PatrickH,
Ying Chu's article is suffused with ethnic studies sensibilities and is thus pretty useless. I have a lot of Asian girlfriends, primarily because of the reasons already mentioned. I wouldn't say that my friends are submissive but they don't get caught up in power struggles as often as white and black.

"Western women are neither strong nor independent."
True enduring strength is found in femininity. Unfortunately that's counterintuitive to the values of current Western culture, and it's a bit unfair to expect an average girl in her twenties (or even thirties) to figure this out on her own.

"What they are is vulgar, bray-voiced, humourless harridans with a chip on their shoulder and a distinct dislike of subtlety, grace, poise, class and style, to wit, the traditional feminine virtues."

No arguments from me save one miniature quibble. It is only a minority that actively hate the virtues you list. The rest know that they fall short here and feel lost about it. There are tons of books on Amazon marketed to American and British women promising how to teach them the elegance of French women, the charm of Audrey Hepburn, the fashion savvy of Italian women etc. Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence

"To someone who views relationships solely in terms of power, the only alternative to domineering, crass, self-centered, crude, grating, neurotic and distinctly unfeminine Western women"

How can you expect women trying to men to be other than grating and neurotic? They're trying to fit square pegs into round holes.

"(without any corresponding compensatory increase in masculine virtues like self-control, discipline, initiative, fearlessness)"

Which is of course why most women who try to masculinize themselves are rarely happy with the results. Very few women are naturally masculine and typically undertake this because men in their lives have been unreliable or abusive. Femininity is not weak but make no mistake it IS vulnerable without a masculine protector. The high cultural value that Asian cultures (at least to Western ones) place on husbands and fathers as protectors is a major reason why Asian women feel much freer to be feminine.

"It is a tribute to the secret self-loathing of so many proponents of the "strong independent" (aka crude, selfish) western woman as an ideal, that unapologetic femininity is considered something despicable."

In itself fair enough but it fails to take into account the increase in crude, selfish (not to mention violent) behavior in men over the past fifty years. There has been a great decline in manners and civility in every segment of American society. I can't comment at all about Canada, but I believe that a lot of what men frequently attribute to feminism is simply a function of whatever makes American people pf both sexes more rude, vulgar and selfish than they used to be. You can't expect women to be exempt from such social trends.

"And despicable for a man to want in a woman."

I wouldn't say despicable but I think it's unrealistic and egotistical for a man to expect a lady if he's not a gentleman. And vice versa. I get very tired of these debates because it is usually status-whoring vulgarians who gnash their teeth about the dearth of classy men and women from whatever group or nationality (not you PatrickH but other people with similar opinions). Genuinely decent men and women who are willing to look hard for well-mannered mates (and overlook superficial values like looks and status) find them. And it certainly helps to open to quality mates regardless of race.

Americans of both sexes tend to dress poorly and feminine white women who are indifferent to money and status frequently don't take care of their appearance. So I can understand the appeal of Asian women. However I have known many Asian women (the mothers of my friends mostly) who are seethingly neurotic and obsessed with pushing their kids to the breaking point in school. And this is not assimilation because these women can barely speak English.

It is very difficult for a man to understand the masculine ethos that is promoted for young women. Barbara Dafoe Whitehead has written about a phenomenon she dubs "the girl project" where the education of girls, from pre-school on, is devoted to career success and thus emphasizes competitiveness and endurance rather than the traditional feminine arts designed to attract a husband and raise a family. Now I certainly wouldn't have been happy consigned to home economics but Asian women are not born graceful and feminine: their mothers teach it to them.

Intellectual honesty being high value for me, I often confronted flagrant political correctness in college. In graduate school I went to Japan, and that changed everything. The politeness of Japanese people made life a smooth pleasure, and my interactions with Japanese women and the uncomplicated delight they took in their femininity inspired me to relax and recover my own. I quickly became accustomed to the tactfulness of Japanese life and the immediate reciprocation of my helpful good manners. A lot of Western women love Japan (e.g. JET program participants) for these reasons. I missed my anti-PC rants hardly at all.

Upon returning to the States I realized how much easier life without attacking PC at every turn. Now sometimes life demands that I advocate for myself but there I see no reason why I, as a woman, should jostle for status in the masculine fashion you describe. And by choosing not to fight these battles I do place myself in a vulnerable position. This problem is easily solved by only associating with well-bred men because they instinctively protect feminine and respectful women, or at the very least do not try to harm or exploit them.

In short the problems of Western women that you note are real but they are a bit more complex than you're well-written rant conveys. If my brother ever asks me for romantic advice I'll recommend (simply on the basis of numbers) that he seek out a Latina or an Asian woman with a gentle, elegant heart but look for feminine women of all races.

Devin,
"...those silly feminists who didn't believe in making babies."

Japan and Singapore are hardly feminist nations yet they have the lowest birthrates in the world. In Europe the uber-feminist Sweden has a higher birthrate than the more patriarchal Greece. I've followed HBD blogs for years and I've noted that despite the daringness of pioneers like Steve Sailer, Griffe du Lion etc. it is morphing into an all-purpose repository for the resentments of well-educated but dissatisfied white men. Now white men are hardly the only people to have resentments and if blacks have African American studies, women have women's studies etc. there's no reason why white American shouldn't. But as that happens HBD will cease to be the engine of truth that it set out to be.

Posted by: hello on August 25, 2009 11:39 PM

"The first set of medications is usually for hypertension. Then a diuretic has to be prescribed to offset the negative effects of the anti-hypertensive. Next comes an alpha blocker."

Diuretics and alpha blockers are both anti-hypertensive drugs. They would be used to lower blod pressure, not to counteract the effect of an anti-hypertensive medication.

Iatrogenic infections are the result of poor hospital sanitation. That is a seperate issue from that of preexisting communicable pathogens brought into the hospital by patients or visitors.

Posted by: Peter L. Winkler on August 26, 2009 12:30 AM

In my 19 years living in Hong Kong -- which must be the global epicenter of white man/Chinese woman relationships -- I've met few if any white men who consciously cultivate 'yellow fever'. I certainly count myself as a non-fever type, although I've been married to the very Chinese Mrs Tall for 13 years.

But I've also met very few white men here who find it difficult to meet, date and think about marrying local women.

Why?

PatrickH has spelled out many of the reasons, and in so doing has moved forward the cause of vivid adjectives by leaps and bounds! I'm not sure I take quite as strong a view, but there's something to be said for the contrasts in voice, physical bearing and manner, and general sense of poise (an excellent word -- and a noun, even!).

I was walking down the street yesterday behind two 20-something American women. Neither was obese or obnoxious or crude (or any other caricature of Americans abroad). They looked like nice, average, educated, just-out-of-college types. But I could overhear their conversation 10 feet away on a busy street with lots of noisy traffic. Their voices were nasal and harsh. Every third or fourth word -- I swear I'm not exaggerating -- was 'like'. They swaggered. They were dressed in sloppy tank-tops, big shorts and flip-flops.

They have not a chance in hell against Hong Kong women of the same age/general demographic profile.

HK women hold themselves and move with a compact, economical grace; they generally dress well, often on low budgets; and they -- as PatrickH again put it -- are unselfconscious, at least about the fact that they're feminine. And HK women are not in any way 'submissive'. As others have indicated, that's a load of crap.

I'm a bone-deep conservative, and I love my American homeland and its people. But the truth is the truth.

Posted by: mr tall on August 26, 2009 2:27 AM

clio, the femininity of Asian women compared to Western women is no mystery: the absence of the chip on the shoulder. No evidence of the problematic relationship to femininity. The softer voice, especially when compared to the harsh braying voices of American women. None of that general sense of humourless brittle phony aggression coming off Western women masking an underlying neediness and dependency.

The femininity of Asian women does NOT consist of them not being ambitious, or money-mad, or hard-working, or interested in science or engineering. Those traits aren't unfeminine in the least.

And...grace, poise, a sense of calm (whether projected or not), dressing well, exhibiting in their persons the realization of femininity as something desirable not despicable or weak or problematic.

More than anything that's it: an unproblematic relationship with being feminine. Self-referential perhaps ...but then again, that's part of femininity too. :-)

hello,

Yes to all of what you said. The disappearance of the ideal of the gentleman from the West has coincided with the disappearance of femininity as Yang coincides with Yin. (Though I must qualify my comment by saying that it is impossible for femininity to truly disappear...more like muted, or devalued, I would say.)

Western women are braying, teeth-bared, wound-up self-obsessed energy vampires with nothing to offer men. Western "men" for their part, barely deserve to be designated as such, since to be a man means among other things, being a gentleman and a father (if not literally the latter then nonetheless an embrace and embodiment of the values of the father, the patriarch, the leader and protector of society). Western "men" have no more to offer western women than the reverse. It's no accident, as the Marxists and other occultists keep saying, that western men have failed to become men at exactly the same time that western women have had such difficulty becoming women.

Mind you, these problems are all so contra naturam that they are a) shallow, and b) temporary. Man-and-Woman runs deep, it's the first and deepest story of our lives. And They will return before long. In one sense, They have never gone away. They can't. They are Us.

Posted by: PatrickH on August 26, 2009 3:15 AM

No personal experience where Annie goes, but my guess is that she's a bit of an idiot savant, as many artistically talented people are.

There is a difference between saying they can't do anything except make art, and saying they are so obsessed with their art that they don't want to do anything else. My guess is that she is an obsessive who has put on blinders towards everything else in life, not that she lacks the general intelligence to do something else if she absolutely had to. Being an obsessive != being a savant.

Furthermore, if you are talented enough you will find many enablers for your obsessiveness. It's especially bad if you get discovered early in life and never have to rub up too closely against reality.

Posted by: Thursday on August 26, 2009 3:21 AM

Two random thoughts on Asian women who live in the west but grew up in Asia.

1. They are smaller. If the entire adult population were to be coded with two variables (height and weight), there should be no trouble making correct gender identification on 95% of those Asian women. This would not be the case for women of any other race, nor for Asian women who grew up in the west. As far as size goes, Asian women, as a group, can be generalized as looking feminine, or at least, definitively not like men.

2. English is their second language. It is hard to sound that assertive when one is not speaking her mother tongue. The only ethnic/gender group with seemingly no mental impediment in speaking English as a foreign language is the Indian male -- some of them speak fast and loud like machine guns. The assertiveness of their delivery seems negatively correlated with their language proficiency. Asian woman can be as fast and loud talking at home, but they cannot pull it off in a second language.

Posted by: Pupu on August 26, 2009 8:44 AM

There's always the fact that Asian women age much more gracefully and slowly than other women. Out in on Long Island the police are constantly busting Asian massage parlors. One interesting thing from the news reports is that the women often are startlingly old - usually over 40, in some cases over 50, and even on occasion over 60. I rather doubt that too many women of other races could continue to work as hookers in their 50's.

Posted by: Peter on August 26, 2009 10:00 AM

A comment about Pupu's point about Indian male English. I was listening to an interview with a master Canadian pickup artist who calls himself Zan. Callers were asking for advice. One of these callers was an Indian with absolutely fluent English, but a very thick Indian accent.

This was causing the young man terrible difficulties in meeting women. They couldn't understand him for one thing. His rat-at-tat talking speed was an issue. Plus, the Indian accent is an object of parody in North America...think of Apu in the Simpson's. It's not a sexy accent from a man, not the way a French or Italian accent can be.

So he was asked to try to imitate an accent, Spanish I think, to remove the offputting qualities of his Indian accent...and MAKE HIM SLOW DOWN.

He was game, did a good job, and voila! His voice acquired a charming, calmer, slower exoticism (his accent wasn't really Spanish, but it was charming).

All this to say that the harsh nasal American accent is not appealing in general, but it is particularly grating coming from a woman. What Tall said, in other words.

American women have always had a rep as shrill domineering harridans, even before feminism. The accent is a lot of the reason for that.

Smooth low soft modulated. That's the kind of voice on a woman that gets a man going. Sing-song can do it too. But not nasal. Not harsh.

Not American.

Posted by: PatrickH on August 26, 2009 10:19 AM

There's a website for everything.

Recently spotted at Slashdot:

"Linux distros are like porn on the Internet: if you can think of it, somebody's done it."

Posted by: Rich Rostrom on August 26, 2009 7:21 PM

With many thanks to PatrickH and Shouting Thomas for their cameos, I couldn't resist blogging on the whole Asian-fetish topic myself, as linked below in my byline, aka my "TinyURL" (just ask my ex-webmistresses, 'specially those who've seen me emerge from Lake Inferior, aka Lake Gitche Gumee Ya-Ya, after a cold swim - Ed.) Whether that's a promise or a threat is, after Mr. Mathis, not for me to say:

We Love You Long Time (Once We Saw the *Local* Talent) – *and* We’re Crack Shots, or, Here Come Mai Lo, Da Bride

[cross-posted to Faithb-, er, Facebook as "DSL. likes his chicks like he likes his chicken: hot, Asian - and served on a bed of rice"]

Posted by: Scott Lahti on August 27, 2009 8:01 AM

Why are Paul Krugman and Niall Ferguson lobbing grenades at each other?
=================================================

Because Krugman just freakin' HATES it that Ferguson is smarter, better-looking, and sells more books than he does. Not to mention Ferguson's a better writer and has that cool accent

Posted by: Reid Farmer on August 27, 2009 1:41 PM

I don't know if Ferguson is smarter than Krugman, who is very very bright indeed. But he sure as hell is cuter.

It's interesting to speculate how many fights between male intellectuals are really dick-swinging contests about which one could score more hot chicks. Roissy would no doubt say:

EVERY FREAKING ONE OF THEM THAT'S HOW MANY

But that's Roissy for you. Still, Steve Sailer says a lot of feminist critiques of society are driven by the desire of the critiquette to live in a world where women like her are seen as "hot".

My guess is, guys are just the same.

Posted by: PatrickH on August 28, 2009 10:43 AM






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