Social Science - Sociology assignment discussion week 12

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Asian Men and the Construction of Racial Desire on Craigslist

C. Winter Han

Gay Racial Desire In a 2010 magazine article titled “A state of Nanjing China,” which appeared in The Advocate, the leading gay and lesbian publication in the country, author Michael Lowenthal chronicled his adventure “across 12 time zones to find a gay experience as foreign as the culinary delicacies his hosts won’t stop serving.” Filled with descriptions of dark alleys, strangely clad ambigu- ously gendered figures, and dimly lit rooms, Lowenthal describes his “for- eign” adventure as one that culminated in a bathroom tryst with an Asian drag queen, whom the author goes to lengths to describe as someone with whom he would never have engaged in sexual activity with outside of his “foreign” adventure. In Lowenthal’s narrative, sexual encounter with an Asian drag queen is enticing specifically because it is something that is “for- eign” to him in every way. It is something for him to indulge in only when he is “twelve time zones away” rather than in his own backyard. There, in Nanjing, sex with an Asian drag queen becomes the ultimate act of engag- ing in sexual activity with the “other,” an activity bell hooks reminds us is enticing specifically because it is seen as “a new delight, more intense, more satisfying than normal ways of doing and feeling.”1

Here, in this faraway and foreign land, Lowenthal allows himself to en- gage in the “real fun” of “bringing to the surface all those ‘nasty’ uncon- scious fantasies and longings about contact with the other embedded in the secret (not so secret) deep structure of white supremacy.” Only within the framework of a foreign adventure where one is expected to indulge in those delights that would normally be off-limits “back home,” he is free to indulge in sex as he would indulge any other foreign delicacy. But as hooks also re- minds us, the desire for the other isn’t simply about desiring something different but is embedded in a larger process that helps to maintain the status quo of race. In this particular case, the “otherness” attributed to the gay Asian drag queen is simultaneously used to eroticize him while devalu- ing his worth compared to those Lowenthal might considered “normal.” His

Q&a : Voices from Queer Asian North America, edited by Martin Manalansan, et al., Temple University Press, 2021. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/csueastbay/detail.action?docID=28684796. Created from csueastbay on 2022-10-31 05:17:08.

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sexual value to the author is only in relation to the other foreign delights indulged twelve time zones away. Rather than challenge existing racial hi- erarchies and boundaries, this episode of interracial desire is a deviation from the normal, and the abnormality of these desires is what needs to be explained or justified.2

This imagined foreignness of gay Asian men is not surprising given that gay Asian men and other gay men of color do not populate the everyday world of gay white men. Instead, they are cordoned off in those gay spaces specifically marked by race. Instead of racial diversity, “everyday” gay life is marked by an unrelenting onslaught of whiteness. As Allan Bérubé noted, various “whitening processes” creates a “gay community” made up of most- ly male, and mostly white, upscale consumers with “mainstream, even tra- ditional, values.”3 For example, gay bars, the epitome of gay spaces, are marked as racialized spaces, often with the specific goal of facilitating inter- racial sexual encounters outside of those gay spaces deemed “normal.” Bars like the Blatino Brox Factory in New York and Red Dragon in Los Angeles mark their clientele as raced, whereas gay bars with largely white patrons are considered “mainstream.” In fact, bars such as the Abbey in Los Angeles claim to be “for everyone,” as owner David Cooley told the LA Weekly, de- spite numerous observations by men of color to the contrary.4 Even when gay bars have a mixed race clientele, the bar itself is deeply segregated, with men of different races congregating at different sections of the bar.5 Even when all the gay men are at the same place, they are not in the same space.

But why think about racialized desire at all? While desire for one race over another may be explained as personal preferences by those who hold them,6 racialized desires are embedded with the larger narratives of race. What is considered desirable and beautiful is hardly a reflection of personal preferences but rather deeply embedded in a racialized system that assigns worth to some but not others.7 More important, racialized desires help mark the boundaries of race by marking those partners who are normative and those who are to be engaged with only twelve time zones away. Thus, exam- ining racialized desires offers us a glimpse into how race is constructed.

Orientalizing Gay Desires In his analysis of gay porn featuring Asian men, Richard Fung noted that Asian men are uniformly depicted as submissive bottoms eager to please their white male partners.8 Fung notes that whereas black men are hyper- sexualized, Asian men are “collectively seen as undersexed.” But I want to extend this argument a bit further and note that Asian men are seen as undersexed only when it comes to being active sexual partners but are overtly sexual when eager to fulfil the sexual needs and desires of their

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white male partners. That is, within gay relationships, Asian men are ex- pected to fulfil sexually submissive roles, and to do so eagerly.9

This isn’t to imply that Asian men are uniformly portrayed as sexual bottoms in gay porn. In his analysis of porn star Brandon Lee, arguably the first Asian porn “star,” Nguyen Tan Hoang points out that the performer is a sexual top.10 Yet what makes Brandon Lee notable and worthy of aca- demic inquiry as a performer is the very fact that he deviates from the norm. The attention he receives as an Asian “top” is due entirely to the peculiarity of an Asian top, thus reinforcing the Asian role as bottoms. His popularity comes not from the normalization of “masculine” Asian men in gay porn but his very peculiarity. In fact, he is the exception that proves the rule.

The gendered sexualization of gay Asian men and other men of color is hardly unique to the gay pornographic imagination. Rather, gendered tropes of sexuality are rampant. Not surprisingly, this gendered sexualiza- tion of Asian men has long historical roots deeply embedded in what it means to be an Asian or Asian American man. As Nayan Shah wrote:

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Chinese and Japa- nese American men and women were depicted as depraved, im- moral, and racially inassimilable to US society. US immigration re- strictions, labor migration, and recruitment patterns contributed to predominantly male Chinese, South Asian, and Filipino migration. This “bachelor society,” with its lopsided gender ratios, has been cast as a tragedy of sexual and social alienation. Historians have criti- cally interpreted the lurid and sensationalist imagery of Asian American bachelor vice to understand broader patterns of sexual- ized and gendered race-making that buttressed racial antipathy and segregation. The racial caricatures that circulate in the nineteenth and twentieth century media of effeminate men, treacherous women, and subservient women reinforced the perception of the “Oriental” race as gender atypical and sexually nonnormative, bereft of sexual agency.11

These historic stereotypes of Asian men served the purpose of positioning white sexuality as “normal.” In fact, Wilson and his colleagues found that perceptions of gay white men lack the racialized gendered stereotypes as- sociated with men of color, and both gay white men and gay men of color see those stereotypes by which gay men of color are measured as being nor- mative.12

More important, the Orientalizing of gay desire not only marks who is desirable and who is not but also dictates expectations about how sexual interactions will occur.13 In the first study to systematically examine the

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linkages between race and sexual roles, Lick and Johnson argued that “ra- cial groups are imbued with gendered information, such that Asian men are perceived to be feminine.”14 If sexual performance is dictated by such sexu- al expectations, we need to examine the racialized and gendered implica- tions that exist for the ways that such expectations are constructed, particu- larly given that sexual behaviors among gay men of color are sometimes dependent on the race of their sexual partners.15

Sexual Desires Online Online personal ads often allow users to explicitly place and search for ads based on specific personal criteria such as age, race, sexual roles, and more, which that allow individuals to cater their ads to targeted readers. In fact, online spaces can be considered more authentic in terms of the articulation of sexual desires as they allow men to “engage more directly with their de- sires, develop and express their fantasies, and approach potential partners with these desires and fantasies in mind.”16 One does not become sexually excited by a potential sexual partner but becomes sexually aroused by an imagined other and goes online seeking someone to fulfil one’s already ex- isting desires. Because of this, examining personal ads allow us to explore the characteristics, both physical and behavioral, that users deem sexually desirable.17

Not only do these ads allow users to specifically target the demographic groups that they desire, but they also allow for users to market themselves by highlighting the traits that they believe will be desirable to others.18 More important, personal ads can act as “a location of autobiography,” where “ad- vertisers [can] often construct their ideal selves in their personal narra- tives.”19 Because of this, advertisers not only construct an idealized sexual partner; they construct what they believe that sexual partner would want from them. As Neal Lester and Maureen Goggin note, personal ads allow for the “creation of a racially, gendered and sexualized self and others.”20 But more important, they become sites where negotiations of race and sexuality are publicly salient and “become public occasions for invoking and distrib- uting a host of myths and fantasies about race and sex.”21

The problem here is that stereotypes about sexual behaviors are always embedded with racial stereotypes, and vice versa. Within gay personal ads, these stereotypes get amplified rather than diluted. In fact, evidence sug- gests that these stereotypes are also widely shared among gay men of all races, and there is widespread agreement about the sexual proclivities of different men based on race.22

Studies of racial preferences in online personal ads are few, but Phua and Kaufman (2003) offer a glimpse into how race and sexuality might interact

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online.23 After examining 2,400 online personal ads, the authors found that gay men were significantly more likely to explicitly state a racial preference for sexual partners than straight men. A later work by Lundquist and Lin (2015) found similar patterns among gay men.24 In their study of the experi- ences of gay men of color who use online sex ads, Paul, Ayala, and Choi (2010) found that race was a was one of the primary criteria for online sex- ual partner selection, both to exclude potential sexual partners as well as to specifically facilitate interracial connections.25 The authors also reported that gay men of color explicitly understood the racialized hierarchy of desire among gay men with white men at the top, followed by Latino men, with black and Asian men being viewed as less desirable. As can be expected, black and Asian men reported much higher levels of sexual rejection based on race than Latino men. These studies offer important insights, but they fail to capture the ways that racial preferences get articulated. This chapter addresses this gap in the literature by examining online personal ads placed by gay men to examine how racial desires are constructed through how men market themselves and how they virtually describe their preferred sexual partners. In doing so, it sheds light on the ways that “Asian-ness” comes to be perceived and marketed.

Racial Construction in Craigslist Ads When examining ads placed by white men seeking Asian partners, a decid- edly racial pattern can be observed. For example, one poster wrote:

Looking for asian son/daughter: I’m a fatherly type white man who is attracted to nice, young (but legal) asian. Maybe you are a sweet asian boy who is curious about being with a guy, I’m basically straight but have an attraction to smooth and emo/fem asians. I can host at my home and we can enjoy some 420 and just relax together. I’m open to helping you explore your self identity, as well as any sexual fantasies that you many have. I’m very open minded—so feel free to be honest with me about what you need or want in terms of being with a dad type. If you have any interest in dressing, I have lots of things you could wear. My main objective is to meet a nice person and make you feel safe and comfortable. Please send a photo and I will return a photo of myself.

The above ad demonstrates a number of themes found among ads placed by white men seeking Asian partners. First, there is an expectation that the Asian partner would be more feminine than white men. In addition, the theme of Asian sexual inexperience was also prevalent in a number of ads.

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The vast majority of ads placed by white men seeking an Asian sex part- ner are from self-described tops looking for bottoms. This isn’t surprising given the long history of feminizing Asian men in contemporary American media, both gay and straight. Having roots in Western colonial domination of Asian countries, Asian men have long been stereotyped as being more feminine and more submissive than white men as part and parcel of colonial justification and Western homoerotic fantasies about the mysterious East.26

Not surprisingly, white men often sought Asian men with more “femi- nine” physical features. As one white poster wrote:

asian guys are hot: I love the slim smooth asian guys I see at the gym and around town. they look great with their clothes on and even better with their clothes off. I’m a masculine bi white top 5’9” 170 uncut cock shaved crotch hiv-neg play safe looking for a sexy hiv-neg asian bottom (18–48) for daytime sex. host or travel. get back with pix and info. thx.

As the post demonstrates, desire for Asian men revolved around perceived conceptions of them being more feminine and sexually submissive than white men. In the way that black men fulfilled white sexual fantasies revolv- ing around the need to be sexually dominated, Asian men were expected to fulfill white sexual fantasies of needing to dominate.

The perceived femininity of Asian male bodies is also reflected in the ways that white men talk about Asian penises. Very few ads from white men seeking Asian men specify penis size, but the majority of the ads placed by white men seeking Asian men that mention penis size specifically mention seeking men with smaller penises. For example, one poster wrote:

I love your small dick: what’s the big deal with big dicks? I like guys with small, boyish-looking dicks. I’m a masculine bi white top 5–9” 170 uncut hiv-neg play safe looking for a smooth small-hung hiv-neg white/asian/latino bottom (20–4) for daytime sex. host or travel. get back with pix and info.

While few of the ads placed by white men seeking Asian men specified that they were seeking sexual partners with a big penis, many of the white post- ers specified that they themselves possessed a big penis. For example, one white poster wrote:

Looking for young Twink that can host, Thick 7 inch’s waiting: Nice tall chill very clean thin strong white 38 155, 7” cut, thick 6.5 girth male hosting tonight for thin twink petite or tiny guys men

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CD TS Asian ++++ Mostly top but verse here. Please be thin petite or small framed smaller the better younger the better 420 pnp

The ad demonstrates a number of themes found among ads placed by white men seeking Asian men. First, the Asian man is expected to be smaller, thinner, and younger than the white men. While the poster presents his “7” cut, thick 6.5 girth,” the only physical demand he makes of his potential partner is a “thin petite or small frame.”

The ads placed by Asian men indicate that many Asian men attempt to fit sexual stereotypes in order to attract white men. For example, one Asian poster wrote:

Come take my panties off daddy then fuck me: I just got a new pair of panties and I would like to find an older married white or hairy top daddy to come pull them off as I suck your married cock then pull them off as I bend over so you can Fuck me like you do your wife. I live alone and discretion is a must. Your clear face pic and stats get mine. I am just a regular guy, not a cd or T girl. I am into kissing, sucking, massaging and if you like to rim a clean smooth tight asian asspussy ++.

The ad highlights the most common themes found among ads placed by Asian men seeking white men. First, white men are expected to be older and more masculine and to possess larger penises than Asian men. Second, white men must be willing to take charge of the sexual situation while the Asian man submits to him and provides him with sexual gratification. Within this fantasy, white men are always older and bigger and possess larger penises, and Asian men provide tight asses for them to use.

Discussion In Craigslist ads, interracial sex is often presented as a “new delight,” some- thing that should be more intense and more satisfying, precisely because inter- racial sex is out of the ordinary. When men look for interracial sexual partners online, they are not looking for the “normal” ways of doing things but rather project their racialized sexual fantasies on potential sexual partners.

In writing their craigslist ads, white men seeking Asian men were likely to equate Asian sexuality with submission and innocence. In these ads, white men who sought Asian men specifically described seeking a more stereotypically feminine partner, whether it was for men who were physi- cally smaller and smoother or who behaved in a more feminine manner. Asian men who specifically sought white sexual partners were also more

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likely to describe themselves as being more sexually submissive than their potential white partners. In describing their own bodies, Asian men often focused on their more “feminine” features and rarely discussed their pe- nises, instead writing about their asses. Thus, it’s clear that the characteris- tics attributed to Latino men had more to do with white sexual fantasies than actual realities.

The problem with racial objectification is that when taken to the ex- treme, people come to be seen purely in terms of stereotypical traits associ- ated with the body.27 It isn’t simply that they come to be seen as objects for consumption; they are also seen as being a consumable good with predict- able characteristics. This consideration is particularly important to con- sider now given the explosion of online ads for partner seeking among gay men. As more gay men utilize online resources to seek sexual partners, the ways that racialized desires get constructed in virtual spaces will become increasingly important in the ways that we come to perceive people of dif- ferent races. Thus it becomes increasingly important that scholars attempt to understand the various ways that online spaces not only reflect racialized beliefs but also how they help to maintain and reinforce them.

While this article focused on men seeking inter-racial sexual partners, racial narratives rarely go unchallenged. That is, while dominant groups may create narratives of race about subaltern groups, members of subaltern groups do in fact challenge these dominant narratives.28 Such counternar- ratives can be found in Craigslist ads posted by Asian men seeking other Asian men. While fewer in number, such ads challenge the dominant nar- ratives of racialized sexual desires and norms. For example, one Asian man posted:

No Rice Queens: VGL looking, in-shape Asian guy looking for other Asian guys for NSA sex. Mostly top but will bottom for the right guy.

Yet another posted:

Looking for regular fuck buddy: Asian. 5’7”. 145. 34. Always horny, looking for a regular buddy. Play safe only. Not into kink. Com- pletely versatile here so you be the same. Not into older white dudes, so don’t waste your time. Looking for a slim partner close to my age. Asian+.

Clearly, ads placed by Asian men seeking sex with other Asian men offer a stark counternarrative to the heavily racialized and gendered ads placed by those seeking sexual partners of another race, particularly ads placed by

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white men seeking an Asian partner. Not only are these ads devoid of racial stereotypes, but they also counter the larger narrative that white men are more desirable by specifically excluding white male partners and construct- ing white men as less desirable than Asian men. In doing so, they actively challenge the racialized hierarchy of desire that marks white men as having more worth than Asian men.

While not the focus of this article, ads placed by Asian men seeking other Asian men offer us a rich opportunity to examine the ways that larger nar- ratives of race are actively confronted and challenged by members of subal- tern groups. Members of subaltern groups rarely embrace dominant narra- tives without challenge. In both of these ads, what is notable is that they both challenge the taken-for-granted assumptions surrounding white and Asian sexual relationships, specifically that the normative interracial paring in- volves an older white man and a younger Asian man. In both these ads, the men specifically address this stereotype, rejecting them outright. In doing so, they construct a different sexual norm outside of the racialized framework.

NOTES

1. bell hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston: South End, 1992), 21. 2. Neal A. Lester and Maureen Daly Goggin, “In Living Color: Politics of Desire

in Heterosexual Interracial Black/White Personal Ads,” Communication and Critical/ Cultural Studies 2, no. 2 (2015): 130–162.

3. Allan Bérubé, “How Gay Stays White and What Kind of White It Stays,” in The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness, edited by B. B. Rasmussen, I. J. Nexica, E. Klinenberg, and M. Wray (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 235.

4. Jonathan Tolliver, “Do We Need Black Gay Bars Anymore?” LA Weekly, June 12, 2015, http://www.laweekly.com/arts/do-we-need-black-gay-bars-anymore-5669980.

5. See Han, C. Winter, Geisha of a Different Kind: Race and Sexuality in Gaysian America (New York: New York University Press, 2015); Jason Orne, Boystown (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017).

6. Brandon A. Robinson, “‘Personal Preference’ as the New Racism: Gay Desire and Racial Cleansing in Cyberspace,” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 1, no. 2 (2015): 317–330.

7. Dwight McBride, Why I Hate Abercrombie & Fitch: Essays on Race and Sexuality (New York: New York University Press, 2005).

8. Richard Fung, “Looking for My Penis: The Eroticized Asian in Gay Video Porn,” in Asian American Sexualities: Dimensions of the Gay and Lesbian Experience, edited by Russell Leong (New York: Routledge, 1996), 181–198.

9. Chong-suk Han, “A Qualitative Exploration of the Relationship between Racism and Unsafe Sex among Asian Pacific Islander Gay Men,” Archives of Sexual Behavior 37, no. 5 (2008): 827–837.

10. Tan Hoang Nguyen, A View from the Bottom: Asian American Masculinity and Sexual Representation (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014).

11. Nayan Shah, “Race-ing Sex,” Frontiers 35, no. 1 (2014): 27. 12. Patrick A. Wilson, Pamela Valera, Ana Ventuneac, Ivan Balan, Matt Rowe, and

Alex Carballo-Dieguez, “Race-Based Sexual Stereotyping and Sexual Partnering among

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Men Who Use the Internet to Identity Other Men for Bareback Sex,” Journal of Sex Research 46, no. 5 (2009): 399–413.

13. Edward O. Laumann, Stephen Ellingson, Jenna Mahay, and Anthony Paik, eds., The Sexual Organization of the City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).

14. David J. Lick and Kerri L. Johnson, “Intersecting Race and Gender Cues Are Associated with Perceptions of Gay Men’s Preferred Sexual Roles,” Archives of Sexual Behavior 44, no. 5 (2015): 1471.

15. See Han (2008) and Husbands et al. (2013). 16. Denton Callander, Martin Holt, and Christy E. Newman, “‘Not Everyone’s

Gonna Like Me’: Accounting for Race and Racism in Sex and Dating Web Services for Gay and Bisexual Men,” Ethnicities 16, no. 1 (2016): 3.

17. Elizabeth M. Morgan, Tamara C. Richards, and Emily M. VanNess, “Comparing Narratives of Personal and Preferred Partner Characteristics in Online Dating Adver- tisements,” Computers in Human Behavior 26 (2010): 883–888.

18. Elizabeth Jagger, “Is Thirty the New Sixty? Dating, Age and Gender in a Postmodern, Consumer Society,” Sociology 39, no. 1 (2005): 89–106.

19. James D. Ross, “Personal Ads and the Intersection of Race and Same-Sex Male Attraction,” in Racialized Politics of Desire in Personal Ads, edited by Neal A. Lester and Maureen Daly Goggin (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2008), 97.

20. Lester and Goggin, “In Living Color,” 131. 21. Ibid. 22. See Han (2008); Husbands et al. (2013). See also Patrick A. Wilson et al., “Race-

Based Sexual Stereotyping and Sexual Partnering among Men Who Use the Internet to Identity Other Men for Bareback Sex,” 399–413.

23. Voon Chin Phua and Gayle Kaufman, “The Crossroads of Race and Sexuality: Date Selection among Men in Internet ‘Personal’ Ads,” Journal of Family Issues 24, no. 8 (2003): 981–994.

24. Jennifer H. Lundquist, and Ken-Hou Lin, “Is Love (Color) Blind? The Economy of Race Among Gay and Straight Daters,” Social Forces 93, no. 4 (2015): 1423–1449.

25. Jay Paul, George Ayala, and Kyung-Hee Choi, “Internet Sex Ads for MSM and Partner Selection Criteria: The Potency of Race/Ethnicity Online,” Journal of Sex Research 47, no. 6 (2010): 528–538.

26. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978). 27. Bartky, Sandra Lee. Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology

of Oppression. New York: Routledge, 1990. 28. Chong‐suk Han, “Examining Identity Development among Gay Men of Color,”

Sociology Compass 11, no. 9 (2017): e12503.

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