- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - page 2 of 2 I like Oriental women (no, not Asian -- I don't particularly care for Indians, Turks, Iranians or Pakistanis). Then again, I like women in general. I've been out with Caucasoid, Negroid and Mongoloid women. I've never rejected a women because of her racial background. But even if I had, so what? But simply because I am more attracted to one set of physical characteristics than to another, Courtney Weaver insinuates that I'm a child molester. It used to be that if you didn't want to sleep with a woman she'd just call you queer, but I guess, what with homo-chic, that's no longer considered insulting. It's OK, according to Weaver's recent work, to crave big, black dicks, or dismiss short men because they don't measure up. That's all fine, but heaven help the man who doesn't like fat, bitchy, hairy, saggy white chicks. Her attempt to generalize one man's preference into some sort of sick fetish is so laughable. She perpetuates stereotypes of Oriental woman as passive victims and of men as predators. It doesn't come close to describing reality. My girlfriend is larger than many Occidental women, in height, girth and breast. She's not very hairy, but compared to me, no woman is. And unlike many Occidental woman, she's not a spoiled, whiny bitch. If I said there was something psychologically wrong with a woman who wasn't interested in me, I'd be reviled by Weaver and her cronies. The double standard is alive and well in the whiny, urban female of today. Face facts: We don't want to fuck you because you're boring, vain and stupid. -- Bill Clark Weaver's article is a catalog of every single tired stereotype about Asian women. Men like the one she interviewed should be beat with a solid pipe until some sense creeps into their heads. As for Weaver, she could have explored the subject matter more by asking this fundamental question: When you search out other people based on previous assumptions about their behavior and culture, you are not looking for a person, you are looking for a representation of something that exists only in your mind. In addition, what about the view from an Asian male's point of view? Don't we get a chance to speak? Mindless drivel by Weaver without any real exploration of the issues should not populate Salon, supposedly one of the better Web zines. I guess I shouldn't expect much, since she is a native San Franciscan. -- Chris M. Kwok Courtney Weaver's sloppy and naive reporting style has finally caught up with her. While virtually everyone is interested in sex, which makes it an easy sell for a topic, when reading Weaver's half-developed columns, one is always left wondering what the real story is. Her buying the stripper's line, for example, that the woman is given $1,000 a night simply for talking indicates that Weaver's busy schedule prevents her from double-checking her sources. In her "Wok Man" piece, Weaver jots one man's opinions down in her note pad as reason enough to publish questionable generalizations about Asian-Americans. From the onset, she doesn't even challenge her source when he declares that the "two kinds " of Asian women in America are immigrants and the first generation of immigrants. A deluge of other misconceptions follow, as if "Ted," who prefers Asian women, is some kind of expert. Not one of Ted's edicts rang true for me. In my 47 years I've dated both Asian-American and Caucasian-American women, and have found that the assumed differences based upon race are negligible. Certainly, there are cultural characteristics of Asian women (and men) that endure, just as my Irish ancestors passed many of their strengths and weaknesses down to me. Weaver approached an interesting topic here, but, as always, she confined her research to one coffee break interview. Send Weaver back to journalism 101 and she just might learn to produce something interesting AND credible for a change. -- Liam Rooney In her regrettable piece "Tiny, Flat-Chested and Hairless," Courtney Weaver confesses that in the past, she has felt two sentiments toward white men who are attracted to Asian women: "One was complete revulsion. The other was relief, since the kind of men who went for Asian women were not men I wanted to have anything to do with." Ms. Weaver then proceeds to proffer the assumptions that white men attracted to Asian women are looking for "docile maids" and that such an attraction may be symptomatic of a "sexual psyche ... connected to pedophilia." She interviews a single white male with just such inclinations, and to her surprise she finds him to be gentle, not the "frat boy" she assumed he would be. Yet never does she go so far as to repudiate the broadly sweeping stereotypes she holds. Neither does she explore her own subjective motivations behind sentiments that appear to be so fundamentally racist. The very concept of this essay was for the author to present her open hatred for an entire group, then meet one of them and admit that he's at least polite. There would be no great difference if an Aryan nationalist were to write, "I've always found black people to be completely revolting, but, you know, I met one, and he was friendly enough." It is the author of that article, and not her interviewee, who should be asked to defend her viewpoints. Clearly, if any white man claimed in writing that he felt "complete revulsion" toward white women who are attracted to nonwhite men, he would be excoriated from all sides as a racist and a sexist or worse. This article obviously reflects a double standard, in which women are considered free to explore whatever sexual avenues make them happy, but men are presumed guilty of some sort of political crime if their sexual tastes do not fit the criteria of others. For the record, I am a white male living in Taiwan and happily married to a Taiwanese woman. I have been living in Asia for well over a decade, and during my stay here I have never, not once, met with any accusation that my sexual preference was the result of some unsavory psychological flaw. How disturbing to encounter such abysmally backward attitudes in a supposedly progressive publication like Salon. If some white men prefer Asian women for twisted reasons, they are decidedly a small minority. Most white men, like myself, are attracted to Asian women because they appeal to our aesthetic sensibilities: We think they're pretty. Weaver's story is no less insulting to Asian women as a whole. She states that an attraction to Asian women "seems a direct rejection of what American women are, or what they stand for or what they want to be -- strong, independent, assertive, equal." This reveals the bizarre assumption that Asian-American women, even if their families have lived in the U.S. for generations, are somehow not first and foremost American women, that they do not aspire to and achieve the same goals as real "American" (read: white) women. It also shows Weaver's underlying assumption that Asian women, no matter where they live, must presumably be weak, dependent, unassertive and unequal. Furthermore, when Weaver suggests that white men desire Asian women in order to dominate and fulfill pedophilic fantasies, she logically must assume that Asian women tend to willingly submit to domination, and that their adult bodies are somehow juvenile, underdeveloped and unworthy of the desire of psychologically healthy men. When I told my wife about this article, she had some choice words to say about Weaver that are not necessarily fit to print. Suffice it to say that she did not react in any manner similar to a "docile maid." In this most misguided piece, Weaver has managed to cast a blanket stereotype across an entire swath of the world's population. Thinking of this sort is the very heart of prejudice. -- Brent Heinrich Taipei, Taiwan Courtney's assessment of "American" (I guess she means "white") women left out one detail besides "strong, independent, assertive, equal." Quite a few are in fact bitchy, sometimes unclean, self-centered and frequently dishonest. As far as being critical over one's preferences in the physical attributes of a mate, could we not say that the whole stigma of women going ga-ga over a muscle-bound hunk is cut from the same cloth? Are there not also people who really go nuts over a nice fat mate? Is that an "obsession" or "fetish"? It just so happens that the "Asian preference" is not as common as other preferences, therefore making it less acceptable in typical human culture, and society brands it as a "fetish" or some kind of disorder in one's psyche. Courtney's insinuation that men who look for an Asian woman are desiring a submissive servile mate is an annoying generalization about Asians and rather insulting (both to Asian women and to the "fetish/obsession" boys). My comment in regards to Asian women in relationships with Caucasian men is that many "American" women have a lot to learn from them. And I mean in terms of acting like a human being. Although it's a well-written article with an attempt to be unbiased and see another viewpoint, that initial preconceived notion about Ted stuck to the end. Regarding her cynicism: What's a matter Courtney, ya jealous? -- A. Johnson SALON | May 8, 1998

R E C E N T L Y+| CHEERIO, "SEINFELD" BY JOYCE MILLMAN (05/04/98)

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