Today, I watched several YouTube videos about interesting things to do in Bangkok. I will be visiting Bangkok this month, and I will have to make a decision soon about how long I should stay there. So, I decided to devote a few minutes of my Sunday to conduct a little bit of research. I stumbled upon this video of a couple of Singaporean female YouTubers on tour in Bangkok. In the market that they visited, a white man came up to one of them and asked whether she is an SPG. She was mortified! I didn't know what SPG was. I googled it, and I was mortified myself. According to Wikipedia, a sarong party girl (also known as an SPG) is a woman in Singapore and to a lesser extent Peninsular Malaysia of Chinese ethnicity who exclusively dates or socializes with men of European origin. Que horror! This dude had the gall to ask a woman to her face whether she is a Singaporean woman who only dates Caucasian men, along with the other derogatory stereotypes that come with being an SPG, before he even asked her for her name. I wonder if this guy would go up to a random Caucasian woman and ask her whether she prefers Caucasian men to Asian men. I bet not. Where does this creep get his sense of entitlement from? There are apparently many Caucasian men who believe that most Asian women, especially those from developing nations, prefer them over Asian men. I am sure that there are Asian women who exclusively date Caucasian men: are they racists, and should we blame them for the creepy white male tourists who target Asian women as subjects of harassment? Have they unwittingly reinforced white supremacy? Or, should we blame the white men who have yellow fever?
Race makes a demonstrable difference everywhere: in the workplace and in neighborhoods, in print and on screen, in schools, hospitals, and prisons. We should not be surprised to see the effects of race on even the most intimate spheres of our lives: dating, sex, romance, and marriage. A common defense of racial fetishes is the claim that they are ‘just a preference.’ Everyone is a bit superficial when it comes to dating. Certainly, we will not deprive people of the gift of our friendship because of their height, eye color, or income. But we will be happy to swipe left because of a wrong haircut, a cringey personal motto, or because their job is not "creative" enough. And, everyone has 'preferences' when it comes to dating. Dating everyone makes no sense. No one has time for that. Hence, superficial filters are necessary. So, is a white man who prefers an Asian woman racist, while a white man who prefers a woman with blue eyes and blonde hair is simply a guy with a preference? When is a preference cringey, and when is it acceptable?
When a white man says that he prefers a woman who has blonde hair and blue eyes, it sounds like he just has an 'aesthetic' preference. But when a white man says he dates only white women, it sounds a bit racist. And when a white man says he dates only Asian women, it sounds problematic because racial fetishes always depend on racial stereotypes rather than pure aesthetic features. Of course, we cannot help what we are attracted to. Some SPGs and men afflicted with the so-called "yellow fever" prefer to date Caucasian men and Asian women, respectively, because it's just an 'aesthetic' preference and not because they subscribe to stereotypes. If we are all horribly superficial when it comes to our dating preferences, why are racial fetishes problematic?
Just because people with racial fetishes are not racists, it does not follow that there is nothing problematic about their preferences because whether or not some particular case of racial fetish is caused by an individual’s harboring racial stereotypes at some level, it inevitably has the effect of reinforcing racial stereotypes. This was why the creepy white man at the Bangkok market had the gall to ask an Asian woman whether she was an SPG, and this was why the Asian woman was mortified. The creepy dude stereotyped all Asian women as being sexually open to white foreigners because he came across a handful of SPGs previously, or has heard of them. On the other hand, the Asian woman has to bear the significant emotional labor required to resist the racial stereotypes against Asian women because she knows that Asian women are stereotyped as "easy" or submissive. And if she was indeed an SPG and enters into a relationship with the creepy guy, she likewise has to bear the significant emotional labor to fulfill, resist, or otherwise negotiate those stereotypes. It’s a double-edged sword.
The existence of SPGs reinforces white supremacy, whether unwittingly or otherwise. Interestingly, the existence of men with yellow fever does nothing to elevate the social status and privileges of Asian women. In fact, many Asian women- like the Singaporean YouTuber- are targeted and harassed because of these racial stereotypes propagated by the yellow-fevered .
So, what's the solution here? Should all interracial dating stop? Or should all dating be interracial? Both options won’t change anything if we don’t collectively accept that race is nothing but a construct.
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