has produced some peculiar effects. For example, among the highly neotenized Japanese the males upper and lower jaws have been reduced in size while the teeth have not. The result has created a disharmony in many males in the form of extreme crowding and malocclusion of the teeth." [Montagu, Ashley (1989) Growing Young N.Y.: McGraw Hill pp. 40]. The majority of biological anthropologists agree that paedomorphous physicality and behavior are closely associated with femininity, and that members of the Asiatic races are more feminine than the Caucasian races.

Secondly, Knußmann draws from Max Hartmann’s theory of relative sexuality in animals and plants (Hartmann, 1956; Chen, 2003).Knußmann writes :" Für die geschlechtertypologische Varationsreihe (M-W-Linie,vgl.Kap.IIIB2a) wurde die Partnerregel aufgestellt, daß ein ganzes M und ein ganzes W zusammenzutreten streben, wobei M und W von Fall zu Fall in verschiedenem Prozentsatz auf die beiden Partner verteilt sein können."(p.456). According to Hartmann, the intensity of sexuality in heterozygous gametes may not be the same for all individuals in a species, but instead may lie on a continuum, ranging from intensely female to intensely male. Furthermore, male gametes of high intensity then tend to unite with female gametes of high intensity. Hartmann's theory of relative sexuality was based upon study of sexual reproduction in certain isogamous and anisogamous algae (Smith, 1956). But Hartmann was also interested in human sexuality (Chen, 2003). Knußmann, maintaining Hartmann’s theory for humans, reasserts that very masculine men should be attracted to very feminine women, which could explain Caucasian men’s sexual attraction to Asian women. These couples would then be ideal in terms of the "power aspect" of sexuality, in which men have a tendentious instinct for dominance and women for submission. Knußmann believes that this is essential for a stable relationship, in contrast to the Halbkontrastehen (a dominant man with a semi-dominant (virago) woman), which is unstable due to unclear structures of power [Knußmann:"Es gibt Hinweise darauf, daß in mißglückten Ehen (geschiedene oder in Scheidung lebende Partner) keine Heterogamie bezüglich der leptomorph-pynomorphen Variationsreihe vorliegt, sondern die Halbkontrastehen überdurchschnittlich häufig auftreten.",p.457].


References

1. J. R. Baker. (1974) Race. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

2. H.-A. Chen. (2003) Die Sexualitätstheorie und "Theoretische Biologie" von Max Hartmann in der ersten Hälfte des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts. Sudhoffs Archiv Beiheft, 46.

3. M. Hartmann (1956) Die Sexualität: Das Wesen und die Grundgesetzlichkeiten des Geschlechts und der Geschlechtsbestimmung im Tier- und Pflanzenreich. (Jena, 1943; 2nd ed. 1956)

4. R. Knußmann. (1996) Vergleichende Biologie des Menschen: Lehrbuch der Anthropologie und Humangenetik. Fischer, Stuttgart.

5. R. Martin and K. Saller. (1956) Lehrbuch der Anthropologie in systematischer Darstellung mit besonderer Berucksichtigung der anthropologischen Methoden. Fischer Verlag, Jena.

6. A. Montagu (1989) Growing Young. Bergin and Garvey, New York. 2nd ed.

7. G. M. Smith, 1956. The Role of Study of Algae in the Development of Botany. American Journal of Biology, 43:(7), pp. 537-543.

Sexuality and stereotypes

From the Yellow Peril to the Model Minority, Asian Americans have been the subject of numerous negative stereotypes. But perhaps most fascinating are the stereotypes that deal with sexuality, stereotypes which, racial theorists claim, form the center of the Asian fetish.

These stereotypes can be roughly divided into three categories. In the first category are placed stereotypes that contribute to the sexual desirability of Asian women. In the second category are stereotypes regarding the sexual undesirability of Asian men. Finally, in the third category are the stereotypes of Caucasian men in relationships with Asian women, the so-called counterculture stereotypes that are created as a response to stereotypes of the first two categories, i.e., the stereotypes of Asian fetishists.

Stereotypes of Asian womanhood

Activists generally allege that Western film and literature promotes dichotomous stereotypes of the Asian women. For example, films and books have depicted Asian women as cunning "Dragon Ladies", such as The Thief of Bagdad (1924) and Daughter of Fu Manchu (1931) (Tong, 1994); while others depict them as servile "Lotus Blossom Babies" or "China dolls", "Geisha girls", war brides, or prostitutes (Tajima, 1989). They argue that despite the differences between these two extremes, the stereotypes are actually interrelated and seek to apply characteristics of exotic sensuality and promiscuity with mystery and being untrustworthy.

In addition to this, they feel that Hollywood has often perpetuated the concept of the "unmotivated White-Asian romance". For example, in Daughter of the Dragon, the daughter of Fu Manchu lays her eyes on a British detective and instantly falls in love with him. The Bounty and Come See the Paradise also contain scenes where an Asian woman falls in love with a white man at first sight. Miss Saigon and The Last Samurai are further examples, as well as J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, which features an Asian romantic interest named Cho Chang. [1] These theorists and activists argue that the repetition of this concept sends the signal that Asian women are romantically attracted to white men because they are white.

Lastly, Kim has argued that the stereotype of Asian women as submissive sex objects has impeded women's economic mobility and has fostered increased demand in mail-order brides and ethnic-fetish pornography (Kim, 1984).

Some feminist critics have argued that sexualization of Asian women is a subset of what they believe is a greater media prejudice against women in general. For example, they argue that beauty requirements for actresses are much greater than those for men. They contend that attractive women often get paired on-screen with unattractive men but not vice-versa.[2]

Stereotypes of Asian manhood

Some race and gender theorists and Asian American activists allege that there's a racism-based disparity in how men of different races are portrayed in the mass media: while white men are depicted both as virile and as protectors of women, Asian men have been presented as both asexual and as threats to white women (Espiritu, 1997). While these two allegations may seem contradictory, they argue that both allegations make sense when viewed with an awareness of the historical context. Racist depictions of Asian men as "lascivious and predatory" were especially pronounced during the nativist movement against Asians at the turn of the 20th century (Frankenberg, 1993). But over time Asian masculinity has shifted from "hypersexual" to "asexual" and even "homosexual," as suggested in a controversial 2004 article Gay or Asian in Details magazine [3].

Historically, between 1850 and 1940, U.S. popular media constantly portrayed Asian men as a military and security threat to the country, and a sexual danger to innocent white women (Wu, 1982). For example, in the 1916 film Petria, produced and distributed by William Randolph Hearst, a group of fanatical Japanese who invaded the United States and attempted to rape a white woman (Quinsaat, 1976). Furthermore, after the attack on Pearl Harbor the "Yellow Peril" gained further momentum when it became a key component in America's war propaganda.

Some Asian American male actors have complained of the difficulty in landing dramatic roles. [4] They allege that there are even fewer roles with Asian men as interracial love interests. It is rare in Hollywood films to find Asian male/white female couples, especially in romantic and sexual situations. However, notable exceptions include Jason Scott Lee in Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, Russell Wong in Vanishing Son, and Tony Leung in L'Amant.

On the physical level, Asian men are stereotyped as being shorter and less well-built than Caucasian men. Traditionally, this disparity in human height had much to do with endemic malnutrition in Asia. For example, the average height of males in South Korea is 5'8.2" and in impoverished North Korea is 5'4.9", which can largely be attributed to chronic famine. The average male height in the United States is 5'9.6". On the other hand, while the height disparity has narrowed for several Asian countries since World War II, this trend has been slowing recently, owing perhaps in part to genetic limits. At any rate, a common perception is that height differences make Asian men less physically desirable when compared to their white counterparts.

Aside from the issue of height, one of the most controversial topics is the issue of penis size, in which people of Asian descent are perceived as being smaller than Caucasians and men of African descent. The only reliable studies of penis-size commonly cited are the Kinsey study, the UCSF study, and an Italian study, none of which even attempted to correlate size with race. There have been many other studies with claims of varying rigor such as the LifeStyles condoms study, but these are generally flawed by selection bias. Frequently cited is the study of J. Phillipe Rushton (1987), but Rushton's data are questionably fitted to his personal theories of racial behavior, including his claims that blacks are inherently inferior in brain size and are thus prone to criminality. Despite the unproven nature of the penis stereotype, it nonetheless leads to the perception that interracial relations are based more on penis size compatibility than simply on personal attraction, which also parallels the myths surrounding white female/black male relationships.

The Role of Testosterone

One possible explanation for the higher incidence of White male - Asian female couples as compared to East Asian male - White female pairings may be higher average levels of testosterone found among Whites as compared to East Asians. [5] Higher levels of testosterone in men produce more masculine physiques and more aggressive personalities, which in turn lead to higher sexual attractiveness for women.

Evidence for this theory includes:

  • Less muscle mass found among East Asians as compared to Whites[6]
  • Lower levels of violent crime committed by East Asians[7]
  • Larger average testicular volumes of White males as compared to East Asian males, e.g. a study by Jared Diamond, professor of physiology at UCLA and Pulitzer Prize winner, comparing average testes volumes upon autopsy of Danes and Hong Kong Chinese[8]
  • Possible differences in average penile size, which shows a strong relation to prenatal and childhood testosterone levels[9]
  • The higher average life expectancies of women and East Asians, fewer incidences of prostate cancer and heart disease among East Asians[11][12][13]
  • The dating discrepancy is not found among East Indian - White couples, East Indians show physical characteristics more similar to Whites than East Asians[14]
  • The larger number of Black male - White female couples as compared to White male - Black female couples, which may reflect a similar dynamic[15]

Sexual crimes

No statistical evidence has yet shown that relationships between non-Asian men and Asian women are any less likely to be healthy and functional than relationships with any other race and gender combination. But some theorists and activists point to recent cases which they allege raise red-flags about the continued fetishization of Asian women:

In 2000, two female Japanese college students in Spokane, WA, were abducted, raped, videotaped and told that if they told anybody what had happened, the videotapes would be sent to their fathers. The three white assailants admitted targeting Asian women precisely because they had a sexual fetish for "submissive" Asian women, but also because they believed that this same submissiveness and cultural shame would prevent the women from reporting the assaults. [16]

On October 12, 2002, Lili Wang, a 31-year-old computer science graduate student at North Carolina State University, was murdered by her former tennis partner, Richard Borrelli Anderson, who then committed suicide. Anderson was a white classmate of Wang who had become infatuated with her, even though she was already married to 30-year old Yufei Qian, a Chinese American man. However, her marriage did nothing to deter Anderson's advances, which appear to have been racially motivated: according to press reports, Anderson had confided to a colleague that he liked Asian women because "they study hard, and they're very nice, soft speaking." A suicide note found at the scene also indicated that he had a racial infatuation with Wang. [17]

On March 30, 2005, Princeton Borough Police arrested former third-year Princeton University Ph.D. student Michael Lohman and charged him with two counts of recklessly endangering another person, two counts of tampering with a food product, one count of harassment and one count of theft from a person. He later confessed that between 2002 and his arrest, he deliberately and exclusively targeted Asian women by cutting their hair without their knowledge or consent. Lohman, whose wife is Chinese, also admitted to filling small plastic bottles with his urine or semen, in order to spray on unsuspecting women or to pour into their beverages when they were not looking, in almost fifty cases. On June 22, 2005, Lohman reached an agreement with the prosecutor's office to pay a $125 fine and to enter a pretrial intervention program involving psychiatric treatment, which, upon completion, would leave him with no criminal record. [18]

On July 29, 2005, Los Angeles police arrested Tyreese Lamar Reed, an electronics technician from the Koreatown area of Los Angeles, in connection with a series of sexual assaults and robberies in the area. The district attorney’s office alleges that Reed committed a series of 18 counts of sexual assault and robberies between August 24, 2004 and June 15, 2005. According to the LAPD, all of the sexual assaults involved Asian women, between the ages of 17 and 47. [19]

On August 24, 2005, former Oakland police officer Richard Valerga was charged with two counts of false imprisonment and five counts of interference with civil rights, for making illegal traffic stops on Asian women, and then trying to kiss and caress them. The incidents, which were targeted mainly toward immigrant Asians, occurred between January and April 2005. Valerga later resigned from the police force and pleaded no contest to four misdemeanor counts, and was sentenced to a six months in jail. The prosecutor said he didn't believe Valerga had shown any remorse, citing statements he reportedly made saying "these events were a misunderstanding." [20],[21]

Supporters of the "Asian fetish" theory see these cases as clear evidence of the harmfulness of what they see as a serious social problem. But critics question whether or not this annecdotal evidence really shows a pervasive societal trend.

Criticisms

Some critics contend that the stereotype of an Asian fetish is a means of discouraging interracial relationships or race mixing, with the intent of making everyone date their own kind and not impurify their own race. The irony is that in the past, racial supremacists opposed such relationships as race mixing. Today, in the United States, the biggest critics of interracial dating are generally Asian males and African American women, who often complain about being stereotyped themselves, resulting in charges of hypocrisy and/or racism. Some people point to changing demographics and increasing inter-mixture of all races as producing insecurity, thus spawning the controversy [22]. Others, however, adopt a more egalitarian viewpoint, by claiming that these interracial relationships would not be a problem if there were no gender gap.

Another frequent criticism is that the target of the notion of Asian fetish is really Asian women themselves. In other words, it is a form of social control intended to discourage Asian women from straying from Asian men. Many Asian women themselves resent attempts to dictate who they date. Indeed, some Asian women appear to date non-Asian men because of unhappiness with certain perceived aspects of Asian culture, whether real or imagined. This view is perhaps best exemplified by the Joy Luck Club, a book by Amy Tan that presented Asian men as sexist and domineering, and which is strongly disliked by many Asian organizations.

Some point out that the issue of dating disparity which is at root of the controversy, is based not on supposed eagerness of Asian women to date other races, but on the lack of Asian male/white female couples. From this point of view, it is racial exclusionism of either Asian men or non-Asian women which leads to the disparity.

A related criticism involves the gendered application of this term, which many accuse of being sexist. "Asian fetish" is applied almost exclusively to white male/Asian female couples as opposed to Asian male/white female couples. The latter is usually tolerated and even promoted within certain segments of the Asian American community. Thus, there are accusations of hypocrisy—supporting one face of a racial fetish (that some see as harmful) while repudiating the other. For example, one notable Asian American community website, the Fighting 44s, coined the term CCB [23] to describe Asian women with a racial fetish for white men. No such term exists for Asian men with a fetish for white women, although notably there does not exist much evidence that such fetishes even exist on a societal level. The collective ire is targeted primarily towards women who are thought to have "sold out". To many, this is evidence of a double standard.

Another criticism is that the concept of race itself is outdated, and that combining heterogeneous ethnicities under labels such as "Asian" or "white," is increasingly outdated. These critics view the opponents of interracial dating as engaging in "identity politics" and promoting racial separation. The key point of dispute is the legitimacy of categorizing people by so-called "race". Thus, in this view, defining a relationship in terms of race itself is the problem; that is, the participants themselves may see each other as individual people, not categories. This view is sometimes called the "social construct" point of view.

References

  1. Espiritu, Y. E. (1997). Ideological Racism and Cultural Resistance: Constructing Our Own Images, Asian American Women and Men, Rowman & Littlefield Publishing.
  2. Frankenberg, R. (1993). White women, race matters: The social construction of whiteness., University of Minnesota Press.
  3. Kim, E. (1984). Asian American writers: A bibliographical review, American Studies International, 22, 2.
  4. Quinsaat, J. (1976). Asians in the media, The shadows in the spotlight. Counterpoint: Perspectives on Asian America (pp 264-269). University of California at Los Angeles, Asian American Studies Center.
  5. Rushton, J.P. and Bogaert, A.F. (1987) Race differences in sexual behavior: Testing an evolutionary hypothesis. Journal of Research in Personality 21(4): pp. 529-551.
  6. Tajima, R. (1989). Lotus blossoms don't bleed: Images of Asian women., Asian Women United of California's Making waves: An anthology of writings by and about Asian American women, (pp 308-317), Beacon Press.
  7. Tong, B. (1994). Unsubmissive women: Chinese prostitutes in nineteeth-century San Francisco, University of Oklahoma Press.
  8. Wu, W.F. (1982). The Yellow Peril: Chinese Americans in American fiction 1850-1940, Archon Press.

See also

On Asian Fetish

On Interracial Romance

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