Jun 11, 2021
Stop Fetishizing Asian Women
The messages I received on Tinder made me delete the dating app in one day
remember when I first heard about Tinder. I promised myself I wouldn’t download the app. For some reason, I thought nobody would swipe right on me. Everybody around me was white, and I was not. I didn’t think anyone would want to date me.
But the opposite happened.
I had many matches. Perhaps too many. The first messages I got from these men made me uncomfortable.
I have never tried a woman like you before. Will you be my first experience?
You look so exotic, I love that.
Asian girls are my favorite. They’re so naughty!
These kinds of messages made me delete the dating app in just one day. A lot of my non-Asian friends didn’t understand what was wrong with these messages when I told them about it. “They’re compliments,” they said.
These messages are not compliments. While I initially was scared no one would swipe right on me, reading these messages made me feel like I was an alien. It felt dehumanizing. These men were attracted to me because of how I looked and not because of who I am as a person. I was a conquest to them, a trophy they get to show off to their friends later.
The hypersexualization of Asian women
What I experienced is something many Asian women face every day. Not just on dating apps but everywhere else too.
Asian women are highly fetishized in popular culture. There is a stereotype that Asian women are meek and docile. They obey their partners without questioning them. They are innocent and do not understand the world around them. They need their partners to teach them everything.
In other words, an Asian woman is stupid and can’t do anything by herself. And more often than not, she has a white man as her partner to teach her the ways of the world. The white saviors protect these women from the big, bad world. But at the same time, these women are sexual. They seduce white men with their innocence.
While these Asian women are partners of white men, they are disposable. White men date these women only for a short time, and their relationship is usually only a subplot of the story.
In season 2 of Friends, for instance, Ross finds a new girlfriend named Julie when he returns from China. Julie is never shown as an individual person of her own in the show. She is only a plot point to further Ross and Rachel’s love story. Ross makes a pros and cons list to compare the two women and ultimately decides to leave Julie simply because she is not Rachel.
Similarly, in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry develops a liking for Cho Chang. But he soon forgets her about two movies later and starts dating his best friend’s sister, Ginny Weasley. Ron says, “You haven’t ever chucked anyone, have you? You and Cho just — ” “Sort of fell apart, yeah,” Harry says.
How did this begin?
The Page Act of 1875 prohibited the importation of women brought for “immoral purposes” to the United States. This law presented Asian women as temptresses, women who led to the downfall of white men. Can a law that was passed in 1875 have an impact on modern society today? Yes.
Six out of the eight victims of the Atlanta shootings were Asian women. The police official declared that the act wasn’t racially motivated but that the man killed these women to “eliminate his temptations.” According to this statement, these women were murdered because they somehow had tempted this man with their Asianness.
Nearly 150 years have passed since the Page Act of 1875, but this incident proves that nothing much has changed when it comes to the fetishization of Asian women.
The dangers of fetishization
A few weeks ago, a white man’s TikTok went viral after he suggested that American men who couldn’t find good girlfriends go to Asia. He also pointed out that if a woman in Asia dumps them, they can easily go find another one. “Don’t worry. There are lots, and I mean, like, many, many, many,” he said.
While this man’s TikTok is infuriating, the sad thing is that it is not an uncommon sentiment. It is not uncommon for white men to think of Asian women as disposable sexual objects. These men have no interest in knowing about the women they are dating; they simply want to date these women to show off.
Due to this fetishization, there are thousands of fatherless children left behind in the countries they travel to. Their fathers have had their fun, and they don’t want anything to do with those Asian women and their children anymore.
The final take
Movies like Crazy, Rich Asians, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, and The Farewell are doing a good job of portraying well-rounded Asian women. These three movies were hugely popular, and none of them used the stereotype of a tempting seductress for their female protagonists.
Perhaps the success of these movies points toward hope for a better future. I hope the day will come soon when men on dating apps will want to talk to me because they are interested in me and not because I look exotic.
