Asian fetish (also known as yellow fever) is an interest, obsession, or preference for Asian people, culture, or things of Asian origin by those of non-Asian descent. It is a slang term that stems from sexual fetishism. Most commonly the term refers to a sexual obsession with Asian women experienced by some non-Asian men. More broadly, it applies to the enthusiasms experienced by some non-Asian people for such things as Asian cinema, tattoos made up of Chinese characters or the adoption of Asian children.
A fetish is something that is desired so heavily that it becomes an abnormal obsession. Objects, body parts, clothing and people are all things that can be fetishized.
An Asian fetish is distinct from an interracial partnership. Interracial relationships may occur for reasons distinct from race. Asian fetishes have been criticised for treating the fetishized person as an object rather than an equal partner. The term Asiaphile is sometimes used to describe the same phenomenon, as is "yellow fever" for East Asians (not to be confused with the disease yellow fever).
Video Asian fetish
Origins
A fetish for Asians comes out of a European tradition of fascination with the East, and a history of othering inhabitants of those regions. After the First Opium War in the 1840s, Western powers, like the United States, swarmed the port cities of China, Japan, and Korea, which sat on a lucrative trade route. As a result, the appetite of the Western middle class for Asian goods and art grew. Some of this art, like postcards and fans, featured sexualized depictions of geishas. The geisha was portrayed as a petite woman heavily made-up and richly dressed. The prominence of the provocative geisha image on trade goods fostered, in the eyes of Western men, the idea of the geisha and east Asian women as decorative, sexual objects. The image of the sexualized Asian woman in the United States was further solidified by the presence of the U.S. military in Asia during the Second World War, the Korean War, and the Vietnam war. Brothels formed in towns surrounding U.S. military bases, their primary clientele being U.S. soldiers. American men who may not have had preconceived notions about Asian women were drafted and sent to fight in Asia where they saw Asian women working in the sex industry. This representation of the Asian woman has persisted and grown into the stereotype of the sexualized Asian woman and the Asian fetish.
Another well known stereotype of Asian women is that they are subservient, passive and quiet. Throughout history in the Western world, the image of an Asian women was 'geisha-like', meaning overly sexual but silent. Asian women are seen giving suggestive gazes but remaining quiet while seducing the man. This image persists today, along with the idea of Asian women being exotic and submissive. Asian women are often referred to as a 'china doll', meaning they are dainty and beautiful, but also meaning they have no feelings and are able to be controlled. In movies, television and media, we see this stereotypical representation of Asian women as an objects rather than humans. Continuously seeing this image in mainstream media has led to the idea of the "Asian fetish".
Maps Asian fetish
Terminology and usage
In the afterword to the 1988 play M. Butterfly, the writer David Henry Hwang, using the term "yellow fever", a pun on the disease of the same name, discusses white men with a "fetish" for (east) Asian women. The term "yellow fever" describes someone who is inflicted with a disease, meaning that someone with an Asian fetish has a sickness. Hwang argues that this phenomenon is caused by stereotyping of Asians in Western society. Other names used for those with an Asian fetish are: rice kings, rice chasers and rice lovers.
The slang term used for a gay man, usually white, who exclusively dates men of Asian descent is "rice queen".
In a collection of writings from Asian American females, YELL-Oh Girls!, Meggy Wang calls a man "Mr. Asiaphile".
Columbia study on racial preferences in dating
In 2007, economist Ray Fisman, in a two-year study he co-authored on dating preferences among Columbia University students, did not find evidence of a general preference among white men for Asian women. Furthermore, the study found that there is a significantly higher pairing of white men with East Asian women because East Asian women discriminate against black and Hispanic/Latino men. As quoted on Slate.com, and also reported in The Washington Post and the Review of Economic Studies (a publication of the London School of Economics):
The study was carried out over two years and was conducted by economists Ray Fisman (lead researcher from Columbia University) and Emir Kamenica (University of Chicago), as well as psychologists Sheena Iyengar (Columbia University) and Itamar Simonson (Stanford University). They took data from "thousands of decisions made by more than 400 daters from Columbia University's various graduate and professional schools".
Effects
Asian fetish places a psychological burden on Asian women, who are forced to cope with constant doubt and suspicion that men who find them attractive have an Asian fetish. Asian American women report both in popular media such as blogs, and in social scientific literature, that they are often uncertain whether people are only interested in them for their race. The doubt that targets of Asian fetish experience stems from feelings of depersonalization, which compound on the objectification Asian females already face as women, to create a further sort of objectification where Asian women feel like interchangeable objects. The fetishized body of the Asian woman becomes a symbol of other people's desires, she is not valued for what she is, but what she has come to represent. Racial depersonalization can be especially hurtful to Asian women in situations where being recognized as an individual is important, such as romantic relationships, because a person may feel unloved if they sense they could be replaced by someone with similar qualities.
Another effect of Asian fetish is that it causes its targets to feel like an Other, because they are isolated and held to different standards of beauty. Asian American women report being complimented in ways that imply they are attractive because they are Asian or despite being Asian. Because of Asian fetish, an Asian woman's racial difference is either seen as a failure to conform to mainstream white standards of beauty, or as something that can be appreciated only on an alternative scale. This can cause insecurity, and affect a woman's self-worth and self-respect.
Men with an Asian fetish are also affected by the stigma that accompanies the term. These men are viewed as inferior, and it is assumed that they date Asian women because they are unable to date White women. This logic holds that Asian women are lesser than White woman. The stereotype that the Asian fetish perpetuates, about the sexual superiority of Asian women, reduces Asian women to objects that are only valuable for sex and not as complete human beings.
NPR correspondent Elise Hu offers that this can be a source of insecurity in Asian women's dating lives, "Am I just loved because I'm part of an ethnic group that's assumed to be subservient, or do I have actual value as an individual, or is it both?". In the other direction, it has been argued that the notion of an Asian fetish creates the unnecessary perception of multiracial relationships as being characterized by "patriarchal, racist power structures" in relationships.
Writer Agness Kaku believes the mainstream white culture undermines efforts to combat sexual harassment based on Asian fetish. Noting how frequently women of Asian descent are subjected to verbal and online harassment, Kaku argues that Asian fetish "thrives on double standards that make light of racial bias against Asians" and states this downplaying leaves women vulnerable to stalking and violence.
Asian women and white men
20% of married Asian American women and 7% of married Asian American men have a non-Asian spouse, 17.1% of married Asian American women are married to a white spouse, and 3.5% of married Asian men have a spouse classified as 'other'. 75% of Asian/white marriages involve an Asian female and a white male. There was a spike in white male/Asian female marriages during and following the U.S.'s involvement with wars in Asia, including WWII, Korea, and Vietnam.
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the image of the Asian woman has been seen as subservient, loyal, and family oriented. After World War II, over feminized images of Asian women made interracial marriage between Asian American women and white men popular. Asian femininity and white masculinity are seen as a sign of modern middle-class manhood. Postcolonial and model minority femininity attract white men to Asian and Asian American women and men see this femininity as the perfect marital dynamic. White men often racialize Asian women as "good wives" or "model minorities" because of how Asian women are stereotyped as over feminized.
In an NPR program, Tell Me More, Michel Martin interviews Chinese-American filmmaker Debbie Lum who interviewed men who posted online personal ads exclusively seeking Asian women. She found that men often describe Asian women as subtle and quiet. Their long, black hair is eye-catching. Their dark, mysterious look with their dark eyes. They give more consideration to how their man feels rather than themselves. She found that men look for Asian wives because they are stereotypically known as docile, traditional, submissive, and the perfect wife who is not going to talk back.
Asian women are viewed as "good wives". They can properly take care of their children during the day and fulfill their mans' sexual desires at night. In interviews done by Bitna Kim, white men explain their fetish for Asian women. An Asian woman contains both beauty and brains. She is "sexy, intelligent, successful, professional, caring, and family oriented". They do not wear white girl clothes, wear heavy makeup and they are not high maintenance. Hence, they have respectable mannerisms. These men that were interviewed see Asian women to be exotic because of her mysterious beauty and petite physical appearance. Sexually, the men in these interviews had a commonality. They all perceived Asian women to have submissive sex. They felt that Asian women did not mind putting her man's pleasure ahead of hers. This interviews exemplify the idea that white men believe that an Asian woman embodies a perfect wife as a "princess in public and a whore in the bedroom".
A white woman is seen to lack the same femininity that an Asian woman has to offer. Instead, a white man gets the next best option that will benefit him most.
Since 2002, marriages between Eastern European men and Asian women have become increasingly common.
In Thailand, research shows an increasing number of young middle class Thai women are marrying foreign men. Sources indicate that Sri Lanka is popular among Western "marriage bureaus" which specialize in the pairing of Western men with foreign women. The first and largest wave of Sri Lankan immigrants to Denmark were Sinhalese women who came to the country in the 1970s to marry Danish men they had met back in Sri Lanka. Statistics also show that marriages of Danish, Swedish and Norwegian men with Thai or Indian women tend to last longer than those of Indian men marrying Danish, Swedish or Norwegian wives.
Filipino, Thai and Sri Lankan women have traveled as mail-order brides to Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
Statistics detailing the sponsorship of spouses and fiances to Australia between 1988/89 and 1990/91 showed that more women from the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Indonesia, South Korea and India were sponsored for citizenship than men from the same countries.
An estimated 200,000 to 400,000 German men annually travel abroad for sex tourism, with the Philippines, Thailand, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Hong Kong as their main destinations.
In media
In her essay "Hateful Contraries: Media Images of Asian Women", British filmmaker Pratibha Parmar comments that the media's imagery of Asian women is "contradictory" in that it represents them as "completely dominated by their men, mute and oppressed" while also presenting them as "sexually erotic creatures".
Since the start of immigration, Asian men and women have been negatively stereotyped in mass media. Although the stereotypes have evolved throughout the years, they have not necessarily changed for the better. There are a few specific ways that Asian women are typically portrayed as: the lotus blossom baby, the China doll, and the dragon lady. The lotus blossom baby exemplifies the shyness assigned to the Asian woman stereotype. The China doll resembles a geisha-like woman. The dragon lady represents a woman that is either cunning and deceitful or a prostitute. Both the lotus baby and dragon lady are very sexualized and continue to objectify these women as exotic property. These images elicit sexual fantasies for men who then believe them to be true, which helps to create the Asian Fetish.
Media continuously furthers the progression of the Asian woman stereotype. This can be seen in movies, where the women are characterized by submissiveness. This trend is embodied within pornography, which focuses on an Asian women's stereotyped body type and her ability to remain submissive to males. Asian pornography uprose when the United States government banned prostitution. But in other Asian countries, porn was supported, which lead to the accumulation and sexualization of Asian-based porn in the United States. The inability for one to truly understand another culture or production opens up more room for imagination and fantasy.
See also
- Amejo
- Ethnic pornography
- Interracial marriage
- Miscegenation
- Orientalism
- Racial fetishism
- Sarong party girl
- Sex tourism
- Sexual fetishism
- Stereotypes of East Asians in the United States
- Stereotypes of South Asians
- Yellow cab (stereotype)
Attraction to specific cultures
- Anglophile
- Francophile
- Germanophile
- Indophilia
- Japanophilia
- Koreanophile
- Sinophilia
- Taiwanophilia
References
Further reading
- Ariely, Dan; Hitsch, Gunter J.; Hortacsu, Ali (2006). "What Makes You Click? -- Mate Preferences and Matching Outcomes in Online Dating". MIT Sloan Research Paper No. 4603-06. SSRN 895442 .
- Mills, Jon K.; Daly, Jennifer; Longmore, Amy; Kilbridge, Gina (1995). "A Note on Family Acceptance Involving Interracial Friendships and Romantic Relationships". The Journal of Psychology. 129 (3): 349-51. doi:10.1080/00223980.1995.9914971.
External links
- Seeking Asian Female-A documentary by Debbie Lum (Official Website)
- Seeking Asian Female page at PBS Independent Lens
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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