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06 jul 05 "what is your obsession with asian women?" i have no such obsession. i have dated one han chinese, one adopted korean (american cultural identity), one ahkenazi jew/white mix, and three whites (unspecified germanic/celtic/slavic mixes), yet you only see the "asians" as notable. you are a racist. that said, it's true that there are some indidious cultural forces working at particular attraction of white men to east and southeast asian women. bear in mind that the following list describes perceptions, rather than attributes. that said, below are possible reasons for this (god, i love the "ordered list" tag). again, these do not reflect my feelings:
the cultural values are clearly invalid -- they're based on a western literary interpretation of "asian values", that don't have anything to do with modernity even in asia, let alone "asian values" under north american cultural influence. but the physical traits are real -- being attracted to an east/southeast asian body/face isn't any more deplorable or wrong than being attracted to tall men. but this raises an issue: is it acceptable to like or dislike features, physical or cultural, of any perceived group? furthermore, is it acceptable to subdivide humanity based on groups at all? i think it is, as in, it's possible and several people will roughly agree with the subdivisions, but we have to keep in mind that the boundaries are quite blurry. ie, we'll always find people who don't fit into a given category. that said, it's generally pretty clear who's a khoisan (formerly hottentot) and who's an inuit (formerly eskimo). "race" has fallen out of fashion, because it implies strong genetic differences which have been found to be invalid. for instance, some africans have more in common, genetically, with some chinese than they do with other africans. but if we alter the definition of "race" a bit to fit a more common-law defition, then it can be said to infer "any group of people who look more alike than they do to other humans." i don't think this is "racist" -- no one is going to visually confuse yao ming with shaquille o'neal (basketball centers). people see what they see, therefore they're going to identify and categorize people based on those genetic traits that produce differences in physical appearance, no matter how minor these differences might be. it's valid to examine the boundaries of human subdivisions, but it's also valid to examine the boundaries of any subdivision. for instance: guitars. there are tenor guitars, and bass guitars that are shaped like "normal" accoustic guitars, and other strange deviations. but we don't throw out the word "guitar" because there are a few blurry areas. we analyze a particular object, and place it in the "guitar" category based on its properties. furthermore, 10 non-insane people are going to agree what is and what is not a "guitar", in (let's say) 90% of cases. someone willing to call a guitar a "guitar" isn't considered to be a "racist", or other bad name. why are there special considerations of categorization applied to human beings, just to avoid hurting people's feelings? i guess because hurting feelings is bad. i agree -- and it's better not to talk or think about these categorical differences. however, they do exist. collections and communities of people "evolved" in different locales -- over the aeons, genetic drift and adaptation to environment are going to produce variations in physiology and appearance. let's examine another example of categorization, in medicine. is there such a thing as "pyriformis syndrome?" some doctors just group it in with "sciatica". both have simliar properties: they're caused by irritation of the sciatic nerve. but doctors aren't in agreement as to whether or not "pyriformis syndrome" (siatica in which the siatic nerve passes through the pyriformis muscle, and is pinched) should be called another disease, or whether it just falls under the "sciatica" category. this disparity arises from -- and this is crucual -- dispute on the best way to treat it (treatment of pyriformis syndrom involves specific stretching of the pyriformis muscle). things here are ambiguous enough such that there's room for discussion. and manybe the boundaries between "races" are fuzzy enough (not to mention useless enough) so that we can throw them out entirely, but people can and will continue to identify them, and do so in consensus. in medical diagnosis, deliniation has to do with practicality. proper diagnosis (a form of naming) determines proper treatment. if we call everything involving pain in the head "peona cranium" and treat it all identically with tylenol, then we're going to kill quite a few people with meningitis who need an antibiotic. here's an interesting example of categorical deliniation and naming: a speaker (the thing that plays music). speakers look really, really different -- someone unfamiliar with speakers would have no idea that those little tweeters on a bose system have anything whatsoever to do with a pair of labtec computer speakers (i'm looking at a pair now). the similarty between speakers is in their internal construction (how they function), and what they do (produce sound). but even here there are fine lines -- consider the human voicebox -- essentially, it functions exactly the same way a speaker does, and is powered by energy, just like a speaker is. but no one is going to lump those together, conceptually. so we have inherent similarity between objects, but we have inherent ambiguity in the "border-states". it's the same thing with human "races". furthermore, the speaker example illustrates something else: the perceived importance of physical appearance in determining categories. sometimes name-distinction is more useful than others. but we can always do it wherever there are multiple examples of an object sharing similar properties, or properties that are more similar than any of those objects' to any other objects' not in the category. categorical deliniation: naming based on similar properties, deemed similar by a jury of reasonable people. i'm not particularly attracted to asian women, but if i were, it would be because their majority physical characteristics appeal to me. those physical characteristics aren't identical from "asian woman" to "asian woman", but characteristics are significantly more similar from asian to asian than they are from, say, asian to ethnic irish. "asian as a whole" to "amerindian as a whole" is harder (perhaps impossible) to deliniate based on physical appearance; furthermore, i might be attracted to amerindians just as much as i would be to asians. it's the physical characteristics i would be focusing on, rather than location, language, or culture. if i like asian women, and a woman is indistinguishable to the physical "object" of an asian i have in my mind, then she fits that category (regardless of name), and i am attracted to her. many japanese claim that they can tell the difference, physically, between a japanese and a korean, but this is probably a little bit obsessive. do you remember the shroud of turen, before it was carbon-dated (the world is 5,000 years old) out of genuity? it was suggested that it might have remnants genetically analyzed to see if they belonged to a jewish man. there clearly are some genetic group traits, even if they aren't "significant" to effect things like reproductive fitness. some of them are, however, often identifiable to the human eye. how much we generalize is based on how familiar with a thing we are. someone might call "asians" into being as a category/mental object. someone might place the magnifying glass closer, and call "southeast asian" and "east asian" into existence. this might be as far as a person can go, based on physical appearance. if we were to take a poll, could the vast majorty of people tell a korean from a chinese from a japanese? no way. it's just like the independent double-blind study of telling coke vs. pepsi -- it was found that people cannot tell the difference. most people react incredulously to this, and state emphatically that they can tell the difference. i tried this test with two friends (double-blind), and found it to be true: we couldn't tell them apart. if you order milk in a restaurant, and someone gives you milk with vodka in it, you're going to yell about it (or at least note it). but if someone brings you coke instead of pepsi, you're probably unsure enough about it not to make a fuss, unless you're a real jerk. i see some leaves in front of me. sometimes we generalize widely, and say "those are leaves". sometimes we do it more narrowly, and say "those are sycamore leaves". it'd be fun to have some advanced computer scan images of 2,000 people, and put each into a "racial" category (category delineated based on physical appearance). that way, we can eliminate prejudice as a confusing factor. a lot of the problem comes from outdated or ambiguous defnitions of "race". here's today's definition, from dictionary.com: race: An interbreeding, usually geographically isolated population of organisms differing from other populations of the same species in the frequency of hereditary traits. what about teeny, tiny, practically insignificant varying frequency of hereditary traits? is this a "mini-race"? the frequency of hereditary traits doesn't have to have any meaning whatsoever in practical application -- ie, human "race" may not affect any other attributes of the "organism" (teehee), except for totally superficial physical appearance. of course, physical appearance is a form of physiology, which has real-world effects. studies on this have been, as you might imagine, controversial. globalized mating is going to make this all a moot point anyway. even now, "race" isn't important to consider, except as an academic and conceptual exercise. whether or not there are "races", people are individuals, and have to be treated and evaluated as such. the only category that's appropriate to apply to humans is "human x" and "human y". once a subgroup is establish, it's easy to start applying qualities to that subgroup -- "'subgroup x' is 'better' than 'subgroup y'". and again, people, because they're horrible, are wont to do this. i am not obsessed with asian women; your question does not apply. if i were, i would be because they are, on the whole, cuter and prettier to me. this whole essay merely states that there is such a thing as "asian women", despite the possible existence of a han chinese-english transvestite. |
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