White male seeking sexy Asian women

[one...two...tree 2,762]

What is the deal with Western men's erotic obsession with the East?

By Laura Miller

In his history of the erotic obsession Western men have felt toward "the Orient," Richard Bernstein begins with what must have been the most inflammatory example he could find: A blog titled "Sex in Shanghai: Western Scoundrel in Shanghai Tells All," in which an individual referring to himself only as "ChinaBounder" boastfully recounted his many sexual trysts with Chinese women. A foreign teacher of English, the blogger mostly recruited his partners from among his former students, and they included at least one married woman, a doctor. ChinaBounder's crowing provoked what Bernstein describes as a "murderously furious response" from Chinese men, who reviled him as a "white ape." But they reserved the brunt of their anger for his lovers, accusing their countrywomen of behavior that "humiliates the hearts of Chinese men, as well as of the Chinese people."After a few disclaimers about the imperfect truthfulness of anonymous confessional blogs and offering his opinion that ChinaBounder's successes would not be "easy to duplicate," Bernstein observes that nevertheless, "there is something to what he said, something about an advantage that Western men have in the competition for the favors of young women there." "The East, the West and Sex" is Bernstein's history of how that advantage has played out since the days of Marco Polo. As a result of this edge, "the East" (which he defines broadly, ranging from North Africa, to India and the Middle East, to Southeast and East Asia) has for centuries represented "a domain of special erotic fascination and fulfillment for Western men."

The subject is squirm-inducing, whether you are a Chinese man with a humiliated heart or a Western woman feeling obscurely spurned or, for that matter, even if you're a Western man enthralled, as Bernstein himself seems to be, by the image of the quintessential Asian nymph, with her "long silky hair, smooth nut-brown skin, and a perfume of orange and spice on her breath" -- and feeling kinda defensive about it. To write about the penchant of certain Western men for Asian women is to invite prurient speculation (Bernstein has a Chinese wife, in case you're wondering -- and you know you were) as well as incendiary condemnations from several fronts and on several grounds. The topic is mined with tripwires attached to a host of uncomfortable thoughts about race, power, sexuality, gender and history.

Bernstein (a columnist for the International Herald Tribune and former China correspondent for Time magazine) negotiates this territory with great delicacy and considerable historical knowledge -- which makes this elegantly written book doubly frustrating, as it's not always clear exactly what he's trying to say. The rage of the men who objected to ChinaBounder is, as Bernstein readily admits, founded in resentment against Western colonialism, a history in which the handing over of Asian women's bodies to Western men was merely the most intimate manifestation of a conquest that also demanded the surrender of Asian land, labor and wealth. No American, he astutely points out, would be so incensed if an Asian "bounder" wrote an online diary listing all the Iowan farm girls and Southern belles he seduced, "simply because," Bernstein writes, "there is no particular interest in the topic." OK, well maybe not no interest, but it wouldn't unpack the same cultural baggage.

As far as I can boil it down, Bernstein wishes to argue that the history of liaisons between Eastern women and Western men should not be condemned out of hand. In spite of the undeniable backdrop of injustice and exploitation, some of these encounters have been a Good Thing, offering to the men a reprieve from the repressive sexual morality of the Christian West and to the women a chance at a less traditionally patriarchal relationship than they might have had with many of their countrymen. There may be manifest inequities between these couples, but their trysts have sometimes blossomed into real affection, tenderness and love.

There's a complicated and fundamentally unsound historical algorithm at the heart of this argument, which may explain why Bernstein (no fool) tends to pussyfoot around it. It depends on a familiar villain -- Christian sexual puritanism in the form of the insistence on monogamous marriage as the only virtuous context for sex. Nobody likes puritanism these days, and even if you'd prefer to think that monogamy is an achievable ideal for some couples, it's hard to disagree with Bernstein's argument that it's not a particularly "realistic" institution in which to confine the sexuality of many people, particularly men. By contrast, he observes, Eastern religious traditions have not associated sexual transgression with sin and the corrosive guilt that attends upon it. Eastern cultures partake of "harem culture," that is, they pragmatically tolerate institutions through which men can find sexual gratification with multiple women without suffering from the profound moral condemnation heaped on sinners in the West.

The Western erotic imagination has been piqued by the idea of harems since it began to receive travelers' reports of the Ottoman sultan's wives and concubines in the 1600s. Bernstein explores the various fantastic accounts and depictions of "the secrets of the harem" that titillated Europeans for centuries, though not, strangely enough, harem-themed pornography (possibly because the availability of erotica in Europe tends to undermine his picture of the West as sexually deprived). Polygamy, courtesans, concubinage and legal prostitution are all practices that Bernstein includes under the rubric of "harem culture," a useful enough concept. Western men who traveled east in the early days of exploration and colonialism more often than not availed themselves of these institutions, obtaining native "wives" and patronizing brothels whether or not they had "real" wives back in Europe. Furthermore, their Eastern hosts often encouraged such activities, offering young women in trade for goods or as welcoming gifts.

The famous Westerners who took enthusiastic advantage of these opportunities included Richard Burton (a 19th-century explorer and translator of "The Arabian Nights" -- an unexpurgated translation that furthered the image of the East as a sexual smorgasbord) and the French novelist Gustave Flaubert, who tore through the prostitutes of Egypt at an impressive pace, recording every detail of the experience, during a visit in his early 20s. Colonial officials in India, Japan, Southeast Asia and Algeria readily adopted the local custom of expecting female servants to service them sexually as well as domestically, and Bernstein repeats the story of a British army captain whose window overlooked a school for "half-caste" girls and who, upon seeing one he liked, simply ordered her up for 80 rupees (the price included a premium because she was a virgin) via the intermediary of his butler.

Needless to say, such options were not available to army captains back in England. Also, there was the "surrounding sensuousness" of India or the "gorgeous and refined demimonde" of Japan, and even the "fabulous, lubricious and grotesque" red light district of current-day Bangkok, whose colors, noises and excesses all testified to the fact that this was not home, and home's rules did not apply here. People of all backgrounds do things abroad that they would never do in their own towns. In the East, what Western men found was, to use Bernstein's term, "fulfillment," a sexual freedom they were denied in their home countries, which he characterizes as "the domain of restriction and repression."

However, sexual freedom, to a greater and more intimate degree than any other freedom, is a paradoxical thing. Unless you're talking about masturbation, then someone else -- a human being with his or her own desires and dislikes -- is involved. If you define sexual freedom as being able to do whatever you want with whomever you please, then (except in very rare cases of perfect compatibility with one's partner at every moment) one man's freedom is another woman's compulsion. Women in traditional harem cultures languished in a condition of de facto slavery, where they had no right to determine anything about their own lives, let alone their sexual partners and activities. Their very survival was predicated on pleasing men. They were treated for the most part as animate commodities, like livestock, to be bought, sold and discarded at will. And if Eastern men's adulterous shenanigans were regarded as "natural," in women such behavior was punishable by extreme social ostracism and frequently by death.

more...

http://www.salon.com/books/review/2009/06/...m=/books/review

[Ban Hammer 13,207]

if i had an interest in this, i'd ask justashooter.

[almaty 19]

yeap, he can google and respond better than anyone...

[one...two...tree 2,762]

yeap, he can google and respond better than anyone...

Shhhh...Charles doesn't want us to pick on Shooter anymore.

[almaty 19]

too bad...shooter is the pro-typical uppity nOOb here

[one...two...tree 2,762]

too bad...shooter is the pro-typical uppity nOOb here

You're preaching to the choir, brother. But still, Charles thinks the choir has unfairly targeted 'noobs' and he wants us to stop.

Edited June 16, 2009 by Col. 'Bat' Guano

[Ladylethal 12]

Gotta say I used to be into asian men myself, dated a south korean descendant before, sooooo cute! Always liked them japanese (black hair, small eyes, yumm!), seriously.

But, looks are not everything and I wouldn't trade my 6'4", armoire style, black puertorican who looks indian for nothing!

Now about the topic at hand, I think we either like what's classic and culturally known as beautiful in our culture, or the exotic.

So americans are either into tall slender blonds or asian or latin women. Plus asian women have that vibe of petite and delicate which I'm certain is very attractive to men with dominating traits.

Edited June 16, 2009 by *Laura*

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Gotta say I used to be into asian men myself, dated a south korean descendant before, sooooo cute! Always liked them japanese (black hair, small eyes, yumm!), seriously.

But, looks are not everything and I wouldn't trade my 6'4", armoire style, black puertorican who looks indian for nothing!

Now about the topic at hand, I think we either like what's classic and culturally known as beautiful in our culture, or the exotic.

So americans are either into tall slender blonds or asian or latin women. Plus asian women have that vibe of petite and delicate which I'm certain is very attractive to men with dominating traits.

I thought it was interesting though that the author Burnstein sees a connection between Western Puritanism and Eastern harem cultures.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

[The_Dude 1,142]

yeap, he can google and respond better than anyone...

Shhhh...Charles doesn't want us to pick on Shooter anymore.

Come on, didn't your mom teach you that it's not nice to pick on the retarded kid in school?

[NickD 202]

Have to say that our men bringing gals back from Korea, Japan, or Viet Nam wished, or some of them did, that they stayed there, some got very wild in the freedom of this country, not the same man serving wives, Perhaps why Justashooter went back, could be, just maybe, who knows, just speculating.

Not really a question of where they are from, but a much different culture. Japanese girls have sure changed over the last twenty years with the western ways their country have changed too. We could do that here too, change to eastern ways, but only with our womens' permission.

[Peikko 1,575]

The whole thing is a crock - even the book itself had no clear objective. No surprises as the reasons people do things, particularly as they relate to sexual encounters, are infinitely variable.

Even the title is misleading as if to suggest all Western males are obsessed with Eastern eroticism...well, quite, what more needs to be said?

[Ban Hammer 13,207]

yeap, he can google and respond better than anyone...

Shhhh...Charles doesn't want us to pick on Shooter anymore.

[almaty 19]

yeap, he can google and respond better than anyone...

Shhhh...Charles doesn't want us to pick on Shooter anymore.

Come on, didn't your mom teach you that it's not nice to pick on the retarded kid in school?

[almaty 19]

yeap, he can google and respond better than anyone...

Shhhh...Charles doesn't want us to pick on Shooter anymore.

Come on, didn't your mom teach you that it's not nice to pick on the retarded kid in school?