Quest Crew
I’m at the car dealership right now, getting one of the seatbelts on my car fixed. I accidentally broke it while installing a car seat, and now it’s gonna cost me. But man, this waiting room is high tech. Free wireless, free donuts, free coffee, lots of big screen TVs with CNBC. Plus a kids area.
Anyway, a fellow bigWOWO reader e-mailed me a link to a fashion and writing blog written by two Asian female bloggers. I thought it was an interesting blog since it was written by two young Asian women from top-tier MFA writing programs who were interested in fashion. You can tell the women are very smart by the way they write. These women are the type who read French poetry, get turned on by reading Joyce, and are totally off the wall artsy. There was a post about Orientalism and fetishism in fashion advertising that the bigWOWO commenter linked. The woman ripped a new one into Christian Dior with charges of Orientalism, and the post was so popular that Jezebel reprinted it. Clicking through the links and posts–and I wasn’t trying to find this, I swear–but I learned that one of the bloggers is married to yup, you guessed it, a White man, while the other is dating yup, you guessed it, a White man. I won’t link their blog because I don’t feel like pissing anyone off (and I do appreciate that they spoke out against orientalism), but I’m sure you all can find it on Google.
I was talking to the aforementioned bigWOWO reader, who is an Asian female, and I pointed out that once again, the AFCC was recruiting members like sugar to fire ants. I know, I know, politics and personal are not supposed to overlap. But it’s hard for an Asian male to read through a rant about how bad White men are against minorities because of colonialism, sexism, Orientalism, and god-knows-whatever-other-isms, and then see that it comes from women who are both married or serious with White men, to the exclusion of the many single Asian guys out there. And yes, there are lots of single Asian men out there. Figure in the fact that artsy Asian women who rant non-stop about these -isms almost always limit their dating pools to White men, and it becomes hard to hear for an Asian brother. In stock market terms, it’s like pump and dump. “You are against White racism? Great! But you won’t date me because you’re only attracted to White men? Ch*nks need not apply? Uh…great, I guess. I’ll support you. Sure.”
Anyway, my co-commenter and I were talking about artsy, Wei Hui types, and how they almost ALWAYS date White men, occasionally mix it up with a Black or Hispanic men, and, in the words of the ever eloquent tokyolovestory from the Fighting44s, “avoid Asian cock like it was the plague,” and my co-commenter said to me, “Well, when you were single, and if you were younger, would you date an artsy woman like this, or would you judge her?”
I said I would definitely date someone like that, and she said, “You wouldn’t see a woman like that as wife material. Very few Asian guys would.”
Maybe. Okay, she’s right. They’re not my type to begin with. I think I’m more of someone who wants to be a community builder rather than a rebel. In my case personally, though, total artsy Asian women are usually completely turned off by guys who like me anyway, guys who are in fields like banking and who read angry writers like Frank Chin and Malcolm X. If an Asian brother had any chance at all, he’d have more luck if he were holding a book by Dostoyevsky or Proust than one of the rabble rousing men of color.
Anyway, two thoughts:
1. Logically, Asian men should support women who speak out against Orientalism, regardless of who the women marry or what their sexual race preferences are. But I do think Asian men are justified in the feelings that arise when said speaking out comes from AF/WM, given the history of the pairing, and given the fact that y’all are still shut out.
I mean, Asian men are human. We are emotional beings. The fact that an entire demographic (artsy Asian women) shuts us out is reason enough for us to experience negative emotions when getting involved in activist endeavors among demographics that shut us out. If we were all like Spock–which is something I sometimes feel the Kingstonians want us to be while they run off with Captain Kirk or Scotty while stepping over Sulu–we could act rational about this and keep our emotions separate. But I don’t think we should aspire to become Spock. Spock’s lack of emotion was one reason that Captain Kirk was above him. Captain Kirk had to “translate” by explaining to Spock what the rest of the crew was feeling because Spock couldn’t figure it out himself.
The answer, I think, is to express our emotions and to accept them. I think we can do this without offending people. It’s the Buddhist way of accepting what you’re feeling. Take logic as logic is, and acknowledge the logical points that people say. It’s not because we disagree with what they’re saying or whom they date, it’s because we Asian men have a growing desire to experience life and to be recognized as full human beings across all demographics. It’s a perfectly natural human reaction to gravitate more towards that which validates you–both in the political and personal realm.
2. I think there need to be active subcultures. I’m not a super-artsy type, but we need to encourage super-artsy Asian male types to succeed and to find themselves. Asian men and women come in all shapes, colors, and sizes, and it’s important that we encourage diversity of thinking and lifestyles within our population.
(Pic from here. I have no idea who Quest Crew is, but it’s another subculture that we need to encourage.)
