Asian Men Are Less "Manly"?!

ok, this isn't a new topic...plenty of people have written about the fact that Asian men are perceived as comparatively not masculine in popular culture (not just here in the USA, but also in Asia itself).

White male models are used for underwear advertising, black males are used for adult videos (ok, maybe that one is just biological...but still), and as everyone knows, interracial couples with Asian females are much much more common than with Asian males (and because of that, Asian guys who get non-Asian girls, especially white ones, gains incredible respect from his Asian male friends as long as the girl is not too ugly).

This topic randomly came across my mind when I thought about the volunteer service trip I led a couple of years ago. A bunch of Americans, me, and my Chinese co-leader were in Yunnan province in China's southwestern corner building roads and teaching English in a remote leprosy village for two weeks. On the way back, we stayed in Kunming, the capital city of the province, where we met this white Yale alumnus (lets call him "Mike" for now) and went to karaoke with him.

After we got back to our lodging after singing our lungs out for a three hours, I overheard this conversation between two Chinese-American girls:

A: "...we were just ogling Mike..."
B: "yeah, cuz we haven't seen a real man in two weeks..."

OH BURN! Let me remind you that in our group of around twenty students at the remote village (half American from my group and half from Yunnan University), there were at least 12 guys including me. Unfortunately, the 12 consisted of 11 Chinese/Chinese-American and 1 short black guy who does not exactly evoke sexual desire in any way.

Now, aside from suppressing the anger of being insulted regarding my masculinity (practically in my face, too), I am actually still quite saddened by the natural nonchalance of the girls' facial expressions as they were having this conversation. If you were just looking at their faces without listening to them, you can swear they were talking about something matter-of-fact, completely true, and ridiculous if it was considered arguable.

I know, living in America, we Asian males should be used to this kind of things by now, but being told so directly still makes me wonder how we managed to achieve such a lowly social perception among females of literally, all colors.

Now, of course, the question that begs to be asked is: why does this happen?

Well, when I was studying abroad in University of Sydney in Australia not that long ago, I took a class on sexuality in medieval Europe. Basically, the take-away point of the class is that, while gender (male or female) is biological, the concept of sex (man or woman) is socially constructed. i.e. being male and a "man" is two totally different concepts and they do not need to correlate.

The perfect example of this happens in all-male prisons, where some weaker male prisoners are forced to play the "female role" (or "be the bitch") for the stronger, dominant male prisoners. Thus, "subjugating others" becomes the definition of masculinity in an environment where the biological gender difference does not exist.

Now, what does this have to do with Asians? The short answer is that the role-playing in the all-male prisons operates on exactly the same principles as race relations in the real world. Here is my take:

In Western society, Asians in general are portrayed as meek and submissive to others. This stereotype, in fact, is very well reinforced by the truth on the ground, at least in the USA. New Asian immigrants, lacking confidence in their English and understanding of American culture, tend to be shy. They avoid confrontational situations with Americans and sometimes may not even choose to speak to Americans and just stick to their own groups.

In the scope of the bipolar division of the world based on the social "sex," these Asians are certainly not domineering, and therefore cannot be male (...so, they are female)...

At the same time, the normal modern social thinking (and this is quite universal except in matriarchal societies), men are supposed to lead over the women (in a fashion slightly less extreme than the prison circumstance stated above)...so basically, the social construct of a Western multi-racial society such as the USA has pretty much labelled all Asians, male or female, to be "women."

In comparison, it is interesting to look at blacks, who are generally thought of as outgoing, talkative, and sometimes violent (some people consider this to be underlying racism, but it is very common belief), thus, blacks both gender are labelled "men."

Such social labeling the perfect explanation why many many people have sexual fantasies about Asian females or black males, and interracial couples involving these two groups are quite common. On the other hand, Asian males and black females tend not to be popular with people of other races. (by the way, Asian gay males are very popular, as "takers," of course, for the same reason)

The biggest irony for the Asian case is that in the traditional male-dominated Confucian society, Asian males practically wields all the household power, making the distinction of their "manliness" very clear in comparison to their female counterparts' role. Yet, sticking to such Confucian tradition has made Asian females even more "womanly" in the eyes of other races...

In conclusion, I would just like to say that my analysis actually makes the prospect of Asian males trying to get females of other races look quite bleak. Other schools of thought on this issue (such as "Asian males are not popular because they are poor/not physically fit/don't understand American culture") all think that if Asian males, as individuals, change somehow, it would be possible for them to get their dream white/black/Hispanic girls.

But my belief says otherwise. The fault lies not with Asian males, but other races, who choose to always see Asians through a pair of colored glasses. No matter how non-Asian a particular Asian acts (and how wealthy he is), the stereotypes bestowed upon him does and will not go away in the minds of other races.

In other words, the only way to really change the situation is to entice other races to learn about Asia through their own experiences. Economic prosperity in Asia countries and communities will certainly help. The powerful pop-cultures of Japan and South Korea have generated (albeit confined to a small niche interested in anime/Korean drama/Asian pop music) greater popularity/sex appeal for Japanese and Korean men...

But more importantly, economic dominance can translate to social dominance in many occasions. Just look at all the hype in the American media about how the Chinese are more confident abroad as their economy surges. In all honesty, I don't see that "surge," but its great that the American media thinks that way: more confidence=more "manliness"...now we just have to wait for non-Asian American women to start thinking the same way...