Poor Asian American men. According to a recent (12 May 2004) Los Angeles Times article by David Pierson, the poet Beau Sia grew up in “the predominately white Oklahoma City” and “romantic opportunities in high school didn’t exist.”
Gee, just where did anyone get the idea that everyone is dating in high school, especially sensitive young men? Do you think there were a few white poets who weren’t getting dates in high school? As I recall, high school is the time when the cool girls (cheerleaders) and the cool guys (football and basketball players) and the bad girls (the ones who smoked and seemed to have a steady supply of Victoria Secret underwear that they wore so you knew they were wearing them) and the bad boys (the ones that never had a curfew and always had detention) were dating and the average high school person—including the geeks, the smart girls and the ones that had to work after school weren’t dating.
So boo-hoo. A poet geek didn’t get a date and he was the only high school guy without one. Gee, someone quick, do a check on his entire high school student body during his time there and see if there wasn’t one other guy or girl who went dateless.
And you think Donald Trump, Bill Gates and Woody Allen are handsome? Go get an eye exam before you run over Mickey Rooney.
Self-loathing happens for “those who live in predominately non-Asian communities” Pierson writes, but he’s writing for the Los Angeles Times? This is a city with at least two Chinatowns, a Little Bangkok, a Little Tokyo, a Koreatown and, in neighboring cities, a Little India and a Little Saigon. Asian Americans make up only about 12 percent of the Los Angeles population. So why are we talking about Oklahoma?
We’re talking about them because a Dr. Darrell Hamamoto, who is based in Davis, a small university town outside of Sacramento is very concerned that the yellow man is emasculated. He wants things the natural way. You know, a yellow man with a yellow woman. He thinks the way to do it is for Asian American men to “star” in pornography. And where else to do it, but in Los Angeles since the San Fernando Valley has earned the nickname Porn Valley? He even produced an amateurish movie with a Korean American ingénue and a Cambodian-Thai pro. A yellow man with a brown girl.
Hamamoto explains that since Layla Lei feels she is yellow she is. Gee, what happened to the “little brown brothers” (Filipinos) and what American vets affectionately called LBFMs? Is Dr. Hamamoto also re-writing history? Or is he just selectively color-blind?
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - RJ Elliott
Asian-American men tend to out-perform all their peers in school. That means they wind up making more money. And women like guys with money. So they shouldn't have a problem with the ladies...
2 - Eric Olsen
Thanks PT, very interesting. Welcome!
3 - Bob A. Booey
I actually found this blog really racist for multiple reasons. Are you Asian, writer?
Also, do me a favor and link the original article because your take on it is quite severe and I think the article should be allowed to speak for itself. I have a hard time believing a tenured university professor would advocate pornography as a way to mainstream acceptance. Either this is some urban hoax racist rant fodder or you're making this up. Link the article.
Your venting about lonely white nerds in high school seems cathartic.
There's no question Asian-American women have an easier time assimilating into the culture (hence the 50% intermarriage rate for Asian-American women). That's both positive and negative since our objectification of Asian-American women is problematic. There are plenty of endlessly insecure, needy white men who favor Asian women because of the myth that they are compliant and obedient. I don't know the statistics on divorce, but any marriages that begin with such a flawed premise aren't likely to work very well.
It's something we need to think about: why is it that Asian-American women, more than Latinas or black women, have become so common as acceptable mates for white men? Clearly it has something to do with our assumptions about "their culture" that aren't quite reflected in reality. Inter-racial marriage rates in general are increasing across the board, but this is a particularly interesting trend over the past 20 years.
I'd theorize that one contributing factor may have been the images of Asia and Asian women as property that were developed by soldiers and even through movies about the Vietnam and Korean Wars. The idea of "comfort women," GI wives, and pliant prostitues may have been generalized for the entire region and all women based on a limited group of women forced into compliance with humiliating conditions through poverty and war. These images of Asian sexuality and servitude may be subconsciously integrated into the way white men view Asian women. Hence the large market for Asian pornography in this country and the existence of only two types of Asian female characters in the media: either the sexually promiscuous Dragon Lady (think Lucy Liu's Ling on Ally McBeal)/kung fu girl or the submissive geisha girl.
There's no question that Hollywood is racist and a part of that is the fact that Asian-American men are virtually non-existent in media. But this is an old story that won't change anytime soon. Big movies play it safe and aim for the middle of the road. Hong Kong kung fu action star imports don't count, by the way, as Americans.
Most of your stereotypes are stupid in that list and you should really get out more and meet some real people. If you're an Asian woman, you seem to be venting and you should think carefully about how your comments will be received by less-educated, less mature readers, i.e., this whole site.
The irony is that there are several men with Asian-American heritage who are considered among the "hottest" men by white women since they downplay their ethnicity. Dean Cain is half-Japanese (and looks very Asian to me), Keanu Reeves is part Asian, Mark Paul Gosselar (yes, even All-American Boy Zack Morris) is part Thai, the lead singer of Hoobastank is Asian, etc. There's a whole big list of others like this on the web, but I don't feel like looking for it. The point is that we find men with Asian features attractive as long as we don't hear their "Asian-sounding names." Our racism has so many contradictions it's hard to know where to start.
4 - JR
Hmmm, if I were older and smarter, I think I'd be insulted by that last comment.
5 - Purple Tigress
The original article can be found at www.mastersofthepillow.com. This is the Web site for James Hou's documentary. He has the full essay, "The Joy Fuck Club."
I attended the panel discussion that followed the screening of "Masters of the Pillow" and the actual porn film that Dr. Hamamoto made, "Yellocaust."
The LA Times article downplays a lot of Hamamoto's rhetoric. You can find the article easy enough since I noted the newspaper and the writer.
The film is called "Yellocaust" because he considers what the US has done to Asian nations is the greatest holocaust in the 20th century. That's his opinion not mine.
What I and other audience members found striking is how limited the view of what Asia was. His discourse in the essay limits it to East Asia (actually only China and Japan). Yet neither person in the actual porn movie was of Chinese or Japanese descent. An Asian American audience member pointed out that the girl in the movie wouldn't be considered yellow. Perhaps brown...
This emasculation isn't something that all Asian American men experience except if you limit your perception of what Asian American is. Just East Asia? Gee, what about Armenia, Pakistan and India? This is a concept that an Asian Indian man expressed. He was the one that pointed out this seemed to be something limited to East Asian men and that they obsessed upon it.
And you know what? I don't think Samoans feel emasculated. I'd have to ask Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson about that one.
Are these people even considered yellow? Not according to James Michener in his "Tales of the South Pacific." Where is the so-called Orient? Originally all of North Africa to the Pacific Islands.
After all, there is some romance to be found in Aladdin (Iran and Iraq) and sheiks (like Valentino as a Middle Eastern man). Iraq and Iran are in southwest Asia. I think Americans have the opposite stereotype of them--as barbaric and animalistic. Not unlike the one about what Americans call black men except Iranian and Iraqi men are seen as fanatical terrorists. Hmmm. That doesn't sound emasculating does it? Perhaps dehumanizing, villainizing or uglification, but not emasculating.
Either way, East Asia is only a portion of a continent and a portion of the Orient. To make sweeping broad statements about Asian American emasculation is just as ridiculous as the original racist notions that stuck all these races, cultures and ethnic groups together. For the LA Times and prof to pretend that Asia is just East Asia is, I suggest, more than a problem in geography.
Dr. Hamamoto is not actually an expert in the field of human sexuality, either. In the documentary he expressed that he thought the natural order of things was Asian man and Asian woman. Asian American man and Asian American woman.
As for the reasons I listed, I have heard of all of these. There is a hierarchy among Asian Americans and it is silly to pretend there is not. To pretend that Asian Americans aren't racist against other Asian Americans is silly.
If you want to get another Asian American to behave, tell them if they don't do X, they are a banana. But a banana in one area is not a banana in another area. That's just the same thing that happens in the Latino and black communities. That's why we have expressions like Oreos and coconuts. For the Hawaiian Japanese, there is also kotonks.
Further, be real. I was a smart girl and a geek in high school. I didn't have a date. So should I feel sorry for that guy in Oklahoma? Not really. There is no conclusive link made by the poet or the writer between his ethnicity and getting dates in high school, particularly if other white boys poets weren't getting dates. Just to say or imply there is a link doesn't mean there is. You'd have to see if all the white poets in the same city were dating and see that he was the only poet of any race in that city without a date to make that kind of conclusion. Because aren't Latinos seen as sexy? Maybe he was asking the wrong type of women...like, cheerleaders without a poetic notion in their brains? I don't know, but just to say it's so doesn't make it so.
When I got to college, I got dates. I am supposed to be more desirable as exotica, right? Gee what an honor.
My point: high school vs. college. Two different worlds. Not a good comparison even in the same region. Not logical. Don't buy it as such.
So if you think I should get out, really I am out and about. But I'm not above criticizing my own ethnic group for things they do to make marrying in less attractive or writers for lacking a cohesive argument.
How can they be stereotypes if I've experienced every single one? And so have my friends. So we should pretend these things don't happen for the good of some ethnic cause, like a positive stereotype?
So what about being exotica? That should ideally make marrying in more attractive unless you're a gold-digger. Do women really want to be treated like concubines and whores? Do they want to be treated like comfort women? Gee, let me think about that one. No, I'll pass.
BTW, a lot of mail-order brides from overseas look for an American man specifically because they are divorced--Japanese, Filipina, etc. Or perhaps they are too old by the standards of their country.
That same prejudice against divorced women carries over here. Sometimes it's just about being divorced and this prejudice drives some to the point where some Asian American men won't admit they are divorced. I don't know. Maybe some women lie about this as well. Still the same reason.
And a lot of Asian cultures don't see wife-beating as a bad thing. Or having a little honey on the side or going out with the boys for some whoring. Some of those attitudes remain in the Asian American cultures.
Does this make Asian American men more attractive to Asian American women? I think not. Does it make them more attractive to white women? I think not.
So is Hollywood media fully accountable? I think not. I am pointing out other reasons that Asian American women are marrying out and I question if having Asian American men in porn will change that.
There's just way too much fuzzy logic going on in the LA Times article and the Hamamoto project.
Hey, I even had a sweet Japanese (Issei) man warn me against Asian American men. He said to marry American (white). He told his daughter the same thing because he thought she would be treated better. Pretty funny. I was also warned against marrying the eldest son or the only son. You think these people also needed to get out? I think they were telling me to get out of the ethnic group.
And just for a historical note...that famous pair of Siamese twins found wives and settled down. But they had fame and fortune. Wonder what happened to the children?
6 - Bob A. Booey
I'm not really sure how to react to the way you write. Some of what you say is rather bizarre (the Siamese twin closer, for example) and you seem to take anecdotal experiences from your own, no-doubt unusual life as truths about entire groups of people. That's a common mistake simple people make, but try and have a little perspective.
I'll write more later perhaps, but I'll just leave you with this question to respond to:
You gloss over the idea of being exotica and seem to view it as strategic for you. Doesn't that disturb you?
You, on the one, hand reject the geisha/concubine role yet you accept being "exotica" that fits into all the stereotypes white people have of Asian women and their expected behavior.
How do you reconcile that? Why on earth are you OK with being exotica?
Don't be mistaken. They want you because you're exotica. 100%. You probably found that especially true when you met nerdier, smarter guys in college who were afraid of women.
Misogyny isn't unique to Asian men. Perhaps you've met some bad ones, but I'd argue that misogyny is one reason white men view Asian women the way they do, i.e., traditional gender roles, no feminist power struggles, etc.
Your critique of Hamamoto's bizarre work, which I have yet to read about, isn't all that damning. Sure, "Asian-American" is too broad a term. But I'm sure he'd admit your point that there are different stereotypes for different Asian groups, e.g., East Asians ("Charlie Chan") vs. South Asians (the "terrorist" stereotypes you mentioned). I would dispute that the American racial consciousness groups the Middle East together with Asia -- that's a ridiculous conjecture so your Aladdin nonsense doesn't apply (he and Jasmine were Anglicized characters amidst ugly Middle Eastern stereotypes). It's also true that the American racial imagination views East Asians and even Southeast Asians as being one aggregate culture to be stereotyped: they really don't know or care the difference between Chinese and Japanese or Thai and Vietnamese.
That is all for now.
7 - Purple Tigress
I don't find being considered exotica a pleasant experience. That's why I said, I'd pass on that. But some Asian American women use it for money or power. White women do, too. Isn't that what the Playboy mansion is all about? In any case, a real geisha, not the American version, would be just as calculating.
Not all of what I'm talking about is anecdotal. Part of the problem with the spread of STDs in Asian and Asian American women is linked their male counterparts' behavior. In particular is HPV. This can cause cervical cancer but rarely effects men who are the carriers. I don't have time to look up the local and international stats, but it is linked not only to the number of sex partners the woman has, but that her male partner has. In cultures where it is acceptable for men to have sex outside of marriage, the chances of the women contracting it increases even if she is monogamous. Since the men do not get tested for this and safe sex doesn't guard against the contraction of HPV, a woman's best hope is a Pap smear. Not common among some communities or countries.
There are whole Web sites devoted to these discussions.
http://endabuse.org/press/releases.php3?Search=Article&ID=7
There is also a great concern about domestic violence in Asian American communities. If you have to fight an acceptance of this problem even though it clearly exists, this means there are problems within the communities and usually what is cited is an acceptance of violence against women by their husbands. The usual feeling is that the women are not acting Asian enough. That's the point about yellowness or being yellow enough. Who decides that? The guy, the in-laws and community members.
Not very attractive if a woman is looking for a potential mate. So let's not blame Hollywood for those.
I have been active in AIDS/HIV and STD education and am currently active in raising charitable donations for a domestic violence center.
Media image is one thing, but we need to look at other dirty little secrets. And again, both the LA Times article and Dr. Hamamoto are talking about East Asia. Dr. Hamamoto doesn't admit to other racial stereotypes that's why I suggested the geography lesson. He doesn't not admit that some Asians might not be yellow. He does not admit that some Asian might be black.
How can anyone combat stereotypes when we are building a stereotype of an East Asian hegemony over all of Asia? So I want to point out that Saudi Arabia is also part of Asia. Armenia is part of Asia.
There's actually a triangular relationship in this emasculation theory that Hamamoto doesn't clearly discuss: black men have large penises; white men have average size penises and yellow men have small penises. Phillipe Rushton also thought this influenced other aspects of behavior although his proofs of size stats were spurious.
This also postulates that the sexuality of a human race is solely determined by men. Not very sound biology.
Further, we cannot combat racism and stereotypes as Asian Americans or Americans unless we admit that it is multilayered. Asians and Asian Americans have plenty of prejudices and stereotypes against each other. Heck, even within the same country.
India and Japan have their own untouchables.
I'm saying there are other reasons women marry out. Oh, and Americans need a geography lesson.
8 - RJ Elliott
"black men have large penises; white men have average size penises and yellow men have small penises."
Like all stereotypes, there is a grain of truth to this.
Height is a major factor in determining the size of the male genitalia. As a group, Asians are shorter than whites or blacks. As a group, blacks are taller than Asians and whites. (At least in the USA...)
Therefore, as a group, the black-white-Asian penile heirarchy is actually true, in general.
(I have no doubt there are Asian men sporting massive dongs, and black guys who suffer from the dread micro-penis affliction. But statistics are merely a collection of anecdotes, in other words a generalization. They may be politically incorrect, but they are also factual.)
9 - Natalie Davis
All of this just points to the stupidity of categorizing people by hue. How's about dealing with people as individual humans and judging accordingly based on that?
10 - RJ Elliott
ND:
I'm all for that! :-]
But people tend to self-identify. Look at a high-school lunch table. It's usually either all-white, all-black, all-Hispanic, all-female, all-male, etc.
So. Since it is a given that, in this imperfect world, people tend to identify with those who are most like themselves, there are naturally self-selecting categories of people.
Assuming this much, those who self-identify as being "black" tend to be taller than those who self-identify as being "Asian." And those "blacks" tend to be taller than those "Asians." And black men tend to be more "hip" than Asian men. And they tend to have bigger wangs.
This is all true. Look it up.
I didn't make this world. I just live in it. And I study it. And I report on it. And even if I don't like it, I deal with it.
Right now, there are murderers and rapists making millions per year playing a fucking game! But I don't cry myself to sleep every night over this fact. I deal with it.
Right now, there are people who are the offspring of the wealthy who are given second and third chances that a plebe like me could never hope to attain. But I don't bitch about it. I deal with it.
That's life. It's rough, and cold, and unfair. But I deal with it. So should everyone else.
IMHO...
11 - Natalie Davis
Or become a recluse. Avoiding society, which is awash in its worthlessness, is much happier.
I self-identify as human. Classifying oneself on the basis of melanin -- sorry, I find it stupid, and I will not go along with it. I am all too aware of how you and "people" tend to focus on it -- you can have it. What a useless topic to study...
You do know that just because two people have the same skin color doesn't mean they have anything of importance in common, right?
And what the fuck does "hip" mean? Who gets to define that? "And black men tend to be more "hip" than Asian men." What a stupid statement.
Deal with it? I do, by speaking out against society, its classifications, and the dolts who play along.
12 - Purple Tigress
Actually, the work of Phillipe Rushton on penis size was largely discredited. Most of his data was old, underrepresentative or likely to be suspect because it required self-report.
You don't think some men added a few inches in the self-report?
Remember, Asia covers a lot of ground. Can you honestly say that Asians (from Israel to the Pacific Islands) are smaller people than Causasians or Blacks? There are an awful lot of jockeys in the US and they aren't all Asian Americans and those are only the short guys that can ride horses and want to.
And penis size isn't known to be proportional.
In any case, this is probably the real penis envy. Not women wishing they had penises.
But if you've read the turgid prose of Dr. Hamamoto, you'll know he avoids that point--tackling the penis size myth.
But if you buy into one part of the myth, aren't you buying into the other part? That black men are oversexed and hard to control? That Asian men are undersexed and more cerebral? And like some odd version of Goldilocks and the three bears, white men are just right?
But my main point is: race and media imagery isn't the only reason women might reject Asian American men.
13 - visualsimpiclity
Bob A. Booey has some good points. What I'm seeing here is that Purple Tigress claims to be trying to combat stereotypes of Asian Americans, but yet generalizes the Asian American men she's encountered throughout her life time. Now let me ask you a question, how can anyone combat stereotypes when they are building a stereotype of Asian American men themselves?
14 - Bob A. Booey
I'm at work, so I can't respond to the latest madness until later, but here's that article she was talking about. It ran in my local paper (the Chicago Tribune) today and it addresses a lot of the stereotypes that have been thrown about in this discussion:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/chi-0405250034may25,1,4341157.story
Sex, self-image and the Asian-American man
By David Pierson
Tribune Newspapers: Los Angeles Times
Published May 25, 2004
Wanting to know what the mostly Asian-American class considered desirable, professor Darrell Hamamoto asked: What posters are on your bedroom walls? After an uncomfortable silence, Hamamoto got the names he expected -- celebrities including Brad Pitt. There wasn't an Asian among them, which reinforced what he has long believed: Cliches and stereotypes about Asian men have rendered them sexual afterthoughts.
"You aren't creating your own images," the 50-year-old Japanese-American told his class at the University of California, Davis. "Make your own movies. You have to take it into your own hands." Like Hamamoto, hundreds of Asian-American men are writing books and poems and creating Web sites in hopes of redefining themselves by combating the enduring notion that they are submasculine. Many are offended that Asian men are projected as power players when it comes to intellectual intercourse but bystanders in the world of romance.
"Racist myths and assumptions about smaller stature . . . smaller eyes -- and less sexual and erotic drive -- have stymied the development and acceptance of Asian-American men as full erotic beings," writes Russell Leong, novelist and professor at the University of California, in the foreword of "On a Bed of Rice," a collection of Asian-American erotic literature.
Internet forums for Asians are saturated with discussion groups with titles such as "Raise Your Hand if You Love Asian Men!!" A thread on www.modelminority.com titled "When the Asian Guy Tries Too Hard" discusses the difficulty some Asian-American men have attracting non-Asians -- often considered a successful sign of crossover appeal. It registered 1,689 hits in two weeks.
Phil Yu, 25, a Korean-American, was so angered by misconceptions about Asian-Americans that he created a Web site, www.angryasianman.com, which he says receives 50,000 hits a month.
A recent uproar on Yu's site erupted when Details magazine published a pictorial in its April issue titled "Asian or Gay?" Yu quickly rallied his readers by saying, "It seriously pulls out every offensive, stereotypical Asian pop culture reference imaginable, objectifying and exoticizing Asian men into a sexual stereotype."
A mid-January posting read: "Bad week for Asian men on reality TV . . . on the latest edition of 'The Bachelorette,' Andy [Chang] got eliminated right away. . . . But honestly, what did you expect? Like she was going to choose the lone, token Asian guy out of that bunch?"
Days after he was booted, Chang said he was disappointed he was the only bachelor who didn't get a one-on-one meeting with Meredith Phillips, the ABC show's bachelorette. After he was eliminated, he wondered what effect his ethnicity had.
"After the fact, I think it worked against me," said Chang, who beat out thousands of applicants to be on the series.
Chang, a Chinese-American dentist based in a Dallas suburb, says he's the antithesis of the socially inept Asian typecast.
The 5-foot-11 bachelor with the athletic build was in a fraternity and never had much problem finding dates. But since he appeared on the show, the 33-year-old said meeting women has been even easier. This, despite once being told by a new patient that she thought he would look like Mr. Miyagi from "The Karate Kid."
"I may have a dental degree," he said. "Does that mean I have to look like a nerd?"
X-rated image
Hamamoto has taken the advice he gave his students, albeit in a more controversial manner. He financed a pornographic movie titled "Skin on Skin," starring a Korean-American actor.
"I wanted people to look at this Asian-American and say, `He's great, he's performing, he's bright, he's beautiful,"' he said. "I wanted to take the lowest road possible. Something basic. Raw."
Ultimately, Hamamoto said he wants to show the world that Asians are sexually complex and that assumptions about nerdiness are unjust. He plans to launch a porn company, which he believes will empower Asian-Americans. Criticism that he has cheapened his cause by using pornography does not bother him, he said. The risque endeavor is also a scholarly exercise, which includes the "Masters of the Pillow" documentary on the making of "Skin on Skin."
The film, with commentary from Asian-American filmmakers, academicians and playwrights, was shown at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival in March and the Visual Communications Filmfest in Los Angeles on May 1.
Late last year, word of Hamamoto's project led to spoofs on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," which aired a mock news story about the dearth of Asian men in pornography, and NBC's "Tonight Show," which showed a skit featuring Godzilla with his groin blacked out breaking up an all-Asian bedroom romp.
The stereotypes have a clear emotional effect on Asian-American men, said William Liu, an assistant professor of counseling psychology at the University of Iowa.
Those who live in predominantly non-Asian communities begin to loathe their appearance and develop ideals of beauty that value blond hair and blue eyes.
Some court non-Asian women exclusively as a sign of status because "they're able to overcome stereotypes and cultural prohibitions," Liu said.
Interracial relationships
Asian-American men lack the success Asian-American women have had in interracial relationships. It's a sensitive fact complicated by the belief by many people in the community that society objectifies Asian females as hyper-sexual Suzy Wongs. The 2000 Census shows that Asian-American women are more than twice as likely to be involved in an interracial marriage as their male counterparts.
The roots of Asian male stereotypes date back 200 years, historians say, when immigrants started arriving in the United States en masse as cheap labor. For decades, they encountered a barrage of discrimination that prevented them from owning property or marrying outside their race. Some were barred from heavy industry, so men took on traditionally feminine enterprises including laundry and cooking.
By 1882, Chinese immigrants were prohibited from entering the United States, stranding those stateside without brides. Subsequently, a "bachelor society" emerged. Wars with Japan, Korea and Vietnam helped demonize Asian men further and gave Americans license to ridicule them, historians say.
Many Asian-Americans are still horrified by older images such as writer Sax Rohmer's books about the sinister Dr. Fu Manchu and Mickey Rooney's buck-toothed Mr. Yunioshi from "Breakfast at Tiffany's," perhaps the character Asian-Americans most commonly identify as a racist icon of an earlier Hollywood.
Some of a younger generation cringe at the sight of the nerdish Long Duk Dong from the 1984 teen classic "Sixteen Candles."
But Asian-American men might be acquiring more appeal.
More are out-marrying
American-born Asians are out-marrying more than older generations. Popular culture and sports have introduced basketball player Yao Ming, baseball player Kazuo Matsui and the actors from the edgy teen movie "Better Luck Tomorrow," which received mainstream distribution from MTV Films. The acclaimed Australian film "Japanese Story" centers on an affair between a white woman and a Japanese man.
Hunky Korean-American actor Will Yun Lee, 28, turns down martial-arts roles because he feels they perpetuate a passionless warrior image. He would rather be a leading man.
"When I first started out five, six years ago, a lot of auditions for Asians had to do with technical computer guys. And at some point it started switching to the villain or the Mafia guy," Lee said.
Another actor who gave Asian-American men something to cheer about was Bruce Lee, but ultimately he did little to advance their romantic value, many say.
Even today, Asian-American men complain that action heroes such as Chow Yun Fat and Jackie Chan rarely get the girl.
As Leong, the author and UCLA professor put it: "Asian men can kick butt, but they can't have a kiss."
15 - Purple Tigress
If you really knew Russell Leong, you'd see just how ironic the whole article was. The irony was, of course, totally lost on the writer at the Los Angeles Times though.
And again, how can it be a stereotype such people really exist?
16 - .:Firestorm:.
To be honest I have not read very much of Purple's writing and cannot claim to know her thoughts very well without lying, at the moment.
However this kind of whiny article is unfortunate. I can understand having a poor high school environment, and racism, but playing the who's the better victim game, and talking up some imaginary hierarchy as if it were real and proper is disgusting, laughable and pathetic.
For all people romantic experimentation and socialization should begin at puberty, and curiosity even beforehand. It is not proper to wait out high school, even college, even after college. Various misfortunes and circumstances can lead to such a situation, sure, but it's not normal and should not be justified now just because it happened to you.
Furthermore it should be realized that most people are not that great, in fact many are full of shit, and the social hierarchy delineated is purely imaginary - it doesn't have to be. It is not the preset way things are.
17 - .:Firestorm:.
To finish my post more clearly, hopefully,
If you accepted that social hierarchy, it was your own fault, your own weakness to believe in the fantastic lies of others.
If you couldn't find the right person for romantic adventures, that is unfortunate but understandable. It is terrible that people should be deprived of normal development, but what can one do to change the past ? The future is what matters, and in its unfolding we should encourage what is right and not repeat what is wrong. If you are going to miserate and brood over the situation, better to do something to improve it rather than competing to see who has the worse horror story.
18 - Chester
[edited]
19 - Ayreon
Minor correction. The Rock's father is African American (Former wrestler Rocky Johnson). It's his mother who is Samoan.
20 - powerade
This is such a dumb list to make, which mean you are dumb. Make me sick to my stomach reading it.
If you say you are not attracted to Asians, you are not attracted to yourself and have low self-esteem. Simple as that.
People like you make me sick.
21 - hs
typical asian female hater. She'll blast the Asian man with her long list of anti-asian male/amy tan stereotypes as reason for her low opinion of asian men. Newflash, men of all races have all those traits as well. So why do you chose to place those stereotypes upon asian men only? [edited]
22 - Ed Godard
All your base are belong to us!
23 - dreamweaver
The article smacks of someone with low-self esteem believing all the stereotypes about asian men and using that as a excuse to whine and bash them.
And is experiencing stereotypes yourself an excuse to believe and perpetuate them?
24 - Taliesin Stormheller
STOP DISSING ASIAN MEN! As a Proud Asian Woman I support my brothas and am therefore offended by your article. I don't know if you are a sista or not, but if you are, you're being a sellout and dissing your own MALE FAMILY MEMBERS. Support Asian Pride- Stop the Stereotypes- Asian Men and Women must unite.
25 - rongayi
Asian men have superiority complex which fails to be effective in an open society like the US.Having an ancient culture is not the same thing as having good social skills.They therefore try to compensate for their social shortcomings by appealing to their intellectual and financial achievements.Harping on physical shortcomings of asian men is counter productive because that is God given the thing that ticks people off around the world is their singular lack of manners