Yellow Fever:
Sexual obsession felt by a non-asian (Usually white, usually male) towards asians of the opposite gender. Symptoms of yellow fever include stalking, halfhearted attempts to learn Japanese/Mandarin/Cantonese/Korean and whacking off to Sailor Moon video’s.
And I should know.
–From Urbandictionary
The other day, an ex-Asian American girlfriend who currently lives up in San Francisco posted some photos from a Lunar New Year’s celebration she attended. She was dressed in a cheongsam that fit tightly around her still curvaceous and lovely body. The dress also had that slit that runs down the side to show off her long and silky smooth legs. And damn, if I wasn’t turned on! I haven’t thought about this woman in a long time, but the only thing that kept me from jumping on a plane to the Bay Area at that very moment was the fact that she has a husband and a kid now.
But it got me thinking about why these photos got me all hot and bothered. Like I said, she’s not someone I really think much about these days, yet there was something…well, I think I might just have to conclude that it was the whole cheongsam thing that made her look so fine. Which begs the question: Do I have yellow fever? And maybe even more pressing than that: Is it even possible for an Asian guy to have yellow fever?
Now, I’ve previously blogged about white guys with yellow fever and how I can’t blame them for this condition because Asian chicks are super hot. I’ve even supported my Asian American sistas who want to date white dudes as long as they don’t date ugly white dudes. But I never imagined that this issue might one day hit home for me on such a personal level. It’s like studying and writing about alcoholism and then suddenly realizing that you yourself may be an alcoholic.
The truth is that for the past 15 or so years, I’ve pretty much exclusively dated Asian women (though there have been a handful of non-Asians too, in my defense). I just assumed it was because I had more in common with Asian (American) women; that we shared a mutual cultural vocabulary. But now that I think about it…there might have been some evidence of yellow fever in play as well.
For example, as I’m sure is true with many of our readers, I enjoy sexual role-playing games. Seeing their women dressed up as a French maid or a Girl Scout might turn on some guys, but I guess if I’m going to be honest, there’s usually a “chinky” element when I do this. I mean just look at the titles of the role-playing games I enjoy:
Traveling vacuum cleaner salesman knocks on door of house where geisha is about to take a bath.
Traveling encyclopedia salesman knocks on door of house where Japanese schoolgirl is preparing to serve sushi off her naked breasts.
Or my favorite:
Traveling broom salesman knocks on door of house where life-sized porcelain China Doll has magically come to life and wants to experience what it means to be human by having sex with a traveling broom salesman.
Look, I grew up around mostly white people and shunned my Asian American-ness in my misguided youth. I dated mostly white chicks and did not find Asian women attractive at all. I know it’s a cliché to say this—but I really did think of them like my sisters who were goody-goody model minorities. I went after the rock n’ roll bad chicks and the Asian American girls I grew up with weren’t like that—well, at least not on the surface. Believe me, after I later had my eyes opened, I looked back on the Asian girls I knew growing up and totally regretted that I had never asked them out. There were some hotties there but I was too whitewashed back then to see the obvious.
But maybe I’ve gone too far in the opposite direction now. Whether I have yellow fever or not, maybe I need to consciously break out of my yellow bubble and start dating non-Asian women. Maybe I should follow the example of John Mayer’s penis and exclusively date white chicks. So…I guess I’ll need to figure out where white women hang out then. Anyone have suggestions?
So what do you think…is it possible for someone who is Asian to have yellow fever? Chinky or not chinky?
Why don’t you not think about them as being “chinky or not chinky” and just date them as women?
Dang, these de-motivational posters really get to ya. Its funny, I have yellow fever yet I never dated an Asian girl. Funny yet true. Esp. for an Asian guy! I have two hard and fast rules about yellow fever. One is never go after the girl Im going for. Two dont overly be bragging about it. And im cool with it.
Saying an Asian guy has yellow fever is like saying dogs prefer doing it doggy style. It’s the most natural thing in the world, so there’s really no fever there.
I suppose you can define asians with YF as a near-exclusive attraction to asian wimmins but that’s not possible unless you’re a peasant farmer in western China. Are dudes claiming to only be attracted to their own race are any less douchey than John Mayer? Maybe it was fashionable during college when we were all militantly joining AA Student Unions. We’re not talking about dating/marriage here. This, like the fever, is a snap judgement gut-level (or lower) superficial reaction.
Interesting, I for one always loved Asian women and I totally think I have yellow fever. I find that Asian women are the most beautiful to me. My very first grade school crush was a cute JA girl that lived on my block. I did go out with a white girl once but she was the one that did the asking out.
This article really offended me and I usually love what you all have to say. I HATE the term “whitewashed”. As a hottie of mixed ethnicity, I am proud to be American and despise labels that one is too white or too yellow or not black enough (remember the flack Obama took).
My daughter’s father is Chinese and he refuses to even consider a romantic relationship with me because I am not Chinese. He wanted me to abort when I found out I was pregnant, saying he wants a “traditional Chinese wife and kids”. He should have thought of that before sticking his chopstick into my lotus.
A man of any race may be attractive to me and I am sick of the cultural bullshit excuse of staying within one’s own race. If white people said this, they would immediately be labeled as racists.
I just hope you men can grow up and appreciate a woman’s beauty without the preconcieved notions that come with what race they happen to be.
I think there is both a cultural and gender bias to being whitewashed and/or having YF. I also respectfully disagree with [MacLu] above and think it is very possible to be Asian AND have YF.
Some of my oldest/closest friends are “bananas”. No offense to anybody. Many people think that I am too based upon my outward appearance and their limited knowledge of my background. When I travel back to Asia, I am usually easily singled out as being from “overseas”. I also live a mostly “American” lifestyle, yet I identify more with being “Asian” than many of those same friends, whom would say they are “American”….just as [Jennifer] does up above. To put my personal view more succintly, I am “Asian”, but I live here as a citizen in the USA.
I was not born here, but did grow-up here from babyhood. I probably lived in a more whitewashed world than the vast majority of my Asian-American friends (that self-identify as “Americans”). I have dated both Caucasian and Asian women, and find a pretty/HOT girl to be pretty/HOT no matter her race….but I do have a preference for those of my own cultural/ethnic identity and race. Ultimately, I went back to the “motherland’ to bring back a wife.
We are all products of our environment, family, culture, society, friends, schools, the media and the mixed and complicated education and lessons that are instilled upon us through those channels. Why do I call myself “Asian” while many of my friends say they are “American”….even though we all look Asian and that’s how we would be labeled/classified by any government entity or scientist???
Overwhelmingly, my friends that are Asian and self-identify as “American” mostly all have white or even Hispanic partners/love interests, with few exceptions. Most of them are also Asian-American females. I luv them all and they are my lifelong friends, but it makes you wonder how/why/when/where along the course of our youth and development that we were taught different and divergent lessons. Many of my male friends that are Asian detect and are subjected to very subtle (and occasionally very open/direct) forms of racism/bias/and exclusion in the public world that my female friends do not seem to experience here in the white-man’s world.
So again, I think there is both a cultural and gender bias based component. I don’t know Offender Philip on a personal level (though I do find many of his posts interesting, engaging, and thought-provoking), so I don’t know his background or upbringing and his personal thoughts and philosophies. He did state that he “was too whitewashed”, so perhaps that qualifies him as being capable of contracting YF, whereas I am merely naturally inclined towards it via my genes.
Mysteries of the universe….
YMMV.
Good Luck!!
We used to have these discussions all the time on the Fighting 44s. Put very briefly, “racism” is not well understood by most people, and it’s important to differentiate between something “racist” and something merely “ethnocentric.”
“Ethnocentrism,” that is, the ability to relate better or identify with one group of people (as opposed to all humanity) based on culture, national, appearance, religion (these are all mixed-up in ethnocentric cultures) is a natural and healthy part of human development. It evolved from way back in the day as a survival mechanism: babies, for example, are born “racist,” that is, ethnocentric. They have an inherent trust for people matching the race of their parents and tend to view visible outsiders with hostility, because back in the day, they would have killed you and/or your parents.
Identity-formation goes through well-understood phases: your own body (babies are not born with the understanding that their bodies are part of who they are), your family (or band), your tribe (extended family and friends), your people (race, culture, religion, nationality), all people (humanity), all sentient beings, and if you’re enlightened enough, the manifest world, and then the manifest/unmanifest world.
Note that in these phases, “earlier phases” are still active as later ones form: you still relate better to your family as opposed strangers. You still relate better to your own physical self than you do with all of humanity.
So if you’re ethnicity X, and you feel a stronger affinity/attraction toward ethnicity X, that is not “racist” or oppressively exclusive, it’s a natural part of human identity formation.
As such, according to my understanding of “Yellow Fever,” it’s not possible to have a “fetish” for someone you relate with, and with whom you have the same race/cultural/national background. That’s just being human.
The only way I can see for one Asian to have a “fetish” for another is if you don’t actually relate to this other person in a deep way but view him/her as “exotic”: for example, if you grew up in the states and love dating people who grew up in China exclusively. Even here, I’d hesitate to call it full-blown fever, as there would be multiple factors at play.
(Unrelated note: I have a comment in the Devastator article “in a moderation queue” which I’ve never seen before. It’s chock-full of Transformers wisdom so please approve when you get the chance!)
Another note: the poster’s above who want Phil (or anyone) to treat people as purely human, decontextualized from race/culture/nationality/religion are missing a crucial understanding of human identity and relationship formation: decontextualization is impossible, and in fact, makes people more racist.
I read an unsurprising article not long ago which describes how white parents who bring up their children to try to treat other children in an entirely decontextualized manner create, well, ignorant children who form their own unquestioned and unexplored beliefs about race, whereas parents who explicitly acknowledge race, and differences and similarities between peoples, end up raising much more enlightened children.
The key is not to negate the results of pre-”worldcentric” phases of identity in preference for a view which embraces everyone as human, but rather, to discuss identity and humanity openly and intelligently, and hopefully with some humour, as Phil has always done.
Stealth MC: We’ll just have to agree to disagree about the process of “decontextualized from race/culture etc”. When I and imagine most of us meet/see a person in a room, via a friend, on the street, blind date, in church, the classifies, at the gym, where ever, its strictly emotional and the first thing I’m I thinking is I wanna meet or boink her. The last thing on my mind is what her ethnicity, her demographic and the likelihood of how much money she makes and how she might raise my children. I’ll leave all the mental aspect to traditionalist when I need to be set up by my parents.
Incidentally, having people treat people as human doesn’t mean to disregard their race or culture but rather don’t let it be a detriment. Enjoy the moment rather than the why or the why not.
So…I guess I’ll need to figure out where white women hang out then. Anyone have suggestions?
Bowling alleys? Gun shows? NASCAR events?
Now please tell me where the asian chicks with Jew Fever hang out.
@TKK – JDate. tons of them there. go get one!
http://www.jdate.com/
i have a serious case of yellow fever for white people
i assume that would be a misnomer…
@Bond – We’re saying the same thing, we just have a different def of what YF is.
Bill, you’ve misinterpreted what I’m saying. I’m not saying that everyone makes conscious determinations or judgments based on race, nor am I saying it plays a significant factor in all interactions. I’m saying that it constitutes a fundamental aspect of human social and psychological development, and people who don’t acknowledge this fundamentally don’t understand racism and risk perpetuating it.
I don’t actually disagree with any of what you’ve said.
Oh and the comment about just treating women as women, as opposed to acknowledging their ethnicity, misses the point of Phil’s post and in fact cuts off their dimensionality: women are not just women, women have an ethnicity, a background, certain social roles, etc. To acknowledge this is a good thing. No one is seriously arguing that people should be pigeonholed based on any racial or cultural label, but the fact is, terms like “Asian,” “American,” “Latino,” etc. have meaning and constitute part of someone’s identity.
Fascinating. To quote a guy with pointy ears who tried to remain emotionless. Talk about mixing races.
I have always had the fever. For the Chinese. I have invaded their Manchuria over and over. I have protected them. Their trains run on time.
Rising Son.
stealth mc: I know. Sometimes i just speed read and write stuff and end up glossing stuff up. Like your site btw.
Phil, your fantasies appear to be a combination of the mythic American door to door salesman and equally mythic Japanese female archetypes.
In other words, you’re the Willy Lo Mein of Yellow Fever.
My best friend and I were having a discussion about which one of us was the more whitewashed.
Him: “You’re so whitewashed you date white girls.”
Me: “You’re so whitewashed you date Asian girls.”
A stalemate if I ever saw one.
Whites with yellowfever have no respect and will even try to pick up an Asian dude’s asian gf in front of him. This should be dangerous at most unless the asian dude is a wimp, cuz I sure would pop the guy in the nose at least before Kung-Fu bashing the freak. Don’t get disrespected, fight for your women and your pride!
Fetishes require being indiscriminate, essentializing and dehumanizing.
Fetishes are more common interracially, ie it’s easier to dehumanize the “exotic” than the familiar, but they certainly also occur intraracially. I have known many, many Asian-American guys who irrationally romanticize, ie fetishize, Asian women.
Damn, the Willy Lo Mein of Yellow Fever.
That there’s a Pulitzer.
I remember the old discussions like this on the 44s. I’ve always said that it was possible for Twinkies to look at Asian women as exotic in much the same way that non-Asians with yellow fever do.
I mean, if you’re a Twinkie who has been a potato chaser your whole life, then Asian women would certainly seem different and exotic to you. If any of you know about Winston Wu, he once got an Asian prostitute in one of his trips to Russia and his comment about it on his blog was, “so exotic!”
An actual fetish is different, and I’m not sure that it’s possible for an Asian to have full blown yellow fever. Philip’s examples of sexual role play are not much different from any other kind of role play or dress up. However, I do think that being a “reformed banana” might carry with it some small issues with overcompensation for past transgressions.
It’s possible for an Asian dude to have yellow fever. This is usually caused when he is bitten by an Aedes aegypti mosquito carrying the virus. Two ironies here:
1) Aedes aegypti is not found in Asia, but is found in Africa and South America. Which means that in order for an Asian dude to come down with yellow fever, he’d have to be into Latinas or Africans. (Get your swirl on.)
2) A Chinese researcher was trying to prove that all Chinese people descended from Asian-based Homo erectus. Instead, his findings showed that all Chinese are actually descended from Africa:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3IzMvBeOLk
This means, in effect, that anyone hankering after an Asian chick, is actually hankering for an African chick.
Welcome to the family, son
Uh… what about black chicks who think Asian fellows are spiffy?
Especially Kaoru.
But it’s not to say that only one race of fellows or chicks is spiffy as they all are, but Asian fellows get overlooked in terms of male beauty.
Which is a bit annoying. Asian dudes should get props too!
great present.