Why does everyone want a mid white boy?

Dating is hard. Dating is even harder when you’re racialized. 

I’ve encountered white men who would comment on my cultural foods, remark how good my English is, and refuse to learn how to use chopsticks. Upon learning that I’m from Hong Kong, they would go on a long spiel about how Wong Kar-wai is their favourite filmmaker and how they love the ‘Eastern meets Western culture’ vibe of the city. With a white man, I’ve never felt fully understood for who I am. Admittedly, I also found it difficult to understand them.

Things were different when I met my current boyfriend, an East Asian man. As he walked me home from our second date, hand-in-hand, through the late-evening chill, we talked about the different ways our families celebrate the Lunar New Year. I told him how, if only we had met a couple of months earlier, we could have celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival together — maybe even shared a mooncake. 

The ease that came with knowing and understanding each other made me feel silly for trying to search for love in seemingly the wrong places; for the strange things I was willing to overlook in exchange for a love that felt more like a superficial prize than authentic intimacy. When we’re curled up on the couch, sharing a pot of oolong tea, I wonder what all of it was for.

It’s probably worth prefacing with some sort of qualifier right now. There is absolutely no problem with loving who you love regardless of race — to argue otherwise would be a recession of the rights that racialized people and interracial couples have fought for in the past century. At the same time, I think it is important to interrogate why racialized women might crave the white man’s validation in a society profiled based on their race and how the pursuit of being desired by the white gaze can warp sexual capital. 

The ‘Oxford study’ phenomenon

The ‘Oxford study’ is in reference to a supposed study that claimed that interracial couples are commonly composed of an East Asian woman and a white man. In fact, it is so prevalent that the shorthand WMAF — white male Asian female — has also been coined to refer to this type of relationship.

The intermingling of East Asian women and white men began with a history of colonialism and imperialism: whether it be from Europeans colonizing Asian countries — such as what the British did to Hong Kong in 1841, or white soldiers being stationed at international base camps, such as American soldiers in post-World War II Japan. 

These events not only gave more opportunities for white men and Asian women to meet but also solidified the white man as the dominant subject within those relationships’ power dynamics. East Asian women, limited by economic opportunity, taking up sex work around base camps thus contributed to the stereotype of hypersexualization.

Simultaneously, history and legislation also played a part in the desexualization of Asian men, suggesting they lack sexual character or qualities. Due to xenophobic tensions between white Americans and Chinese Americans during the US’ Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, as well as laws that prevented Chinese women from immigrating to America as a result of suspicions that they are sex workers, Chinese men were confined to more traditionally ‘feminine’ jobs, such as laundrymen. This removed the Chinese men from fulfilling traditional jobs that would allow them to perform masculinity.

In the media, Asian women are depicted as submissive to white men, and are even portrayed as grovelling for their attention, favouring men’s validation over relationships with other women. For example, in episode 10 of the second season of Sex and the City, main character Samantha — a white woman — dates a white man with an Asian woman named Sum as a servant. She is implied to be Thai, is soft-spoken, and bows her head in every interaction. Samantha’s boyfriend adores Sum’s servility and cooking, and defends her when Samantha reveals how Sum mistreats her in his absence. 

Eventually, he breaks up with Samantha and the final scene shows Sum sneakily smiling at Samantha while pretending to cry in his arms. 

This is one example from an episode that aired in 1999 that depicts the harmful stereotype of Asian women as caterers to men and eager to please, which appeals to patriarchal standards of femininity and masculinity. 

Today, you might see comments on TikTok or Instagram which refer to the Oxford study under videos featuring WMAF couples. When the Oxford study became a meme, Asian women became the butt of many online jokes, with comments referring to them as “race traitors.” 

From my experience clicking on the commenter’s accounts, they are usually Asian men whose comments seem to come from a certain sense of resentment over Asian women frequently having white — instead of Asian — boyfriends. Though, I’ve also seen white women refer to the Oxford study in a disparaging comment against WMAF couples, to suggest that white men go for Asian women because we are ‘easier’ to impress. According to them every Asian girl is a “white worshipper.”

Despite the prevalence of WMAF couples, there is no actual such Oxford study that proves that East Asian women are most attracted to white men, or that white men are most attracted to Asian women. Many may assume its validity upon hearing its academic-sounding name, but it’s a hallucinatory source. 

This misnomer has permeated our culture so deeply that memes circulate the topic, WMAF couples are harassed online, and some people may feel determined to enter into a WMAF relationship due to its online romanticization and fetishization. An obsession with half-white, half-Asian babies — ‘wasians’ — probably also fuels this determination.

I’ve even heard Asian friends joke about white men they have a crush on, saying that they would “let him make me his Oxford study.” 

Why do we love being loved by white boys?

Our societal obsession with pedestalling white men is evident in our media — even if some want to believe we’re heading toward a post-racial world. The online trend #whiteboyofthemonth on X is a self-reflexive meme imbued with irony to point out how often women fixate on white celebrities who are men — even if they’re mediocre in comparison to incredibly attractive, racialized celebrities. 

Even in its light-hearted irony, #whiteboyofthemonth does the very same thing it attempts to critique. This meme is supposed to be self-cynical yet continues to worship a new ‘white boy of the month’ by indulging our algorithms with photos of them. It feels a lot like a snake swallowing its own tail when trying to confront our platforming of white men. 

We can talk for ages about the white male gaze’s fetishization and hypersexualization of Asian women in Western societies: how East Asian women are seen as cute, submissive, family-oriented, and generally have ‘desirably’ small and slender frames. The ugly side of all this is that racialized people can also fetishize whiteness and are willing to fetishize themselves for the white male gaze.

Some part of me always understood that the desire for men’s validation existed in myself, but white men’s validation was its own separate, more complicated experience, burdened with histories of colonialism, diaspora, and race. In a culture that perpetuates the notion of white men as the ideal image of masculinity through subconscious social norms and media — while Asian men are emasculated and asexualized — being desired by a white man feels like you could be desired by any man. 

In a very honest conversation with my boyfriend, he admitted to feeling similarly about receiving attraction from white women. I can’t even fault him. I understand that if a white woman could be attracted to an Asian man — a group that is systemically overlooked in the dating pool — then he might feel like he is “beating the system” or “winning at the white man’s game.”

It’s also no secret that beauty standards have a strong correlation with race, including within Asian communities: large eyes, tall nose bridge, and pale skin. To me, they’re undeniably reminiscent of white features. It’s no wonder why an East Asian person would want to be pursued by someone who embodies physical traits that are considered ideally beautiful — even if it means a 10/10 Asian girl gets with a mid white boy.

White men desiring you is not only validating but more importantly, a form of sexual capital.

Fractures within the Asian community

Another reason I’ve heard Asian women being hesitant to date Asian men of their own culture is a gap in feminist views. 

From my experience, I’ve seen no strong direct correlation between a man’s race and his personal beliefs about feminism. I’ve met some Asian men who carry the patriarchal traditions rooted in their culture, but I also feel that my Asian boyfriend deeply respects my thoughts, opinions, and positionality as a woman. I’ve also met plenty of white men who have expressed many microaggressive ideas about gender. In any case, entering the dating pool is inherently a coin toss between meeting feminist and misogynistic men.

However, in an interview with The Varsity, Aksaamai Ormonbekova — a Kyrgyz second-year student at U of T studying political science and visual studies — wrote that she finds it difficult to imagine dating a Central Asian man because they tend to have a patriarchal mindset. 

She adds, “That doesn’t mean… there are no Central Asian men that [have progressive views],” just that she wouldn’t be with a Central Asian man as long as he was “brought up” with traditionally patriarchal views like “putting women in the kitchen and pumping them with children at the ripe age of 19.”

Although the experiences of Central Asian and East Asian women differ, the Western tendency to group Asian cultures into one manifests in the stereotyping and exoticising of both East and Central Asian women in similar ways. 

“I definitely know that when an Asian man likes me it is not really because he thinks I am different,” said Ormonbekova. “[W]hereas I’ve had more senses of curiosity coming from [white] men I’ve talked to.” 

The alternation between Ormonbekova’s encounters with white and Central Asian men demonstrates the implicit differences that Asian women experience when a white man is attracted to them. Moreover, it was interesting to see Ormonbekova talk about Asian men’s patriarchal mindset because I see these men growing resentful towards WMAF pairings and only responding to Asian women with more misogyny. 

Members of the Asian Men’s Rights Movement (MRAsians) are a subculture of Asian-American men who often target and harass Asian women dating white men. While I think there are valid questions to ask about standing in solidarity with the men of your own race, to suggest that Asian women should only date Asian men extends into policing the bodies of Asian women. 

Jake Takeuchi — a third-year Japanese-Canadian student at U of T studying English and political science — said in an interview with The Varsity that he believes MRAsians have “misplaced anger” and suggests there are other areas of the “power structure” we should be critiquing. 

For example, he doesn’t see the same “emotional reaction” by MRAsians to how “Asian art has been appropriated.” This begs the question of whether Asian men’s resentment truly stems from an expectation that women should be culturally faithful, or specifically faithful to the men of their culture. 

An article published in the 2021 Journal of Asian American Studies  argued that MRAsians misuse theories of gender and race to critique the role that whiteness plays in ideals of masculinity, while positioning “Asian American male grievance in fundamental opposition to feminism.”

The advocacy of Asian men against racial discrimination should not oppose feminism; ideally, it stands in solidarity with it.

Rather than policing the sex lives of Asian women, attempting to dismantle the racial hierarchy would have a more structural impact if we examine how Western media emasculates and desexualizes Asian men. They are often portrayed as the nerdy comedic relief rather than the disarming leading man.

As Takeuchi notes, Asian men’s resentment against Asian women is probably “rooted in the male loneliness epidemic” and a “desire to be wanted sexually.” He adds that MRAsians’ feeling that the WMAF pairing is “unfair” is because of “some sort of ownership” over Asian women. 

I believe this gender fracture within the diasporic Asian community is yet another symptom of white supremacy itself. It’s the classic ‘divide and rule’ tactic that made colonialism so successful. For example, when Asian men suggest that Asian women only date white men for money, they perpetuate long-standing stereotypes about Asian women and sex work,  stereotypes that have contributed to horrifying rates of sexual violence and mass murder against Asian women. 

For example, the 2021 Atlanta Spa shooting shows how the hypersexualized perception of Asian women being sex workers has led to violence perpetrated by white men.

I don’t think it’s difficult to understand why racialized men, particularly Asian men — who statistically receive the least attention on dating apps alongside Black women — grow resentful of a system that upholds white men as the pinnacle of masculinity. It’s also understandable to me why Asian men, feeling powerless within white supremacist structures, would feel an extra sense of betrayal when they see Asian women regularly dating white men.

But Asian women are not the ones who can dictate the hetero-racial hierarchy;  they too are marginalized. White women continue to be seen as the pinnacle of femininity, and when I’ve been attracted to white men, I’ve had to ask myself terrible things like, “What if he’s not into Asian girls?” or “Maybe he’d like me more if I were white, or hell, even half-white.” 

On the other hand, being hypersexualized as an Asian woman and positioned as favourable or desirable romantic and sexual partners should never be seen as a ‘perk’ of the hetero-racial hierarchy. Desexualization and hypersexualization are two sides of the same coin, both carrying devastating consequences. While being systematically rejected in the dating pool is painful, it’s equally painful to be reduced to a mere porn category.

No theory for love

Love is complex and untheorizable. My own experiences cannot be generalized to every member of a racial group. As Takeuchi pointed out in one of our other conversations, perhaps I had just met “shitty white men.” 

My past struggles with connecting with white men do not mean that interracial relationships between racialized and non-racialized people can never work. Takeuchi mentioned that he never felt a racial “disconnect” that affected his relationships with white women. If anything, it was the “relationship with [his former partners’] parents” that made things difficult. He believes “our generation is more tolerant and [has] seen more interracial relationships in their lives and media.”

Ormonbekova also said, “I am usually open to any race and can find any race attractive but I do see myself dating someone of mixed race or of Asian descent if I want our cultural bond to be the premise of the relationship.”

There will always be limitations in interracial relationships involving a racialized and a non-racialized person, as the white partner may never fully understand the racialized experience, which can affect their perspective on the world. However, limitations are not unique to racial or cultural differences. They can arise from gender, age, religion, class, or family structures. 

You simply have to ask yourself if you’re willing to accept that your partner may not fully comprehend your cultural or racial experiences and whether their other ways of understanding and relating to you can compensate for it. 

Undeniably, the marginalization of Asian men reveals a history of systemic emasculation. As an Asian woman, it’s disheartening for me to see Asian men feeling undesired and unattractive. It’s certainly worth examining the complex relationship between race, social status, and sexual capital. 

If you’re a racialized person who finds yourself seeking validation from white men because it feels more meaningful than other forms of sexual validation, I encourage you to reflect on why that might be. Ignoring racial dynamics and pretending we live in a post-racial, colour-blind society only reinforces white power structures.

It might be unfair to blame either Asian men or women for the Oxford study phenomenon, given that we’re both living under a societal framework built around whiteness. However, Asian men and women can start unpacking the hetero-racial structure by recognizing that we can be both victims and complicit in upholding it.

I’m no ‘reformed Asian woman’ for dating an Asian man — it will probably always feel different to be gazed upon by a white man. But, now, I don’t really feel the need to look if they’re gazing at me.