Not your “geisha girl”

I noticed something weird in a friend’s Facebook profile picture. The face of the woman he had moved to Japan to date had been inexplicably replaced with that of another Asian woman. Otherwise the picture was exactly the same as it had been.

It seemed like he had cut one woman out of his life and pasted another into her place.
The image bothered me, probably because I am friends with his ex-girlfriend, but also because it seemed to be clear evidence of what gross people call “yellow fever.”

That is the racist name white men who fetishize Asian women call their predilection.
This fetish is relatively common and accepted by mainstream society.

Often men feel no qualms about saying “I only date Asian women,” and listeners rarely protest the validity of such a statement.

Only dating a specific race is racist. You have decided that vast groups of people are unfit to date solely because of their race.

I’m sure men who have restricted themselves to the Asian members of the dating pool would argue they are enamored with Asian culture, but sometimes I think these men are more in love with the culture than they are with their girlfriends.

Not to mention the fact that there is no monolithic Asian culture. Asia is kind of a big continent. 

Even if they were born and raised in the United States, women of Asian descent are treated as embodiments of some exotic and mysterious culture by fetishists, rather than as individuals.

According to a study by Korean-American psychologist Bitna Kim, white men who exclusively date Asian women overwhelmingly cite the perceived subservience of these women as an attraction.

They like that “women serve the men. They do things for him that the Western culture has long forgotten.” 

In this sense, the fetish is both racist and sexist. A fetishist wants an Asian girlfriend in the hopes that he can have the sexy sandwich-maker he always dreamed of.

These stereotypes are dangerous and these relationships hurt the women involved.
The blogger She-Hulk-Smash describes her experiences saying it isn’t very hard for her to find a man interested in her because they don’t care who she actually is.

As long as she was still Asian, she could be a completely different person and it would make no difference.

She says these men treat her like an “exotic souvenir,” a characterization she resents. It is important to recognize Asian fetishists for what they are: racists and sexists.

This is especially important at IU, as thousands of Asian women attend our University.  
Of course biracial dating is awesome, but not when it is based on racial stereotypes.

You should not date someone because of what they are, but because of who they are.

­— casefarr@indiana.edu