Nov 25

Nov 25 S04E02 - On the Emasculation of Asian Men

Transcript

Jay Ooi:

We’ve seen the rise of hot East Asian men on our screens, from Chris Pang and Henry Goulding in Crazy Rich Asians, Kevin Kreider in Bling Empire, and Simu Liu in Shang Chi, But it wasn’t so long ago that Asian men were the nerdy, unattractive sidekick, and in fact we still see a bit of this today.

So what are the origins of this geeky, asexual Asian man?

Dr Sophie Loy Wilson:

When I was first introduced to this field, the way that I saw Chinese men depicted in cartoons was as effeminate, sinister, really orientalist stereotypes are deployed.

Jay Ooi:

How does it affect Asian men?

Timothy Kazuo Steains:

It can be defeating to know that actually, I can't do much about it actually because it's a much larger structural thing that one person can't fight on their own.

Jay Ooi:

And how do different ideas of masculinity come into play here?

Jane Park:

In Australia, you've got the valorization of the athlete, right? The kind of muscular, masculinity. In East Asia via China, it's been kind of the nerdy dude, the nerdy dude got all the women.

Jay Ooi:

Hello, and welcome to Shoes Off, stories about Asian Australian culture. I’m Jay Ooi.

I think we all know the stereotypes of East Asian men - maybe they’re the cunning, mysterious villain, or the kung fu master, or often the submissive, geeky, scared guy, perhaps shorter, perhaps with a small dick. In today’s episode, I want to focus on the emasculation of East Asian men. And yes, it will primarily focus on East Asians as there’s a particular history here, and apologies, we may refer to it generically as “Asian men” in this episode, but it may play out similarly for other Asians - just listen on. And yes, this is kind of a part two to last week’s episode, and you might hear some familiar voices in this ep.

So how have these Asian men become so undesirable?

Timothy Kazuo Steains:

Okay. So, if you see some of those statistics that come out of websites like OkCupid or whatever, they do statistics about who gets the most responses. And on the male side, it's always white men who get the most responses and Asian men are somewhere down the bottom. East Asian and South Asian men are somewhere down the bottom.

Jay Ooi:

That’s Dr Timothy Kazuo Steains, lecturer in gender and cultural studies at the University of Sydney. And he’s right - Asian men don’t get as many replies, whereas Asian women do get quite a lot, and even expressed a higher preference for dating someone outside of their racial background, so it’s not a thing where all Asians are roughing it, just the men.

Timothy Kazuo Steains:

And the way that we talk about this in academic work is that it's a form of Orientalism. And Orientalism comes from, I guess, the colonial fantasy of the East. Where the West is the superior culture that colonises and penetrates the East through colonisation. And it's a fantasy of power over a lesser kind of race. Right.

Jay Ooi:

Okay, we’ve touched upon Orientalism a few times, but I think we’re going to need to really dive into it for this ep.

So orientalism is this term coined by Edward Said, a Palastinian American Professor of literature. Like Dr Steains mentions, it’s this view of the “east” from the perspective of the “west”.

Said noticed that a lot of European scholars would write about the east, but because it’s coming from the perspective of the west, who thought they were more civilised and superior, the way they wrote about the East is tinted by the mysterious, uncivilised, exotic and even dangerous. Knowledge of the east, or the Orient, is formed through this perspective, and it continues to shape how the West sees the East today.

Timothy Kazuo Steains:

And this particular fantasy, it's a very gendered one because the coloniser is very masculinised. Right. Because they are the dominator, the penetrator, as it were. And that the Asian is very feminized in that scenario, in that particular power dynamic. And so, within that imaginary, white men desiring Asian women, reinforces that colonial fantasy. Right.

Timothy Kazuo Steains:

But Asian men become a threat to white men. And therefore they need to be constructed as asexual or homosexual, or whatever it might be, in order to make sure that they are not competition for women for white men. And so, that's meant to be the colonial hangover of those kind of racialised gender dynamics that affect Asian men today because all of those assumptions about the threat that Asian men signify to white men, is all in our mainstream culture. Right.

Jay Ooi:

So because of the way Asia is painted by the West, Asian men get portrayed in a way that robs them of western masculinity.

Dr Sophie Loy Wilson:

The way that White colonists saw Chinese migrants, is in a really emasculated way right from the beginning. Often, they were talking about Chinese migrants coming in these big groups.

Jay Ooi:

That’s Dr Sophie Loy-Wilson again, Senior Lecturer in Australian History from the University of Sydney.

Images that colonists painted of these migrants depicted them in a uniform way. They will dress the same, look the same with the same hat. There was not much individualization happening. They're described as these slave like hordes of people coming from China. In reality, there were often individual miners who'd come on individual contracts to work in the mines.

Jay Ooi:

So instead of Asian men having individual personality and traits, the view of them is almost homogenous, because they’re seen as so foreign and other. And Dr Loy-Wilson says the vast majority of Chinese migrants were men. So if that’s the way they’re depicted, what were these men actually like?

Dr Sophie Loy Wilson:

When I was first introduced to this field, the way that I saw Chinese men depicted in cartoons was as a feminine sinister, really orientalist stereotypes are deployed. Often devoid of gender almost. Never painted attractive, they were never painted with strength. When I began to see photographs of Chinese miners or laborers from this period, and I mean from the late 19th century or even a bit earlier, I'm looking at men that were incredibly strong, incredibly tough to survive in any of these jobs, whether you were doing the early, quote unquote coolie labor that some men were involved in whether you were a shepherd, whether you are a gold miner.

Dr Sophie Loy Wilson:

This is hard labor. You had also come from a part of China, where if you are working in the agricultural sector, you are carrying liters and liters of water on your shoulder every day just to survive in the village. You are in the fields farming, so these are very, very strong people. Women and men, right? I feel that physical strength was never captured in the images that I saw whether they were paintings, or whether they were cartoons. That physical strength was stripped away. You have the queues oftentimes been portrayed with their long queue, which is part of the Qing Dynasty. That queue was a real sign of brutality and masculinity, and that again is edited out of the European depictions of these men.

Jay Ooi:

The queue is that hairstyle where the hair on top is grown long and braided at the back, and the front part is shaved off.

Dr Sophie Loy Wilson:

Often the queue is seen as a feminit thing that's used to humiliate the Chinese men. Queues are pulled, for example. They're cut off, for example, in more extreme cases. They're a mark of honor and prestige. They're coiled up on people's heads in the same way that we have men bonds today. They're extremely beautiful things. People took care of them.

Jay Ooi:

So early on in our history, Asian men are depicted as effeminate because they’re almost this unknown common enemy, despite being strong, rough men. And racial violence is a real threat.

Dr Sophie Loy Wilson:

The amount of articles we have of market gardeners being beaten up and killed, Chinese men being beaten up and killed, I mean, this is a weekly regular occurrence that Chinese men are attacked by gangs of larrikin youth. Suddenly, you have a really nasty situation. I think that this shift explains a lot. Then boom, you have Federation in 1901. Right when our nation is formulating its identity, this deep undercurrent of really confronting racial violence is part and parcel of city life. This racial violence is particularly targeting Chinese men.

Jay Ooi:

Yes, a not so friendly reminder of some of our horrid history. Asian men are constantly portrayed as a threat. But as we started to develop as a colonial country, things began to change.

Dr Sophie Loy Wilson:

Colonialism is shifting to focus on nuclear families, and they want to bring out White settlers and their families to settle colonies like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, et cetera. There's a real focus on families and families as settlers. As this happens and the settlers move in places like South Australia, Chinese migrants are pushed into these other roles, so it's very hard to own land at different points for Chinese Australians, or often leasing land. Insecure agreements. It's hard to get security of tenancy.

Jay Ooi:

Chinese men start working in more subservient roles, like shop keeping, cleaning, and market gardening, which further strips them of their masculinity. So, hang on, Asian men are a threat, but they’re also feminine and weak. How does that make any sense?

Dr Sophie Loy Wilson:

One of the great ironies of the ways in which Asian men are depicted as a feminine is that does not correlate to the threat they are supposed to opposed. Right? They're constantly posing this threat as these workers that are undercutting White jobs. As these men bringing diseases. What's interesting is that, I think the depiction is much more about White fragility than it is about Chinese men in their experience. Right? I think it's all about the threat that White men felt on a range of levels from Chinese men.

Jay Ooi:

So all these historical depictions are ways for White European men to have some sort of power and control of Asian men because Asian men are kind of threatening to white men. And there’s also another time in our history where our manliness is threatened by Asians. Yepp, it’s, WWII.

Dr Sophie Loy Wilson:

This was as a big shift in attitudes towards Asia because these Asian men, powerful, strong Japanese men were inflicting pain on these fragile White bodies. The Australian men looked so fragile and they looked so breakable and they were so skinny and the Asian men we're in power. She argues that this is a big cultural shift at the time.

Jay Ooi:

WWII was when we had footage of the war - we literally saw powerful Asian men exerting their dominance over weak white men. So what does that mean for Australia and our masculinity?

Dr Sophie Loy Wilson:

Australia has always been a subsidiary country to big powers, and that has influenced how masculinity works here.

Dr Sophie Loy Wilson:

Australian men are not positioning themselves as world leaders. I think a lot of Australian attitudes and antipathy towards Asian men, or the need to dominate Asian men are fears about being dominated by Asian men relate to the subservient positions Australian men hold towards Great Britain or America.

Jay Ooi:

Yes we don’t ever pretend to be a world super power - we’re always kind of politically aligned to other “white” powers, but don’t forget how close we are geographically to Asia.

Dr Sophie Loy Wilson:

I think that Australia was almost invaded by an Asian power, and I think we downplay that in our history. We were almost invaded by an Asian power. I think we're so focused on our American Alliance and the history of that, that we forget that there's a psychological impact of being bombed, of Japanese submarines coming in here. Yes, I believe that caused the further demonization of Asian men and a desire to take away the power culturally from Asian men. You can't take away the geopolitical power of Asia, which has been on the rise since that time. You cannot take away the fact that we are a small tiny White country in an Asian region, but you can culturally create narratives that allow White men to dominate Asian men.

Jay Ooi:

So we have this history of demonising and emasculating Asian men, yet also this fear of them and desire to dominate them, and I think as Dr Loy-Wilson says, it’s going to have huge impacts on our collective psyche - how we think about and perceive Asian men is a result of this Orientalism, this exaggerated “other”.

But I don’t think this is the only thing contributing to this perception of East Asian men as emasculated. How is masculinity in Asia different? Let’s take a look at what we’re seeing in K-pop men and K dramas, or even dramas from Taiwan and Thailand.

Melissa Ty:

Feminine androgynised men is very attractive. He's got makeup, he has really slim build, he dances, he sings, he has maybe longer hair, so he takes a little pride in his appearance. So these things I think are much more valued now in modern Asian culture. And I think that's just one aspect of it.

Jay Ooi:

That’s clinical psychologist Melissa Ty. So yes, notions of masculinity in parts of Asia are really different. What’s considered desirable and attractive is not the same as what we would typically think of here in Australia.

Melissa Ty:

In Asian culture it seems like wealth is incredibly important.

Jay Ooi:

Yeah. I think so. And being hyper masculine is actually not important at all.

Melissa Ty:

No. No I think wealth definitely equals power and status in Asian cultures, and then you can see it in K-dramas, you can see it in Chinese dramas, but K-dramas especially. There's always the department store mogul, the billionaire son.

VO
So we have this different ideal of a man in a lot of Asian countries. But where have these different desirable traits come from?

Jane Park:

there's a very, very rich, philosophical and historical traditions that we all come from, so when you think about professor Louie talks about the Confucian scholar ideal, right?

Jay Ooi:

That’s Dr Jane Park, Senior Lecturer of Gender and Culture Studies at Usyd.

Jane Park:

Ideals of masculinity in China before the encounter with the West. China saw itself as the center of the world and everybody else was barbarian. We may be entering that mode, not so... Anyway, so the Chinese masculinity which would then filter it in via Confucianism to places like Korea and Japan and also Vietnam and so on. Is the very opposite of Western ideals of masculinity.

Jane Park:

In Australia, you've got the valorization of the athlete, right? The kind of muscular, masculinity. In East Asia via China, it's been kind of the nerdy dude, the nerdy dude got all the women. There's already that, and that's all class inflected, because until again, contact with the West and the budding origin, whatever capitalism replacing feudalism, when sort of the merchant at the beginning of the crazy rich Asian emerges, it's kind of like in Jewish culture as well. The nebbish guy, the guy who's very scholarly and quiet and passive, probably passive aggressive. That was the ideal, so then there's already a clash with the West.

Jay Ooi:

Yes, as much as the nerdy stereotype is a bit of a stereotype, there is also a bit of truth to it, in that smart, hard working, quiet men have been more sought after in places like China.

Jane Park:

In Korea, there's a saying oppa becomes appa. Oppa gappa denda, right? Which basically means older brother becomes father. Now that is really creepy if you think about it, because when Korean girls are dating guys, they often call the boyfriend oppa, big brother and so then the idea is that when you get married, then your boyfriend becomes your husband and subsequently the father of your child. You can unpack that in lots of interesting ways. It's quite weird and incestuous, if you think about it in a Western way, right?

Jane Park:

In Korea, the idea is that you don't really own your body. It's a very Confucian... Actually, we got it from you guys from China, so this idea that we are all part of one big family and you don't really own yourself, men have more privilege because Confucianists were sexist. The idea that particularly if you're a woman, you're owned by, you're always being defined by men and even if you're a guy you don't really have a sense of individual will or self the way that you do in the West. Again, even in the West, this is a very recent phenomenon. It's very American. A very individual, atomistic, absolutely anti relational mode, which is why we're in trouble. Trump is the final outcome of that philosophy of self over others.

Jane Park:

That kind of collectivist, the family as nation, the nation as family defines Korean culture.

Jay Ooi:

I know we’ve said this a few times before in this show, but a lot of Asian cultures are much more collectivist in their thinking, and so this whole concept of being your own person is already inherently very Western. And so in a lot of Asian cultures, what’s seen as good in a man is someone that values and takes care of this collective family unit, not the athletic bro who sleeps with a thousand women for his own gain. And Dr Steains says the formation of social groups when we’re younger impacts us greatly on forging our identities.

Timothy Kazuo Steains:

So if we're talking about, I don't know, alpha male, white masculinity, where they will create groups where they forge identities like that and where Asian men are not included, then it could mean that Asian men just get acculturated in different ways because they aren't included in that group. In a way, I think that's a good thing because my politics is not I want to be an alpha white man. But I think that is something that happens too. So it's a combination of both pre existing cultural ideas about what masculinity should be.

Timothy Kazuo Steains:

That combination of things can mean that there's a bit of a gap in terms of the possibility for Asian-Australian men to be considered desirable within this an Australian context.

Jay Ooi:

So whilst we might already have different views of what makes a good man, Asian men can often be left out of groups that perpetuate this sort of western masculinity anyway. So where does that leave us?

Timothy Kazuo Steains:

Asian male masculinity is a really good example of an alternative form of masculinity.

Timothy Kazuo Steains:

I think is actually super-interesting and potentially feminist as well because there is a certain kind of benefit to not being read as an alpha male in that there's actually a really interesting space where some other kind of ideal can be forged.

Jay Ooi:

This alpha male image that we often think about and perhaps aspire to be - that doesn’t have to be the epitome of masculinity. Like Dr Steains says, we can create our own alternative forms of masculinity.

Timothy Kazuo Steains:

I think just more proximity to queer people also helps a lot. I think it helped me a lot.

Timothy Kazuo Steains:

Some people create style out of queerness and that there are really specific ways of being queer, like create community. But actually queerness is not something that can be held down as structured or rigid in any way either so that it can go anywhere. And that's the same for anybody's experience of gender.

Jay Ooi:

I really like this point about queerness - this openness to breaking down traditional boundaries of masculine and feminine. We often have so much pressure to conform to masculinity, but seeing people who are just doing their own thing outside of this masculine feminine binary can be enlightening and liberating. Masculinity can be a prison, but being Asian and having access to other forms of masculinity can be incredibly freeing.

Okay, so far we’ve covered the historical treatment and portrayals of East Asian men, as well as the different ideas of masculinity that exist between certain Asian cultures and Australia. Now, I want to look at the effects of this emasculated view of East Asian men.

Eugene:

So I went to a very white private school in Western Australia.

Jay Ooi:

That’s Eugene Yang, a Chinese Australian writer and now also a podcast maker. Eugene grew up between Singapore and Canada, before moving to WA.

Eugene

And I think when I hit year 11 and 12, was when I felt probably the most confident, I still think in my life, not to say that I think I'd faked in school, they're two different things. But yeah, I think I just had this confidence and confidence that came from just being in the same place for so long. And being in a contained environment, where, as a Asian Australian boy to teenager, everybody knew me and sort of knew the person that I had worked on being.

Eugene:

And in that sense, that was maybe when I felt that my own race was the least visible, because I had just been there for long enough that the person was able to be recognized and seen.

Jay Ooi:

So Eugene felt like he was assimilating pretty well at the end of high school, but that all changed when he moved to Melbourne for university.

Eugene:

And I think it was really jarring to suddenly feel that recognition, and just that default of the person being recognized and seen wasn't there anymore, that if I walked into an average room at Melbourne University or the college that I lived at, it would almost be assumed that I would be an international student, that I would sound a certain way.

Eugene:

And it was just really jarring and really difficult to kind of adjust to that and know what to make of it. Because suddenly I felt like I had to do extra in order to be seen and heard.

Jay Ooi:

This is also something we’ve touched on before, this concept of distinguishing yourself from the other Asians and not wanting to be associated with them, because you’ve assimilated well and you’re one of the “in” crowd now. And one way Eugene tried to distinguish himself was by not dating another Asian girl.

Eugene:

I think it was very much a part of the assimilationist mindset that I had quite strongly growing up. I don't really know where it came from, but I think I can kind of safely say that there was this feeling of if I was an Asian guy dating an Asian girl, I would kind of just look like someone who is boxed in, as like someone who lives in an Asian bubble and would just sort of be there forever, even though it would not be true, it would be what it looks like. And so I guess I just felt like dating a white girl was some kind of success.

Jane Park:

You don't want to be just another one of those Asians. You don't want to be lumped together with the collective. Maybe that has something to do with, I know I've done this and many of my students have told me they do this. When you're in public and there are a lot of say Chinese or Korean people or whatever, speaking in the language and you want to distinguish yourself from them. You, you go more occa or you try to sound as white as possible. Maybe that's part of it as well. Unconsciously we're trying to become white.

Eugene:

I think I've definitely recognized that, in the way that we said when I was in high school, I wouldn't have wanted to date an Asian girl or I wouldn't have felt as attracted to her, I think I've definitely recognizing how much that was me projecting my feelings of undesirability onto other bodies that looked like me. So yeah, I definitely realized that in a very kind of clear way.

Jay Ooi:

I just wanted to talk briefly about your experience on, say, dating apps? Because you did talk about, I guess, differences between different countries, what sort of things did you notice in Australia, in Melbourne?

Eugene:

Yeah. So I guess I, as a baseline, noticed I got fewer matches than my friends did on average. But if that was sort of my perception of a low amount of matches on the app, when I tended to travel, and especially traveling to Asian countries, that went up very significantly. So yeah, I think just if I ever went to a place where I could maybe be seen more as a local or more of the "normal" of that city, or that town or that country, I suddenly felt like, at least in the world of dating apps, that I was more visible, that I was more conventionally attractive.

Melissa Ty:

I think it definitely impacts their sense of self esteem, their self worth, again feeling othered, I think is always going to have a negative impact on us because belonging is a huge part of our well-being, our sense of belonging.

Jay Ooi:

Melissa Ty again, clinical psychologist.

Melissa Ty

And I think there can be whole spectrum of responses to that. Some people will feel kind of defeated by it. Just buy into this idea, these messages that they're getting feel defeated. Other people might fight against it and maybe over compensate. Maybe they'll start hitting the gym, and getting big. Different people cope in different ways.

Eugene:

And so yeah, I think a lot of the time when I was dating and getting on Tinder and my friends just being like, "Oh, I matched with this person and that person." And then I'm just like, "Oh, mine's been very quiet for a few days."

Eugene:

And then eventually when I did meet someone, it was weird, because I'd be talking to them and most of the time, in conversation, they'd be like, "Oh, yeah, I grew up in Hong Kong," or, "My dad or mom brought us to Shanghai for a while when we were kids." Or they'd be like, "Oh, yeah, my previous partner was Malaysian, which is why I'm familiar with this food we're having." And I was always like, it seems like the only time I'm dating non-Asian girls are when they've either lived in Asia, or they've had previous Asian partners. And it seems like there's got to be a certain kind of background first for anything to happen here.

Jay Ooi:

I guess what that sounds to me is maybe that, by default, Asian men are not seen as potential partners for non-Asian women and they have to have something?

Eugene:

Yeah, they've got to have some sort of pattern break or recognition... yeah, I don't want to say humanizing experience, because I feel like that's a little bit severe. But I feel like yeah, maybe pattern breaker is the right kind of term for it. Yeah, it's like, shall I think about food analogy, some people are just terrified of the concept of eating raw fish, once they have sushi, they realize there's a whole world of raw fish to eat.

Jay Ooi:

So one impact is that the only non-Asians who will choose to date Asian men are ones that have had some sort of pattern break before, at least in Eugene’s experience. And this has effects from making you question why people are dating you, to just feeling defeated, or motivating you to try and assimilate more and fit into that western masculine stereotype. Here’s Dr Steains again.

Timothy Kazuo Steains:

Anyway, psychoanalyst called Jacques Lacan, he believed that as children when we look at the mirror, something significant happens where previously, we have just thought of ourself in a disembodied way. We hadn't seen what we actually look like. We've just seen our body parts. Then, when we look in a mirror, we see what we look like as a totality. Not only do we get a sense of self, but we get a sense of what people are looking at, and it creates this other identity within us about what other people see and perhaps what we think other people want to see. It's a disembodied part of our identity that carries all of the expectations of other people looking at us. We're like, "Okay, I'm going to forge not just this identity for myself, but I'm going to forge this identity that other people see for the sake of other people's gaze on us."

Timothy Kazuo Steains:

Masculinity is part of that too. The way that people perceive you or the way you think that people perceive you can be a big thing that we can fixate on. I think if you're always getting this message that you're not good enough or not sexy enough because of your race, you will start to believe it. I think that it can create a warped sense of self, like a warped sense of self-confidence too that can be really difficult to work through.

Eugene:

And yeah, I guess it was kind of challenging because it made me feel like I couldn't... this is almost relating to the high school stuff, right? I couldn't be sort of seen and recognized as the individual, but you'd had to have these set number of series of experiences or perspectives to be somebody who sees me. And then you think like, "Everyone else is seeing these things I'm seeing." Maybe everyone else is seeing Ken Jeong in the Hangover being a crazy naked lunatic, and that's the only time they've ever seen an Asian person on the screen, let alone in real life. Maybe they're waiting for me to spring out of a boot and be a crazy lunatic as well.

Eugene:

But I think I always wanted to resist that rabbit hole, I always wanted to resist the idea of just sitting down and resigning to this idea that like, "I'm really unattractive in specific Western cultures because of my quote unquote, race." Because as much as it can feel like a valid explanation, and as much as it can kind of affirm a lot of your frustrations and feelings, it doesn't really take you to a nice place.

Jay Ooi:

So Eugene hasn’t let this bring him down, since he doesn’t think it’s that helpful to him. But there are a lot of Asian men who do feel quite shafted and are pretty angry and annoyed about it all. Now I had stumbled upon a few subreddits where there were people quite angry at Asian women who date and marry white men, describing them as self hating race traitors who are trying to essentially erase their Asianness because they can get with a white guy. And look, I know it’s touchy, but I don’t want to dismiss this completely. Asian women do out-marry more than Asian men, and I’m sure you’ve heard phrases thrown around like “I don’t date other Asians because they look like my brother.” Here’s Melissa Ty again.

Melissa Ty:

I mean I would think that there is some internalised racism there because Asian men have gotten so much flak in mainstream society and media. So I think that Asian women in Australia have been exposed to Australia's idea of an ideal man. So it makes sense that they would be perhaps unable to visualise themselves with an Asian male partner. It's not dissimilar to the kind of internalised racism... well not internalised racism, but things that we dislike about ourselves that may be inherently Asian. Like Asian girls not liking their monolids, for example. It's just this idea that this isn't good. So it becomes internalised.

Jay Ooi:

So there might be some internalisation on the part of Asian women who want to distance themselves from their Asianness. But it does get pretty extreme. In fact, Eugene, who wrote an article on Asian male attraction, alerted me to a term and a group on the internet called ricecels. So you might have heard of incels, or involuntary celibates. Basically, these are men who aren’t able to find a romantic or sexual partner even though they want one, and they often throw a lot of hatred and anger toward women for not wanting to be with them. Ricecels is the Asian version of this, where Asian men feel this way, blaming all women but in particular Asian women for their inability to get with them.

Eugene:

I feel like yeah, a lot of that ricecel anger and resentment that goes towards women, essentially, is sort of what happens when you sit with futility. And a feeling of futility in yourself, is that if you feel like you've got no hope, you just get really angry because of the way you've reached that futility, and you think it's not your fault, and you think it's the way everyone else's, you end up being resentful and hateful towards other people.

Jay Ooi:

I mentioned this to Dr Steains as well who was very intrigued by this concept.

Timothy Kazuo Steains:

Well, I think that there's a certain extent to which they're right in the sense that they are highlighting, with a certain kind of critical attitude, the kinds of racialised power dynamics that we've been talking about. It is true that Asian men can really have a real negative experience with these racialised dynamics and create significant feelings of self-hatred or suffering. And it can be really difficult to know how to not just get out of feeling but actually to navigate those dynamics in the real world. Knowing that it's unjust, what can you actually do about it?

Timothy Kazuo Steains:

It can be defeating to know that actually, I can't do much about it actually because it's a much larger structural thing that one person can't fight on their own. You can get buff, and you can get those surgeries that make you look like you have a bigger jaw or whatever, which some of the incels do. But not everyone has access to that and it's not really true. It's not really clear whether that works or not.

Jay Ooi:

I asked psychologist Melissa Ty about this as well.

Melissa Ty:

I think it comes from externalising this problem that they feel, or difficult feelings that they have around perhaps being unwanted. One way to defend against that is to blame the source of that, and to say, "It's your fault that I feel this way." So I think, shaming women is a way to express their unhappiness and also... I think their hope is that they will change their behaviour.

Jay Ooi:

If you had someone who had these thoughts and ideas who came to you, how would you approach this as a psychologist?

Melissa Ty:

I would try to explore some of those beliefs around relationships and also his sense of self. And if he's carrying beliefs that are unhelpful, I think I would explore, "Okay. How unhelpful is this in your life? Are there other ways of thinking about this that would maybe lead you to more fulfilling relationships." So I think it's around kind of understanding where that's coming from and hopefully shifting perspective.

Jay Ooi:

So whilst it’s very true that Asian men have been emasculated in the west and it is harder for them to be seen as attractive, sexual beings, this ricecel anger often focuses on the external, and everyone’s treatment of them, rather than internally and what they have control over.

Eugene:

I think you can't be that angry at other people and blaming of other people without simultaneously feeling like you've got no work to do on yourself. And that's a decision that you make. And I don't have sympathy for that decision.

Jane Park:

I would adamantly deny the fact that any Asian woman who dates a white guy is a race traitor. If you do that, you're saying like, all people who date outside their race are traitors. What the hell does that mean? That's so wrong.

Jay Ooi:

So there’s clearly a lot of angst and sadness from Asian men because of how they’re perceived, and we do have a history that paints us in a certain way, as well as cultural differences in masculinity. But I think there’s more to it as well. When it comes to role models and visible representation, it’s still a work in progress. Eugene remembers idolising professional wrestling growing up, and Asian representation there wasn’t the best.

Eugene:

the only real Asian wrestler, I remember, was called Jimmy Wang Yang. And he was basically a Chinese American dude who dressed like a cowboy with the chaps and the hat and a rope. And ran around saying, "Hi ha," in a pretty kind of cringy way. And his job was to be beaten up by a big beefy white guy. So he was a very kind of like a stepping stone kind of a character for other people.

Eugene:

So Jimmy Wang Yang would be one of them. Just generally, I think things like Ken Jeong in the Hangover being the only time you're seeing an Asian man on TV or in a movie as a sort of unhinged, naked dude, puffing out of a bird, and doing some kind of weird kung fu stuff.

Timothy Kazuo Steains:

So we don't see many Asian male leads or romantic leads in Hollywood in TV. It's very rare, especially to see an Asian man with a white woman, let's say, because that particular power dynamic is just not seen as either acceptable or maybe people think that people just won't want to see or consume that because it goes against the existing narrative of how those gender dynamics are supposed to work along the lines of race.

Jay Ooi:

I think we are seeing slow improvements with movies like Last Christmas and Searching but there’s certainly a lot more work to be done.

Melissa Ty:

I mean, I would hope that as a society we would want more diverse role models out there. And the more that Asian men are seen, and Asian men are valued, then I think those stereotypes will start to break down. I mean we've got movies like, 'Crazy Rich Asian' and again there is the stereotype of the rich good looking Asian, but it's better than what we had before. So I think the more that we challenge our biases the more that we are aware of them, we're more likely to start to break these stereotypes.

Jay Ooi:

I think Melissa makes a good point here - a lot of the Asian representation we’re seeing isn’t that diverse, so the wider range of role models and images we have, the better. And if you think media isn’t that powerful or effective, here’s some thoughts from Dr Park, who uses pop culture to teach her students about race and gender.

Jane Park:

Look, the media has the power to disseminate these images to a really wide audience. That's number one. Number two, is that a lot of people won't actually get to meet Asian people or other people of other races. Tons of empirical data shows that we choose to live very racially segregated lives, so if all the information you're getting about a particular group is from the media, of course, that's going to influence how you see that group and how you interact with that group.

Jay Ooi:

And changing our collective perception is definitely one way to address this.

Eugene:

let's say there's a physical and then there's a cultural side with attraction works because we're humans and we're visually oriented, attraction works with physicality first. And then, as you get to know someone, I guess, attraction grows or develops because of personality, and maybe that's where culture comes into it.

Eugene:

And I think physically is where things like culture and representation come in because the more kind of normalized and non-stigmatized certain bodies are, the more they may be able to be seen on that first layer of attraction.

Jay Ooi:

But how else can we address this emasculation of Asian males? Especially when we hear comments from those around us that might be a bit hurtful or reveal a preference against Asian men?

Timothy Kazuo Steains:

Well, actually, I think talking about it is a good starting point. Like the incels, I think talking about that, that's the first step. It's an important step. Even though lot of people are critical of the incels. Obviously, I think there are a lot of ways in which parts of it incel culture, I don't agree with the way that they frame some of these issues, but I think the first step is to talk about it. For me, personally, it's a still ongoing kind of thing where I'm trying to let go of particular masculine expectations and in the process, find all the things that I've been missing out on. Some of those things are just genuine, loving connection with people, which it's difficult to do if you feel like no one's in interested in you in the first place.

Timothy Kazuo Steains:

Sometimes people saying "I only date white guys," I think that's fine. I think that if somebody has that kind of feeling, I'm not going to be like you should be attracted to this or that person.

Timothy Kazuo Steains:

But, and I think there are, especially if it's someone that you don't know, it can be really confrontational. But if it's people that you do know, and perhaps it could just be, you could just ask them about why that is. And if it's someone that you're comfortable with, you might be able to understand more of the complexity and nuance between them.

Timothy Kazuo Steains:

Because of course there are going to be reasons for why they feel that way. Some of those reasons might be valid. Some of them might be bound up in all sorts of culturally inherited things.

Timothy Kazuo Steains:

For me, especially if it's people that you're close to, it's nice to be able to have conversations about that, that seem nonjudgmental. Because if it gets really judgmental, then they're more likely to shut down anyway.

Jay Ooi:

Gently talking about it is definitely one way to get people thinking about these ideas we have about race and attraction which we’ve learnt.

Timothy Kazuo Steains:

Yeah, I know. It is true, you don't want to just completely ignore it, because you don't want to ignore racism and to just create a world where everyone just lets racists get away with it. But yeah, sometimes there are different modalities of conversation, which we're choosing how to have conversations with different people all the time, and I guess it's just a matter of knowing that this conversation about race can take place in different ways, depending on the particular context.

Jay Ooi:

And Psychologist Melissa Ty seems to agree.

Jay Ooi:

if we're in conversation with friends and maybe someone happens to say, "Oh. I'm just not into Asian men." Or "I don't think Asian men are attractive." Even me just saying that now, makes me feel a little hurt.

Melissa Ty:

It's extremely hurtful. I think it's about showing curiosity about that. I think a lot of people might jump to anger, but I think it's around, "Why do you think that?" "Where did you learn that?" And maybe that will help them build self awareness around that as well. See, I think curiosity is always a good place to start.

Melissa Ty:

I think it's really about coming to a place of self-acceptance, because when you are a minority and if you are devalued in some way, you've internalised that. So if you can come to a place of, 'No matter what, I am still okay. And I am still loveable, and I still have value in this world." Then I think that that's a good outcome. And I think it's about really turning in to these rather than, externalising that anger and externalising that hate. It is around looking at your self and finding your own self worth.

Melissa Ty:

And I guess also find the people who do know you for who you are. Go out there and find people who accept you. I think that's the biggest healing that we can experience, is other people's acceptance of us. So I think, it's not easy. It's simple but not easy.

Jay Ooi:

I think this is really important but often not easy to do, but I promise there are groups and communities that don’t stereotype Asian men as non-sexual, timid beings. Often the people that surround us end up impacting the way we view ourselves, and if you’re in an environment or friendship group where putting down Asian men is kind of normal, then I’m sorry you’re experiencing that. Just know that not everyone feels this way about Asian men. For Eugene, he went on to explore the challenges of dating as an Asian-Australian man, so I asked him what he learnt from writing his article.

Eugene:

I guess I just learned that I wasn't the only one that had felt that way. And that with just a little bit of prodding, it's something that a lot of guys would want to talk about but don't because maybe we're worried that a friend will go create a weird website about it. Yeah, I think I just really learned, yeah, how prolific it is as a feeling, but also how reluctant we are to talk about it.

Jay Ooi:

We’ve covered quite a lot in this episode, but let me try and wrap it up. Asian men have been stereotyped and stigmatised in Australia ever since they arrived, from being treated as disease carriers, to being painted uniformly and as sinister or effeminate, even though they were just culturally different, and were of course not a singular monolith. They have also been pushed into roles outside of the nuclear white family, and have been excluded from images of Australian identity.

But ideas of masculinity and what is attractive in a man are very different here in Australia vs in a lot of Asia. The quieter, hard working, family-oriented man is often what is desired in a lot of Asian countries, whereas this is seen as less masculine here in Australia, since they’re not the athletic, bro-ey womaniser. And as a result, Asian men are perceived as emasculated and not as sexually attractive here in Australia.

And because of these stereotypes, a lot of Asian men in Australia do have a harder time dating and forming sexual and romantic relationships. And if someone is attracted to them, they might question whether someone likes them because of them or because they have this weird thing for Asians. But it can also go the other way, where Asian men start blaming others, particularly women, for being unable to form these sexual and romantic connections.

And a lot of these phrases that get casually thrown around like “I’m just not into Asian guys” can be quite hurtful, and I think we definitely need to examine ourselves, our language and our preferences, and also catch each other out on them.

But we also don’t have many great Asian male role models in the west to look up to, and so we can often be caught between typical Australian masculinity, and what our culture values as well.

But just because Asian masculinity isn’t valued as highly in Australia, it doesn’t mean it’s worse or wrong. There’s a unique opportunity for Asian men to forge their own identities and versions of masculinity, and I think this is a really great space for us to exist in. For me personally, I don’t want to conform to traditional Aussie masculinity, and finding acceptance of other identities has been really helpful.

To wrap this episode up, I want to share a bit more of Eugene’s story, and where he’s landed today.

Eugene:

So yeah, I've been in a good relationship for almost four years. So it may be, yeah, that just sort of, by default, kind of makes things nicer. But I feel like I... I don't know if it's just in my head. Okay, so two things actually, so one is that I definitely feel like the optics of me as an Asian man with a white female partner, are still kind of weird to other people sometimes. Sometimes we're walking just on the street, and we'll be holding hands, or, in some way giving away that we're together, and this one time, this dude walked by us and just went, "What a lovely couple." And just kept on going.

Eugene:

But yeah, I think the other thing that I was meant to talk about is I think I feel like I have seen more Asian male, Western female couples around the place in the last year or so.

Eugene:

And maybe that is a broader cultural shift or maybe it's just sort of where I am and what I'm subconsciously kind of looking for or looking at

Eugene:

But at the same time, as we've said, I think sometimes with dating in general, you do just need to figure yourself out first so that you can be a person worth dating. But you do also maybe have valid sort of racial, cultural complications on top of that, so it's kind of a messy thing. But yeah.

Eugene:

The complications that come with race and representation and visibility, just add extra obstacles to the whole experience of dating and relationships. But I think that if you kind of just keep doing the thing, which is figure yourself out, be a better person, be someone who is worth dating, be someone who's worth loving, generally, something good will happen.

Credits

This episode of Shoes Off was written, produced and edited by me, Jay Ooi.

Special thanks to all the guests in today’s episode: Dr Timothy Kazuo Steains, Dr Jane Park, Dr Sophie Loy-Wilson, Melissa Ty, and Eugene Yang, as well as JT Tran who I couldn’t quite fit into this ep.

In the show notes for this episode at shoesoff.net you can find all the references, including Eugene’s article he wrote about this topic.

Some music is by Avik Chari and the episode artwork is by Yelly Chuan.

What sort of comments have you heard thrown around about Asian men? Let me know @shoesoffau on facebook and instagram.

If you liked Shoes Off please subscribe, we’re on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or wherever you’re listening to it right now, or head to shoesoff.net

And if you have Asian male friends who might relate to what you’ve heard today, please share this episode with them.

Thanks, and catch you next episode.

Eugene:

And maybe if I'm just someone's type because they have had an experience living in Asia or dated men of color before, then that's still kind of a valid choice that someone else can make. And it's not up to me to kind of demand somebody's attraction, even if I feel like that's tied to broader cultural things. It's not up to me to kind of resent someone else or be angry at them.