you can't just call everyone an incel
(pt 2) spineless asian american essays, wmaf + asian masculinity, and avoiding accountability for our own relationships with whiteness
This is Part A, Chapters 1-3 of a 23,000 word manifesto on the culture, media, and discourse surrounding Whiteness, Asian America, “representation,” and White Male-Asian Female (WMAF) relationships. If you haven’t yet, read the intro:
In this 2nd installment I’ll explain how much of Asian American culture writing is focused on recalling historical anti-Asianness to justify our oppression as if to avoid interrogation and accountability for our current relationships with Whiteness, such as the abundance of WMAF in positions of cultural and political influence.
Current WMAF discourse is stuck between the binary of White patriarchy and White feminism, where being pro-WMAF is a celebration of the post-racial feminist future where interracial relationships abound, and being anti-WMAF is a dogwhistle for incels. I’m dissatisfied with this discourse. I’ll analyze the logic of both “sides” and the politics of desiribility through discussing post-racial White feminism, White sexual violence against Asian women, Celeste Ng, Asian anti-feminists, racial purists, Elliot Rodger, the Oxford Study, and racialized masculinity.
Part A, Ch 1: Why WMAF matters. The spineless Asian American Essay.
Part A, Ch 2: Let’s talk about WMAF.
Part A, Ch 3: Ah Yes, Asian Masculinity.
1/ the spineless Asian American Essay
So why should anyone other than bitter misogynists still talk about WMAF?
Today’s essays on Asian America indulge in our ancestors’ and elders’ histories of colonization, railroad builders and gold miners, sexual violence, the origins of the words “Asian America,”1 and yellowface. While informative, these essays rarely prioritize, let alone incorporate, any modern nuance about our relationship with White people today (like WMAF).
Devoting the majority of words to recalling a collective racial history as context for the present assumes that in the centuries or decades since, all of Asian America has experienced the same effects. We neglect that class heavily influences how war, hypersexualization, or the model minority myth actually plays out in different communities today. Even within WMAF relationships there is nuance in how Asian females are received in their romantic relationships and by our society: a war-bride, refugee, or Southeast Asian does not have the same privileges as an Ivy League alum, suburbanite, or East Asian.
Also, it’s 2025 – the Asian Liberals are no longer in denial about historic anti-Asianness. Yet, while authors are quick to cite examples like war brides and “me love you long time,” they are not so willing to interrogate their own relationships with Whiteness. The Asian American Essay may start out with a personal anecdote about anti-Asianness to establish relatability, but the writer’s lived experience slowly fades out into the background as Asian American History 101 takes the stage.2
Has the Asian American community gaslit each other so much that when we write something about our lives, we have to validate our oppression by referencing something from the history books?
Whether intentional or not, what makes this typical Asian American Essay so tiresome and preachy is what
calls the “the air of superiority [that manifests] in the author’s sudden removal of themselves from the matter—as if they too aren’t impacted by what’s being critiqued—and in the affected, contradictory modesty that comes in them then assuring the reader that they are.”3 In implying that Anti-Asianness is something for the history books, these writers ultimately “blur [our] vision and judgment about something political (meaning: pertaining to power relations) in the present moment,” as writes.4Anti-Asianness didn’t disappear, it just evolved, and some are lucky that it doesn’t feel relevant to them anymore. The “interactive dynamics of racism, sexism, homophobia, ageism, and ableism” have merely shifted to the private, casual parts of our lives. By not recognizing our lived experiences and proximity to whiteness as modern manifestations of the history we claim to respect, we overlook that power and oppression are not just patterns, but processes “produced and reproduced through many people outside the immediate power dyad.”5 It’s the people around us who sustain and affirm racialized stereotypes, expectations of behavior, and power dynamics.
In some better Asian American Essays, the author will include sociological analysis of contemporary research on interracial relationships, hate crimes, or media representation. But it’s as if only statistics can be trusted to make convincing arguments; even when we are talking about Asian American media, we rarely dive deep into the content itself — what we make of the plot line, the lore, the casting, the author’s backstory — instead we stick to summary-type aggregate statements applauding (or criticizing) the mere existence of the Asian American Media.
To be fair, that is how version 1 of my manifesto looked — I wanted my “evidence” to rest mostly on other people’s scholarly analysis and “official” research, not just my personal angry movie reviews. Through the process of writing this manifesto I’ve challenged my own ideas.6
I learned that avoiding personal reflections on our positionality today undermines the importance of our ancestors’ histories that we claim to respect. We blur history into sweeping generalizations, authorize White feminism to dictate the binaries and boundaries of the discussion, and oblige White liberals with easily digestible versions of the Asian American Model Minority (gag!) journey.
Ultimately, mainstream Asian America in its current state is unwilling to actually engage with Whiteness as it relates to ourselves today. So in this manifesto, I will be focusing on racial dynamics post-2020. I will be assuming that we all know about, or can research, the violent histories of anti-Asianness, Asian female hypersexualization, and Asian male emasculation.
2/ let’s talk about wmaf
The present-day question of WMAF is controversial, and not one approached lightly. You don’t bring it up unless you’re ready to die on one of two possible hills: pro-WMAF, which either advocates bodily autonomy or White-worship, or anti-WMAF, which either evokes miscegenation or Asian pride. To me, a 2nd generation Chinese American, the WMAF non-conversation taken at face value is just another colonized community wondering whether they should date White people.
Dig a little deeper – the way we rush to diagnose the “other” side as bitter misogynists or self-hating White-worshippers instead of actually investigating the racial dynamics in WMAF exemplifies the limitations of our self-imposed binaries.
Nowadays, the racial undertones of a WMAF relationship may seem inconsequential to White people. bell hooks writes of White men who openly desire Black women:
“Unlike racist White men who historically violated the bodies of black women/women of color to assert their position as colonizer/conqueror, these young men see themselves as non-racists, who choose to transgress racial boundaries within the sexual realm not to dominate the Other, but rather so that they can be acted upon, so that they can be changed utterly.”
As such, many White people see interracial relationships as objective, albeit progressive, choices. They know that exploring the Other “will provide a greater, more intense pleasure than any that exists in the ordinary world of one’s familiar racial group.”7 Interpreting this phenomenon as just a post-racial win helps us all forget that White men still see Asian women as sexual conquests8 and White men kill us,9 because White America has always seen all of Asia as an imperial conquest.10
it’s not WMAF, it’s just “interracial”
Despite the violent history, it seems that Asians have a particularly hard time recognizing the White in the Asian-White relationship, and accepting that the WMAF dynamic specifically differs from other interracial relationships involving Asian women.
Many articles defending WMAF and tearing down critical Mens’ Rights Asians (MRAsians) refer to the relationships as “interracial,” rather than naming the two races involved – for example, “When Asian Women are Harrassed for Marrying Non-Asian Men,” “I’ve Been Harassed Online For Being In An Interracial Relationship – And I’m Not The Only One,” “Trolls are citing an ‘Oxford study’ to demean Asian women in interracial relationships,” or “Peter Kavinsky is White and I’m Glad || On The Portrayal of Interracial Dating.”11
The usage of “interracial” here exploits the word’s association ”with the history of anti-miscegenation laws that especially targeted Blacks,” as a Reddit user suspects. “Anything from that era immediately evokes imagery of Black children not being allowed to drink from the same water fountain.”12
This deliberately misleading vocabulary places criticism of WMAF in the past and portrays WMAF couples as welcoming, and enjoying, the “post-racial future.”13
By refusing to name White supremacy as the culprit both now and then, we dismiss Asian male anger as hang-ups over obsolete injustices and falsely represent a societal failure as a personal one.
it’s not white supremacy, it’s the unstable asian male
“Good Asian Liberals,” aka Boba Liberals, are quick to link any WMAF criticism to MRAsians and the unstable Asian male psychology. Instead of investigating White supremacist systems, WMAF defenders tear down Asian incel culture and flatten a discussion about Asian America into a White-feminist politic.
To them, you are either a feminist (pro-WMAF, because you believe that Asian women have the right to be with any other race), or you are a misogynist (anti-WMAF, because you believe that Asian women must be with only Asian men). Notwithstanding the obvious double standard here in the unbalance between “any other” and “only Asian,” this straw man debate between Asian women and Asian incels conveniently allows White men to evade responsibility.
In 2022, when MRAsians harassed Hmong American Olympian Suni Lee for dating a Black man, many people published scathing critiques of Asian incels. It’s curious that both of these writers14 blame “MRAsian’s misguided fight against White supremacy” for their spiteful behavior, but feature only a BMAF relationship as a case study, when WMAF relationships not only are more popular, but also are literally connected to the root of this conflict – Whiteness.
In Suni Lee’s case — while the BMAF relationship is illustrated with a photo of the happy couple and the MRAsians are decried as the manifestation of all anti-interracial or anti-feminist psychology, the WMAF dynamics remain unchallenged and the culprit of White supremacy remains nameless, faceless, omnipresent. White supremacy camouflages itself as the backdrop against which the MRAsian ideology mysteriously forms, when it’s really the main character that constructs Asian masculinity as the “other against which White masculinity is defined as superior.”15
Further, in the mad dash to berate MRAsians at any cost, WMAF defenders discount clear evidence of White supremacy at play within intimate relationships. In Celeste Ng’s article, “When Asian Women Are Harassed for Marrying Non-Asian Men,” she offers proof that the r/AsianMasculinity subreddit often “explicitly discussed Asian women’s choice of sexual partners” (hyperlinks are Ng’s). The links actually offer an analysis of alt-right fetishization of Asians, a story about White men groping Malaysian women at clubs, and 2 videos of women discussing their personal dating preferences.
While there is plenty of misogynist discussion in the comment section, how can Ng sidestep the explicit racism and violence that the comments are responding to? Ng doesn’t address the original content of these posts because she does not want to truly interrogate the WMAF dynamic. Ng’s priority in this essay is to shame Asian male misogynists, not to defend Asian women’s autonomy. Within our current discourse, there is only room for one of these narratives to exist.
Isn’t it actually anti-feminist and anti-Asian to believe that you cannot support Asian women’s autonomy and criticize White supremacy at the same time?
it’s not oppression if you’re a man
Statistical evidence, rather than depth of lived experience, is often wielded and prized in the Oppression Olympics between Asian women and Asian men. Instead of engaging in honest conversation, many (both attacking and defending WMAF) arm themselves with statistics. For example, the phrase “Oxford Study,” allegedly referencing 2010 research16 that found that 25% of all interracial relationships are WMAF, has become fighting words – on any pro-WMAF Tiktok, Asian men dismissively comment “Oxford Study” as a condescending substitute for “numbers don’t lie,” and Asian women respond (rightfully) with accusations of misogyny.
Arguments on either side, operating under the misconception that oppression can be quantified and independent variables like race, class, sexual orientation, disability, etc all “add on” to someone’s oppression score, fall apart when you acknowledge the social context within which said “evidence” develops.
Anti-WMAF, generally Asian male commenters, rely on “objective” research to prove the overabundance of WMAF relationships. What they overlook is that statistics are in fact limited by their researchers’ own subjective and philosophical approaches to methodology, correlation, or data efficacy. For example:
How do you account for generational or class differences? Do you care?
Do we include only legal marriages? How do we define “relationship?”
What if someone is multiracial?
What if someone considers themselves non-White but is actually white-passing?
What if the woman in WMAF is literally the only non-White person in their area?
What if the man in WMAF is literally the only White person in their area?
Knowing whether there are really disproportionally more WMAF in privileged positions requires contextual, qualitative discussion and simply trying to mic-drop with a percentage is absurd.
On the other hand, many WMAF defenses use statistics about financial privilege to assert that Asian American men are only feigning oppression to bully Asian American women. For example, Ju-Hyun Park17 states that “Asian women make 73 cents for each dollar an Asian man makes” and “Asian men were 44% more likely to be executives than Asian women” to suggest Asian men are actually more privileged than Asian American women and therefore have nothing to complain about.
This argument of “social privilege” through the logic of capitalism, rather the racial dynamics at play, is only one of many instances where Asian Americans fall back on deservingness and meritocracy to claim belonging in White America.
Is no one going to say anything about the obvious disparity in between Asian men and Asian women both socially and professionally? In school, it seemed that the extroverted Asian girls could easily break into the “cool White kids” group, but Asian boys could not — the popular boys still hung out with other Asians. And, during my time in the corporate world, senior management was consistently White people and Asian women — rarely men of color, especially not Asian men.18
Attempting to quantify oppression removes any unquantifiable social interaction or experience, ignores intersectionality at the expense of proving a point and assumes that outcomes themselves are what matters, awarding legitimate suffering only to the winner, and disregarding the “minority group” (in this case, Asian men) whose reasoning is just as critical to understanding the problem.
it’s not white men who are entitled, it’s asian men
’s article debunking the WMAF Oxford Study correctly points out that the study doesn’t make sense as anti-WMAF ammo, because it doesn’t take into account anecdotal evidence like the “real and valid reasons why Asian women choose to date outside their race.”19 However, she also falls into the same trap of reducing a complex conversation about White masculinity and normalized dynamics into an easy takedown of “modern-day anti-miscegenation” via posing the obviously foolish strawman “narrative that Asian women [consciously] choose White men only to acquire their status and privilege.”
I don’t believe anyone engaging in good-faith WMAF criticism nowadays is actually accusing Asian women of gold-digging. It’s 2025 — I’m not saying mail-order brides don’t exist, I’m saying that my peers are born and raised Asian American. To make an honest effort at analyzing WMAF as it occurs today, we need to understand that we are part of this population.
Elle Ray presents the “sentiments of the other side” (anti-WMAF) in a tiny section near the end of the article, but identifies both Asian male emasculation and Asian female hypersexualization as historical events that took place mainly in the 1900s, instead of, for example, very seriously internalized small dick jokes that undeniably still happen in 2025. Out of the 20+ times she writes “White men/man/partner/person,” ~12 of those times are simply in the descriptive phrase of “[insert race] women dating/with/choosing White men.”
What I mean to point out is that over half of the time White men are mentioned, they are but passive observers, someone being dated or chosen by an Asian woman. We don’t talk about commonplace, accepted, internalized White-Asian dynamics, instead opting for shocking, blatantly racist things like the horrific Atlanta Spa Shootings.
This is a conscious move that WMAF defenders make to position all WMAF critics as out-of-touch anti-feminists criticizing Asian women and Asian female autonomy, rather than White supremacy and White masculinity.
To top it all off, the Oxford Study isn’t even the “damning” research we all think it is. Elle Ray links a TikTok in which Christian Divyne reveals that words “Oxford Study” originated from a Black man’s (@lightskinbbyrei on TikTok) joke that “the power of the Caucasian kitty pounder over the Asian female subconscious needs a full Oxford investigation.”20 Divyne goes on to spend the second half of the video berating Asian misogynists for just not understanding that “mid White people get everything.”
A commentator on Divyne’s video astutely points out that “a black dude created the meme and everyone uses the meme but you framed the video to say asian men are misogynistic?” Somehow, in a complex situation involving black men, White men, Asian women, and Asian men, the majority of the conversation still centers Asian men’s failings.
asians can be white feminists too
In this way, many well-intentioned Asian American (and non-Asian) thinkers omit actual discussion of the specific White-Asian racial dynamics when attempting to “disprove” the myth that Asian women’s attraction to White men is built on internalized racism.
This conversation should not be a debate about Asian women’s right to choose their partners, or even about whether Asian women are obligated to care about Asian mens’ feelings. By centering the ways our personal decisions can reflect our society’s racial hierarchy, we can untangle ourselves from this Western bubble where our unalienable, God Given Right to make our own decisions also releases us from our positionality in relation to the rest of our kin/people/society.
Current Asian American Discourse doesn’t make room to talk about:
The ways Asian men are excluded from traditional White/western masculinity
The defensive and dismissive language some Asian women use to explain their dating preferences, if they even give voice to it at all
How the colorblind narrative of WMAF post-racial feminism ignores White supremacy at the societal level
Why WMAF plotlines are so rampant in contemporary Asian American racial coming-of-age autofiction
Our reliance on Whiteness to define Asianness by what it is not, which encourages dilution of our culture into discrete, commercializable personality traits that sever connections between Asian America and Asians elsewhere
The intertwined global politics of imperialism, colonialism, carcerality, and anti-indigeneity
The rampant anti-Asianness that permeates any conversation about capitalism, business ethics, creativity (or lack thereof), knockoffs, and authoritarianism
Characterizing WMAF critics as uninformed misogynists without offering a substantial critique of today’s brand of White masculinity is a disingenuous attempt to evade the uncomfortable conversation.
This conversation will inevitably make its way towards the subject of masculinity for non-White men, where WMAF defenders (or anyone who is not a White man) may have to face some uncomfortable truths about their role in upholding western standards of masculinity.
3/ ah yes, asian masculinity
The conversation about Asian (and racialized) masculinity often gets lost in the neverending dispute between White supremacy and White feminism. Here, when I specify White supremacy and White feminism, I am not limiting the participants to White people. Rather I am saying that Asian Americans have limited themselves to the White person’s worldview.
The lack of a robust intersectional analysis in the masculinity discourse gestures towards the average liberal’s queasiness when confronted with non-White men struggling with masculinity and intimacy – they just don't fit into the White feminist framework where all men equally reap the benefits of oppressing women.
In general, our society too quickly rejects men who divulge their grievances about intimate relationships (with women) as self-victimizing-misogynist-incel-losers. It’s not like we’re paranoid for no reason — we live in a patriarchal society that preaches toxic masculinity. We have witnessed incels shoot up their schools.
sums up this paradox, writing that:“The legacy of modernity is as broad as humanity, but singularly recurrent among its outgrowths is the frequency with which men and women renegotiate their relationship to one another.”21
Current discourse abounds with thinkpieces about whether women even like men anymore, why boys aren’t going to college, whether we even want male vulnerability, male body-shaming, the lack of (straight) male voices in contemporary fiction, the “quiet cruelty” of boyhood, and the exploitative violence of manhood.22
In this tug-of-war between patriarchal systems and modern feminism, it seems like we don’t know which side to trust. Our reaction to male vulnerability is a bitter mixture of skepticism, spite, and condescension with little room for empathy, lest it be at the expense of women.
While feminists demand more for women, they overlook that men could, and should, also benefit from being freed from the clutches of toxic, White masculinity. Society does have contradictory and impossible expectations for men – men must be tall, strong, handsome, and considerate, assertive but not aggressive, tactful but not passive, compassionate but not hypersensitive, vulnerable but never actually insecure.
Do liberal women really want men to pretend these gendered struggles don’t exist, to be more like the “male feminist, the self-effacing ally who leaps with joy to argue that he is the source of all the wrongs in the world?”23 Probably not.
Let’s be real, the mainstream feminist movement does not actually want men to be more “feminine.” No, we want them to still be manly but “positively,” more of a himbo than an abuser.
In Boymom, Whippman suggests this attempt to expand the definition of masculinity only reinforces masculinity as the better alternative to femininity and “sends a clear message to boys and men that appearing masculine is so fundamental to male worth that they must never reject it all together.” Even well-intentioned advocacy for “healthy” masculinity can be a dog-whistle for the way we expect men to hide their weaknesses.24
If we really wanted to interrogate toxic masculinity, we’d have to think about Whiteness and how White masculinity is the ultimate prize.
the binary of white patriarchy and white feminism
Curiously, a lot of these masculinity essays avoid saying anything substantial about its intersection with race and class, even though the essays are ultimately about the expectations of White masculinity. Maybe it’s because they’re written by White people, or because venturing beyond the safe-zone of mainstream White feminism to understand the lived experiences of non-White men feels like an easy way to get caught saying something that sounds anti-feminist.
Either way, there’s not much written about racialized masculinity in these contemporary boy/manhood essays, because the straightforward way around the anti-feminist landmines is “to simply label [men] as oppressors and dismiss them,” never giving “voice to the gaps in our understanding or [talking] about maleness in complex ways,” as bell hooks writes in The Will to Change.
We’ve trapped ourselves in the binary of White patriarchy and White feminism, a binary that powers the popular untruth that “authentic” male vulnerability is just misogyny and “the meat of masculinity is still just hating women and relating to them primarily via sexual resentment.”25 This reinforces toxic masculinity by denying men the grace to explore their emotions, and also eliminates intersectionality. This reductionist approach washes away the existence of queer folks like trans men who struggle with masculinity in different ways.26 It overlooks the racialized rankings of masculinity upheld by White supremacy and continues to explain it all away under the progressive guise of romantic preference.
why do we desire the people we desire?
And this brings us back to WMAF. Specifically, denying that Asian men (and, obviously, other non-White men) are subjected to racialized standards of masculinity, and asserting that Asian men’s romantic predicaments are completely a consequence of their own misogyny is some White feminist thinking that makes none of us safer.
Mainstream feminists viewed Elliot Rodger (the 2014 Isla Vista shooter) and his infamous manifesto, My Twisted World, as the “embodiment of misogynistic entitlement,” yet paid little attention to “Rodger’s claims to having been sexually and romantically marginalized on the basis of his race [half-Asian], introversion, and lack of stereotypical masculinity.” Amia Srinivasan observes that at the core of Rodger’s twisted worldview is the truth that “racism and the norms of heteromasculinity placed him beyond desirability.”27
Acknowledging the truth to this statement is not the same as endorsing Rodger’s actions. Because “incels refer to women mechanistically, as ‘femoids/foids’ [and] construe themselves mechanistically, as a collection of physical measurements, external status markers, and so on,”
suggests that not only does the incel epitomize misogynist violence to the average person, incels additionally provoke a “bio-materialist horror” that our romanticization of free will, love, and intimacy, could possibly be psychologically manipulated or “that human beings are fundamentally and inescapably mechanistic to our core.”28We don’t want to believe that our personal decisions can be subconsciously influenced by societal forces or that we may be less in control than we thought.29 So, we fear anything short of outright dismissal of incel reasoning exposes us too, as antisocial, reductionist, or nihilist.
Look me in the eyes and tell me that White men don’t see themselves as more deserving than Asian men. Tell me that Asian women have never internalized this kind of thinking in some way.
Do you know a White guy from high school who thought he was cooler than the Asians, who now has an Asian girlfriend? I’m sure you do. That’s the White superiority complex at work.
Do you know an Asian girl with an entirely Asian friend group, but a White boyfriend? I’m sure you do. That’s the racialized standards of masculinity at work — Asians are friends, not boyfriends.
None of this means an Asian man is entitled to an Asian woman. Srinivasan suggests:
“The question, then, is how to dwell in the ambivalent place where we acknowledge that no one is obliged to desire anyone else, that no one has a right to be desired, but also that who is desired and who isn’t is a political question, a question often answered by more general patterns of domination and exclusion.”30
While Asian women may not be intentionally creating or causing racism, White racial domination still shapes our perceptions of daily life. Often, Asian women explain their preference for White men by conflating ethnic culture and patriarchy and associating co-ethnic males with Asian male dominance.
In this way, “Asian masculinity is constructed as the opposite of White masculinity…suggesting it is an essentialised racial component of one’s blood, body, and culture” that renders Asian masculinity “unalterable and invariable” and glorifies “White men as romantic liberators.” 31
It’s not that all Asian women in WMAF relationships need to break up with their boyfriends. It’s more that we shouldn’t deny there’s some real reasons why we want who we want, and why so many of us want White men.
writes in an essay about genital preferences and understanding our own sexual desire:“Accountability is tricky. A very careful balancing act. It relies on a neutrality that must carefully not dip into apathy. It requires a self-compassion that still uncomfortably challenges yourself. It demands deep introspection, while also being just as considerate about other perspectives.”32
This juxtaposition of Asian with White masculinity quietly lives on in the contemporary Asian American novels and films that we praise for rejecting the White gaze and upholding our own ways of seeing ourselves. I have a lot of thoughts on whether they’re worthy of the praise that they get for “representing” Asian America. I’ll cover this next.
In the next essay, I discuss contemporary Asian American literature and media. Here’s part 3:
Here’s part 4:
stopping asian hate, one boba at a time
(pt 4) choose your asian american aesthetic - compliant or carceral?
Here’s part 5:
just put the fortune cookies in the bag bro
(pt 5) unfeeling, empty asian labor in fashion knockoffs, olympic swimming, severance, past lives, perfect days, and netflix's 3 body problem
As Jay Kang jokes in a podcast episode of
, “If an article about Asians is 1,000 words right now, 200 are like a perfunctory mention of AAPI hate, and like 150 are ‘Asian American, a term that originated at the University of California, Berkeley in the late 1960s’…there’s like 600 words left that you can make an argument in.”I’m not going to cite specific essays here because it feels too personal to criticize this general “vibe” of what authors are not writing rather than what they are writing, just to make my point. Once you’ve read a couple of contemporary Asian American thinkpieces I think you’ll understand what I mean.
As
writes in notes on style and authority, a critique of “culture writing” that is written so defensively that it doesn’t actually say anything, I refuse to “refuse authority” and prop up my own opinions by citing authors to state the obvious – “This subject matters because of this fake reason; this opinion isn’t mine, it’s this other guy’s; I am just reporting the stream of my own thoughts, not making a claim; by the way, here’s a study.…” I have authority because I am writing this.In Choosing to walk,
notes, “An essay is not the process of translating a fully-formed idea into words on a page; it is the process of discovering and testing an idea by challenging it with form, syntax, structure.”Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance, bell hooks
What White Men Say In Our Absence, Elaine Hsieh Chou
Trigger warning: Extremely graphic list of hate crimes against Asian women
Policing the borders of Anti-Asian violence, Mark Tseng-Putterman
When Asian Women are Harrassed for Marrying Non-Asian Men, Celeste Ng; I’ve Been Harassed Online For Being In An Interracial Relationship – And I’m Not The Only One, Sandie Cheng; Trolls are citing an ‘Oxford study’ to demean Asian women in interracial relationships, Steffi Cao; Peter Kavinsky is White and I’m Glad || On The Portrayal of Interracial Dating, Kay
r/aznidentity post titled “Don’t let people get away with saying interracial relationships when they really mean WMAF”
“Asian American guys are the low men on the totem pole, a humiliation that wouldn’t nearly be as bad if at least Asian American women were also similarly low in status,” from
’s review of The Expat that covers similar themes.Also, I want you to consider if you personally know many Asian men who have made it beyond middle management in America? One of the only times my father has ever initiated a conversation about race in America was when he told me that there’s a limit to how far up the corporate ladder someone like him could climb, and how amongst his peers, he was one of two Asian men, and the only Asian immigrant.
Separately, one of my managers was an Asian American man who reported directly to the CFO, and it was only then that I realized I had never seen someone who looked like him, someone I could’ve grown up with, in such a high position.
Do Women Even Like Men Anymore?,
; Why aren't we talking about the real reason male college enrollment is dropping?, ; Authenticity Man, ; America’s small dick joke problem, 'The gym bros all have eating disorders': OK, now what? ; Do we really want more male vulnerability in fiction?, ; just boyhood, ; Men Performing Masculinity,From the chapter “Coda: The Politics of Desire” in The Right to Sex, Amia Srinivasan
We can draw a connection to the similarly controversial topic of AI art. As one commenter on Internet Shaquille’s “What’s Missing from the AI Conversation” suggests, people deeply hate and fear AI art because “it exposes an inherent truth about the human creative process - that it's a largely computative, recombinatory process.”
From the chapter “The Right to Sex” in The Right to Sex, Amia Srinivasan
Kudos for all the extensive research you've done on this topic. But there are also limits to the facts-and-logic approach, as well as the appeal-to-social-justice approach. Most people will pursue their self-interests, and in a society where: (a) the status of X men are high, (b) the status of Y men are low, and (c) X men are into Y women, things will unfold just as exactly as you'd predict. This is no longer becoming as unique to Asian America as we once thought and I'm seeing similar things happen in other minority communities that we Asian Americans once thought had such strong solidarity.
Regarding the WMAF dynamic, the thing that I've always disliked about it is less about how it affects my personal dating life, and more about the cultural messaging that these Asian Americans are the only ones who truly matter, so all our essays, novels, films, etc. ought to revolve around them as told from a very narrow pro-WMAF perspective. It is a really fascinating topic that touches on so many issues, so more people—especially Asian men and Asian women who have differing opinions—have full right to weigh in and tell their side.
For instance, I'd be very interested in personal essays about your own dating experiences as an Asian American woman who doesn't buy into the aforementioned mindset. You hinted at it in the first part of this series. I'd love to read more stuff like that.
Good research. i want to comment more but i dont know what i want to say yet