This was fascinating to read as an Asian woman married to a white man who used to be not attracted to Asian men circa 2010s and now is attracted to Asian men and honestly all other men/women of various races.
I want to quibble a bit about your response to the first common argument attempting to explain Asian women's endophobia. You say that we are not dating our parents' generation, but that's not necessarily true. When we date people we are also dating their family to various degrees. I didn't want to date an Asian man when I was younger was because I didn't want to marry into an Asian family. It was that simple. I didn't want to risk finding out my partner would side with his parents over me, but I also didn't want to deal with the fallout if he did side with me.
Sure other minority races and ethnic groups had similar issues, but I knew the expectations an Asian man's family would have towards me. I also hoped that at least being different than the other races and ethnic groups would mean those parents would give me more grace. (There'd also probably be less community shame ha.) And with a white man, I was pretty sure, at least if he was liberal and whatnot, that his family would most likely not have certain expectations of me.
Of course I'm not sure how much this may apply to other Asian women. I think I felt these things particularly because my parents immigrated here into a particular Asian immigrant community. Most of the women in that community didn't have happy interactions with their in-laws or with the conservative expectations that were put on them. I didn't want to be like those women.
To get back to the main point though: I think that when dating, you're never just dating the person you're dating but their community too. At least if you're thinking of being with that person long term.
I think this is part of the explanation, but I would note that this persists even for mixed race boys/men? For mixed race men with Asian moms and white dads, this attraction deficit persists, and persists more the more they are Asian looking’ than ‘white passing.’
And maybe that’s just subconsciously associating more Asian appearing mixed race men with stereotypes about Asian families.
Also it doesn’t track for Asian men adopted into white families— there were a lot of Korean boys adopted into white families, but there does not seem to be a preference for them among Asian women?
If anything there’s like this bifurcation— if you are too ‘white’ as an Asian man, then you are less attractive to Asian women open to or explicitly seeking Asian men to date. But then you are not white enough to Asian women open to dating white men.
Basically, if you fit the ‘banana’ stereotype, then you are actively selected against by most Asian women at a higher rate than non-‘banana’ Asians.
My comment here is mostly to challenge the narrative that Latinos and Asians are emasculated culturally in similar ways in the west.
Stereotypically, Latino men are still associated with ‘machismo.’ There is a stark difference in sexual stereotypes regarding Asian men vs. Latino/Hispanic men and Black men.
Black men are hyper-sexualized, to the point that their sexuality is often racially presented as dangerous— that they are hyper-sexual ‘savages’ who are dangerous to white women because they, in the negative stereotype, are ‘animals’ with low self control of their sexual desire. There were a lot of lynchings that basically posited black men were sexually assaulting women. Black men are ascribed the larger penis sizes, which adds to the racist stereotype of black men as dangerous sexual predators.
Latino men are associated with machismo, and are similarly often positioned by racists as sexual predators. As lovers, Latino men are still positioned as possessing ‘Latin heat,’ a racial stereotype where as lovers, Latinos are presented as more passionate lovers. Combined with the Machismo association, Latin men are racially positioned as being more possessive, even violently so, based on the perception that their emotional investment is more passionate and that their conception of masculinity is more demanding of violent reprisal when challenged.
Stereotypes about Asian men and Asian masculinity do not posit them as sexual predators, or even as dangerous competitors to white men. They are not presented as savages, because frankly the feudal history of Asia is as well established as that of Europe. Asian masculinity is presented as ascetic— as possessing rigorous discipline according to various honor codes (bushido, various martial arts disciplines like Taoist kung fu, Buddhist asceticism, etc.) Asian masculinity is strongly centered on discipline and self control. Emotionally this presents Asian men as cold, as dispassionate, rigid in outlook and life in general. The Kung Fu Master is above sexual desire, the virtuous Samurai Warrior is not tempted by the seductive kunoichi, the Buddhist monk is not tempted by the beauty of noblewomen, etc. Stereotypes of Asian masculinity, if anything, present the masculine Asian male as striving for asexual mastery in practice, if not in their internal world.
In a very literal sense, Asian masculinity is presented as emasculation from western perspectives— down to Asian men having smaller penises, and men who become eunuchs for political power in palace dramas.
Even when sexuality is addressed, it is within the confines of harnessing sexual energy toward enlightenment— the Kama Sutra is ultimately about surpassing sexual desire, Toaist sexual cultivation is not pleasure focused but about cultivating the body medically, etc. Contrast the stereotypical image of the Asian Comfort House and Comfort Women to the bawdiness of a European brothel, either a low-class brothel servicing sailors, or a high-class brothel servicing aristocrats. The sexual image of a European aristocratic brothel is less constrained than an Asian aristocratic Comfort House. European aristocrats take mistresses from the brothel whores, but while stereotypical Asian aristocrats do take mistresses, even their mistresses are held to higher social standing than the comfort women.
These distinctions matter because a lot of cross-race attraction is based on fetishization of the other race. Black men are often fetishized based on the racist stereotypes of them as sexual ‘savages,’ and fetishized for their dick sizes. A lot of race fetish for black men emasculates white men as being too civilized to sexually satisfy their women; a lot of porn is made about black ‘Bulls’ cuckholding white men with their ‘animalistic’ sexual prowess. There is also an aspect of ‘slumming it’ to this fetishization, where the fetish is that the white or Asian woman is being sexually degraded by lowering herself to sleeping with the black man, where black men serve as an available pool of social inferiors whom higher status white or Asian women can use to satisfy their base sexual desires. In many, many respects, the sexual fetishization of black men is dehumanizing to the black men involved.
Conversely, there is also some fetishization in that black culture is more associated with street culture. Street culture is appropriated by the middle class and upper class as ‘cool’ and superior to stuffy paradigms of ‘high culture’ of the upper/aristocratic class; even Asians are adopting street culture, and in this sense black men have proximity to the status of being more authentic in the terms of street culture. It’s the culture of black gangs that is celebrated at the top of billboard charts, then to a lesser extent Latino gangs. In western culture, Asian street culture is seconded to either black or Latino gangs, or celebrated where it adapts the aesthetic of white organized crime— Yakuza or Triads or Korean Mafia who wear suits and conduct themselves more like white collar criminals than as street toughs. Here also is a difference in how Latino masculinity is emphasized and Asian masculinity is asexualized: ‘high crime’ Latino cartels are more masculine than white organized crime in the sense that they are more violent, and assumed to be even more possessive and sexualized than their white counterparts; an Italian mafioso in pop culture may have mistresses, but the Cartel boss has many mistresses, and is constantly embroiled in high-drama, telenovela level conflict with his romantic interests.
That brings us to the way Latino men are fetishized in a way Asian men are not: the Latino fetish in some ways dehumanizes Latino men in the same way black men are dehumanized when fetishized. They are more savage, more violent— but also more romantically passionate. So a fetishized Latino man may be more possessive of his lovers, but he is also a more savage defender of insults to the honor of his lovers. The racially fetishized Latino man is basically obsessed with his lovers, extemely and acutely engaged in sexually satisfying those lovers, and so long as the woman confirms to his concept of machismo, she can expect him to defend her honor with extreme violence if she is insulted by other men.
Contrast this to what little fetishization of Asian men there is.
The largest Asian male fetish is essentially for feminized K-pop idols, or even for idolized ‘boys love’ stories about gay Asian men written widely by women. This is a very definite feminization of the fetishized Asian male, an emasculating fantasy less about sexual satisfaction but emotional relatability. The feminized idol is sensitive and emotionally available, maybe even overtly homosexual, more similar to the fetishizing woman on an emotional basis.
By contrast there is almost no fetishization of the hyper-masculine Asian male stereotype. At most there is maybe some fetish for Japanese rope bondage, and other Asian sex fetishes like bukake. Asian men fetishized as sexual predators are perverts, often even pedos, obsessed with anime and video game content depicting the sexual exploitation and degradation of women. They are men with large collections of pornographic material, predators who take up-skirt photos with elaborate schemes, even obsessed with gross things like used women’s panties. This again is an emasculating stereotype— these men are so deprived of sexual release their sexualities have warped them into deep perversion. Who wants to be the girlfriend of the otaku obsessed with anime waifus of dubious age?
I think an important factor here is that we are talking about Asian women who are exposed to Western stereotypes. So these are the internalized stereotypes being carried by Asian women about Asian men, and the stereotypes being carried about men of other races.
It might even explain why Asian countries in particular are faced with fertility crises— even Asian women in Asian countries are presented with these stereotypes about Asian men, and many apparently choose to be single to getting an Asian boyfriend. Those seeking feminized men chase idols, which is not most men; even if by temperament they may be similar, those with a lot of physical masculine dimorphism do not qualify as feminized enough.
Those seeking masculine men are forced to choose between men more stereotypically dedicated to honor than their lovers, a man who will by martial arts stereotypes dedicate himself to the sword above even his wife and children; alternatively they have to settle for perverts who get off on degrading women.
That also explains some of the recalcitrance toward South Asians and MENA men too. MENA men are religiously obsessed by stereotype, dedicated to a religious lifestyle in which women aren’t even seen, much less work, much less are wooed and dated. South Asian men similarly come from repressive cultures where prior to Western colonialism, women were even more repressed than in East Asian cultures or European cultures. Desi men are subject to a lot of poor understanding of Desi culture, but also a lot of caste-based weirdness not really understood by non-Desi women of other cultures. The status of women in the complexity of caste and religious diversity among Desi cultures is not well understood, but generally assumed to be repressive to women. The only Desi men fetishized by Westerners are more or less Bollywood heartthrobs. There is if anything a dearth of stereotypes about their performance as lovers or romantic interests, because again Desi culture is basically opaque and not understood by westerners. Maybe there is some fetishization of the Yoga guru type, where the guru has knowledge of ancient Vedic sexual enlightenment, but this is as easily wrapped up in Yoga cultism.
I did have a 'wait, what now?' reaction to the 'Latino men are emasculated in Western culture' take.
The bit about Asian cultural stereotypes of masculine asceticism reminds me of Aang's arc in the third season of Avatar the Last Airbender, where he is expected to let go of his attraction-to/concern-for Katara so he can embrace the massive cosmic power that is needed to defeat the Fire Nation.
The tricky thing there is that I'm not sure how how authentically that is representing the full distribution of actual Asian cultures' stereotypes about masculinity- is it a demonstration of the larger trend in those cultures or a prime example of Western culture fixating on arguably-comes-across-as-emasculating parts of those cultures?
There's negative non-sexual stereotypes across other races too.
In general, fat and black/brown is not sexy. Skinny and any color other than Asian = exotic = sexy. Hell, for that matter, fat and white is not sexy, generally. I think white men get more access to 'dad bod' body positivity, but yeah, fat and black/brown is reserved for comic relief for the most part.
Fatness is a proxy for physical fitness, and being less physically fit is emasculating across the color spectrum. This is why in street culture, if you're fat you have to be a good sugar daddy to get women, like Biggie Smalls or other rappers of size.
It is worth noting that being fat and Asian is particularly challenging, but this is also a product of Asian culture in general being especially anti-fat. Also, though, fat Asian men are particularly associated with the Otaku/creepazoid shut-in pervert stereotype.
Religious purviews are generally ascetic; this is not unique to Buddhism, Taoism, or Hinduism, it’s true about Christianity as well. But since Christian is US default, we are very familiar with most Christian men not being virgins saving themselves for marriage.
There is a difference between Western and Eastern feudalism, though, in that Asian aristocracy was more culturally disciplined and constrained compared to Weatern aristocracy. Western aristocracy had feudalism, but the culture that taught chivalry also taught romance, for example in the Arthurian legend the romance between Lancelot and Guinevere was central. Galahad was lionized as pure and chaste, but was also Lancelot’s son, by a wife who killed herself for jealousy, so the feudal model of chivalry was anything but chaste. That’s even down to Hellenic mythology featuring Zues’ philandering, and generally Hellenic heros being less than chaste; ditto Germanic/Tuetonic heros.
Conversely, Confucian and Neo-Confucians held to an ideal of filial duty on the part of aristocracy. Asceticism was a tool shoguns used to enforce discipline on the Samurai class. There was never really an Asian equivalent to European pre-industrial Bohemianism, or Libertines, prior to the age of sail and Westerners colonizing Asia. And then through opium wars, resisting Western licentiousness became kind of a core of conservative resistance as Asian aristocrats resisted western takeovers. Like the brothel/comfort house comparison is pretty direct.
Some of this is down to Europe having been wracked by religious warfare prior to the age of sail, so not only did European rulers not have particular disciplinary control of their nobility, but also the religious influence of the church was severely curtailed. Conversely Asia was relatively politically stable when Europeans showed up; if anything the biggest cultural change had been the adoption of Islam in South Asia as Arabs colonized a lot of South Asia prior to Europeans showing up.
So yeah there were not any major sexual revolutions in Asia prior to Western colonization; there were some historical stuff like Tantra, and some niche stuff like Taoist sexual cultivation in Taoist alchemy, but nothing as recent as the Bohemian and Libertine sub-cultures.
There was also never a period of frontier licentious tolerance, like brothel culture in the American West or gaucho culture in Mesoamerica. Western licensure brought stuff like Carnival to Brazil and Latino culture, and Mardi Gras to New Orleans and black culture.
Aang spends the entire show fucking his way through the entire planet, all in a bid to save his race. That's canon, by the way. It's so bad that one girl goes "why won't you fuck me tooo~~~~!" (Okay, it's a kids show, and they can't say f on TV).
It's been a while, and I remember there were at least a few comic relief moments involving Aang flirting with or crushing on girls or young women, but I really don't remember anything that was hinting at Aang going off and having sex with random people.
If that was canon, then why was one of the areas of concern in Korra that all airbenders in the world were among Aang's/Katara's kids/grandkids (until the start of season 3)?
The people writing Korra were the people who wanted... that play episode in the original Avatar to be real. They wanted a "comic relief" guy, etc.
That there was an entire episode devoted to making fun of the rest of the writers (who'd wanted Toph to be... well, a musclebound dude, because Earth Rocks [pun-apologies]).... yeah.
Aang had a mission, and he was taking that mission pretty seriously (for a twelve-year-old boy, mind you kindly) -- "travel everywhere, and get in the pants of as many girls as possible."
Dudes who think they have insight into the 'female mind' are just poseurs who (a) mainly want to impress other men, (b) have no real understanding of the female mind, and (c) have never claimed to have this insight out loud in front of a real woman who had the power/station to tell him he was wrong.
It's based on people's ratings of profiles, rather than stated prefs. The effects look weaker than in the studies you cite (10-20% less attractive), so more overcome-able. Not sure what's going on there!
This (actual revealed preferences in terms of attraction being less extreme than stated preferences) is a great sign for the viability of Srinivasan's 'modest' prescription, right?
How do you square concerns about the dateability of asian men with the fact that a higher fraction of asian men are married than white, black and hispanic men?
I don't understand the American marriage data well. I do have a couple competing hypotheses to offer:
1. Marriage rates and stability are strongly correlated with income (e.g. https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/second-quarter-2019/earnings-gap-marital-status-race-gender). Asian American male income has risen dramatically in the period the graph shows, such that now the Asian American average is >30% larger than the White average. So I suspect white male marriage rates are higher than Asian males after correcting for income. In other words, one would expect Asian male's marriage rates to be even higher, if the racial attractiveness gap was closed.
2. Asian male undesirability has declined over this period. The first two studies I discussed use data from the mid-2000s. The number of Asian women dating Asian men has since increased. However, more recent racial preference data still indicate that Asian males are lowest desirability:
Maybe this undesirability has an outsized effect on online dating, hookups, and causal sex, but not much of an effect on marriage.
3. If we take on a Buss & Schmidt style sexual strategies perspective, we may find an explanation for Asian male marriage stability. Asian males are low attractiveness, high income, high education, low violence. This makes their appeal as short-term sexual partners low, but their appeal as long term partners high. I believe one of the studies I cite here shows data that the attractiveness of the spouses of Asian males is low. So there is a nice sexual arbitrage opportunity here that inclines both sides of these marriages against divorce.
I kinda wonder how much the 'nerd factor' plays a role. A lot of South and East Asians' family line in the USA begins through visas which were originally granted (in the early post-Hart-Celler period) for scientific and technical reasons, and unsurprisingly a lot of techies and academic achievers wind up being South and East Asian. i.e., Asian-Americans are likely a nonrandom sample from the larger ancestral Asian pool.
This particular personality type seems much more appreciated by the ladies in Asia than it is in the USA. China in particular had a social structure that favored bookishness for *over a thousand years* (and, indeed, the test-based aspects of social stratification of our own society trace back to China through the British civil service system, which had Chinese inspirations).
It doesn't explain, though, the large number of white (male) nerds who wind up with Asian women ("Search your feelings. You know it to be true.") My guess is being white and nerdy codes as less nerdy than being Asian and nerdy, explaining the Asian ladies' prejudice discussed here. But then why don't you see more of them go all the way and chase after white jocks?
> My guess is being white and nerdy codes as less nerdy than being Asian and nerdy, explaining the Asian ladies' prejudice discussed here. But then why don't you see more of them go all the way and chase after white jocks?
I think there's probably something to this. I also wonder about first and second generation asians in America, who generally have fairly different attitudes towards women, wifely expectations, and so on.
Speaking as a white guy (a jock at that) who's done business and lived off and on in Asia for 15+ years, a white dude's (absurdly overpowered) dating potential there is driven by several factors:
1) More egalitarian attitudes re women's roles and expectations
2) Being more fun and interesting and less conformist
3) Being more successful than even the median east asian successful (ie you earn USD / own a company, etc)
4) Being more masculine and fitness and health oriented - American successful guys are lean and exercise regularly, Chinese successful guys are fat alcoholics who smoke a lot (business culture stuff), and other asians are not as bad as Chinese, but generally less healthy the richer they are
5) Every single rich East Asian guy cheats, systematically, continuously, and at scale, and it's 100% culturally accepted and basically business as usual. And I mean literally every single one. True across China, Korea, and SE Asia in my experience, less experience in Japan.
This cheating effect is so strong, it's still seen in America (where east asian men cheat at 3x the rates as women).
> I also wonder about first and second generation asians in America, who generally have fairly different attitudes towards women, wifely expectations, and so on.
It's mainly this. I've talked to a lot of Chinese women in the USA and if they are open to dating outside of their race/nationality - it is mainly because they do not like the attitudes and expectations that come from men in China. China's culture is horrific towards women compared to the west. They would be open to dating someone from China but that man would also have to break the mold and effectively act like an American/westerner. That is just extremely unlikely and so they tend to date outside their group. These immigrant women are also just more likely to be outside the box overall. They've left their home country, they're living in a country that has a very different culture, etc. They mostly pair up with white men because white men are going to be the next largest represented race within high income groups that these women also belong to.
As a white trans man with a half Asian mom, I don't have a ton of sympathy for the complaints discussed, by anyone of any race, gender, or trans status.
I *understand* them. Being rejected sucks. Being horny and lonely sucks. Being single in a society where sex and romance are the only gateways to basic human intimacy sucks. And I'm not arguing that a solution *necessarily* exists. Sometimes situations are simply unfixable.
But I notice that the put-upon subjects frequently ignore what seem like extremely obvious (to me) *possible* solutions.
If straight Asian guys and Black women can't get dates elsewhere, date each other.
Gay Asian guys can date each other. Gay Black women can date each other.
But if that solution is unworkable because Asian guys aren't attracted to each other or Black women, and Black women aren't attracted to each other or Asian men, that kills the "I'm victimized because nobody will date me" narrative. Like, if YOU wouldn't date you, why should anyone else?
I'm not saying it's possible or desirable to fake attraction to someone you're not into. I would be more romantically and sexually successful if I was more attracted to other trans guys (or men in general, really). Alas, I am not. But that's reality. So I don't like the available options? Whining that other people don't like me as an option is both hypocritical and, more important, counterproductive.
I'm reminded of the endless forum and reddit and social media posts where people gather together to vent about how friendless and lonely they are. Why not make friends with each other? Duh? But that takes work and the emotional maturity to acknowledge that as much as being lonely is suicide-inducing levels of awful, there is no cosmic injustice in your loneliness. It simply is.
The ironic thing is, trans people date each other all the time (t4t). People date across race all the time. Plenty of people are sensibly not wasting time trying to date people of “higher status” that don't want them, and dating people of similar status that do.
You don't need to be performatively progressive to be genuinely attracted to fat people, disabled people, trans people, people outside your race, whatever. I date other trans people and genuinely prefer it that way.
So the people pining desperately for a thin white cis person to validate their existence HAVE an alternative model to follow for dating happiness. They just…refuse to use it.
I have more sympathy for Black women than Asian men here. Black women are rejected more by EVERY demographic. There are genuinely fewer alternatives for them.
But my short Southeast Asian American grandfather married my white grandmother, had kids, then dumped HER for a younger white woman. Whatever you can say about him, you cannot say he didn't have game.
Asian men have more options but whine as if they have none. It's dumb as hell.
Some observations that don't fit the typical literature:
1. Asian men and women outmarried at similar rates in the 80s and the gap only emerged in the 90s and beyond. The old-school racist caricatures of Asians are irrelevant to why the gap is so big today
2. For Indian - East Asian pairings, it's almost always Indian male + EA female (even among 1st gen). Considering Indians have worse stereotypes and are less fit and more unattractive on average than East asian men
3. The gap between Asian men and women hasn't really closed in the past 10 years, despite much better positive Asian male representation in media
4. Birthrates are collapsing in East/SE Asian countries the fastest among all nations
This suggests that media representation or masculinity arguments are not the root cause. The real cause is likely this:
- EA/SEA cultures are more gender egalitarian than other non-white cultures, and EA/SEA women are seen as more desirable than most other races of non-white women. This allows them both freedom and access to pursue global hypergamy easier.
- Other races of non-white men are protected by more patriarchal culture and less relative desirability of their female counterparts.
This is interesting because I am a black woman in a relationship with a white Cuban living in Florida…. people are usually surprised by that based on the racist Cuban stereotype.
Furthermore, my past dating prospects include only white Latinos (like from Argentina another place known to not f with black peopke historically) white guys… not intentionally but that’s just who expresses the most interest in me. I’ve smashed a lot of different types of guys tho 👀🤭
I don’t see how that’s relevant but I am fully able to comprehend America’s mental retardation regarding race and ethnicity so that is not something I need to see. I understand what you’re trying to say or imply completely.
It was a comment about Latinos sometimes being surprised. Also, it was a comment about Mexicans. I doubt you fully comprehend America's race and ethnicity... you'd have to put in new sections on Brazil and mixed-race thinking. Mexicans in America are statistically very likely to say they are "multirace", it is part of the reason why Latino is a demographic construct.
My comment doesn’t say anything about Latinos being surprised, it says “people are surprised…” that I am currently with and have dated in the past Latinos with a specific reputation. That all said, weird that you don’t know me and are assuming what I do and don’t know, but also race in general is a demographic construct…………………..
Not weird at all. Unless you're both obsessed with race, and a "world traveller" you ain't gonna "fully comprehend America's race and ethnicity." Hell, you ain't gonna be able to tell why a Native comes into a closed-door room without knocking. There's a lot of fun stuff in the world, and it's just plain smug and unsophisticated to think you know all of it. And if you wuz a world traveller, I could always eat my hatte.
A good portion of white men's distaste for black women in the US is probably cultural. For various reasons, American black women are very often obese, angry and loud and hard to understand when they speak. They rarely have a college degree and when they do, are often still angry and obese.
I wouldn't want to date them either even if I was black. A lot of these black men who achieve things like a college degree wnd up with a white woman because it's way easier to find a soft-spoken, slim feminie woman among the white population than among the black.
People act like attraction is something you can debate into changing. It’s not. It’s shaped over years—environment, exposure, experience. You can examine it, sure, but trying to engineer it out of people feels just as forced as the thing you’re criticizing.
As for why Asian women prefer White men over Asian men, I believe there are four main factors at play:
1. East Asians are genetically and culturally predisposed to be more neotenous in appearance and behavior, more conformist, less audacious and risk-taking, more introverted, and less emotionally open than White people in Western countries. Women are famously not into men with "side character energy"; I don't think I need to explain why the majority of these traits are considered unattractive in males.
Youthfulness in men is only advantageous to a point. Extreme emotional suppression, while loosely associated with masculinity, can also be unexciting or frustrating, which may explain why effeminate, extremely-attentive K-drama protagonists find such a strong appeal among Asian women.
2. Among Asians (especially South Asians), the legacy of millennia-old arranged marriage traditions has led to cultures where men do not need to have good rizz to reproduce. Even today, money is the single most important variable in most Asian dating scenes, and dating itself is mostly seen as a means to a material end.
Many non-Asian cultures, by contrast, not only teach boys early on that they need to peacock in order to attract women, but that their success with women defines their worth as a man. They will openly flirt with strangers, go to the gym daily, or join gangs/cartels/bands just to achieve higher sexual status.
In Asian cultures, this kind of focus on sexual worth is seen as petty and vulgar, and is typically repressed (or redirected into work, under the assumption that money will bring them sexual success) — and when their men are then placed in the West, the results are predictable and unsurprising.
3. East Asian women being more conformist and status-conscious than any other group means that if White men are at the top of the local hierarchy, then they will be more attracted to White men.
This is especially true for first- or second-generation EA women looking to integrate into Western society: not only do White men have the taboo appeal of being more free-spirited and less-preferred by their parents (giving them newfound feelings of agency), but they will also help them achieve higher social status and integrate them with their surroundings, issues which EA women frankly just tend to care more about.
This would also explain why Japanese women tend to prefer the appearances of Japanese men while living in Japanese society, but usually seek a foreign partner if they find themselves elsewhere.
4. Asian men are indeed "emasculated" in the West. Outside of what is called "Asian-American media" (slop for boba Asians), East and South Asian men alike are rarely the protagonists of anything, likely because both are still such small, unremarkable, inscrutable minorities to the rest of America.
Combined with what I've already mentioned, this contributes to their dehumanization, lowering their sexual status and excluding them from people's preference ladders.
Good post btw. These are important questions for understanding the world we live in, even if most well-adjusted people won't enjoy discussing it.
You overlook the elephant in the room: there are a lot more white people than Asian people, especially in certain parts of the country. If you’re an Asian girl, you will have many more opportunities to date white guys than Asian guys.
There is the simple cultural difference where white american men are more confident in the dominate culture compared to Asian males ergo if Asian men approached more white women, the stats would even out more.
The issue is more psychological & cultural from the Asian side. The reason this doesn't effect Asian women is because they are the passive recipients.
I think you are overthinking this - most people in the world (95%?) are raised as racists by racist societies. The brand of racism invented by the Portuguese and the English, and 'perfected' by the Americans, has been globalised. It denigrates Black women as 'too masculine' and Asian men as 'too feminine'. The majority of people buy into those stereotypes and act accordingly. Black men and Asian women have options to date white women and men who exoticise them as hypermasculine and hyperfeminine respectively. Enough exercise that option to skew Black and Asian preferences significantly. Most people have internalised the message that overt racism is crass. Doesn't that explain most of what you describe?
This was fascinating to read as an Asian woman married to a white man who used to be not attracted to Asian men circa 2010s and now is attracted to Asian men and honestly all other men/women of various races.
I want to quibble a bit about your response to the first common argument attempting to explain Asian women's endophobia. You say that we are not dating our parents' generation, but that's not necessarily true. When we date people we are also dating their family to various degrees. I didn't want to date an Asian man when I was younger was because I didn't want to marry into an Asian family. It was that simple. I didn't want to risk finding out my partner would side with his parents over me, but I also didn't want to deal with the fallout if he did side with me.
Sure other minority races and ethnic groups had similar issues, but I knew the expectations an Asian man's family would have towards me. I also hoped that at least being different than the other races and ethnic groups would mean those parents would give me more grace. (There'd also probably be less community shame ha.) And with a white man, I was pretty sure, at least if he was liberal and whatnot, that his family would most likely not have certain expectations of me.
Of course I'm not sure how much this may apply to other Asian women. I think I felt these things particularly because my parents immigrated here into a particular Asian immigrant community. Most of the women in that community didn't have happy interactions with their in-laws or with the conservative expectations that were put on them. I didn't want to be like those women.
To get back to the main point though: I think that when dating, you're never just dating the person you're dating but their community too. At least if you're thinking of being with that person long term.
I think this is part of the explanation, but I would note that this persists even for mixed race boys/men? For mixed race men with Asian moms and white dads, this attraction deficit persists, and persists more the more they are Asian looking’ than ‘white passing.’
And maybe that’s just subconsciously associating more Asian appearing mixed race men with stereotypes about Asian families.
Also it doesn’t track for Asian men adopted into white families— there were a lot of Korean boys adopted into white families, but there does not seem to be a preference for them among Asian women?
If anything there’s like this bifurcation— if you are too ‘white’ as an Asian man, then you are less attractive to Asian women open to or explicitly seeking Asian men to date. But then you are not white enough to Asian women open to dating white men.
Basically, if you fit the ‘banana’ stereotype, then you are actively selected against by most Asian women at a higher rate than non-‘banana’ Asians.
My comment here is mostly to challenge the narrative that Latinos and Asians are emasculated culturally in similar ways in the west.
Stereotypically, Latino men are still associated with ‘machismo.’ There is a stark difference in sexual stereotypes regarding Asian men vs. Latino/Hispanic men and Black men.
Black men are hyper-sexualized, to the point that their sexuality is often racially presented as dangerous— that they are hyper-sexual ‘savages’ who are dangerous to white women because they, in the negative stereotype, are ‘animals’ with low self control of their sexual desire. There were a lot of lynchings that basically posited black men were sexually assaulting women. Black men are ascribed the larger penis sizes, which adds to the racist stereotype of black men as dangerous sexual predators.
Latino men are associated with machismo, and are similarly often positioned by racists as sexual predators. As lovers, Latino men are still positioned as possessing ‘Latin heat,’ a racial stereotype where as lovers, Latinos are presented as more passionate lovers. Combined with the Machismo association, Latin men are racially positioned as being more possessive, even violently so, based on the perception that their emotional investment is more passionate and that their conception of masculinity is more demanding of violent reprisal when challenged.
Stereotypes about Asian men and Asian masculinity do not posit them as sexual predators, or even as dangerous competitors to white men. They are not presented as savages, because frankly the feudal history of Asia is as well established as that of Europe. Asian masculinity is presented as ascetic— as possessing rigorous discipline according to various honor codes (bushido, various martial arts disciplines like Taoist kung fu, Buddhist asceticism, etc.) Asian masculinity is strongly centered on discipline and self control. Emotionally this presents Asian men as cold, as dispassionate, rigid in outlook and life in general. The Kung Fu Master is above sexual desire, the virtuous Samurai Warrior is not tempted by the seductive kunoichi, the Buddhist monk is not tempted by the beauty of noblewomen, etc. Stereotypes of Asian masculinity, if anything, present the masculine Asian male as striving for asexual mastery in practice, if not in their internal world.
In a very literal sense, Asian masculinity is presented as emasculation from western perspectives— down to Asian men having smaller penises, and men who become eunuchs for political power in palace dramas.
Even when sexuality is addressed, it is within the confines of harnessing sexual energy toward enlightenment— the Kama Sutra is ultimately about surpassing sexual desire, Toaist sexual cultivation is not pleasure focused but about cultivating the body medically, etc. Contrast the stereotypical image of the Asian Comfort House and Comfort Women to the bawdiness of a European brothel, either a low-class brothel servicing sailors, or a high-class brothel servicing aristocrats. The sexual image of a European aristocratic brothel is less constrained than an Asian aristocratic Comfort House. European aristocrats take mistresses from the brothel whores, but while stereotypical Asian aristocrats do take mistresses, even their mistresses are held to higher social standing than the comfort women.
These distinctions matter because a lot of cross-race attraction is based on fetishization of the other race. Black men are often fetishized based on the racist stereotypes of them as sexual ‘savages,’ and fetishized for their dick sizes. A lot of race fetish for black men emasculates white men as being too civilized to sexually satisfy their women; a lot of porn is made about black ‘Bulls’ cuckholding white men with their ‘animalistic’ sexual prowess. There is also an aspect of ‘slumming it’ to this fetishization, where the fetish is that the white or Asian woman is being sexually degraded by lowering herself to sleeping with the black man, where black men serve as an available pool of social inferiors whom higher status white or Asian women can use to satisfy their base sexual desires. In many, many respects, the sexual fetishization of black men is dehumanizing to the black men involved.
Conversely, there is also some fetishization in that black culture is more associated with street culture. Street culture is appropriated by the middle class and upper class as ‘cool’ and superior to stuffy paradigms of ‘high culture’ of the upper/aristocratic class; even Asians are adopting street culture, and in this sense black men have proximity to the status of being more authentic in the terms of street culture. It’s the culture of black gangs that is celebrated at the top of billboard charts, then to a lesser extent Latino gangs. In western culture, Asian street culture is seconded to either black or Latino gangs, or celebrated where it adapts the aesthetic of white organized crime— Yakuza or Triads or Korean Mafia who wear suits and conduct themselves more like white collar criminals than as street toughs. Here also is a difference in how Latino masculinity is emphasized and Asian masculinity is asexualized: ‘high crime’ Latino cartels are more masculine than white organized crime in the sense that they are more violent, and assumed to be even more possessive and sexualized than their white counterparts; an Italian mafioso in pop culture may have mistresses, but the Cartel boss has many mistresses, and is constantly embroiled in high-drama, telenovela level conflict with his romantic interests.
That brings us to the way Latino men are fetishized in a way Asian men are not: the Latino fetish in some ways dehumanizes Latino men in the same way black men are dehumanized when fetishized. They are more savage, more violent— but also more romantically passionate. So a fetishized Latino man may be more possessive of his lovers, but he is also a more savage defender of insults to the honor of his lovers. The racially fetishized Latino man is basically obsessed with his lovers, extemely and acutely engaged in sexually satisfying those lovers, and so long as the woman confirms to his concept of machismo, she can expect him to defend her honor with extreme violence if she is insulted by other men.
Contrast this to what little fetishization of Asian men there is.
The largest Asian male fetish is essentially for feminized K-pop idols, or even for idolized ‘boys love’ stories about gay Asian men written widely by women. This is a very definite feminization of the fetishized Asian male, an emasculating fantasy less about sexual satisfaction but emotional relatability. The feminized idol is sensitive and emotionally available, maybe even overtly homosexual, more similar to the fetishizing woman on an emotional basis.
By contrast there is almost no fetishization of the hyper-masculine Asian male stereotype. At most there is maybe some fetish for Japanese rope bondage, and other Asian sex fetishes like bukake. Asian men fetishized as sexual predators are perverts, often even pedos, obsessed with anime and video game content depicting the sexual exploitation and degradation of women. They are men with large collections of pornographic material, predators who take up-skirt photos with elaborate schemes, even obsessed with gross things like used women’s panties. This again is an emasculating stereotype— these men are so deprived of sexual release their sexualities have warped them into deep perversion. Who wants to be the girlfriend of the otaku obsessed with anime waifus of dubious age?
I think an important factor here is that we are talking about Asian women who are exposed to Western stereotypes. So these are the internalized stereotypes being carried by Asian women about Asian men, and the stereotypes being carried about men of other races.
It might even explain why Asian countries in particular are faced with fertility crises— even Asian women in Asian countries are presented with these stereotypes about Asian men, and many apparently choose to be single to getting an Asian boyfriend. Those seeking feminized men chase idols, which is not most men; even if by temperament they may be similar, those with a lot of physical masculine dimorphism do not qualify as feminized enough.
Those seeking masculine men are forced to choose between men more stereotypically dedicated to honor than their lovers, a man who will by martial arts stereotypes dedicate himself to the sword above even his wife and children; alternatively they have to settle for perverts who get off on degrading women.
That also explains some of the recalcitrance toward South Asians and MENA men too. MENA men are religiously obsessed by stereotype, dedicated to a religious lifestyle in which women aren’t even seen, much less work, much less are wooed and dated. South Asian men similarly come from repressive cultures where prior to Western colonialism, women were even more repressed than in East Asian cultures or European cultures. Desi men are subject to a lot of poor understanding of Desi culture, but also a lot of caste-based weirdness not really understood by non-Desi women of other cultures. The status of women in the complexity of caste and religious diversity among Desi cultures is not well understood, but generally assumed to be repressive to women. The only Desi men fetishized by Westerners are more or less Bollywood heartthrobs. There is if anything a dearth of stereotypes about their performance as lovers or romantic interests, because again Desi culture is basically opaque and not understood by westerners. Maybe there is some fetishization of the Yoga guru type, where the guru has knowledge of ancient Vedic sexual enlightenment, but this is as easily wrapped up in Yoga cultism.
I did have a 'wait, what now?' reaction to the 'Latino men are emasculated in Western culture' take.
The bit about Asian cultural stereotypes of masculine asceticism reminds me of Aang's arc in the third season of Avatar the Last Airbender, where he is expected to let go of his attraction-to/concern-for Katara so he can embrace the massive cosmic power that is needed to defeat the Fire Nation.
The tricky thing there is that I'm not sure how how authentically that is representing the full distribution of actual Asian cultures' stereotypes about masculinity- is it a demonstration of the larger trend in those cultures or a prime example of Western culture fixating on arguably-comes-across-as-emasculating parts of those cultures?
I should have unpacked that line a bit more.
Basically I think there is a bimodal thing going on with Latino men: one image is the latin lover guy you meet on a sultry vacation; the other is the funny, bean-eating guy who repairs your roof. The spread of this latter image is discussed in a couple papers (e.g. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228515356_The_Cultivation_of_Social_Perceptions_of_Latinos_A_Mental_Models_Approach).
I don't think the prietos in the background of this cartoon are insatiable lovers 😂: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1a/Edmund_S._Valtman%2C_What_you_need_is_a_revolution_like_mine_ppmsca.02969.jpg/1920px-Edmund_S._Valtman%2C_What_you_need_is_a_revolution_like_mine_ppmsca.02969.jpg
There's negative non-sexual stereotypes across other races too.
In general, fat and black/brown is not sexy. Skinny and any color other than Asian = exotic = sexy. Hell, for that matter, fat and white is not sexy, generally. I think white men get more access to 'dad bod' body positivity, but yeah, fat and black/brown is reserved for comic relief for the most part.
Fatness is a proxy for physical fitness, and being less physically fit is emasculating across the color spectrum. This is why in street culture, if you're fat you have to be a good sugar daddy to get women, like Biggie Smalls or other rappers of size.
It is worth noting that being fat and Asian is particularly challenging, but this is also a product of Asian culture in general being especially anti-fat. Also, though, fat Asian men are particularly associated with the Otaku/creepazoid shut-in pervert stereotype.
Note that Asian Construction Workers are also stereotyped against, more in a gaijin sort of way -- "did not actually become a salaryman."
Religious purviews are generally ascetic; this is not unique to Buddhism, Taoism, or Hinduism, it’s true about Christianity as well. But since Christian is US default, we are very familiar with most Christian men not being virgins saving themselves for marriage.
There is a difference between Western and Eastern feudalism, though, in that Asian aristocracy was more culturally disciplined and constrained compared to Weatern aristocracy. Western aristocracy had feudalism, but the culture that taught chivalry also taught romance, for example in the Arthurian legend the romance between Lancelot and Guinevere was central. Galahad was lionized as pure and chaste, but was also Lancelot’s son, by a wife who killed herself for jealousy, so the feudal model of chivalry was anything but chaste. That’s even down to Hellenic mythology featuring Zues’ philandering, and generally Hellenic heros being less than chaste; ditto Germanic/Tuetonic heros.
Conversely, Confucian and Neo-Confucians held to an ideal of filial duty on the part of aristocracy. Asceticism was a tool shoguns used to enforce discipline on the Samurai class. There was never really an Asian equivalent to European pre-industrial Bohemianism, or Libertines, prior to the age of sail and Westerners colonizing Asia. And then through opium wars, resisting Western licentiousness became kind of a core of conservative resistance as Asian aristocrats resisted western takeovers. Like the brothel/comfort house comparison is pretty direct.
Some of this is down to Europe having been wracked by religious warfare prior to the age of sail, so not only did European rulers not have particular disciplinary control of their nobility, but also the religious influence of the church was severely curtailed. Conversely Asia was relatively politically stable when Europeans showed up; if anything the biggest cultural change had been the adoption of Islam in South Asia as Arabs colonized a lot of South Asia prior to Europeans showing up.
So yeah there were not any major sexual revolutions in Asia prior to Western colonization; there were some historical stuff like Tantra, and some niche stuff like Taoist sexual cultivation in Taoist alchemy, but nothing as recent as the Bohemian and Libertine sub-cultures.
There was also never a period of frontier licentious tolerance, like brothel culture in the American West or gaucho culture in Mesoamerica. Western licensure brought stuff like Carnival to Brazil and Latino culture, and Mardi Gras to New Orleans and black culture.
Aang spends the entire show fucking his way through the entire planet, all in a bid to save his race. That's canon, by the way. It's so bad that one girl goes "why won't you fuck me tooo~~~~!" (Okay, it's a kids show, and they can't say f on TV).
It's been a while, and I remember there were at least a few comic relief moments involving Aang flirting with or crushing on girls or young women, but I really don't remember anything that was hinting at Aang going off and having sex with random people.
If that was canon, then why was one of the areas of concern in Korra that all airbenders in the world were among Aang's/Katara's kids/grandkids (until the start of season 3)?
The people writing Korra were the people who wanted... that play episode in the original Avatar to be real. They wanted a "comic relief" guy, etc.
That there was an entire episode devoted to making fun of the rest of the writers (who'd wanted Toph to be... well, a musclebound dude, because Earth Rocks [pun-apologies]).... yeah.
Aang had a mission, and he was taking that mission pretty seriously (for a twelve-year-old boy, mind you kindly) -- "travel everywhere, and get in the pants of as many girls as possible."
This is a great write up but definitely suffers from "male brain-ism" to put it succinctly.
You're seeing things from a very male way. You're lacking insight into the female mind
Dudes who think they have insight into the 'female mind' are just poseurs who (a) mainly want to impress other men, (b) have no real understanding of the female mind, and (c) have never claimed to have this insight out loud in front of a real woman who had the power/station to tell him he was wrong.
👍
my takeaway from this is that by being especially into Asian men I am simply doing my part for society
Thank you for your service. 🫡
Well hello there!
Sadly, I have to disagree with this piece: you're unusually charismatic, my guy. <3
Historical trivia: I was first introduced to these trends from the glorious ol' OkCupid blog. Sadly now defunct, but here's a HuffPost article citing it: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/okcupid-race_n_5811840
It's based on people's ratings of profiles, rather than stated prefs. The effects look weaker than in the studies you cite (10-20% less attractive), so more overcome-able. Not sure what's going on there!
This (actual revealed preferences in terms of attraction being less extreme than stated preferences) is a great sign for the viability of Srinivasan's 'modest' prescription, right?
my advice for East Asian men: start picking up chicks at anime conventions and K-pop fan meets. It’s not shameful if it works.
How do you square concerns about the dateability of asian men with the fact that a higher fraction of asian men are married than white, black and hispanic men?
https://usafacts.org/articles/state-relationships-marriages-and-living-alone-us/
I don't understand the American marriage data well. I do have a couple competing hypotheses to offer:
1. Marriage rates and stability are strongly correlated with income (e.g. https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/second-quarter-2019/earnings-gap-marital-status-race-gender). Asian American male income has risen dramatically in the period the graph shows, such that now the Asian American average is >30% larger than the White average. So I suspect white male marriage rates are higher than Asian males after correcting for income. In other words, one would expect Asian male's marriage rates to be even higher, if the racial attractiveness gap was closed.
2. Asian male undesirability has declined over this period. The first two studies I discussed use data from the mid-2000s. The number of Asian women dating Asian men has since increased. However, more recent racial preference data still indicate that Asian males are lowest desirability:
a. Data from 2022: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12119-021-09931-9
b. Data from 2017: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00224499.2025.2473965
c. Data from 2023 (I think): https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-024-01450-9
Maybe this undesirability has an outsized effect on online dating, hookups, and causal sex, but not much of an effect on marriage.
3. If we take on a Buss & Schmidt style sexual strategies perspective, we may find an explanation for Asian male marriage stability. Asian males are low attractiveness, high income, high education, low violence. This makes their appeal as short-term sexual partners low, but their appeal as long term partners high. I believe one of the studies I cite here shows data that the attractiveness of the spouses of Asian males is low. So there is a nice sexual arbitrage opportunity here that inclines both sides of these marriages against divorce.
Steve Sailer wrote about this all the way back in 1997.
https://isteve.blogspot.com/2017/05/is-colorblind-by-steve-sailer-published.html?m=1
I kinda wonder how much the 'nerd factor' plays a role. A lot of South and East Asians' family line in the USA begins through visas which were originally granted (in the early post-Hart-Celler period) for scientific and technical reasons, and unsurprisingly a lot of techies and academic achievers wind up being South and East Asian. i.e., Asian-Americans are likely a nonrandom sample from the larger ancestral Asian pool.
This particular personality type seems much more appreciated by the ladies in Asia than it is in the USA. China in particular had a social structure that favored bookishness for *over a thousand years* (and, indeed, the test-based aspects of social stratification of our own society trace back to China through the British civil service system, which had Chinese inspirations).
It doesn't explain, though, the large number of white (male) nerds who wind up with Asian women ("Search your feelings. You know it to be true.") My guess is being white and nerdy codes as less nerdy than being Asian and nerdy, explaining the Asian ladies' prejudice discussed here. But then why don't you see more of them go all the way and chase after white jocks?
> My guess is being white and nerdy codes as less nerdy than being Asian and nerdy, explaining the Asian ladies' prejudice discussed here. But then why don't you see more of them go all the way and chase after white jocks?
I think there's probably something to this. I also wonder about first and second generation asians in America, who generally have fairly different attitudes towards women, wifely expectations, and so on.
Speaking as a white guy (a jock at that) who's done business and lived off and on in Asia for 15+ years, a white dude's (absurdly overpowered) dating potential there is driven by several factors:
1) More egalitarian attitudes re women's roles and expectations
2) Being more fun and interesting and less conformist
3) Being more successful than even the median east asian successful (ie you earn USD / own a company, etc)
4) Being more masculine and fitness and health oriented - American successful guys are lean and exercise regularly, Chinese successful guys are fat alcoholics who smoke a lot (business culture stuff), and other asians are not as bad as Chinese, but generally less healthy the richer they are
5) Every single rich East Asian guy cheats, systematically, continuously, and at scale, and it's 100% culturally accepted and basically business as usual. And I mean literally every single one. True across China, Korea, and SE Asia in my experience, less experience in Japan.
This cheating effect is so strong, it's still seen in America (where east asian men cheat at 3x the rates as women).
Cheating by gender and race from GSS:
https://imgur.com/58w3Dab
And I think probably 3 of those effects, at least 1,2,5, are still at least partially true in America for east asian vs white guys.
> I also wonder about first and second generation asians in America, who generally have fairly different attitudes towards women, wifely expectations, and so on.
It's mainly this. I've talked to a lot of Chinese women in the USA and if they are open to dating outside of their race/nationality - it is mainly because they do not like the attitudes and expectations that come from men in China. China's culture is horrific towards women compared to the west. They would be open to dating someone from China but that man would also have to break the mold and effectively act like an American/westerner. That is just extremely unlikely and so they tend to date outside their group. These immigrant women are also just more likely to be outside the box overall. They've left their home country, they're living in a country that has a very different culture, etc. They mostly pair up with white men because white men are going to be the next largest represented race within high income groups that these women also belong to.
As a white trans man with a half Asian mom, I don't have a ton of sympathy for the complaints discussed, by anyone of any race, gender, or trans status.
I *understand* them. Being rejected sucks. Being horny and lonely sucks. Being single in a society where sex and romance are the only gateways to basic human intimacy sucks. And I'm not arguing that a solution *necessarily* exists. Sometimes situations are simply unfixable.
But I notice that the put-upon subjects frequently ignore what seem like extremely obvious (to me) *possible* solutions.
If straight Asian guys and Black women can't get dates elsewhere, date each other.
Gay Asian guys can date each other. Gay Black women can date each other.
But if that solution is unworkable because Asian guys aren't attracted to each other or Black women, and Black women aren't attracted to each other or Asian men, that kills the "I'm victimized because nobody will date me" narrative. Like, if YOU wouldn't date you, why should anyone else?
I'm not saying it's possible or desirable to fake attraction to someone you're not into. I would be more romantically and sexually successful if I was more attracted to other trans guys (or men in general, really). Alas, I am not. But that's reality. So I don't like the available options? Whining that other people don't like me as an option is both hypocritical and, more important, counterproductive.
I'm reminded of the endless forum and reddit and social media posts where people gather together to vent about how friendless and lonely they are. Why not make friends with each other? Duh? But that takes work and the emotional maturity to acknowledge that as much as being lonely is suicide-inducing levels of awful, there is no cosmic injustice in your loneliness. It simply is.
The ironic thing is, trans people date each other all the time (t4t). People date across race all the time. Plenty of people are sensibly not wasting time trying to date people of “higher status” that don't want them, and dating people of similar status that do.
You don't need to be performatively progressive to be genuinely attracted to fat people, disabled people, trans people, people outside your race, whatever. I date other trans people and genuinely prefer it that way.
So the people pining desperately for a thin white cis person to validate their existence HAVE an alternative model to follow for dating happiness. They just…refuse to use it.
I have more sympathy for Black women than Asian men here. Black women are rejected more by EVERY demographic. There are genuinely fewer alternatives for them.
But my short Southeast Asian American grandfather married my white grandmother, had kids, then dumped HER for a younger white woman. Whatever you can say about him, you cannot say he didn't have game.
Asian men have more options but whine as if they have none. It's dumb as hell.
Some observations that don't fit the typical literature:
1. Asian men and women outmarried at similar rates in the 80s and the gap only emerged in the 90s and beyond. The old-school racist caricatures of Asians are irrelevant to why the gap is so big today
2. For Indian - East Asian pairings, it's almost always Indian male + EA female (even among 1st gen). Considering Indians have worse stereotypes and are less fit and more unattractive on average than East asian men
3. The gap between Asian men and women hasn't really closed in the past 10 years, despite much better positive Asian male representation in media
4. Birthrates are collapsing in East/SE Asian countries the fastest among all nations
This suggests that media representation or masculinity arguments are not the root cause. The real cause is likely this:
- EA/SEA cultures are more gender egalitarian than other non-white cultures, and EA/SEA women are seen as more desirable than most other races of non-white women. This allows them both freedom and access to pursue global hypergamy easier.
- Other races of non-white men are protected by more patriarchal culture and less relative desirability of their female counterparts.
This is interesting because I am a black woman in a relationship with a white Cuban living in Florida…. people are usually surprised by that based on the racist Cuban stereotype.
Furthermore, my past dating prospects include only white Latinos (like from Argentina another place known to not f with black peopke historically) white guys… not intentionally but that’s just who expresses the most interest in me. I’ve smashed a lot of different types of guys tho 👀🤭
You should see what people say about black Mexicans -- "wait, you're really Mexican? You speak spanish?!"
I don’t see how that’s relevant but I am fully able to comprehend America’s mental retardation regarding race and ethnicity so that is not something I need to see. I understand what you’re trying to say or imply completely.
It was a comment about Latinos sometimes being surprised. Also, it was a comment about Mexicans. I doubt you fully comprehend America's race and ethnicity... you'd have to put in new sections on Brazil and mixed-race thinking. Mexicans in America are statistically very likely to say they are "multirace", it is part of the reason why Latino is a demographic construct.
My comment doesn’t say anything about Latinos being surprised, it says “people are surprised…” that I am currently with and have dated in the past Latinos with a specific reputation. That all said, weird that you don’t know me and are assuming what I do and don’t know, but also race in general is a demographic construct…………………..
Not weird at all. Unless you're both obsessed with race, and a "world traveller" you ain't gonna "fully comprehend America's race and ethnicity." Hell, you ain't gonna be able to tell why a Native comes into a closed-door room without knocking. There's a lot of fun stuff in the world, and it's just plain smug and unsophisticated to think you know all of it. And if you wuz a world traveller, I could always eat my hatte.
Did not say I know all of it, I said I understand it but ok.
A good portion of white men's distaste for black women in the US is probably cultural. For various reasons, American black women are very often obese, angry and loud and hard to understand when they speak. They rarely have a college degree and when they do, are often still angry and obese.
I wouldn't want to date them either even if I was black. A lot of these black men who achieve things like a college degree wnd up with a white woman because it's way easier to find a soft-spoken, slim feminie woman among the white population than among the black.
This is probably not true in Africa.
Old comment, but yes. Any discussion of racism / "racism" in dating that doesn't take this into account is incomplete at best.
People act like attraction is something you can debate into changing. It’s not. It’s shaped over years—environment, exposure, experience. You can examine it, sure, but trying to engineer it out of people feels just as forced as the thing you’re criticizing.
As for why Asian women prefer White men over Asian men, I believe there are four main factors at play:
1. East Asians are genetically and culturally predisposed to be more neotenous in appearance and behavior, more conformist, less audacious and risk-taking, more introverted, and less emotionally open than White people in Western countries. Women are famously not into men with "side character energy"; I don't think I need to explain why the majority of these traits are considered unattractive in males.
Youthfulness in men is only advantageous to a point. Extreme emotional suppression, while loosely associated with masculinity, can also be unexciting or frustrating, which may explain why effeminate, extremely-attentive K-drama protagonists find such a strong appeal among Asian women.
2. Among Asians (especially South Asians), the legacy of millennia-old arranged marriage traditions has led to cultures where men do not need to have good rizz to reproduce. Even today, money is the single most important variable in most Asian dating scenes, and dating itself is mostly seen as a means to a material end.
Many non-Asian cultures, by contrast, not only teach boys early on that they need to peacock in order to attract women, but that their success with women defines their worth as a man. They will openly flirt with strangers, go to the gym daily, or join gangs/cartels/bands just to achieve higher sexual status.
In Asian cultures, this kind of focus on sexual worth is seen as petty and vulgar, and is typically repressed (or redirected into work, under the assumption that money will bring them sexual success) — and when their men are then placed in the West, the results are predictable and unsurprising.
3. East Asian women being more conformist and status-conscious than any other group means that if White men are at the top of the local hierarchy, then they will be more attracted to White men.
This is especially true for first- or second-generation EA women looking to integrate into Western society: not only do White men have the taboo appeal of being more free-spirited and less-preferred by their parents (giving them newfound feelings of agency), but they will also help them achieve higher social status and integrate them with their surroundings, issues which EA women frankly just tend to care more about.
This would also explain why Japanese women tend to prefer the appearances of Japanese men while living in Japanese society, but usually seek a foreign partner if they find themselves elsewhere.
4. Asian men are indeed "emasculated" in the West. Outside of what is called "Asian-American media" (slop for boba Asians), East and South Asian men alike are rarely the protagonists of anything, likely because both are still such small, unremarkable, inscrutable minorities to the rest of America.
Combined with what I've already mentioned, this contributes to their dehumanization, lowering their sexual status and excluding them from people's preference ladders.
Good post btw. These are important questions for understanding the world we live in, even if most well-adjusted people won't enjoy discussing it.
You overlook the elephant in the room: there are a lot more white people than Asian people, especially in certain parts of the country. If you’re an Asian girl, you will have many more opportunities to date white guys than Asian guys.
why wouldn't this apply to white girls and asian men? It's clearly not being overlooked.
There is the simple cultural difference where white american men are more confident in the dominate culture compared to Asian males ergo if Asian men approached more white women, the stats would even out more.
The issue is more psychological & cultural from the Asian side. The reason this doesn't effect Asian women is because they are the passive recipients.
I think you are overthinking this - most people in the world (95%?) are raised as racists by racist societies. The brand of racism invented by the Portuguese and the English, and 'perfected' by the Americans, has been globalised. It denigrates Black women as 'too masculine' and Asian men as 'too feminine'. The majority of people buy into those stereotypes and act accordingly. Black men and Asian women have options to date white women and men who exoticise them as hypermasculine and hyperfeminine respectively. Enough exercise that option to skew Black and Asian preferences significantly. Most people have internalised the message that overt racism is crass. Doesn't that explain most of what you describe?