Pride or Fetish: Dating as a White-Passing Hapa

Hapa Mag - SEPTEMBER 16, 2020

By Nathan Liu

Yellow fever. It’s a term that every Asian American knows. Even if we’ve never experienced it ourselves, we almost always know someone who has, and can easily visualize the kind of person that this term is directed toward: Some white guy with a katana and/or paper scroll on his wall, who loves to flaunt what little Chinese/Japanese/Korean he knows, who is obsessed with anime and/or kung fu flicks, and who only ever dates Asian women. In other words, we picture a truly disgusting, racist pervert. But what if I told you that the white guy in question is actually Hapa? What if the reason why he’s always trying to use Korean is because he wanted to practice the language his Asian parent never taught him? What if the reason why he’s always going to Asian cultural events, dating Asian women, and obsessing over Asian history is because he’s searching for a community he never had growing up? Would you still call him a racist pervert? Would you still say he has yellow fever?

The reason I ask these questions is because, despite being Chinese on my father’s side, I grew up fairly whitewashed. We did small things in my household, like say grace in Cantonese, and celebrate the Lunar New Year, but, overall, I was about the most white-looking and white-acting guy in the world. My dad never bothered to teach me Chinese language or history. He didn’t hit me, demand that I get perfect grades, or do any of the things that Asian dads are stereotypically “supposed” to do. And while I’m personally glad that he didn’t, I was left feeling like a fake Chinese as a result. Not only did I not look Asian, but nothing about my upbringing or home life was Asian either. So then, was I really Asian? Other Asian kids certainly didn’t think so. They openly doubted my background, and treated me coldly when I tried to join various Asian student groups in high school. Even if they never said it out loud, the confused and, in some cases, outright hostile looks they gave me made it clear that they didn’t think I belonged there. It hurt. It hurt more than I can possibly say. As a result, I did everything I could to change their minds, to prove that I was Chinese. I started learning Mandarin, actually spending several summers in China immersing myself in the language and culture. I taught myself Chinese history. I joined various Chinese cultural societies and institutions, such as NYU’s China House, and GCC (Global China Connection). And, yes, I began dating Chinese women.

Now, just to be clear, I didn’t exclusively date Chinese women. I did occasionally go out with Black and white girls as well, but I’d be lying to myself, and you all, if I tried to say that the majority of the women I dated in college weren’t Chinese. I mean, it happened so much that the first question my friends and family would ask me when I told them I was seeing a girl was, “So where in China is she from?” That definitely says something. As you can imagine, lots of people accused me of having yellow fever. I naturally got very defensive when they did, and developed several responses. How can I have yellow fever if I’m Asian too? Yes, the girls I date have the same background, but that doesn’t mean that I think of them as the same. What’s wrong with me reclaiming my heritage? Isn’t that what Jungle Fever, I’m Through with White Girls, Snow Falling On Cedars, and all the other movies that shame people of color for dating outside their race are arguing, that we need to honor our roots and stick with our own kind?

As time went on, however, my opinions started to shift. Who was I to force my own insecurities and desire for validation onto these women? I wasn’t eroticizing their “otherness” in the way that guys with yellow fever do, but I was still diminishing their personhood and individuality by valuing them for their ethnicity. I was basically just using them as a way to make myself feel more Chinese, and that’s definitely harmful too. So I stopped consciously seeking out Chinese women. Yet, despite that fact, the girls I wound up dating after college mostly tended to be Chinese. The truth is, I had a type. Certain kinds of women were just more attractive to me than others, in the same way that someone might prefer particular hair colors or body types, but I still felt embarrassed. I still felt like a bad person for being attracted to certain women. That’s when I realized that it wasn’t my responsibility to care about what other people thought of my dating habits.

It wasn’t my job to prove my Chinese heritage. Whether others believed me or not, that didn’t change the fact that my name and blood both hail from the Middle Kingdom. Likewise, it wasn’t Chinese women’s job to help me feel more secure in that fact. Most importantly, it wasn’t my job to change my romantic preferences based on societal expectations or stigmas. Love is unpredictable. You can’t control who you’re attracted to or when. If people only ever dated individuals that society expected them to date, interracial relationships would never happen, and mixed people like myself would not be born.

Because society tends to think in binaries, Hapa people are often forced to “choose” a side, and are thus burdened with the expectations forced on certain groups. By virtue of looking the way I do, I was labeled as “white,” and was thus granted the privileges and stigmas that accompany that identity. The same is true of Hapa people who look more Asian, and are thus categorized as such by the general public. They’re forced to deal with all the crap society thinks being Asian should entail. It’s not fair, or right, and if we want to create a more inclusive world, we need to change how we discuss identity and relationships. For that matter, we need to change how we discuss attraction and attractiveness. The entertainment and advertising industries need to stop holding up white as the default standard of beauty. That will level the playing field, and not leave certain groups, like Black women and Asian men, feeling devalued. It’ll also reduce the number of race and ethnic fetishes, which are often based around the “novelty” of being with someone “different,” since everyone will be seen as equally attractive. At the same time, we need to stop shaming people for dating outside their own race. It’s no one’s responsibility to “maintain the bloodline,” or “secure the purity of their group,” or any nonsense like that. People should be allowed to love whomever they want, and, most importantly, we need to stress the importance of individuality. Hapa children, and all children, regardless of their race, should be allowed to live and act however they so desire. No one should tell them, this is who you are, so this is who you need to be. Take it from me, hearing that can push you into some strange places. Places where you wind up becoming something you never wanted to be.

Yu Kitamura

How do you identify?

I am a straight, cisgender, Japanese woman working in the entertainment industry.

How do you define yellow fever?

I define yellow fever as men, usually white men, preferring to date and being obsessively interested in East Asian women. It’s when race is fetishized and hypersexualized. It’s when people are attracted to certain perceived qualities of Asian women, such as the idea that Asian women are pure, submissive, and doll/anime like. It’s the idea that we are “exotic” because we don’t look like them.

Do you believe that Asian or Hapa people can have yellow fever?

Yellow fever is all about the idolization of otherness, about emphasizing the difference between people in terms of race. However, I have experienced yellow fever from someone who is Asian. They were from another country and made it clear they were attracted to me because I was Japanese. As for Hapa people having yellow fever, it’s a bit more complicated. Their identity and cultural heritage might be rooted in Asia, but if their reasons for being sexually attracted to an Asian person stems from stereotypes that aren’t true, that’s when it becomes a problem.

What are your own experiences with yellow fever?

I was involved in a project with a director who was of different Asian descent. Upon our first meeting, he began explaining his concept by telling me his passion and interest in Japanese bondage. I was guarded and began listening more carefully because who am I to judge someone on their interest? I wanted to make sure this was essential to the story he was pitching. Ultimately, I agreed to the project on the one condition that I would not be hypersexualized. He said of course. He sent me photos of my costume. It was a small, skimpy, school girl outfit. I was shocked, as I had been very clear. He agreed to change it to a more conservative uniform. The shoot was done the following week. Then out of the blue he told me he wanted to show me the footage and so I met him [and] he proceeded to ask me out on a date. I politely declined as it was unprofessional and frankly, I wasn’t interested. As an actor, I then made a choice to never attach myself to projects or audition for them if it perpetuates this hypersexualized, misrepresented, misinformed idea of what an Asian person is. These images that we see in the media can be harmful, especially when they become mainstream.

Christian Dan Luu

How do you identify?

I am a queer, nonbinary Vietnamese-American.

Do you believe that Asian or Hapa people can have yellow fever?

While I will never shame someone from a marginalized group for dating exclusively within that group, I totally think that it's possible for Asian and mixed-Asian people to fetishize Asian bodies, especially women's bodies. So many people romanticize the geisha, the K-pop idol, the submissive waifu, the porcelain doll, that they completely erase the identity of the person in front of them. 

What are your own experiences with yellow fever?

Being trans and Asian is complicated. Even before I was out, so many creepy white men would expect me to fulfill a Miss Saigon Me-Love-You-Long-Time fantasy for them that I put on every single dating profile "MY BODY IS NOT YOURS TO FETISHIZE," because the ratio of creepy to non-creepy messages that I got was overwhelming. It made me doubt whether it was even possible to experience intimacy without being fetishized. And this has been my experience since high school. I have distinct memories of boys taking me home to show me their gundams, telling me how much they love K-pop, and asking me if I've seen all of Ghost in the Shell (I'm more of a shoujo person, to be clear). Even now that I've established myself within a community of queer people and have queer Asian friends, I find myself comparing notes with them to see which of the white guys have hit on all of us so we know who to avoid. 

Sam Tanabe

How do you identify?

I’m a cis, gay, mixed-race Japanese and Swiss American.

Do you believe that Asian or Hapa people can have yellow fever?

Some connotations of “yellow fever” don’t apply when an Asian person exclusively seeks out other Asians. However, that doesn’t mean Asian people can’t commit racial offenses in dating, even with other Asian or mixed-Asian people. The dehumanizing “symptoms” of infatuation can appear regardless of the races involved. 

What are your own experiences with yellow fever?

The gays are obsessed with labels, so of course we have our own terms surrounding yellow fever. The nuances and ingenuity of gay culture brings us specific terms like “rice queen,” “sticky rice,” and “potato queen.” Being mixed, I’ve been told I’m a “gateway Asian” or “Asian lite” for someone who’s never been with an Asian before. I hate that. It only further perpetuates the idea of white desirability. I sometimes wonder if we gaysians have allowed yellow fever to thrive for so long to combat the gay community’s dismissal of Asian sexuality. “No fats, no femmes, no Asians” appears in more app bios than we, as a marginalized group, would like to admit. If you find someone sexy, then go for it, but consider your motives and how fetishsizing an “exotic” race ignores other prominent, meaningful qualities.