At The Right Coast, Thomas Smith is criticizing New York Times ethicist Randy Cohen for, among other things, “[advising] a man who finds himself exclusively attracted to Asian women [that] he get help for his racism.” I haven’t read that Cohen item, but if Smith is characterizing it correctly, Cohen’s advice is indeed bunk. There’s nothing racist — expressing hostility, hatred, or dislike or even (shifting subtly away from racism) expressing stereotypical generalization based on race — about being physically or erotically attracted to women who have a particular look. It is racially discriminatory, but choice of spouse or sexual partner is one place where we rightly don’t condemn race discrimination (or for that matter sex discrimination).
But this brings up one point that I’ve observed: Whenever the topic of white men who prefer Asian women comes up, someone nearly always theorizes that this is because the men have a stereotype of Asian women as submissive and deferential. The man isn’t so much being faulted for racism as for a desire to be the boss in the relationship. I’ve heard people say this time and again.
And yet every man I know who is like this (I’ve known four fairly well) has ended up dating Asian women who are far from submissive or deferential. Likewise, the men I know who are married to Asian women (I put them in a separate category because I have no idea whether they generally prefer Asian women or just happened to marry an Asian woman) do not seem to be married to submissive or deferential women.
Now perhaps this is just an artifact of my circle — the men are mostly Los Angeles lawyers; I hardly have an unbiased sample. In fact, this is why I’m not relying on the fact that most of the Asian women I know aren’t submissive or deferential; the women I know are an especially biased subsample. And I realize that in former generations, or especially in situations where American men married Asian women they met overseas, the matter might be quite different.
Still, today, it seems to me that either (1) the men I know who prefer Asian women are repeatedly disappointed, since they seek submissive women but don’t get them, and yet keep repeating their error, or (2) the men actually prefer Asian women for very different reasons — chiefly their looks, since American Asian women (and especially those who are assimilated enough that they’re willing to date white men) have very similar personalities to white women. As you might gather, I think item 2 is much more likely, at least for men of my circle, which is to say educated big-city men (though it might quite well apply to men of other circles; I just don’t know enough to tell).
Now I realize that preference for looks is itself complex, since looks can yield both a visceral physical response and what I call an “erotic” response rather than a physical — a response that’s triggered by psychological connections, such as a sense that this woman is exotic and different from most other women, something that some men may find attractive. Still, the preference seems to be for a woman’s looks, and not for the woman’s willingness to be dominated.
If I’m right, then what’s the reason for the “they just want submissive women” theory? Part of it might be that this was indeed once the preference for some men, for instance those bringing home war brides or mail-order brides — I’m just purely hypothesizing here, since I have no reason to think that this is so, but at least I can’t rule it out.
But part, I think, might be the tendency of some people — at least in some circles — to like theories that place men, and especially white men, in a negative light, the “men are pigs” / “white men are oppressors” theories. Many people who like those theories don’t actually hate white men (some might be white men, and some might sleep with white men). Rather, they adopt the theories because in certain circles those theories have a certain fashionable cachet, as signs of deep and power-structure-subversive understanding. And this is so even when the theory seems to have no empirical foundation.
Or am I mistaken? Is there any real evidence that most white men, or even a substantial number of white men, today who prefer Asian women do so because they think that Asian women are more likely to be submissive?
(Before people start speculating, no, I’m not saying this just to defend my own preference for Asian women. I’ve been involved with one Asian woman in the past, and naturally found her attractive, but I’ve been involved with considerably more non-Asian women, and found them attractive, too.)
UPDATE: Several readers e-mailed to agree with my perception here, based on their own experiences — some men who marry Asian women they meet overseas are looking for the stereotypical submissive woman (and might be getting her), but it’s a mistake to generalize from this to men who prefer Asian-American woman, who don’t fit the stereotype, and who aren’t sought because of this stereotype. And I should stress that I’ve heard the “white men who like Asian women must just be looking for submissive women” line about the latter category, as to which the line seems to be quite mistaken.
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