Talk:Asian fetish

One sided -> "White man prefer submissive women thats why "Asian"???
Some do, okay. But the complete article only cycles around that one theory. That gens might play a role, the "exotic" aspect we might find more attractive than the more or less distant cousins all around us here in the western world not a word at all about that. No it's all about "men seeking weak women". It HAS to be. So stupid... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.110.239.229 (talk) 20:26, 25 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Worse, it left out the obvious. Short height and reduced body hair are feminine traits. They also happen to be Asian traits. Was this obvious truth unacceptable to admit? There is also a reputation for high IQ that could play a role, and the desire for future children to have a tiger mom. Instead, we get the raging feminist assumption that this is all about power over women. 97.104.89.121 (talk) 20:15, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
 * The perspective you propose to include violates Wiki community guidelines of neutrality. Wiki reflects the majority opinion that exists among reputable published sources, and the majority of reputable published sources connect Asian fetishes (with a LOT of evidence from history, sociology, psychology, etc) to the power dynamics between white Western men and Asian women. There is not a significant enough amount of literature backing your point that "Short height and reduced body hair are feminine traits. They also happen to be Asian traits." is the reason why Asian fetish exists as it does. Ushtima (talk) 00:17, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Anecdotal evidence are useless, as they would be based on our personal experience rather than published research. Whether certain Asian women happen to match with the feminine beauty ideal of other cultures is an interesting thought, but we would have to see if there are sources which claim this. Dimadick (talk) 10:53, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
 * This wikipedia article is slightly biased and non-neutral in my opinion. By the way that it is biased against men's attraction which is many times not sexual and sometimes might get confused with sexual fetishization. 190.219.24.57 (talk) 22:55, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Men and women find particular characteristics attractive. White men in the US are seen as privileged and East Asian women as oppressed by the mainstream media so it will be obvious that anything which includes a white man is labeled as power dynamics and systemic oppression. The article is politically biased and doesn't analyze things from point of view that analyzes what makes a particular race of women more physically attractive to men (this is common sense). Rather, it analyzes it from a political point of view only focusing on US politics and history, ignoring the rest of the world where people can find women with particular physical characteristics (can be of a particular race) attractive, having absolutely nothing to do with the US or white supremacy. The only evidence you are talking about is from colonial US history. Also Wikipedia's guidelines of neutrality is based on that articles should not be biased, it doesn't matter if it is a mainstream opinion on a subject, it is still a bias. Rather, I suggest it should explain which the mainstream opinion is and also other opinions without actually taking sides with any opinion. The article explains what the mainstream opinion is but it takes sides with it and doesn't talk about any other opinions on the subject, besides, as I already said, only focusing on the United States, rather than the world in general, and only focusing on US history since colonialism and wars in East Asian countries. Maybe it should also be added that short height and reduced body hair, along with more attractive facial features, are more attractive to men, happening to be traits in East Asian people, this is somewhat likely (I'm not saying it's 100% fact, it is an opinion in itself). Also, perhaps it should be noted on the article that the opinion that asian fetish is based on oppression is an opinion, rather than fact, and not take it as the only opinion. 190.140.67.86 (talk) 02:06, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

This isn't a forum for sharing opinions about this topic, and Wikipedia does not publish original research. The way Wikipedia maintains neutrality is by taking the side of reliable sources. If you know of reliable sources, feel free to propose them. Grayfell (talk) 04:15, 16 September 2023 (UTC)


 * It's quite disingenuous to ignore the fact that articles can be cherry picked to support a certain perspective. 68.206.188.115 (talk) 21:59, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

South Asian?
"An Asian fetish is a strong sexual preference for people of Asian descent or heritage. The term generally refers to people specifically of East or Southeast Asian descent, though this may also include those of South Asian descent.[1][2][3][4][5][6]"

Yet that's clearly not what the sources say.


 * Citation 1 says nothing about South Asians.


 * Citation 2, a seoulbeats.com article, says nothing about South Asians, speaks only to East Asians.


 * Citation 3, a quartz.com article, says nothing about Asian fetish or specific Asian ethnicities.


 * Citation 4 says nothing about South Asians.


 * Citation 5 doesn't say that the concepts of 'Asian fetish' or 'yellow fever' or anything similar apply to South Asian woman. The reference does say that South Asian women were exoticized and eroticized (as, for example, Black women have been, see page 64). Yet this is not the same thing as the documented *preference* of East and Southeast Asian women. Google books preview of page 65 here:


 * Citation 6 says *nothing* about Asian fetish or racialized erotic/romantic preferences. At all. I was actually baffled when I found a full text URL for this citation. It's literally just an economics study. Full text PDF available here:

Mind you, I am not biased against the idea that South Asian women are fetishized and that there is a separate, less common fetish for South Asian women. I am looking in to this and collecting any references I can find to put in the article about this topic, and it does have a place here if indeed it is notable. But for the most part Asian fetish/yellow fever refers to a preference for East and Southeast Asians, as references 1-4 clearly say. None of these citations even mention South Asian women. There's also no need for gender neutral language when all the sources show that the phenomenon is skewed towards Asian women, like all of the scholarship I've reviewed in this article. 98.156.249.110 (talk) 12:40, 31 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Citation numbers 5 and 6 support the inclusion of "South Asian". It speaks, as you say, how South Asian women are exoticized and eroticised and that is a valid source for this article.
 * Citation 6 speaks specifically about a racialised/eroticised/fetishisation of Asian women in reference to Sri Lankan (and to some extent Thai) women on pages 73-75. Sri Lankan women are South Asian women. Across these three pages it speaks about the racialised sexual attraction towards Sri Lankan women.
 * On page 73, it speaks about how Sri Lanka has emerged as a sex tourism destination with mentions of newspapers and books about Sri Lanka being a sex tourism destination. It references a book about "sexual attractions in Asian cities" and includes services provided in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
 * Page 74 speaks about the mail order bride industry in Sri Lanka and how they are being exported to the West with specific references to the European demand for Sri Lankan mail order brides. On the same page it speaks about the mail order bride system in Southeast Asian countries like Thailand and the Philippines. It also speaks about a phenomenon in Sri Lanka known as "tourist brides" which is about how Western men, particularly older men, travel to Sri Lanka to find young wives. I quote a specific part of the text, "Western males, preferring innocent and subservient Asian stereotypes to their own supposedly liberated and demanding women, come to the island seeking young wives" - with additional references to an article published by a Sri Lankan newspaper titled "Swedes Smittenby Lanka's Lasses" and a book by a Sri Lankan author titled "Who Needs Tourism?", which discusses the matter.
 * On Page 75, it speaks about Sri Lankan, Southeast Asian and European feminist organisations that have been working and denouncing the prostitution of Sri Lankan, Southeast Asian women and women in general in the international sex tourism market.
 * Also, in other parts of the "Asian fetish" article there are sentences and citations to other examples of racialised attraction towards South Asian women including an article about Indian mail order brides in Scandinavia. There is also a link to a British porn magazine devoted to Asian women, including South Asian women, titled Asian Babes, which started out as a porn magazine devoted to South Asian women only before expanding to include East and Southeast Asian women.

Found two sources. Might be worth looking into and including their subject matter in the article. First source speaks about a report documenting stereotypes of Asians in American media and speaks about how South Asian women are portrayed as "exotic seductresses" and East Asian women portrayed as "lotus blossoms" and "innocent girls who are still sexually available". Second source is about street harassment of women in the Australian state of Victoria and has a section about the intersection of race and street harassment and speaks about how Southeast Asian, South Asian and East Asian women were reported as the top 3 groups of non-white women to experience street harassment from men.
 * I have added the information back in with the sources. 2403:5801:98D4:0:1110:1972:A6D0:9EC7 (talk) 13:29, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Removal of content
On 2 March 2024, several subtractive edits were made to this article by 176.72.21.252. Three of these edits were seriously erroneous. I will address them by quoting each edit summary and providing an explanation.

176.72.21.252 wrote: Neither of these two sources support this recently added statement. In fact they wrote somewhat differently of the matter, and the first about modern day and the latter mainly about WW2 - 03:24 2 March 2024

Incorrect. Woan (page 292) says Asian women were stereotyped by American soldeirs as cute, un-assumimg, and had "extraordinary sexual powers." Scars of War (page 41) says that the view of Asian women as demure and seductve dates back to the 1800s, with the opening of Japan and the arrival of Chinese women to America, which led to the 1875 Page Act having been passed to keep Asian "seductresses" out of America.

176.72.21.252 wrote: This added mention not only reads silly and unscientific, but while the other additions to the lede could be considered summary of the body, this is longer than the part about it in the body, which itself is just an offhanded mention - 03:44 2 March 2024

The content you removed does not "read silly or unscientific"; it is an important part of the section "psychological effects of fetishization", sourced from Zinzius's review of a study on the psychological effects of Asian fetishization. She writes on page 221:

176.72.21.252 wrote: Here too if you read the cited Zheng for this part, even the title of the publication is "Why Yellow Fever Isn't Flattering: A Case against Racial Fetishes" meaning they definitely aren't arguing for it being seeing as flattering. - 03:48 2 March 2024

OK, but you removed the alternative viewpoint which was cited to ''Phoebe Eng, not Zheng. Eng wrote:

Please don't do something this careless again. 2603:8080:1F00:4882:746C:E10A:12D4:1DB7 (talk) 17:47, 2 March 2024 (UTC)


 * These "subtractive edits" were on content you had recently added.


 * Incorrect. Woan (page 292) says Asian women were stereotyped by American soldeirs as cute, un-assumimg, and had "extraordinary sexual powers." Scars of War (page 41) says that the view of Asian women as demure and seductve dates back to the 1800s, with the opening of Japan and the arrival of Chinese women to America, which led to the 1875 Page Act having been passed to keep Asian "seductresses" out of America.


 * The sentence you added is about exploration and colonization. Woan writes of time after WW2. Heavy synth. You also invent descriptions out of air instead of using something close to the original. You also don't mention the context and commentary Woan provides. Thomas similarly first talks about the US military generally, then talks of the 1800s and brings up only the adjectives seductive and sinister in relation to that era. So, again heavy synth and not including what Thomas comments on it.


 * The content you removed does not "read silly or unscientific"; it is an important part of the section "psychological effects of fetishization", sourced from Zinzius's review of a study on the psychological effects of Asian fetishization.


 * You added things that weren't in the original statement. Again synth. You also now ignored how I specified that the lede is supposed to be a summary of the body, not your favorite bits cherrypicked. Are you ignoring Masequesmay, Chen, Grabe & Hyde and Tran?


 * OK, but you removed the alternative viewpoint which was cited to ''Phoebe Eng, not Zheng.


 * I didn't remove it, it's included in the new more general phrasing too. It doesn't even matter who is specifically referenced in the lede because it's supposed to act as a lead into and a summary of the body. The phrase you were pushing was a biased sample of one reference and doesn't act as a summary of the body, and the first referenced you gave even is completely contrary to it. You keep repeating this ignorance of most sources and acting on just one. Eng too points out that the opinion may differ from others. If you want to stress that point more, there should be more sources to support it in the body.


 * Most importantly, you removed many general improvements to the body for no reason, maybe just out of carelessness. You didn't comment on those matters at all here or in the edit summary. If you want to change some part, change it specifically and explain why and give proper references that support it. I have no reason but to revert if you do such unexplained undos without explaining why, perhaps just purely on accident. --176.72.21.252 (talk) 05:16, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
 * The sentence you added is about exploration and colonization. Woan writes of time after WW2. Heavy synth.
 * And? That is not synthesis. The context of both source pages are in relation to the fetishization of Asian women. Woan had been in the article for years.
 * You added things that weren't in the original statement. Again synth. You also now ignored how I specified that the lede is supposed to be a summary of the body, not your favorite bits cherrypicked.
 * I did not add any of this to the article. I restored content that *you* deleted. I don't think you're aware of what the word "synth" means. The lede is a summary of the article's subjects. Zinzius (2005) notes that research found that the Asian fetish had some positive effects for Asian women, but there was a corresponding negative effect (resentment) among white women, who are the largest female demographic in the USA.
 * So, Zinzius (a WP:SECONDARY source) is obviously *highly* relevant to the topic of psychological consequences of the Asian fetish.
 * I didn't remove it, it's included in the new more general phrasing too.
 * Yes you did. This is plainly obvious to see. You removed Phoebe Eng's content from the lede based on Zheng. If you're actually denying you did this, you may have serious WP:COMPETENCE issues. 2603:8080:1F00:4882:746C:E10A:12D4:1DB7 (talk) 01:32, 4 March 2024 (UTC)


 * And? That is not synthesis. The context of both source pages are in relation to the fetishization of Asian women. Woan had been in the article for years.
 * You're not even commenting on what I'm writing as a reason. You wrote about exploration and colonization. The source is of time after WW2. What part of the discrepancy here do you not understand? And just 5 months ago Woan was originally cited for completely different text.


 * I did not add any of this to the article. I restored content that *you* deleted. I don't think you're aware of what the word "synth" means. The lede is a summary of the article's subjects. Zinzius (2005) notes that research found that the Asian fetish had some positive effects for Asian women, but there was a corresponding negative effect (resentment) among white women, who are the largest female demographic in the USA. So, Zinzius (a WP:SECONDARY source) is obviously *highly* relevant to the topic of psychological consequences of the Asian fetish.
 * You clearly did. It's very hard to even access some of these sources yet you managed it very quickly and behave like an owner of the edits. The way you edit and write makes it obvious you're the person who kept forcing in the image of the underage person just a while ago. The same one now forcing in the word "innocent". Both wikilawyer with hyperlinks in edit summaries that I don't even know how to do. If you combine all of these factors it gets very unlikely that we're talking of different people.
 * And you're not really commenting on what I'm arguing. It's supposed to be a summary of ALL the things in the body, not one unusual, cherrypicked and synthy sentence repeated character by character while ignoring 5 whole cited paragraphs. I also didn't comment on any relativity, but it's also just one part of the source which again provides other context.
 * Yes you did. This is plainly obvious to see. You removed Phoebe Eng's content from the lede based on Zheng. If you're actually denying you did this, you may have serious WP:COMPETENCE issues.
 * You're citing a work in progress edit that I continued working on. I have tried to work towards to a compromise. It's tiresome to try to even approach a compromise with someone who doesn't budge even a bit, so I'll let you have the sentence as it was by your hand. 100% your edit of the sentence then. Are you willing to compromise on something at least if you get 100% of that?
 * And you're still not mentioning the mass revert of all the different general edits. It's against the rules to revert without reason. I try to work towards compromise. I'm adding back 100% your edit of the sentence. How will you respond? By a mass revert again? --176.72.21.252 (talk) 07:35, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Fetishism vs appreciation?
Hello, the article seems to conflate fetishism as meaning the same thing as having love and respect for Asians. But it's a term that's specifically for reducing Asian people as nothing more than sexual objects and stereotypes with no individuality. It's practically perpetuating an idea that Asian women are desirable and exotic but passive, which isn't an innocent stereotype or a desirable trait to envy. The article seems to actually defend it as a good thing and seems to miss the whole point of what it means. Also fetishism can also be applied to Asian men, or more specifically Korean men where girls tend to not see the man as he really is, but what they see in Korean dramas. I think there needs to be a chapter for that too as it fits the unhealthy shallow love towards a race. Respectothers8 (talk) 00:20, 10 March 2024 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the note. You're right in the first sentence, possibly also spurred by the other editor's edits. You can try to edit the other editor's sentences he added to the lede as you can see we talked about above. I tried but it got difficult. But adding to the lede without adding to the body first doesn't really work either and your sourcing is a bit lax. The article talked of how it feels to be a recipient of it, not the other way. You also wrote about "sexpat tourism", apparently meaning sex tourism which we have a separate page for and did already mention by that name in this page. You used a source for it where it talks about how a poor Cambodian family sells their daughter to a Cambodian man and of them as the main exploiters. That doesn't seem to be related to the text added. The other source added specifies in the chapter cited that in 1998 western sex tourism was in fact "a mere fraction of the totality of prostitution, and, indeed, sex tourism in Thailand" and then talks of the Malay-Thailand border as main locations of sex tourism. It didn't seem to concern itself with fetishes or racialization at all. Does this belong to the sex tourism page instead? --176.72.21.252 (talk) 12:38, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't agree that this article defends the Asian fetish. Instead, it presents a balanced offering of what the reliable sources say. Some authors (like Zheng) think that the Asian fetish is bad and not flattering, while others (like Eng) think it is good and liberating. Most sources are simply neutral and present no moral judgment on the fetish.
 * In fact, if you look at the talk page history/archive; for a long time, many people complained that the article was too biased towards the position that the Asian fetish is bad. I agreed with that take.
 * As for the "idea" that Asian women are desirable: the reliable sources say that, most without making any judgment. Some (like Zinzius) say that this is envied. It's up to you to find one that says it's "unhealthy". Zheng is already given due weight in the article. But we cannot promote one viewpoint on a sexual fetish or women's sexual capital to the exclusion of all others, if it's not an overwhelmingly accepted one. Zheng acknowledges that her take is not the pre-eminent one. 72.177.23.66 (talk) 11:23, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Were you responding to me or the other person? If to the other person, use only one space. I was talking about the additions, and only referenced the earlier section where there was the discussion of the lede and what belongs there and what doesn't. --176.72.21.252 (talk) 14:42, 18 April 2024 (UTC)