From: parghi@cs.uiuc.edu (Amit Parghi)
Subject: From the Stanford Daily #2 (Part II)
Originator: parghi@dubius.cs.uiuc.edu
Organization: Tex & Edna Boil's Prairie Warehouse and Curio Emporium
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1992 20:54:46 GMT

This article appeared as a sidebar to the main article (see previous
posting) on the front page of the Stanford _Daily_ on December 1.  Again,
a lot of the issues discussed in this article have been covered in this
newsgroup, but I think it's still worth a read.

Amit

	Asian males say they're getting dealt a bad hand in media
	portrayal, the dating game

	by Carrie Chang
	Editorial staff

	Ever heard of an Asian male fetish?

	"I don't know of anything breathing on the planet who has
	that," said junior Mike Duh.

	While the stereotype of exotic subserviency haunts some Asian
	women, Asian men are often seen as "geeky" and "socially
	clueless."  This unflattering image, coupled with the
	preponderance of Asian female-Caucasian male relationships on
	campus, has left many Asian man caught in a Catch-22 rejection;
	besides being excluded from interracial relationships, some of
	Stanford's Asian men feel slighted by Asian women as well.

	"Asian men ... they're pissed off," said Rick Yuen, director of
	the Asian American Activities Center.  "I think it could be
	that they might want to date white women and are being
	rejected, but also that they are feeling betrayed by Asian
	women."

	Many Asian males argue that common stereotypes of being overly
	studious and shy coupled with their generally smaller build
	compared to males of other races have placed them in this
	double-bind of rejection.  But they say the most damaging
	component could be the way Asian men are inevitably portrayed
	as emasculated characters in the media, cast as either evil
	eunuchs or unequivocal nerds.

			  The Long Duck Dong factor

	"I can tell you why this is happening in three words," said
	Duh.  "Long Duck Dong (the socially clueless Asian character in
	Sixteen Candles who ran around asking, `What's a-happenin' hot
	stuff?')."

	While actresses like Joan Chen and Tamilyn Tomita are usually
	cast in alluring roles, Asian men are more often portrayed as
	comic freaks or asexual wimps.

	"How often do you see studly Asian men in movies?" asked Duh.
	"All you see are dorks with heavy Asian accents."

	"If you look at the media, there are hardly any positive
	representations of Asian guys in interracial relationships,"
	said Dr. Karen Huang, a psychologist with Counseling and
	Psychological Services.

	And while flattering images of Asian men are scarce, famous and
	successful Asian women in the media are more prevalent; more
	often than not they have Caucasian spouses.

	"Look at Connie Chung and Amy Tan, they're all married to
	Caucasian men," said Huang.

	If images in the media haunt Asian men, stereotypes on campus
	persist as well, painting a picture of men who, as one
	Asian-American woman said, "do problem sets, play volleyball
	and listen to Erasure all day."

	"There's a lack of individualism in that perception," said
	senior Kenneth Tan, issues chair of Asian American Students
	Association.  "No one wants to go out with a cardboard figure
	who plays volleyball and wears baseball caps all day."

	The prevalent image of clones with baseball caps and
	calculators cuts a figure far from dashing.

	"You don't say, `God that man is so sexy -- he finishes his
	problem sets on time,'" said junior Chris Yeh.

	"When I go to Chinatown and see old Chinese bachelors sitting
	in the park by themselves, I get really depressed," said Tan.

	Some say such subtle images turn off all women, leaving Asian
	men with the short end of the stick...

	"Short end of the stick?" asked Duh.  "That brings up another
	stereotype."

				Fear of rejection

	Surrounded by negative images which they feel diminish their
	appeal to women, many Asian men are reluctant to ask out women
	of other races for fear of rejection.

	"We feel there's a 90 percent chance we'd get dissed," said
	Tan.

	"I'm not scared to ask a white woman out but there's always in
	the back of my mind, `Why would they be attracted to me?'" said
	sophomore Eric Tung.

	"If you actually think like that, you go in with an attitude of
	self-fulfilling prophecy," said graduate student Pat Lin.  But
	he added that it might be true that many women are
	preconditioned to see Asian men as unromantic figures.

	But senior Isolde Birdthistle, who is Irish and is going out
	with Lin, argues that not all women are swayed by the negative
	stereotypes.  "There are a lot of white women who really
	consider Asian men attractive.  I don't think I'm a rare
	exception," she said.

			    Boundary of two cultures

	For some Asian men, the number of many Asian women going out
	with white men can be a sensitive issue, triggering hostility
	and even bitterness.  In their eyes, dating outside the "ethnic
	pool" signals a betrayal of their race.

	"A lot [of] Asian women are snow-blind twinkies who view having
	a white boyfriend as a status symbol," complained "Kevin," an
	Asian-American senior.

	"The skewed ratio of interracial relationships on this campus
	could mean that white women aren't going out with Asian guys,
	but what bothers me more is that some Asian women are turning
	their backs on their culture," said Tan.

	But junior Nancy Chiou dismissed that idea as "ridiculous."

	"Just because I'm going out with someone who's white doesn't
	mean I'm betraying half my culture," she said.

	Some women disagree that Asian women prefer white men, pointing
	out that other factors come into play to explain the
	interracial dating scene on campus.

	"A lot of Asian men tend to act slower so Asian women don't
	realize they're interested until it's too late," said senior
	Angela Chen, adding that the socialization process of Asian men
	in this country might [be] leaving them feeling more insecure.

	"We are more insecure," said Tan.  "As an Asian living in
	America, I find myself on the boundary of two cultures.  One
	culture teaches me to be quiet and reflect, while the other
	culture says the ideal male is verbally aggressive," he said,
	adding that Asian ideals are often out of sync with white,
	mainstream ideals of masculinity.

	Whatever [the] reasons given, many disgruntled students often
	find themselves lost within a myriad of racial explanations
	that attempt to explicate but usually never fully address the
	self-esteem questions inherent in the dating predicament.

	"We want to be able to look at ourselves and say we're okay
	people, we're strong.  There's different signals that tell us
	that," said Yuen.  "For Asian men, the signal is, we're not
	okay because this happens."
Newsgroups: soc.culture.asian.american,soc.culture.african.american,alt.politics.clinton