Race and sexuality
While partially based on physical similarities within groups, race is understood by scientists to be a social construct rather than a biological reality.
This increased white anxiety about interracial sex, and has been described through Montesquieu's climatic theory in his book The Spirit of the Laws, which explains how people from different climates have different temperaments, "The inhabitants of warm countries are, like old men, timorous; the people in cold countries are, like young men, brave.
[19] After the opening of Japan by Matthew Perry, word began to spread in the United States about the seductive femininity of Asian women.
This radical reconstruction of the South was deeply unpopular and it slowly unraveled, leading to the introduction of Jim Crow laws, which legally discriminated against African Americans,[22] There was an increase in the sense of white dominance and sexual racism among the Southern people, Tensions heightened after the end of the civil war in 1865, and as a result, the sexual anxiety which existed in the white population intensified.
[50] According to Kao, et al., the dating disadvantage of Asian men persisted even when they had advanced educational backgrounds and significantly higher incomes.
[51][48] Increased education does however influence choices in the other direction, such that a higher level of schooling is associated with more optimistic feelings towards interracial relationships.
[56] Currently, there are websites that target specific demographic preferences, such that singles can sign up online and focus on one particular partner quality, such as race, religious beliefs or ethnicity.
[57] Non-white ethnic minorities, mostly Indians and East Asians,[58] who feel they lack dating prospects as a result of their race, sometimes refer to themselves as ricecels, currycels, or more broadly ethnicels,[59] a term related to incel.
[61] Hoang Tan Nguyen, an assistant professor of English and Film Studies at Bryn Mawr College, wrote that Asian men are often feminized and desexualized by both mainstream and LGBT media.
According to Chong-suk Han, this explains why East Asian drag queens typically win trans beauty pageants, because they are thought to pass more easily as female.
[12] Charlie Anders notes that the best-selling transsexual pornographic films depict Asian trans women, and they are highly esteemed and sought after by men identifying as heterosexual.
According to a 2015 study, Asian American participants who identified as lesbian or bisexual often reported stereotyping, and fetishism in LGB circles and the larger U.S. culture, as well as low representation within the community, as minorities.
[68] According to a study using a large sample size of gay men in Australia, there is widespread tolerance of sexual racism in that country.
[57] A 2015 study on sexual racism among gay and bisexual men found a strong correlation between test subjects' racist attitudes and their stated racial preferences.
[13][70][71] Homi K. Bhabha explains racial fetishism as a form of racist stereotyping, which is woven into colonial discourse and based on multiple/contradictory and splitting beliefs, similar to the disavowal which Sigmund Freud discusses.
[13] The effects of racial fetishism as a form of sexual racism among gay men of color are discussed in research conducted by Mary Plummer.
European racial characteristics such as blond hair desexualized Swedish women in Singapore, and made them feel less feminine.
[79] It has been reported that women in China seeking to have a child through in-vitro fertilisation have a tendency to select white men from America and Europe as sperm donors, even when Asian men are available in these countries as donors, because they are more attracted to white physical traits such as light hair or eye color.
[84][85][86][87][88] According to a 2008 article from the Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice by Sunny Woan, the modern "Asian fetish" originates from Western imperialism.
[89] These stereotypes became widespread when Western men returned to their home countries, and may be linked to the over-representation of Asian women in pornography, as well as the mail-order bride phenomenon.
In one case in 2000, two men, David Dailey and Edmund Ball, and a woman, Lana Vickery, abducted, blindfolded and raped two Japanese women in Washington.
The scientist studying her anatomy went as far as making a mold of Baartman's genitalia postmortem because she refused him access to examine her vaginal region while she was alive.
It is the combined power of these two markers of social location which has enabled western artists to represent black women at the margins of societal boundaries of propriety."
While some praise Minaj's work for its embrace of female sexuality, some criticized that this song continues to reduce black women to be the focus of the male gaze.
[102] The 2020 song "WAP" ("Wet-Ass Pussy") by Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion received a similar mixed reception, with some outlets praising its embrace of black female sexuality and others claiming it was degrading or objectifying women of color.
In a 2009 study, a small subset of white female online daters were found to exclusively prefer only black men.
[108] The authors suggested that White men may be more likely to prefer Asian women due to stereotypes that they embody "perfect womanhood and exotic femininity".
[111] Jewish women as a love interest for Christian men became popular in 19th century Western European literature, and became known as La Belle Juive.
"[116] Feminist author Audre Lorde cautions that this kind of BDSM "operates in tandem with social, cultural, economic, and political patterns of domination and submission" creating the perpetuation of negative stereotypes for black women in particular.
[119] "Violence for black female performers in BDSM becomes not just a vehicle of intense pleasure but also a mode of accessing and critiquing power.
