I Like Battlepanda, By The Way

Which you might not have guessed, given that every time I write about one of her posts, I seem to be disagreeing with her. Still, she's definitely worth putting on your daily reads list (unless of course, I'm the only one who has a daily reads list.)

That said, I do understand the difference between fetishism and a simple preference for certain types of women. (Angelica has examples.) But given that I was not-too-subtly accused of being an asian fetishist myself when Vicki and I started dating, this is kind of a sore point to me. I agree that white men can date asian women without it being a fetish - I would count myself among that number - but the point is that the fetish does exist, and so does the "submissive" stereotype it's based on, and neither should really be the subject of winks, nudges, or jokes.

Unlike other fetishes, I would argue this is particularly noxious, and worthy of special condemnation. After all, if you're going after Asian women because you believe them to be "submissive", what you're really doing is looking for victims. A guy who wants to lick a foot or something is - if he can find a consenting partner - not harming anyone. Some asshole looking for a nice yellow girl to take his abuse and domineering isn't just seeking out a woman he's attracted to, he's bordering on sexual predation. The article I linked to previously may be an extreme case, but with a whopping 8% reporting rate, who can say?

So are all white men who date Asian women sexual predators? I certainly don't think so. But, there is a stereotype of submissive Asian women, which feeds a fetish for a certain man, who then carry out some pretty disgusting acts. Even without the gross-out factor, it's hard to believe that an attraction motivated by "submission" could ever be wholly benign.

It seems, by the way, that Angelica and I have succeeded in finding some of our respective hot-button issues - her and Sino-Japanese history, me and Asian Fetishism. How weird - I only started reading her blog last week!