"I Dont Date Asians Because They Remind Me Of My Brother"
Added 2023-06-24 23:41:38 +0000 UTC
Comments
I agree that she doesn't necessarily hate her own culture either, but I do think it's a bit odd to disqualify such a broad category of people from your dating pool. I actually think Aba's other point about Asian men potentially being forced on her by her parents is a strong possibility, and that would certainly explain why she is so opposed to the idea as an adult.
2023-06-25 17:02:05 +0000 UTC
Hmmm, I disagree with Aba’s take on this. I think Aba and podcast host are failing to add a little bit of context to what the lady saying.
I don’t think she was necessarily wrong to generalize. Based on the varying ethnicities around that table, it seems likely that this podcast was filmed in the US so based on that context clue, I think it’s reasonable to assume that when she’s saying Asian men, she actually means Asian-AMERICAN men. The two are very different. For example, I’m half-Nicaraguan and half-Salvadoran living in the US and I have a Mexican-American stepparent and I would say it’s easy for me to relate to any other Latin-American person around me because our cultures have enough similarities and we have a similar experience growing up in the U.S.. Even though I’ve lived in Nicaragua for a few years, I relate a lot more to my Mexican-American friend than I do to people back in Nicaragua. Just as there are similarities growing up Latin-American, the same can be said about Asian-Americans. I live in an area with a high Asian population so nearly all of my friends are Asian (Chinese-American, Japanese-American, Vietnamese-American, etc.) so even though they do each have their own distinct cultures in their homes and within their families, the Asian-AMERICAN experience is similar enough that they have a lot in common to warrant some generalizations. And even though my friends are Asian-American and I’m Latin-American, we all have immigrant parents so we share many similar experiences as children of immigrants and growing up as non-white in the US. I’m pretty certain there have been past videos where Aba has made generalizations about being black and having immigrant parents so it’s weird for him to suddenly be so nitpicky about someone else making generalizations. I’ve mainly been with Asian and white men and I, too, could probably make generalizations about those experiences even though their were each different ethnicities. The woman in the podcast is Asian-American and she talks about how she’s basing this off her own experiences with Asian men she’s met/her friends so if that’s her experience, I think it’s okay for her to make that generalization. She’s not stating anything bad in her generalization, just that they’re not her preference because of her own experiences. So even though Aba is correct about how Koreans are different from Japanese and the differences of Europeans so on, I don’t think that fits the context of what she’s trying to convey.
I also think it’s an overreach to assume that she hates her own culture. That’s such an extreme conclusion for Aba to reach based on what she’s saying. It’s possible to develop a preference that doesn’t stem from hating yourself or your culture. I remember running into a TikTok where someone was talking about interracial dating and someone jokingly commented about how each culture has their own misogynistic tendencies and it’s nice to take a break from the one you grew up and try a different kind and I related to that. I’ve had latino boyfriends but I prefer dating other ethnicities/races, and it’s not because I hate my own culture. I love being latina, I love the music, the food, my body, the language, etc. I wouldn't want to be anything else. However, there is a lot of misogyny/machismo and racism within latino culture that can sometimes be very overbearing so I do dislike that very specific part of my culture. Some latino men say and do subtle things that remind me of that misogyny/machismo within men in my family, and if it’s not the man himself, it’s his family doing and saying those things. My friend was just telling me a few days ago that sometimes Vietnamese-American men have very misogynistic views (that was his perspective, not mine) so when I heard this Vietnamese woman stating that she doesn’t like to date asian men, the first thing I wondered was if it was for the same reason I don’t have a preference for latino men.
Who knows, maybe she does hate asian men because she hates herself. But based on my own experiences and perspective, I don’t think she’s saying that.
