"Asian Men are less 'manly'?!" Revisited: the Emotional Concerns of Living at "Home"

In one of the earliest (and to this day one of the most read) post of this blog, the author touched upon a personal experience of racial preference among women that come off as deeply disadvantageous to Asian males.  The subject is quite resonating in the recent days here in Taipei as the town is reportedly being graced by the presence of two famed Caucasian pickup artists, who has tallied their victories in Hong Kong and are now making inroads in Taiwan.  The public nature of their exploits, so casually shared through social media and subsequently reinterpreted through mainstream media, are draw huge criticisms.

Interestingly enough, the two pickup artists seem to be Asian specialists with girlfriends in every country on this side of the Pacific rim.  They have not made a secret their almost exclusive interest in Asian women, noting, among other things, the ease of success, not because of the women themselves, but the weakness of the competition they have found in local men.  Their claim to fame, after all, involves them directly and physically taking away girlfriends of local men on the streets of Hong Kong, meeting little resistance from the stoic guys of the city outside of online protests.

It certainly does not help that the local media here have the habit of sensationalizing negative incidents to sell news.  Aside from the recent subway stabbing that made the killer a devious hero figure, such inclination of hero-making has made the entire foreign and local populations nervous about the arrival of the two pickup artists.  All the resident foreigners are busy distancing themselves from the visiting pickup artists, while the local nightclubs are reportedly going through measures to ensure the safety of their female clientele.  Taipei is by not means underestimating the celebrity status and potential power of the two visitors.

But perhaps the biggest question of all here is that, by conceding the "danger" of these pickup artists, is the local male population discreetly agreeing with the sentiment that, foreigners (especially white guys), are indeed more "manly" than the locals, and are thus more successful with getting women at a short notice?  Or, taking a step back, is what the pickup artists are really good at really the correct definition of what ought to be considered admirable masculinity?  In other words, should males really look up to these guys as role models when it comes to becoming "real men"?

The author is willing to opine on the topic with an extremely short answer to the negative.  People who live here should not do what these guys do for the simple reason that the local males live and breath in this town for an extended period of time.  The factor of residence should add in a whole new set of emotional complexity into the idea of hanging out with women for non-pure purposes.  As much as the two pickup artists pretend to have girlfriends in the respective towns they visited throughout Asia, what is certain is that they are in no way attempting relationships that balance the physiological and the psychological.

To be blunt and straightforward, the principle really boils down to this.  Do not take home and sleep with women who do not want to be communicating at a higher level in the days, weeks, and months ahead.  Sure, both parties may tacitly agree to letting what happened remain untold and forgotten after the fact, but the human mind does not really work that way.  To suppress one event of this sort, one has to proceed with other ones constantly in order to remain emotional balanced.  And in a small town like Taipei where the club-going crowd is so niche and rowdy, the notoriety of the "player" will soon be too visible for one's own good.

Yet, to take another big step back, it is observable that perhaps thinking about male-female romantic relationships as more than just satisfaction of physical needs with formal, not-so-important emotional appendages may be an Asian male thing in itself.  At least in the author's experiences, to clearly cut a person out of one's life seems to be much more fraught with difficulties in an Asian sitting where collective guilt over promiscuity is strong and remain taboo in wide range of social segments, especially when compared to Western European cultures where progressive liberalism in this area has made "casual" sex so normal.

To dive into the minds of the two pickup artists in Taipei, it is perhaps their casual nature toward relationships that attract women.  Sometimes a person does not want to be burdened with the need to keep in touch with their sexual partners.  They want to forget and move on.  Perhaps Asian males are not best targets for achieving such a "clean cutoff," largely because they inhabit the same small town.  The author is guilty of this just as any other Asian out there.  But if he can be freed of this socio-cultural reflex to be loyally monogamous, then like other Asian males, he may be sleeping with girls at his room without thinking twice about it the morning after. 

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