That seems pretty obvious considering one want is a subset of the other. If I’m physically attracted to you but not in other ways, I can still want to have sex with you. That’s a single box to be ticked, whereas “potential partner” is the title of the entire checklist. Surely this is a ubiquitous phenomenon that applies to mainstream beauties as well. In fact, you’ll hear them complain about it, too, as described in TFA.
Is this different from being a cis-woman?
There is, as OP alluded to, a very strong fetishization of non-white, non-cis women.
I'd guess most of the men that are looking for a "real relationship" are doing so because they want to find somebody to have children with, especially at 30+. In general they are not going to invest time and energy into building a relationship with someone that lacks the proper organs to conceive a child.
What I read here is just that you’re just as discriminatory as the people who you complain about. I don’t see any mentions of race in the article and what it describes applies to most cultures and every race.
Stop being racist and maybe people will stick around after receiving the Thing.
What? The OP is trying to look at the premise of the post through a lens of race – non-white women are often fetishized by white men for their non-whiteness. I mean, shit, look at... any porn site. And they're right – fetishization makes for a totally different dating experience, a different experience of The Thing.
Where is the racism here? Is just mentioning the idea of race somehow racist?
(EDIT : the OP doesn't mention race though, so the blame might be actually more on the answerer.)
The whole concept is not only scientifically flawed (and so was largely abandoned by anthropologists, who prefer to use the much more culturally than genetically defined concept of ethnicity), but has also resulted in untold suffering in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Not that fetishization of skin color isn't an issue, but affirming the validity of race by using it to think about this issue is guaranteed to make matters worse.
Race as a sociological phenomenon is very real to those who experience it. Fetishization of race in sex is demonstrably real as well and not limited to women.
Regardless, race isn’t really the important part — it was just an example. You could replace race with any number of descriptors of a person (weight, height, etc) and it doesn’t make it feel any better to be fetishized; it’s not two people having sex, it’s one person having sex with an idea. Ideas aren’t supposed to have feelings, dreams, or agency.
Some combinations of these sociological states are just a lot more likely to be fetishized (and porn sites have the stats on that!) And when they are, it changes the power dynamics around sex significantly.
I disagree. Having to do with race is racial, not racist. The latter is inherently prejudiced. Merely mentioning race does not make something racist.
We're talking about fetishization, sexual gaze, and power dynamics. It would be irresponsible to not talk about the role that race plays in this conversation.
Hard disagree. What you're saying reminds me of Seinfeld’s "Not that there's anything wrong with that" suffix and "I'm not racist, but" starter. You don't have to mention things that are obvious, you're just making the conversation awkward.
I fail to see how talking about race (keep reading) changes anything about the the concept at hand: People want you because you have "the Thing, and maybe only the Thing."
"Being an Asian woman" itself can be the Thing, that's still covered by the article.
Both your comment and the parent are racist because you’re applying common issues to “white men” while they’re really not limited by race in any way whatsoever. Whether this or that race is fetishized by which race is completely irrelevant in the context of the article.
And I absolutely do believe white people can be fetishized! But this article is written in the context of a white person living in a predominantly white society. My main argument is that her experience is not generalizable to the wider population, who experience the power dynamics of sex very differently.
As a trans woman who passes for cis, I can tell you that lots of men want to sleep with me, but far fewer want to have a real relationship with me after I disclose that I’m trans (and from talking to women of color, this is not unique to trans women). There’s no power there other than transactional. So I’ve had to learn to always be on guard and find ways to filter out the fetishists to meet the men who aren’t ashamed to date me.