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Thundercracker
Jun 25, 2004

Proudly serving the Ruinous Powers since as a veteran of the long war.
College Slice
I'm just of the opinion that, at least in most major metropolitan cities, Asian are like a decade away from joining "White" America. We'll be like off-white, eggshell, like Irish, Italians, and Jews. Like there will still be seriously offensive portrayals in the media, but in the corridors of power, finance, and the creative sectors it'll be a non-issue.

My Asian-American friends are surprisingly, not thrilled with the idea.

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Pigasus
Dec 26, 2009

Too fat to wear pink.

What happens if it was a white female/Asian male coupling? I'd expect that to spark some reaction because Asian men are not sexualized as some gender ideal like Asian women.

White male/Asian female couples are ignored because Asian women are sexualized and stereotyped in this demure women stereotypes that is acceptable for a woman in the couple. There is also a longer history of white men bringing home an Asian wife after WWII.

Since Asian men are not sexualized and been given bad stereotypes, like small penises, they're more likely going to get pushback when they date a white woman.

Earwicker
Jan 6, 2003

I know several Asian people who have been flat out disowned by their parents for dating or marrying white people. They are all either Indian or Sri Lankan, but those are still part of Asia!

Cat Ass Trophy
Jul 24, 2007
I can do twice the work in half the time

Pigasus posted:

What happens if it was a white female/Asian male coupling? I'd expect that to spark some reaction because Asian men are not sexualized as some gender ideal like Asian women.

I have some friends who lived in Manhatten, and they got a lot of grief. Some of it was minor, just rude stares. Other incidents were truly threatening to their safety. She was a red head of Irish decent, he was Chinese. They said the amount of poo poo they got was very unexpected. It was one of the reasons they moved back to California.

Thundercracker
Jun 25, 2004

Proudly serving the Ruinous Powers since as a veteran of the long war.
College Slice

Cat rear end Trophy posted:

I have some friends who lived in Manhatten, and they got a lot of grief. Some of it was minor, just rude stares. Other incidents were truly threatening to their safety. She was a red head of Irish decent, he was Chinese. They said the amount of poo poo they got was very unexpected. It was one of the reasons they moved back to California.

That's totally weird. Like who was threatening them, white people or chinese? I've never experienced anything like that here

Oracle
Oct 9, 2004

quote:

What happens if it was a white female/Asian male coupling? I'd expect that to spark some reaction because Asian men are not sexualized as some gender ideal like Asian women.

In my experience as the woman half of the couple, not much. His parents love me, his extended family is fine with me (all overseas from a country that fetishizes lighter skin, so my blueblooded rear end already had a +1 in the good column) and most of my family either don't care or think he's hot (including my 90 year old great-aunt, which is hilarious as she has no brain to mouth filter anymore). The only time I'd ever felt uncomfortable was holding hands with him at some podunk town drive-in theater where we got a few stares. Nothing hostile but it was definitely like 'what the gently caress are you looking at.' This is all in the Midwest, too.

We have two school-age kids and so far none of them have encountered any racism, either. Maybe it helps that they're awfully cute. And that we live in a town with a substantial (for the area, anyway) Asian population.

I think the most comfortable we felt was in Hawaii. Seems like everyone's part-Asian there, we fit right in.

quote:

Since Asian men are not sexualized and been given bad stereotypes, like small penises, they're more likely going to get pushback when they date a white woman.
Hahaha no. What other 'bad stereotypes' are there other than that one? They're nerdy? Work too hard? Good at math? Seriously, they suffer more from 'model minority' stereotypes than bad ones. I guess it depends on where in the country you are. I'm sure say, California has more varied stereotypes based on ethnicity like the Vietnamese are all gang bangers or something, but in the Midwest they might as well be any ethnic white group for as much of a big deal as it raises.

Oracle fucked around with this message at 21:16 on Mar 3, 2014

Fragrag
Aug 3, 2007
The Worst Admin Ever bashes You in the head with his banhammer. It is smashed into the body, an unrecognizable mass! You have been struck down.
On the whole Asian/White relationship, I found the documentary Seeking Asian Female and the accompanying webseries They're All So Beautiful pretty interesting. Episode three deals specifically from the Asian male point of view.

Personally speaking, I never had so much trouble when dating white women. I had a long term relationship with a half Belgian, half Philippine girl and we never got much grief due to our races. The worst thing we would hear was people exclaiming how adorable our children would be.
I recently had a fling with a Belgian girl. She told me when she told her parents that she was dating an Indonesian, her mother worriedly asked "I hope he's not Muslim?". The relationship didn't go far enough for me to meet her parents luckily.

On a sidenote, I've been a bit of a Tinder-holic the past month, but one thing I'm very pleasantly surprised at is how little race comes up.

Earwicker
Jan 6, 2003

Oracle posted:

Hahaha no. What other 'bad stereotypes' are there other than that one? They're nerdy? Work too hard? Good at math?

60% more likely to self-identify as a "hardcore gamer"

computer parts
Nov 18, 2010

PLEASE CLAP
There's a stereotype for East Asians in general (though it's more prevalent for men) to be obsessive hard working people who never leave their work cave. I think a lot of it is because the people who are Asian but aren't from the US did legitimately have to work hard in order to come over so it's a self selection bias sort of thing.

That's part of why I like my girlfriend, because she's like me - she's smart, and she can work hard when need be, but in general she's pretty relaxed and she told me her parents were also pretty laid back and didn't care about her grades that much.

(though apparently her brother still does like 9 hours of school each day so they are working harder than in the US)

Pilsner
Nov 23, 2002

Pigasus posted:

White male/Asian female couples are ignored because Asian women are sexualized and stereotyped in this demure women stereotypes that is acceptable for a woman in the couple.
I speculate it's because virtually nothing negative is ever said about Asian women in the media. Think about it, ever seen a news broadcast, TV show or movie putting Asian women in a bad light?

I also think that argument about them being sexualized is a bit tired. Finding them beautiful does not equal having crazy notions that match the worst stereotypes.

Tricerapowerbottom
Jun 16, 2008

WILL MY PONY RECOGNIZE MY VOICE IN HELL

Pilsner posted:

I speculate it's because virtually nothing negative is ever said about Asian women in the media. Think about it, ever seen a news broadcast, TV show or movie putting Asian women in a bad light?

I also think that argument about them being sexualized is a bit tired. Finding them beautiful does not equal having crazy notions that match the worst stereotypes.

You're kidding, right?

Pigasus
Dec 26, 2009

Too fat to wear pink.

Oracle posted:

Hahaha no. What other 'bad stereotypes' are there other than that one? They're nerdy? Work too hard? Good at math? Seriously, they suffer more from 'model minority' stereotypes than bad ones.

It's never really overt outside of that one, but their portrayal in media is typically slapstick (Bobby Lee, Ken Jeong, Jackie Chan) or silently hardworking, but they're always be asexual and rarely masculine. Even when Jet Li was a prolific movie star, he did not have any romantic relationship with Aaliyah in his most famous film, Romeo Must Die. For God's sake, the title had a direct reference to Shakespeare! Asian men are, unfortunately, rarely the handsome leading men.

There's a really good article that relates this portrayal of Asian men to the success of Psy's Gangnam Style. Below is a good excerpt that summarizes my point.

Racialicious posted:

PSYs sudden and surprising success means little for the success of K-pop in the West, which, aside from the dedicated niche fandom and Asian diasporic groups, faces a tremendous uphill battle, thanks to both cultural differences in pop music and a limited set of acceptable non-threatening roles that performers of Asian descent can fill. PSYs Gangnam Style, for all of the many reasons why its successfulfrom the creativity inherent in the music as well as the video that accompanies it to the charismatic man himself and his polished performancesis also wildly successful in the West in some small part due to the fact that he is one of the things the Western mainstream wants to see from its Asian people: a funny guy who doesnt pose any threat of making Asian men seem sexually desirable.

There's other articles that discuss the same issues of how Asian men are stereotyped as asexual, but I think I belabored my point. I can't help but wonder how interracial couplings with an Asian man are treated differently compared to Asian women because even though they're the same ethnicity, there's a very interesting, gender-based disconnect of how they're treated in Western society.

I think it will be particularly interesting how this dynamic works out when you consider homosexual Asian men.

Oracle posted:

I guess it depends on where in the country you are. I'm sure say, California has more varied stereotypes based on ethnicity like the Vietnamese are all gang bangers or something, but in the Midwest they might as well be any ethnic white group for as much of a big deal as it raises.

That's one of the best things about being in a part of the country with so many different kinds of Asians! Seeing how the different countries clash! I remember Taiwanese ladies are stereotyped as incredibly materialistic.

Pigasus fucked around with this message at 03:17 on Mar 4, 2014

Kessel
Mar 6, 2007

The Slanted Screen is a documentary specifically dealing with the asexual presentation of Asian males in media, and is a must-watch for anyone looking for a primer on the issue.

Ailumao
Nov 4, 2004

Pigasus posted:

That's one of the best things about being in a part of the country with so many different kinds of Asians! Seeing how the different countries clash! I remember Taiwanese ladies are stereotyped as incredibly materialistic.

I used to work for a company in China that employed a lot of Japanese people, and "Taiwanese people are really materialistic/obsessed with new devices/LV bags/etc, don't you think?" came up a whole lot when I mentioned to them that I studied there for some time. I have never heard that before or since, so I thought it was just a weird thing I ran across.

I got my MA in Chinese and my cohort had more than a few white, western women and one gay dude who had a real and very overt thing for East Asian dudes, so I guess they're in the minority. Most people who do graduate degrees in languages are pretty far from the norm though.

computer parts
Nov 18, 2010

PLEASE CLAP

Magna Kaser posted:


I got my MA in Chinese and my cohort had more than a few white, western women and one gay dude who had a real and very overt thing for East Asian dudes, so I guess they're in the minority. Most people who do graduate degrees in languages are pretty far from the norm though.

Anecdotally but I knew some Arab girls growing up and they all had some very heavy crushes on Asian guys (mostly Chinese); it was kind of a non-starter for their families though (or really for anyone not of their particular nationality/religion).

Atlas Hugged
Mar 12, 2007


Put your arms around me,
fiddly digits, itchy britches
I love you all

Magna Kaser posted:

I used to work for a company in China that employed a lot of Japanese people, and "Taiwanese people are really materialistic/obsessed with new devices/LV bags/etc, don't you think?" came up a whole lot when I mentioned to them that I studied there for some time. I have never heard that before or since, so I thought it was just a weird thing I ran across.

I got my MA in Chinese and my cohort had more than a few white, western women and one gay dude who had a real and very overt thing for East Asian dudes, so I guess they're in the minority. Most people who do graduate degrees in languages are pretty far from the norm though.

I've run into this a few times, though I think it stereotypes a very specific type of Taiwanese girl. The ones that are "supposed to be" materialistic are either ABCs who've returned to the island, foreign educated, or those that aspire to be. It's more that they've been "corrupted" by western/foreign influence than anything else. "True" Taiwanese girls just want to work hard and support their parents.

So Japanese people or westerners living near Asian diaspora communities might run into this stereotype more often, but again it's all about selection bias.

In Taiwan itself, the easiest place to see this cultural divide is in the night club scene. The places that are all you can drink tend to be populated by local Taiwanese who went to local schools and universities and a handful of foreigners who want to get drunk at a low price, more often university students than foreigners with jobs. Then you have the expensive downtown clubs with a cover and dress code where everyone speaks English with an American accent. Foreigners, be they western or Asian, who hang out exclusively in these places would get a very different impression of "Taiwanese women" than if they were "slumming it" at clubs or bars that catered to a local crowd.

But all this really says to me is that there is an economic divide. If you only hang out with rich people, of course you're going to think they're materialistic.

Oracle
Oct 9, 2004

quote:

It's never really overt outside of that one, but their portrayal in media is typically slapstick (Bobby Lee, Ken Jeong, Jackie Chan) or silently hardworking, but they're always be asexual and rarely masculine. Even when Jet Li was a prolific movie star, he did not have any romantic relationship with Aaliyah in his most famous film, Romeo Must Die. For God's sake, the title had a direct reference to Shakespeare! Asian men are, unfortunately, rarely the handsome leading men.
Counterpoint: Chow Yun Fat, John Cho, Steven Yeun. Yes, the test screening of an end of movie kiss between Jet Li and Aaliyah didn't test well, that was also like 14 years ago. Honestly I think its just because Jet Li doesn't do romance well. I will also note that in The One he's married to a fluent Chinese speaking white woman and there is onscreen kissing and I don't recall any waves from that.

quote:

The Slanted Screen is a documentary specifically dealing with the asexual presentation of Asian males in media, and is a must-watch for anyone looking for a primer on the issue.
Seconding this, really absorbing documentary, also revealed why my great-aunt thought my husband was so hot.

Pigasus
Dec 26, 2009

Too fat to wear pink.

Oracle posted:

Counterpoint: Chow Yun Fat, John Cho, Steven Yeun. Yes, the test screening of an end of movie kiss between Jet Li and Aaliyah didn't test well, that was also like 14 years ago. Honestly I think its just because Jet Li doesn't do romance well. I will also note that in The One he's married to a fluent Chinese speaking white woman and there is onscreen kissing and I don't recall any waves from that.

I'm not really interested in debating really specific examples, but I do have to point out that Chow Yun Fat isn't prolific outside of Hong Kong cinema. In US media, most of his films are huge flops.

Do you think Asian men are portrayed as asexual or emasculated in media?

It seems like you don't so let's end this argument now because I brought up the topic to explore a gendered aspect of interracial dating, but you're just arguing against this stereotype. I'm not against discussion about it, but this isn't the avenue for it.

Cat Ass Trophy
Jul 24, 2007
I can do twice the work in half the time

Thundercracker posted:

That's totally weird. Like who was threatening them, white people or chinese? I've never experienced anything like that here

It was always white people, and most of the time it was young males in groups wearing track suits. I know it sounds cliche, but that was the source of most of their trouble.

Oracle
Oct 9, 2004

quote:

I'm not really interested in debating really specific examples, but I do have to point out that Chow Yun Fat isn't prolific outside of Hong Kong cinema. In US media, most of his films are huge flops.
And that is probably my bias showing, but I seem to recall Anna and the King doing alright. Other films he's been in primarily for American audiences he hasn't really played a romantic lead.

quote:

Do you think Asian men are portrayed as asexual or emasculated in media?
Historically? Absolutely. I just think its changing.

quote:

I brought up the topic to explore a gendered aspect of interracial dating, but you're just arguing against this stereotype. I'm not against discussion about it, but this isn't the avenue for it.
I'm not just arguing against that stereotype. I'm telling you as a white woman who is married to an Asian man and can think of three other white women within her direct sphere of influence who are also married to Asian or south Asian men, I have never encountered any animosity or jealousy or incredulity about why am I with an Asian guy from either side of the aisle, nor have any of them mentioned anything similar. I am in my 40s and even back in high school me and my friends would crush over Asian or Filipino guys regularly. Hot guys are hot guys, no matter their ethnicity. Hollywood may have still been on the wacky immigrant poor English-speaking Asian man train (see Long Duk Dong, who also now that I think of it had a 'sexy American girlfriend,' though that was granted part of the joke) at that time, but its not like everyone follows lockstep with what Hollywood thinks. Hell, my sister went to prom with an accented English-speaking Vietnamese guy and a friend of hers was on again-off again with a Filipino guy. Noone thought anything of it and again, this was 20+ years ago in the Midwest. Even my racist parents didn't say poo poo (and believe me they would have if it'd have been a black guy).

I agree that its long been a Hollywood stereotype, I just don't feel like its affected real life nearly as much as you seem to think, and even the stereotype is changing (and has been in fits and starts since Bruce Lee).

Fluorescent
Jun 5, 2011

재미있는 한국어.
I have seen an awful lot of Asian men (granted, mostly foreign) who think a white American girl will never date them. It is definitely a stereotype that is affecting people.

necrobobsledder
Mar 21, 2005
Lay down your soul to the gods rock 'n roll
Nap Ghost

Oracle posted:

Hahaha no. What other 'bad stereotypes' are there other than that one? They're nerdy? Work too hard? Good at math? Seriously, they suffer more from 'model minority' stereotypes than bad ones. I guess it depends on where in the country you are.
Some common stereotypes of East Asian males I've heard directed minimum at least to me and my peers that I could non-ironically counter with another stereotype:

* Bigoted / chauvinistic
* Mama's boys / coddled by parents
* Socially awkward (either in immigrant roles or as part of a social pariah clique)
* Effeminate and/or just plain weak physically

A lot of this depends upon what the local culture values more, and in semi-rural areas stereotypical masculinity standards for men tend to prevail regardless of race. White nerdy kids were every bit as ridiculed as black or Asian kids. I saw this for myself growing up in a working class area with pretty much a UN of ethnicities and nationalities at a 2500+ high school. I honestly think that in the absence of other commonalities and context, American culture tends to devolve into a sports-based one (supported in studies on overcoming racial bias - you create another factor to discriminate by instead of skin color).

Pigasus posted:

Do you think Asian men are portrayed as asexual or emasculated in media?
I think the general lack of roles where Asian men are the center of the action / love interest and so forth mostly has to do with being a smaller racial group in the US than whites, hispanics, and blacks and is a byproduct of marketing in Hollywood trying to appeal to as many people as possible with massive advertising campaigns with fewer bullets rather than a broad range of them. There was an article I read some years ago about someone talking to a marketing and advertising executive about how they target different groups (white, hispanic, black) and asked why they didn't have an Asian demographic. The answer was that their studies showed they basically were indistinguishable from white people on every term that mattered to advertisers, contrary to what we would think from our usual racial surveys aside from the census.

The usual roles Asian males have available are pretty limited in Hollywood it seems and the market dynamics will prey upon consumers' gut instincts (read: probably more racially biased) over trying new IP. John Cho (from Star Trek, Harold & Kumar) has mentioned how he couldn't really even audition for anything outside strictly prescribed roles because of how formulaic Hollywood is. On the other hand, it's somewhat rare to see interracial relationships in Hollywood movies to begin with and oftentimes it's a white male centric relationship if so (we could probably bring in the predominance of white homosexuals in popular media as another barometer of just plain racial centricity there anyway). So my gut feeling is that audiences are totally receptive to the idea of Asian (both south and east) main characters but producers of media content are finding it really difficult to justify taking the risk to even test the waters and thus get the expectedly lackluster results.

Then again we basically got a Hollywood Asian male fetishist porn movie with Ninja Assassin the other year out of the blue, so I dunno whether steps are going forward or laterally. Daniel Dae Kim has done a pretty fair job of helping break the traditional mold and validate that non-stereotypical Asian male roles are commercially viable alongside Steven Yeun more recently.

I do think there's a bit of "unfairness" for Indians given they're probably underrepresented in "cool" roles in American media now compared to even East Asians. My strong suspicion is that it's tough to hit prime time with anyone that could even remotely look like they're Arabic because of the strong anti-Muslim / anti-"Arab" contingent that runs through so many conservatives in America (regardless of racial background).

Fluorescent posted:

I have seen an awful lot of Asian men (granted, mostly foreign) who think a white American girl will never date them. It is definitely a stereotype that is affecting people.
With a self-defeatist attitude like that being rather common among Asians that do subscribe to stereotypical cultural mores, that's hardly a surprise. But for immigrants in general, finding some way of assimilating to their new countries is tough regardless of racial factors let alone establishing romantic ties.

computer parts
Nov 18, 2010

PLEASE CLAP

necrobobsledder posted:

The usual roles Asian males have available are pretty limited in Hollywood it seems and the market dynamics will prey upon consumers' gut instincts (read: probably more racially biased) over trying new IP. John Cho (from Star Trek, Harold & Kumar) has mentioned how he couldn't really even audition for anything outside strictly prescribed roles because of how formulaic Hollywood is. On the other hand, it's somewhat rare to see interracial relationships in Hollywood movies to begin with and oftentimes it's a white male centric relationship if so (we could probably bring in the predominance of white homosexuals in popular media as another barometer of just plain racial centricity there anyway). So my gut feeling is that audiences are totally receptive to the idea of Asian (both south and east) main characters but producers of media content are finding it really difficult to justify taking the risk to even test the waters and thus get the expectedly lackluster results.


That's one of the nice things about The Walking Dead - you have an interracial relationship, and while it is Asian-White it's Asian Male-White Woman, and they're even explicitly married and everything. It's not quite the same context as reality since it's the apocalypse and lots of social norms went down the drain, but it's at least normalizing the idea that Asian men aren't totally useless.

UnfortunateSexFart
May 18, 2008

𒃻 𒌓𒁉𒋫 𒆷𒁀𒅅𒆷
𒆠𒂖 𒌉 𒌫 𒁮𒈠𒈾𒅗 𒂉 𒉡𒌒𒂉𒊑


Oracle posted:

And that is probably my bias showing, but I seem to recall Anna and the King doing alright. Other films he's been in primarily for American audiences he hasn't really played a romantic lead.
Historically? Absolutely. I just think its changing.

I'm not just arguing against that stereotype. I'm telling you as a white woman who is married to an Asian man and can think of three other white women within her direct sphere of influence who are also married to Asian or south Asian men, I have never encountered any animosity or jealousy or incredulity about why am I with an Asian guy from either side of the aisle, nor have any of them mentioned anything similar. I am in my 40s and even back in high school me and my friends would crush over Asian or Filipino guys regularly. Hot guys are hot guys, no matter their ethnicity. Hollywood may have still been on the wacky immigrant poor English-speaking Asian man train (see Long Duk Dong, who also now that I think of it had a 'sexy American girlfriend,' though that was granted part of the joke) at that time, but its not like everyone follows lockstep with what Hollywood thinks. Hell, my sister went to prom with an accented English-speaking Vietnamese guy and a friend of hers was on again-off again with a Filipino guy. Noone thought anything of it and again, this was 20+ years ago in the Midwest. Even my racist parents didn't say poo poo (and believe me they would have if it'd have been a black guy).

I agree that its long been a Hollywood stereotype, I just don't feel like its affected real life nearly as much as you seem to think, and even the stereotype is changing (and has been in fits and starts since Bruce Lee).

I live in a city that's 50% Chinese and no one has a problem with white/Chinese relationships but it is still unusual to see white female/Chinese male, and I've heard lots of complaints from Chinese male friends. They feel like they have to be super rich to get a shot with a Chinese girl and no other race will consider them.

PT6A
Jan 5, 2006

Public school teachers are callous dictators who won't lift a finger to stop children from peeing in my plane
People who have a self-defeating attitude like that are always going to find out they're correct, though. It's the bad attitude, not the race, that people are reacting to. Being insecure is very unsexy, no matter what race you are.

Totally Normal
Mar 29, 2003

WELLNESS!
I am a physically weak stereotypical asian man married to a white woman. Her family is great - laid back, accepting, and progressive. My family has been nothing but a problem, but they're all due to ridiculous conservative old country beliefs.

Thundercracker
Jun 25, 2004

Proudly serving the Ruinous Powers since as a veteran of the long war.
College Slice

PT6A posted:

People who have a self-defeating attitude like that are always going to find out they're correct, though. It's the bad attitude, not the race, that people are reacting to. Being insecure is very unsexy, no matter what race you are.

Being a regular gawker in E/N, being an insecure defeatist male is truly something that crosses all racial barriers

In any case, the idea that you "win" women with wealth, biotruth or not, is gross to me on all levels. Having grown up around the Irish, the only proper way is to charm her with the gift the gab. :D

Kessel
Mar 6, 2007

PT6A posted:

It's the bad attitude, not the race, that people are reacting to. Being insecure is very unsexy, no matter what race you are.

While this is correct, the point is that, because of stereotypical attitudes towards races and cultures,
1) an insecure white male will have an easier time finding a partner despite his insecurity, compared with a similarly-insecure minority male;
and 2) discrimination, real or perceived, is likely to have an impact on the insecurity level of the individual perceiving the discrimination.

Yes, insecurity is sexy. But there are insecure males of all races. The point is that, ceteris paribus, a majority male will find things easier.

Oracle
Oct 9, 2004

quote:

I do think there's a bit of "unfairness" for Indians given they're probably underrepresented in "cool" roles in American media now compared to even East Asians. My strong suspicion is that it's tough to hit prime time with anyone that could even remotely look like they're Arabic because of the strong anti-Muslim / anti-"Arab" contingent that runs through so many conservatives in America (regardless of racial background).
I dunno, it seems like the only roles I see Indians in (Harold and Kumar excepted; seriously, if you haven't seen that movie you really should, it is amazingly subversive on so many levels. The sequels aren't as good but still offer some interesting criticism) is cab driver/doctor/restaurant owner. And I think enough people have been exposed to Indians by now that once the ethnicity is established they just sit back and go with the story, not keep saying 'well he looks Ay-rab to me so I ain't a 'gonna watch it.'

quote:

Yes, insecurity is unsexy. But there are insecure males of all races. The point is that, ceteris paribus, a majority male will find things easier.
That doesn't mean they should just throw up their hands and give up, or use it as an excuse for why they can't get a date. This:

quote:

They feel like they have to be super rich to get a shot with a Chinese girl and no other race will consider them.
is a bigger problem to their success. A good start would be to stop stereotyping the women of their own race/ethnicity and have a little more faith in all the others.

Thundercracker
Jun 25, 2004

Proudly serving the Ruinous Powers since as a veteran of the long war.
College Slice

Kessel posted:

While this is correct, the point is that, because of stereotypical attitudes towards races and cultures,
1) an insecure white male will have an easier time finding a partner despite his insecurity, compared with a similarly-insecure minority male;
and 2) discrimination, real or perceived, is likely to have an impact on the insecurity level of the individual perceiving the discrimination.

Yes, insecurity is sexy. But there are insecure males of all races. The point is that, ceteris paribus, a majority male will find things easier.

I mean, this sounds logical due to how racism in America plays out. But realistically, is it true? All my Asian guy friends are in relationships, like I think literally everyone I know, whereas I know a lot of lonely white dudes.

Experiences may vary, anecdotes not statics, but I think it might be too easy to let the narrative overide reality

computer parts
Nov 18, 2010

PLEASE CLAP

Oracle posted:

I dunno, it seems like the only roles I see Indians in (Harold and Kumar excepted; seriously, if you haven't seen that movie you really should, it is amazingly subversive on so many levels. The sequels aren't as good but still offer some interesting criticism) is cab driver/doctor/restaurant owner. And I think enough people have been exposed to Indians by now that once the ethnicity is established they just sit back and go with the story, not keep saying 'well he looks Ay-rab to me so I ain't a 'gonna watch it.'


This is actually an issue in India itself (the stereotyping careers anyway). There's a pretty decent Indian movie called Three Idiots where one of the main conflicts is how the main character is being forced to be an engineer (he would rather be a photographer), while the main love interest is being forced to be a doctor. There's even a scene where the girl's sister is pregnant and her father says "is it a boy or girl? I want to know if I should expect an engineer or a doctor".

It's actually a fairly comedic movie and one of the highest budgeted films in India so it's got a lot of mass appeal, but you can see that same sort of pigeonholing even if it's more from a family standpoint than a racial caricature.

Thundercracker posted:

I mean, this sounds logical due to how racism in America plays out. But realistically, is it true? All my Asian guy friends are in relationships, like I think literally everyone I know, whereas I know a lot of lonely white dudes.

Experiences may vary, anecdotes not statics, but I think it might be too easy to let the narrative overide reality

I think one factor may be how much weight you put into international students at universities. I believe there was a study where the gender ratio for international students (and especially Chinese) in the US was heavily skewed towards men, which would give you the situation where an immigrant would be without any close cultural companions except other fellow men.

computer parts fucked around with this message at 13:33 on Mar 5, 2014

Kessel
Mar 6, 2007

Thundercracker posted:

I mean, this sounds logical due to how racism in America plays out. But realistically, is it true? All my Asian guy friends are in relationships, like I think literally everyone I know, whereas I know a lot of lonely white dudes.

Experiences may vary, anecdotes not statics, but I think it might be too easy to let the narrative overide reality

Alright then, let's not ride the narrative and instead look at some hard numbers.

I'm not sure if you've seen the wonderful statistical analysis that OKCupid does with their data, but here's a numbers-based example for your perusal:
http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-race-affects-whether-people-write-you-back/

Statistically speaking, even controlling for attractiveness, white males straight up get a higher rate of message replies than Asian males. Let's look closer at the numbers:
- When the sender is a white male, an Asian female will reply 29% of the time. If the sender is an Asian male, she will reply 22% of the time.
- But is this result because Asian males write back less in general? Well, if an Asian female writes a message, an Asian male will reply 48% of the time. A white male will reply 41% of the time - a full seven percent less often than the Asian male.

Here's another great paper from researchers at Princeton University analysing the data from over a million dating site exchanges, just as many as OKCupid:
http://paa2008.princeton.edu/papers/80046

A quote from that paper:

quote:

Over 90% of white women who state a racial preference prefer not to date East Indians, Middle Easterners, Asians, and blacks. White men with stated racial preferences, in contrast, only prefer not to date one group at levels above 90%: black women.

I can't find the paper right now and I'm rushing off to something else, but IIRC there was another large-scale study which concluded, in an analysis of whether women in America find Asian males attractive, that every single race found them less attractive than would be expected except for one race-sex combination: black women.

Kessel fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Mar 5, 2014

si
Apr 26, 2004

Oracle posted:

is a bigger problem to their success. A good start would be to stop stereotyping the women of their own race/ethnicity and have a little more faith in all the others.

Well I'm not sure how we ended up in the land of philosophical/academic debate about relationships instead of reality, but remember at least with ethnic Chinese, this is not just a stereotype. This is a very deeply etched cultural belief, and especially in modern China it is exceptionally bad due to the gender imbalance. How much it matters in other countries is largely in their family and how they were raised, but it definitely crosses borders with many families.

Thundercracker
Jun 25, 2004

Proudly serving the Ruinous Powers since as a veteran of the long war.
College Slice

Kessel posted:


Here's another great paper from researchers at Princeton University analysing the data from over a million dating site exchanges, just as many as OKCupid:
http://paa2008.princeton.edu/papers/80046
.

I've seen that study before. Won't argue the numbers, but like in econometrics I have a feeling (no proof though) that there's an inherent bias in the data in terms of only measuring what's able to be collected.

I think my point is really that, if there's a skewed populaton of lonely Asian American males out there, I'm not really seeing it personally. Like, off the top of my head I can't even think of a single one of my friends who's single. But then again, I'm fully willing to admit that my own experiences do not reflect the majority in America, and also maybe it's due to my age (thirties) that it might look differently for the younger set.

Kessel
Mar 6, 2007

Thundercracker posted:

I've seen that study before. Won't argue the numbers, but like in econometrics I have a feeling (no proof though) that there's an inherent bias in the data in terms of only measuring what's able to be collected.

I think my point is really that, if there's a skewed populaton of lonely Asian American males out there, I'm not really seeing it personally. Like, off the top of my head I can't even think of a single one of my friends who's single. But then again, I'm fully willing to admit that my own experiences do not reflect the majority in America, and also maybe it's due to my age (thirties) that it might look differently for the younger set.

Right. I don't mean to belittle your experiences! I merely mean to suggest that, even correcting for biases, the data showing that there is a disparity is overwhelming.

Here's one last paper which should help to remove any of your doubt:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0031703

The rest of the study is interesting, but here we're interested in the stuff near the opening. Here's the data in question:


This is data from the census in both the United States and the United Kingdom (so, not just the US.) The data has about as little collection bias as you can get and doesn't get much better than this (it's literally "how many interracial marriages are there, as recorded by the official census".) The US data is from 2006, which is about seven years ago, so it falls pretty close to the average marriage age for the US generation currently in its thirties (similar to you, and not from the younger set.)

quote:

If we focus upon marriages between White and Black people then we observe that there are over twice as many marriages between Black men and White women than between White men and Black women in the US. An observed consequence of this pattern is a decline in marriage rates for Black women, which has been described in the US as the marriage squeeze [4]. The asymmetry is smaller in the UK but still present.

The gender asymmetries are even larger for marriages that include Asian and White people. In this situation, however, it is the number of White men marrying Asian women that is over twice the number of White women marrying Asian men. The largest asymmetry shows that marriages between Black men and Asian women in the US outnumber those between Asian men and Black women by about five to one.

As you can see, even controlling for all the factors you mention, there is still a significant disparity between the way Asian women and Asian men are treated in terms of interracial partnering and marriage.

Kessel fucked around with this message at 16:31 on Mar 5, 2014

Oracle
Oct 9, 2004

I would be very curious as to how many of those X man/Asian women pairings are where the woman is foreign-born or naturalized and the man is in the military, because of the military serving overseas and finding a wife there factor. Since there are a lot more men than women in the armed forces it might account more for the disparity than simply saying 'Asian women are considered more desirable.'

Kessel
Mar 6, 2007

Oracle posted:

I would be very curious as to how many of those X man/Asian women pairings are where the woman is foreign-born or naturalized and the man is in the military, because of the military serving overseas and finding a wife there factor. Since there are a lot more men than women in the armed forces it might account more for the disparity than simply saying 'Asian women are considered more desirable.'

This was actually addressed in the Princeton paper linked above, on page 7. The authors accept that the white male-Asian female pairing in marriage may be due to war brides. That's part of the reason they used dating data instead of marriage data - military/war brides would not show up in an analysis of the former.

Basically, whether you look at dating or marriage, the conclusions drawn from the data are much the same, suggesting that whatever impact military brides have doesn't really change the fact that there's a baseline disparity.

Kessel fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Mar 5, 2014

necrobobsledder
Mar 21, 2005
Lay down your soul to the gods rock 'n roll
Nap Ghost

Kessel posted:

I can't find the paper right now and I'm rushing off to something else, but IIRC there was another large-scale study which concluded, in an analysis of whether women in America find Asian males attractive, that every single race found them less attractive than would be expected except for one race: black women.
"Black women" aren't a race but a race-sex combination :)

I think that was the study done by CMU several years ago. The results were something like "to be equally attractive to women on these dating sites as an Asian male, you'd need to make at least $200k / yr and be 6 feet tall while this does not hold for any other ethnicity." That is, substantially less than 1% of Asian males are as appealing on dating sites compared to median / average white, hispanic, or black males measured by message responses, profile views, and a couple other variables measuring interest. The authors of the study were obviously alarmed and triple checked their math because of the serious implications if the math is right but they couldn't refute the results. Honestly, I just think they forgot to filter out the fake profiles that plague these sites but I think they also wrote a paper on detecting fake profiles so I may sadly be wrong.

By Chris Rock's definitions that apply for black Americans when it comes to income v. cultural relevance... that's pretty much grounds for racism (he noted hyperbolically that in his NJ neighborhood top black celebrities like MJ and Beyonce lived among... white dentists so if a black dentist could get into the neighborhood, he'd have had to "invent teeth"). I dunno though, just because people view Asian males as unattractive / not dateable in general doesn't mean racism to me given they just might be overrepresented with the guys that aren't participants in the dating pool.

Then there was the statistic in the same paper that showed that white women that stated that they'd be open to dating interracially only actually ever dated interracially (on the site, obviously) at a rate of something low like 8%. In contrast, men that said they were open did so at a rate exceeding 70%+. I don't believe they tried to correct that based upon length and number of relationships well though (AKA promiscuity), but they were pretty thorough and I'm probably wrong about downplaying those figures.

One takeaway I got from the paper was that women self-reporting what they'd be open to doing has little bearing upon their recorded behavior - this is kind of important to check regardless of gender, race, etc.

But really, none of this matters as much as the reality that there's a pretty darn non-zero number of AM-non-Asian couples in the US and that it's a lot more than .1% of marriages (the marriage pool being diluted by divorce+remarriage stats included). If I let the stats dictate everything, I should almost certainly be the top .1% of Asian males in the US by income and height or something given interest from multiple girls (independent events assumed), but that's not true. The anecdotal evidence elsewhere in the thread also goes against the blatant racism in dating assumption too even if there's significant bias present.

Kessel
Mar 6, 2007

necrobobsledder posted:

"Black women" aren't a race but a race-sex combination :)

This is what happens when I post while tired. Corrected!

quote:

If I let the stats dictate everything, I should almost certainly be the top .1% of Asian males in the US by income and height or something given interest from multiple girls (independent events assumed), but that's not true. The anecdotal evidence elsewhere in the thread also goes against the blatant racism in dating assumption too even if there's significant bias present.

Anecdotal evidence doesn't disprove the significant bias because it's possible for the two to coexist - there can be significant bias present AND people can still anecdotally know other people who go against the grain. It doesn't change the fact that on the whole, significant bias appears to be present.

Kessel fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Mar 5, 2014

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Thundercracker
Jun 25, 2004

Proudly serving the Ruinous Powers since as a veteran of the long war.
College Slice

Kessel posted:

Anecdotal evidence doesn't disprove the significant bias because it's possible for the two to coexist - there can be significant bias present AND people can still anecdotally know other people who go against the grain. It doesn't change the fact that on the whole, significant bias appears to be present.

In reflecting, I think the easiest way to explain this is that the study is true across the country, but in regions where there are significant numbers of Asian Americans it's probably much less true.

Like if 10 years ago, you surveyed America you'd see it as incredibly homophobic, but in areas where gay culture actually thrived like San Fran and NY it'd be far less so.

In any case, I'm optimistic that it's a problem that's pretty much going to solve itself within a short amount of time. Growing up in my hometown it was pretty racist, but now there's a much of interacial couples from my high school. There's even more of a ripple effect in that due to facebook everyone can see everyone else's relationships, and even if you aren't dating someone outside your race it's much easier to be exposed to it, and not have it be a complete mystery.

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