With the Sex Positivity fair coming up at Davidson College, a random factoid came up about Asian women being one of the most desired by most people, while Asian males were seen as less desirable. I did a little digging to see if there were any peer reviewed articles on the subject. I didn’t look too hard but, there were none. If you do a quick google right now you’ll see a bunch of unofficial articles discussing the subject with some form of “data” but there really was no concrete literature on the subject. So I’ll be addressing this as a curiosity rather than a studied and documented phenomenon.
Dating as an Asian male sounds very foreign to me, because I never thought my race really made that much of a difference. To me it was just dating. This may come from the atmosphere of Miami, where interracial couples were very common. It never really occurred to me, like many other things, until I came to Davidson that interracial dating added some twist to a relationship. Looking back at my past relationships, I realized that (not bragging or anything) that I have mostly been in interracial relationships. Me being Asian never really crossed my mind as being a real factor in dating, whether I was with an Ecuadorian girl or a black girl. But looking back and hearing that Asian men were on the bottom of the desirability chart, it made me think about the stereotypes Asian men are often associated with. In American popular culture we are often portrayed as the nerdy side character and never the charming protagonist. There are also several articles on the emasculation of Asian men available. I myself somewhat break these stereotypes, as I like to think of myself as an outspoken person, rather than a timid one, but with these looming stereotypes, I find it easy to believe why people think Asian men are so low on the desirability scale.
ACAA and I are actually going to be taking part in the Sex Positivity fair to try and dissuade these stereotypes of Asian males, and also call attention towards the exoticism of Asian women.
