Most people have preferences when it comes to dating, like tending to date people with certain characteristics (more outgoing or intelligent people) or physical traits (only dating guys taller than you or only having blonde girlfriends). But could these tendencies stem out of inherently flawed biases?
Society has become more diverse over the past century and potential partners are no longer limited to those in your immediate surroundings or race group. This has led to the rise in popularity, or at least acknowledgement, of racial dating preferences.
Preferences apply to all genders, sexualities and races but preference is seen most frequently towards Asian women, particularly East and Southeast Asian women, frequently from white men. There is nothing wrong with appreciating Asian culture or aesthetics but problems arise when people start to date and interact with others for the sole reason that they are Asian.
Racial preference may prove to be a major red flag in white male/Asian female relationships. This issue arises from the fact that many see Asian women as obedient and passive and thus could be a sign of expectation of a power imbalance in the relationship.
Of course, most relationships consisting of white men and Asian women are not sinister. My own parents’ relationship consists of my white father and Filipina mother and I can safely say that their 20-year relationship is not built on a foundation of racial fetishization but these sort of trends do raise questions when speaking about society as a whole.
As mentioned before, it’s not wrong to incline towards certain types of people, but at what point does this become fetishization of a particular race?
Trends seen on dating apps like OkCupid show that Asian women are far more likely to be messaged than other ethnicities. This aligns heavily with what has been seen historically with interracial marriages over the 20th century as interracial couples became much more common. In the 1970s and further in the 1990s and 2000s due to the internet, there has been a spike in mail-order brides (marriages where a woman from an often developing country is sought out by a man from a 1st world country in a catalogue or via internet interactions) from Asia specifically. Such marriages are usually for the woman's economical benefit or to help their relative immigrate and hence extends the narrative of white men "saving" more docile Asian women.
The hypersexualisation of East Asian women may have begun with the first wave of Asian immigrants to the US from China in the mid-19th century, with well over half of working female Chinese immigrants working as prostitutes. “War brides” - the wives of military personnel from other countries - may also have a role in shifting the public mindset towards Asian women throughout the 20th century. With higher numbers of Japanese, Filipina, Korean, Vietnamese and Chinese women leaving their countries to live with their new husbands after wars during the 1900s. Many of these women were seen to be fleeing their war-torn country to live in the west with their often white husbands. This may have perpetuated the stereotype of the “fragile Asian woman”; a stereotype that is being fed to the general public by the media even today. The recent rise of anime, k-pop and kawaii culture in western countries only further feed this mentality.
An introspection into our biases is necessary for us as a society to shift the way we perceive Asian women, both in relationships and as individual people.
Written by Ella Klassen
Artwork by Zara Masood
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