Dating and Asian American men and women

Justin Chan of PolicyMic.com recently posted the question: "Are Asian Men Undateable?" The answer is both yes and no. Instead of moaning about it, there's plenty Asian men and Asian American men can do about it.

Chan notes that the website "Are You Interested" surveyed 2.4 million interactions and noted that their male users favored Asian women.  Chan's article seems to be a response to Cherylynn Low's 13 November 2013 "Asian Women Don't Get Luckier on OkCupid, We Get More Harassed."

Chan worried about being rejected (Don't all men worry about that except those extraordinarily vain few?).  He mentions a UCLA Bruin who wrote "I feel cheated out of a myriad of romantic experiences that could have been brought to fruition were I not an Asian male." Does that comment make you think the writer, John Shim, was looking for a relationship or a notch on his score card?

When I first read both of these articles, I thought that not much had changed since I started dating. Because of my stalker ex (despite a restraining order in place and one arrest), I didn't post my photo. I was told this would greatly decrease the number of responses I received. However, as a Japanese woman, I received about 20-30 a day. So I decided to experiment. Without a photo, if I used the same profile and wrote Asian, I got about 30 responses per week. If I did not identify my race, then I got very few. If I identified myself as black, then I got none.

What I also noticed was that if I politely declined men, as an Asian woman or as a Japanese woman, I received more nastigrams---even if the decline was for something as simple and impersonal as geography. I didn't want to date someone on the other side of the country. This kind of outrage never happened if I didn't identify myself as Asian or Japanese. Some men in their nastigrams would tell me that they had had my mother, sister, cousin for a buck when they were in Asia. I got the distinct feeling they felt I should be honored to have received their attention.

Further, I was more likely to get complimented for my English even though I clearly stated I was born in the U.S. Of the men who responded without knowing my race, when I revealed my race, there were some who would claim that they could tell from my writing that I was a non-native speaker of English.

As a Japanese or Asian American woman, I also got asked my bra cup size by white men, sent photos of erect penises by white and black men, and received unwanted advice from Asian men about how I should behave. Some were greatly offended that I was willing to date men of any race. Some wanted to teach me how to be more Asian.

If nothing has changed since I was dating and it seems not much has changed since Mickey Rooney played Mr. Yuniyoshi in the 1961 "Breakfast at Tiffany's" then there's no use in whining about it. If "Frances Ha" and her best bet for a good relationship both call themselves "undateable" maybe there's something undateable Asian American men are missing. Get up and make yourself more dateable.

Dating as practiced in the United States is filled with facades building up false expectations. For Asian and Asian American men, I recommend they turn away from this often artificial dating practice and cultivate other aspects of socializing with the gender of their preference.

First, I think that Asian American men must deal with the disconnect between what their parents teach them, particularly parents from an older generation. Many Asian American parents value their sons above their daughters. So the Asian American man may get to order his sisters and mother around at home and his mother may tend to his every need, but he's not the object of adoration outside the house within the larger general American population. Asian American women will be sought after by men of various races and in higher demand than Asian American men.

That means, you can't treat Asian American women unkindly. You can't take them for granted. You can't treat them like your mother and you can't let your mother or father treat them poorly either. You may be king at your home, but you're not one of the golden princes of the American social scene.

One way to deal with this disconnect is to understand what is generally acceptable. You can glean this from reading Dear Abby or various other advice columns and the comments posted on those columns.  Read Miss Manners or Emily Post. Good manners will get you noticed.

In my opinion, some Asian American men are the worst of both cultures--they adopt the most sexist aspects of their respective Asian culture and add it to the sexist aspects of the American culture. They become super sexist. That, in my opinion, isn't sexy. What is sexy is a guy who is interested in what I'm interested in without being paternalistic or condescending. The interest, however, must be geniuine.

As a geek and someone who has been in the geek culture, this is the same advice I'd give to my science geek friends. Many geek subcultures that are predominately male. If you want to attract the few women in that culture, you have to be better than your competition.

If you want a woman who looks a certain way, then you better be able a good match for her. Be a Ken to her Barbie. If you're a jeans and T-shirt guy, don't expect to get a fashionista.

If the competition is too rough in whatever culture you're in, then you need to find activities that put you together with more women. My hobby of rock collecting is predominately male. However, you can be like Rosey Grier, the former football player, and take up hobbies like macrame and needlepoint. You could take dance classes. Don't be one of those leering guys in the yoga class, aerobics or zumba class. People notice and you'll be labeled the creepy guy.

Most of the dance classes have more women than men. Of course, when I emphasized that I wanted a man who danced, I got a lot of hate email from men who told me that there were no heterosexual men who liked dancing and that John Wayne never danced. If that's your prejudice, you might need to work on yourself. John Wayne did dance in a movie and there are plenty of heterosexual men who dance. Remember, Fred Astaire was balding, didn't have the kind of physique that makes you want to rip his shirt off, but he was attractive to women. I've seen short men, men with paunchy stomachs, balding men and even older men who don't have the Donald Trump big bank account advantage being swooned over by women who want to dance.

My husband, who I met through Argentine tango, believes that Asian men need better PR and after a recent U.N. study made headlines, that may be true and there's a lot one can do about the bad PR. More people must be willing to speak out and not accept ghastly yellowface or the whitewashing of history. That's a campaign that won't help your immediate needs on the dating frontline, but one that needs to be fought just the same. Don't be the always ranting angry guy, because that's also unattractive.

Women must also be willing to speak up. One thing that personally turned me off of many men, white and black, with yellowfever was how they spoke about Asian men. I reminded them that my father was Asian American, my grandfathers and uncles were and are Asian American. My brother and cousins are Asian American. Every derogatory statement they said about Asian and Asian American men was a negative comment about my family.

Being undateable may just be a state of mind. Things at the movies have changed since my parents time and the era of "Breakfast at Tiffany's" despite the yellowface in "Cloud Atlas." Besides Bruce Lee, we have Bi (Rain), Jet Li, Chow Yun-fat, Poreotics, Jackie Chan and a former part-Japanese Superman in Dean Cain and part-Asian Booboo Stewart ("The Twilight Saga: Eclipse") and part-Asian Dan Southworth ("Act of Valor"). While it's true that Asian Americans face different problems on the dating scene than Caucasians, Latinos and African Americans, there's always something one can do to improve one's chances and opportunities and in doing so, on a local level you can help define the new normal.

Why we should love Osaka mayor Toru Hashimoto

There are plenty of reasons to love the Osaka mayor Toru Hashimoto. Two weeks ago, he made remarks about comfort women has caused a ripple in the international waters of women issues.

I'm not really clear on what Hashimoto actually said, because when I worked from the Rafu Shimpo I noticed that sometimes statements made by politicians were taken out of context. And sometimes, the media gets caught up in whatever sounds good and sells papers and gets good ratings.

When I first wrote about the issue of comfort women, it was in an essay published in the Rafu Shimpo called "The Rape of Conquered Women." At that time--just before the Los Angeles Riots, there were two claims that are no longer touted today: The comfort women was something unique to the Japanese and that even the Nazis hadn't used sex slaves. One of the favorite witnesses for English language articles was Seiji Yoshida. His accounts and his book were widely criticized by Japanese historians (who were then in turned bitterly criticized for being Japan apologists).

As it turned out, neither claim was true. The Nazis did have sex slaves--taken from the Jewish, gypsies and other political prisoners. The exploitation and sexual enslavement of women from conquered populations has a history that goes back further than 415 BC, which was when "Troades" or "The Trojan Women" was first produced. Greek playwright Euripides wrote the tragedy during the Peloponnesian War. In 1971, Katharine Hepburn was Hecuba, Vanessa Redgrave was Andromache and Genevieve Bujold was Cassandra. Irene Papas was the infamous Helen.

After the publication of my essay, men, mostly I suppose Korean, threatened my colleagues and myself. Ironically, a man threatening me with violence or rape because I held an opinion he didn't like puts such a person on the same level of men who rape during war. Fear is a way of silencing dissenting voices. Rape is a way of silencing women and disgracing "their" men.

The rape and enslavement of conquered women during 415 BC was one of the perks of war. What about in 1930-1940s when the Japanese committed the war crimes supposedly associated with the comfort women. I propose there are several problems in revisiting these acts and interpreting them.

1. Racism in the Allied Countries such as the U.S. allowed for the rape of non-white women by white men without much fear of punishment. 
2. Institutionalized racism affected national and international policy.
3. The attitudes toward rape tended to blame the victims.
4. The attitudes toward women protected as property.
5. Because women were treated as property within certain cultures and societies, the concern was not about how women were treated by how women were treated by others.
6. Similar war crimes committed by the Allied troops against the women, including "rescued" comfort women, complicated the issue and made it more likely to be ignored.

According to Associated Press reporters Mari Yamaguchi and Malcolm Foster,  Hashimoto's most recent statement clarifies his position. He "meant to say military authorities at the time, not only in Japan but in many other countries, considered it necessary." From my understanding of Japanese history, this is true. One of the first things they provided for foreigners in Yokohama after the opening of Japan was a whore house. There was a concept that men needed to have a sexual release and this wasn't only present in Japanese culture. The British also held that attitude and brothels were a part of their experience during World War I. 

Probably what should outrage women in Japan is that he suggested in a recent visit to Okinawa that the U.S. military make better use of the legal sex industry "to control the sexual energy of those tough guys."  

You might have been misled by more recent articles. In Japan Today, Washington's Jen Psaki supposedly denounced the comments Hashimoto made on Friday (17 May 2013), however Psaki's comment were on 16 May 2013. 

The full transcript reads:

QUESTION: Hi, my name is Takashi from Japanese newspaper Asahi. Osaka City Mayor Hashimoto recently made a comment on the so-called “comfort women” issue, arguing that even though it is unacceptable from the moral perspective value, but the comfort women were necessary during the war period. And he also argued that it is not fair that only Japan is criticized by the United States and other countries, because there are other country military that were provided sexual service by prostitute. And do U.S. has any position on his comment or criticism against the United States? 

MS. PSAKI: We have seen, of course, those comments. Mayor Hashimoto’s comments were outrageous and offensive. As the United States has stated previously, what happened in that era to these women who were trafficked for sexual purposes is deplorable and clearly a grave human rights violation of enormous proportions. We extend, again, our sincere and deep sympathy to the victims, and we hope that Japan will continue to work with its neighbors to address this and other issues arising from the past and cultivate relationships that allow them to move forward.

QUESTION: Do you describe this issue sex slave or comfort women?

MS. PSAKI: Again, I don’t know that I’m going to define it. You kind of laid out the specific details there, and we have described this issue in the past as comfort women[ii].

The U.S. State Department didn't reply to Hashimoto's additional comments. According to JapanToday.com, Hashimoto reply to Psaki via Twitter was:

Let me go straight to the point. When America occupied Japan, didn’t they make use of Japanese women?

I can’t help but point out that it is unfair for America to criticize only Japan by putting aside acts by its own country.

The United States should face what the US military did against local women, in particular Okinawan women when they occupied Japan.

The U.S. State Department (Patrick Ventrell, the acting deputy spokesman) didn't actually reply to these statements in the Monday daily brief:

QUESTION: Something about Japan’s comfort women? Osaka Mayor Hashimoto continued to argue that the American troops utilized women for sexual purpose during the occupation period in Japan, and even later – especially in Okinawa. And he also argues that the United States is unfairly criticizing Japan by putting aside what they did to local women during and after the war period. And I was wondering if you have any comment on that.
MR. VENTRELL: I didn’t hear who you said at the beginning that said this.
QUESTION: Osaka Mayor Mr. Hashimoto.
MR. VENTRELL: This is something that Jen addressed at the briefing last week and gave a very robust condemnation of those remarks. I really refer you to what Jen said last week. But we already condemned those.
QUESTION: But I thought what she condemned last week was his comments about them being a military necessity.
MR. VENTRELL: Yeah. Is this a new --
QUESTION: This sounds to be – this seems to be something new.
MR. VENTRELL: I hadn’t seen these new remarks. Let me --
QUESTION: The mayor says that the U.S. troops used– whatever term you want to call them – during the occupation.
MR. VENTRELL: Let me look in. I’m not aware of new remarks by the mayor of Osaka, more that we had a strong reaction to what he had said previously. Let me look in and see whether we’re aware of any subsequent remarks.

While the article goes on to assert "There is no mainstream evidence that modern militaries other than Japan employed a formal sex slavery system." it also continues that "Pulitzer Prize-winning historian John Dower is among credible sources who say American troops committed multiple rapes of Japanese women during the occupation and that press censorship muted reporting of these crimes."

What the article means by formal is hard to define. If by modern, Dower could refer to the early modern period of the 18th Century. There is ample evidence that the Nazis had sex slaves and they kept good records. There is also evidence that the British military in India kept and promoted military brothels. Brothels were lawful in British India until the 1930s and created racial and class conundrums, particularly when European prostitutes came. To put this in the context of the history of Japanese aggression,  first Sino-Japanese war was in the 1894-1895 and the second was in 1937-1945 with minor incidents beginning in 1931.  And what about the American military in Vietnam or in Korea? A 2009 UCLA thesis by Elya Filler looks at the role of Japan's comfort women system in the contemporary sex industry, but doesn't indicate where the Japanese got this idea.

When Commodore Perry opened Japan in the 1850s, Japan had been in seclusion for 200 years. It had no modern army, navy or airforce. Where did it learn modern warfare?  Military brothels were already being used in Europe and Asia by the British and French.

I do not believe that we as Americans or former Comfort women from Korea have the right to pressure the people of Osaka to find a new mayor, particularly since he has raised the issue of comfort women and attempted to expand the conundrum of the comfort women from an Asian point of view.  We've had mayors accused of sexism such as New York's Michael Bloomberg and Warren, Michigan's James Fouts. Fouts added that public employees should buy American autos. Bloomberg and Hashimoto are men of the 2010s. Men and women in the 1930s and 1940s in America were conditioned to accept:

1. All women want to be raped.
2. No woman can be raped against her will.
3. If a woman was raped, she was asking for it (perhaps by the way she was dressed or by being out late at night or drinking alcohol).
4. Rape can be enjoyable as in if you're going to be raped, you might as well  relax and enjoy it.

Susan Brownmiller noted in her book "Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape" that gang rape was found in many cultures as a measure of control for women who strayed from their prescribed social roles. The 1975 book has a chapter devoted to war and notes that during the Occupation of Japan there were incidents of rape. 

A more recent article by Terese Svoboda, noted that the U.S. government concealed information about rape and that the reasons were not just political but also racial. The punishment of black soldiers for rape was more extreme. 

Another article online draws from Svoboda as well as other researchers and newspaper reports of the time. There is also mention of Korean comfort women being raped by U.S. forces.  While the article is new, the information is not. I was aware of the rape of Japanese comfort women by the Allied forces a few decades ago from sources written in English. 

Although Hashimoto has backpedaled in a long three-hour statement, his original assertions should indicate why the issue of the comfort women is more complicated than has been presented to Americans by the media. Further, South Korea seems more concerned about their women's treatment by Japan as opposed to the concept of comfort women or the current plight of foreign women in Korea who find themselves under similar circumstances. That seems to hark back to the ancient concept of rape as a crime against property and not a person. According to Wikipedia, South Korea supplied comfort women to American forces in Korea and according to the New York Times, some of they want apologies and compensation. In a 2009 New York Times article, the women called the South Korean government hypocritical, something that is perhaps not lost on many Japanese.

Hashimoto bravely continued to assert:

Based on the premise that Japan must remorsefully face its past offenses and must never justify the offenses, I intended to argue that other nations in the world must not attempt to conclude the matter by blaming only Japan and by associating Japan alone with the simple phrase of "sex slaves" or "sex slavery."

As L.A. Asians, shouldn't we be concerned about the rape or sexual slavery of all Asian women during war or colonialism or even times of peace? That is the conundrum of the Korean comfort women. The issue should reach beyond Japan and reparations for crimes committed under imperialism has far-reaching implications. Imagine if Great Britain had to pay reparations to all the countries that had been under the British Imperial empire, including the women who became sex slaves.

My breasts and I salute Angelina Jolie

As a child, I remember looking at my Barbie and wondering when I, too, would look like that. I would suck in my waist and try to expand my childish breasts. Of course, as an adult I realized that normal female human beings do not look like Barbie.

Besides, being ethnically Asian and not part of the Beverly Hills Sweet Sixteen I need a plastic surgery party kind of social class, it was not meant to be. I was never going to have a chest that might inspire comparisons with missile heads or melons. Men and women let me know about my deficiency in this respect.

Yet I've been on both sides of just enough and not enough. As a mediocre gymnast in high school, my meager cleavage was a blessing.  I have a good physique for a female gymnast. Gymnasts move on after they hit their twenties and develop womanly figures, and some even develop some real cleavage. When I was still pursuing gymnastics, I got on a scale every day. As one male gymnast pointed out, if you don't have much cleavage you can't afford to get a gut.

Now, I'm much too old for gymnastics, but in my current hobby of belly dancing, there's not enough jiggle on top to make any sort of shoulder shimmy worth watching. While belly dancing originated in North Africa and West Asia where women dress conservatively, in Europe and America, belly dancing is performed in what is little more than a fancy bra and a skirt. Cleavage matters. I have no jelly bowls to jiggle. 

As a young adult, I've suffered through bad bras, and as a post-college woman, I've been offended by online crassness when I was still dating. A guy wants to see a  full-length photo and even then, more than a few will ask you what your cup size is. They expect at least a B and hope for a C if you're Asian.

As being ethnically Asian defines me, having breasts that require a bra defines me. I am to some men, my bra size.

Even so, I can't imagine the kind of pain and self-image reassessment that Angelina Jolie went through before she arrived at her decision. She is an attractive woman and she must know that some of that attraction has to do with her breasts. When the story broke about Jolie's NYTimes opinion piece, I remember thinking about what some waggish film commentator wrote about her as Lara Croft, something about her running in a T-shirt. For some men, all women are just their breasts. I once watched the Oscars with a mixed crowd and a pre-med student kept commenting on all the women--whether they were or were not wearing a bra. Maybe some men filter those thoughts before letting the words leave their mouths. I hope not.

As one of my colleagues noted, there was some lamenting online about the loss of Jolie's breasts. I am sure that she must have known this would happen. She has chosen to have reconstructive surgery. Will people now cattishly compare the now and after?

The kind of mindset that equates women with their breasts almost justifies the kind of modesty you find in North Africa and West Asian countries. Consider that female breasts are not the historically the sexual obsession of all cultures. There used to be a joke about the difference between Chinese and Japanese women showing their physical assets. Chinese women showed a little leg. Japanese women showed the back of their neck or a white foot and ankle. Cheongsams and kimonos aren't made to show cleavage.

In Japan, the concept of female sexuality is more mutable. The first novel in world history, Genji Monogatari, was written by a woman. At one point, the protagonist's good friend opines that it is a shame that Genji wasn't born a woman. That's not an admission of homosexuality, but how in the Japanese culture things aren't always what they seem. A beautiful face is a beautiful face but could easily belong to a man or a woman.

In Japanese traditional theater, all the actors are men. That wasn't originally so. Kabuki started out with female actors, some of whom might have also been soliciting. Eventually, the women were replaced by boys and when male patrons were still brawling over the boys as women, the boys were replaced by men and the onnagata tradition began.

One of the most popular and celebrated onnagata is Bando Tamasaburo V. Watching him on TV and on stage, you can learn how to be womanly in a traditional Japanese sense. You don't need cleavage to be feminine. I've met heterosexual men who were lovestruck by Tamasaburo in his younger years.

Even the samurai tradition, if Western aficionados would admit it, has an element of homosexuality that can fall into a gray area as illustrated in the 1999 Japanese movie "Gohatto" (御法度), or "Taboo."The Nagisa Oshima film isn't so much about homosexuality but the desire for a beautiful face that could be a woman's. You have to wonder why Kanō Sōzaburō (Ryuhei Matsuda) refuses to cut his bangs. Would that make him more masculine and in this all-male group, less powerful? Yet for this essay, what's important is that he inspired lust not because he looks like another man, but because he could pass as a woman.

How hard is it for a woman to realize that she'll never be as beautiful as a man dressed as a woman? That topic was touched upon in the 2003 Takeshi Kitano "Zatoichi." I knew that feeling when I saw Tamasaburo as a woman and again when I was in Hollywood one day. I was rushing in between work and classes. I had not brushed my hair or had time to put on lipstick. Yet the most beautiful woman in the room was a man. He obviously had to try hard and I wasn't even trying. That either makes you give up and gives you time to consider what makes a woman?

In Western cinema, women like Audrey Hepburn and Elizabeth Ashley have been able to make it without a bountiful cleavage and been considered beautiful. Yet in more recent years it seems as if pornography has crossed over to become part of pop culture with Madonna posing for a special limited edition pornographic book. Breast augmentation surgery has become more common place. Now small breasts can be considered a physical defect.

In another real streets of Hollywood experience, I remember taking a woman to a one-woman stage show about breast cancer in Hollywood. She said, "Why would anyone want to talk about that?" What she said was true. Even at a time when it was finally PC to talk about AIDS and HIV, past the Larry Kramer and ACT-UP generation, people didn't want to talk about breast cancer. But we do need to talk about breast cancer, and women shouldn't feel that their identity as women depends upon their two breasts.

Instead of talking about Angelina Jolie's breasts, we should be talking about how expensive it is for the average American woman to get the genetic test for BRCA1 and BRCA2. We should talk about how some 458,000 women each year die from breast cancer and how few women can afford the choice of reconstructive surgery. We should talk about breast cancer or how to talk about breasts without falling into a snickering boy peeping Tom mentality. 

In America, we have the technology, but we don't have affordable healthcare, something that is available in other countries such as Japan and Canada.

We need to rethink our values. Angelina Jolie gave us something to talk about and it was undoubtedly a courageous thing to do. Let's talk about things that matter to hundreds of thousands of women all over the world. I no longer want to be Barbie, but I also don't want to be defined by my cup size. Angelina Jolie noted she had options, but those medical options aren't available to too many women in America and around the world.