Nipposexual 3: Damned if you do...

[imomus]

artysmokes raised a very interesting point in our discussion of nipposexuality yesterday. "Personally, I've never fancied a black woman, but I'd be horrified if someone levelled accusations of... racism at me [for that]," he said, pointing up a simple but puzzling Catch-22: it's both racist if you do fancy someone of another race, and racist if you don't. The only way out of the accusation of racism is to say that race plays no part in your attraction to, or lack of attraction to, the otherly-raced person. And so we get the somewhat absurd spectacle of someone trying to pass off a big tangled knot of historical, cultural and racial features as nothing more than personal attributes. "It's not her Japaneseness that I like, it's the fact that she has lovely dark hair and eyes, and makes great sake teriyaki, and wears lovely kimonos at obon... In the end, though, she's just a unique individual, and all the other stuff is just a bonus."

I often think it's terribly sad that the identity politics movements of the 60s and 70s, which were all about discussing matters of race and gender and using them as criteria for analysing the world, became, in the 80s and 90s, the complete opposite: a way of saying "Shut up!" If Artysmokes risks being called a "racist" for either fancying or not fancying a black woman on account of her race, all his accuser is really saying is "I don't want racial considerations to be an issue in this conversation at all. My use of the term "racist" is the final statement in which race is the structuring concept that I want to hear in this discussion. Shut up about race!" And so identity politics, which in the 60s and 70s was very much an invitation to have a discussion about race and gender, became, in the 80s and 90s, a way to close those same discussions down. What started as an initiative to foreground and spotlight the concepts of race and gender became a call to sweep them under an extremely large and dark carpet. Far from advising you to join the Black Panthers and structure your entire life around racial struggle, today's conservative liberationist wishes to liberate you from the concept of race itself; he will often tell you that race, as a scientific concept, doesn't exist at all.

But wishing don't make it so. Race and gender are sociological facts, whatever they may be to science. After being foregrounded by identity politics in the 70s, they were deconstructed in the 80s. Then, by means of benign-sounding ideological tropes like equality of opportunity, the uniqueness of individuals, the commonality of all humanity, and blindness to race, colour or creed, race and gender were shown out of the hotel lobby, frogmarched down the service corridor, and set to work in the kitchen, out of sight. It's not that these things instantly stopped determining the lives and histories of people. It's just that we didn't talk about them, because we felt strongly that they shouldn't determine the lives and histories of people.

So successful were concepts like "racism" and "sexism" at taking race and gender off the conversational agenda that attempts were made to create other taboos in their image: "rockism" was meant to make rock music go away, and "homophobia" to make either prejudice against gays, or, more sinisterly, gays themselves in all their difference and particularity, disappear into the woodwork. But think of all the neologisms that weren't coined! All the missed opportunities to stigmatize! Nobody has invented the reproach "marketist" for anyone who attempts to say that marketers have specific attributes rather than being "individuals, same as everyone else". No, marketing is "unproblematical" and doesn't need to be deconstructed. Carry on marketing! Nobody calls "businessmanist" those who single out businessmen and say they have unique attributes, either good or bad. You're still allowed to say "I want to marry a businessman" rather than twist yourself up in knots with constructions like "He needs to wear a suit and be savvy with money and go out daily to wheel and deal and bring home the bacon, but I wouldn't say that necessarily means I'm saying he needs to be a businessman. I mean, there are lots of people who meet those criteria who aren't businessmen at all. I'm not being businessmanist about this. You know, scientifically speaking there's no evidence to say that a businessman is different from any other human being. And people who say businessmen are hot are being just as offensive, reductive and patronising as those who say they're not."

In aggregate, then: deconstruct everything or deconstruct nothing. Make everything taboo, or nothing.

Comments

[tarandfeathrhim.livejournal.com]

In the future there will be cars fuelled entirely on liberal guilt...

...and I'll be the first one driving.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Did you know they just isolated the "businessman gene"? So it's not okay any more to criticize them for making a conscious lifestyle choice; they just can't help it, the poor things. Lay off them!

[(Anonymous)]

momus, if you're still reading these replies, you have the patience of the grand canyon. I haven't been so patient as to read many replies. Still, I brazenly repeat what I imagine someone else has said.

It's not the race per se that your interested, I think. After 3 generations of integrating socially if not genetically in the states, many full blooded japanese people become the generally pudgy, boorish, unkind people that make everyone else dislike america. They're still japanese racially, but culturally, they're kansas. I doubt you'd feel more attracted to this "japanese" person.

The problem is that your choice of cultures to fetishize means you've selected a country where womens rights are a not really what they are in your country of origin or residence.

Another appropriate question I think is whether you would want your imaginary future daughter to be raised as a japanese woman. If that seems like a flippant or ridiculous question, you're not thinking hard enough about it.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I know your busy, busy schedule has prevented you reading all the comments, but I have actually dealt with this question. I don't think you've sufficiently deconstructed women's rights (or in fact the concept of "rights" itself) as they manifest in the West. And yes, I would be happy to see a Japanese daughter brought up Japanese: if a Japanese upbringing produced the kind of woman I'd want to marry, why on earth wouldn't it produce the kind of woman I'd want to raise? Then again, I don't think having mixed parentage would make that possible, however desireable it might seem.

[encyclops.livejournal.com]

I don't even know what circles we're talking about anymore where "I want to marry a businessman" isn't a really strange idea to express. Maybe it's just a peculiar leftish-American idea that people want to marry a person they fall in love with, and in other countries and socioeconomic situations men still marry mostly good cooks who make them horny and women still marry good earners who make them comfortable. From where I'm sitting I can't really tell which idea is happier.

Anyway, you're starting to sound a little peevish. It seems as though you dared us all to be offended by your sexual predilections, and however halfheartedly we rose to the challenge you are now taking us all to task for it. I personally don't see the point of celebrating or condemning your feelings on the matter; just who are you trying to justify yourself to?

Your evaluation of "homophobia" and the result of the other "isms" seems curiously reversed to me too. Surely the effect of all of those things is to highlight the prejudice, to reify it and foreground it, to lift it from the default common ground of society. It's not that racism and sexism make race and sex taboo to discuss; it makes them difficult to discuss by socially legislating a single point of view. It's perfectly okay to damn someone for whiteness or maleness, for example. Likewise, it's perfectly okay to take you to task for fetishizing Japanese women, but not okay to praise you for it.

Finally: you're still not discussing it, unless it's in the comments which have grown far too long to keep up with. You're just mentioning it, and justifying it in abstract terms. I still don't know exactly why you like Japanese women, just that you do. I assume it's their beauty, perhaps their contradictory nature as you see it, and probably in large part your perception that they represent a culture you're madly in love with.

You can't make love to the entire country of Japan, so you make love to its women. As long as everyone is happy, why deconstruct it? And if you're going to protest its deconstruction, why in the world begin by inviting exactly that?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The reason this topic is so interesting to me (and, judging by the number of comments, to other people) is that it crosses so many of the papered-over cracks in our cultural logic. We're not talking any more about "whether I have the right to date a Japanese girl". We're talking about problems and contradictions within the West's very arrogant ideology about others of all kinds.

Your belief that the stigmatisation of homophobia "is to highlight the prejudice, to reify it and foreground it, to lift it from the default common ground of society" doesn't take into account that the stigmatisation of homophobia might also be the stigmatisation of homosexuality itself, ie of difference. By the same logic, to ban golly dolls may remove an insensitive image of a black person from the culture, but it also removes an image of a black person from the culture. It's worth seeing the creation of new taboos as a part of a project to banish difference and make "the default common ground of society" a bland, samey place where there are women, sure, but they're really men with a twist, and gays, sure, but they're really straights with a twist, and other cultures, sure, but they're really ours with some more exotic scenery.

[kineticfactory.livejournal.com]

The thing is, one can choose to be a businessman or not; one cannot choose to be black, white, (fe)male or gay.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

This point keeps coming up, and I really don't see what it proves. You know, just because they haven't yet found the businessman gene yet, who says it isn't genetic? And just because they may have found the gay gene, who says homosexuality has to be? And just because something is or isn't genetic, who says it therefore is or isn't guilty? All this stuff is changing fast anyway: parents are on the point of being able to choose their children's gender; every transsexual has chosen a gender of destination. As science and globalism open more conscious choices to us, we have to stop saying that choice makes something guilty whereas fate makes it innocent.

[drpsycho.livejournal.com]

dear momus, i read you since a very short time but i've been very delighted by this your series of posts on cultural and racial specificity.
very insightful, really.
thank you for this opportunity of discussion:)

[(Anonymous)]

I think that it is ok to fancy people of other races.

Trevor

[(Anonymous)]

" today's conservative liberationist wishes to liberate you from the concept of race itself; he will often tell you that race, as a scientific concept, doesn't exist at all."

yeh, but it was quite important to explain, once and for all, to really thick people, that we are all the same biological machine with minute differences such as skin pigmentation. before that, you had these morons thinking that blacks hadn't evolved from the apes. okay, there is SOME moral policemen stuff in there too, granted, but that inconsequential in comparison with hammering the point in

[(Anonymous)]

I've yet to meet a Japanese women I didn't wish to shake. They look, act and converse like children. They think 'cute' is an admirable trait, without questioning the lack of social pressure for men to be 'cute'. Feminity as the subtle odour of submission, for men who haven't got the guts (flair, imagination and sense of responsibility) to be true dominants, settling for conservative-dominant and culture-dominant. I dislike cute, therefore, because it is such a middle-of-the-road and forgettable thing. It is stuck, stale and the sort of simpering to the male gaze and the male ego (or the nearest approximation they can get of it) that has been doing the rounds for centuries.

[(Anonymous)]

perhaps you'd prefer a big beefy man and moustache hairs between your teeth?

[kattullus.livejournal.com]

Those who want to marry businessmen are some of the most vilified people in western culture. They're called gold diggers and hundreds of movies/books/poems/songs/whatever have been made about how terrible they are. Now personally I don't mind people who seek financial security in their potential mates, but others do.

But that's not the main point I wanted to make.

The problem with bringing up the subject of genetic predisposition is that many think it's the same as predeterminism, i.e. that just because one is, say, biologically programmed to find males attractive, one'll never find oneself attracted to females. There's also the matter of choice involved, i.e. someone might be predisposed genetically towards something, but might never act on it. Just because you want to eat chocolate doesn't mean you have to. Hell, you might be able to push the desire so much out of the way you might not even realize that you want it. Similarly, you might not want to eat chocolate, but you could choose to eat it, and would enjoy it. Neither reason is inherently better than the other. Whether you choose or not, it's what you do that matters.

To give an example, rape is always horrible, whether the perpetrator is genetically predisposed towards it or not.

I realize that none of this has anything to with the discussion of whether it's okay or not to dig japanese women more than others but then I don't really have an opinion one way or the other. I'm not going to question the fetishes and peccadilloes of others, it's impolite. That being said, I've known Asian women who've been objectified in rather horrible and demeaning ways and that I object to (I'm not saying that you do, to be honest I have no idea and I'm not going to presume to know how you behave towards others in real life). It's all about the actions, not the thoughts or desires.

[corysklar.livejournal.com]

hi momus nick! its chaki! sorry i was so drunk when i met you in la! can you add me as your lj friend?! luv -me

[(Anonymous)]

Did anyone else notice how Momus flagrantly aped Matthew Collings' prose style in Nipposexual (1)? This isn't the first time of course. I hope for Momus' sake that it was a conscious decision, but I would be amused if it wasn't!

You are going to have to do better that if you wish to get your smug face onto a Channel 4 chatshow!

And what happened to your "column in a major national newspaper", the by way? The nation was really looking forward to reading your profound and wise musings... Shame.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I like (http://www.imomus.com/thought200600.html) Matthew Collings' prose style.

[fufurasu.livejournal.com]

I have enjoyed these discussions very much.

My rationalist approach is as follows: Race, nationality, profession, caste, are sets of distinctive attributes. The fact the words "asian" and "caucasian" have meaning in the first place proves that these sets of attributes are significant help in differentiating between people. As such, it is perfectly fine to discriminate using them. They are attributes, for fuck's sake.

Exressing a preference for asian women means attraction to the attributes implied by "asian." The term is a shorthand for the attributes. There's little else to it.

Problems arise when people object to the attributes some other feel are implied by a racial shorthand. Some asian women don't like to be thought of as submissive. But the attribute "submissive" is not present in everyone's understanding of the set "asian."

Black men run fast.
Asian women are attractive.
Beautiful women are attractive.
I am not too keen on blondes.
Stupidity is a turn-off.
Ballerinas are sexy.
I prefer apples to pears.
Apples are red.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

That's a very sensible summary, thanks!

But the attribute "submissive" is not present in everyone's understanding of the set "asian."

I think this is one of the key problems here. It enrages me when "submissive" is presented as an attribute of Asian women. Someone did note that Japanese women are much more likely to slap their partners, and I can totally confirm that, from my own relationships and those of friends. Also, there's a huge underestimation of the extent to which submission is enacted in Japanese culture as a pure sign, a theatrical gesture, a cosplay. What's more, even this symbolic capitulation is mutual: when someone bows to you or apologises to you, you bow back and apologise back.

[londonsound.livejournal.com]

I was thinking about that the other day (the comment that not fancying people of a certain race makes you racist) because my flatmate said, 'I don't find black men attractive, I don't like their features.'

Maybe I wouldn't have thought it was racist if she hadn't added the bit about features, but saying that you don't find a certain colour of people attractive implies in some way that you don't like something as basic as colour, that puts you off, so to speak. Her comment was racist in a few ways - one of which being of course that black people do not all share common features. If she'd said Nigerian people or Jamaican people, that would've been more understandable as there might a greater amount of shared features, but her comment made no sense. Similarly someone might think that not finding black women attractive at all might be racist in the same way?

But then maybe thinking that is racist is actually racist. Because of skin colour is really not a big issue at all (although not even all black people have the same skin colour really) then why is saying you don't find black women attractive any more racist than saying you don't find brunettes attractive, or very tall people? But saying you don't like black people implies so much more, I suppose, in terms of what you aren't liking about them. Which is really just a reflection of a general amount of racism in our culture rather than anything else.

Somehow I don't think it's racist to be specifically attracted to a particular race. But then that is flawed on my part, because someone could only be attracted to 'white' people, and I'd get kinda horrified.

Hi there old buddy!

[artysmokes.livejournal.com]

Oh gosh, what have I started? ;)
I'm not going to get too deeply into the "is it racist...?" debate right now. I'll just clarify a couple of my personal thoughts for you, as a friend.
I've never fancied a black woman and I don't expect to in future, but I wouldn't rule it out completely. It's vehemently not the colour of skin, or facial features tha puts me off, or even the particular "smell" of (most) black people. It is *cultural*. I can't see myself fancying a black woman for the same reason I can't see myself falling for a Chav. I am most attracted to people JUST LIKE ME. White middle class atheist women with an interest in arts, indie music, booze etc. Most black women I've met do not have much in common with me regarding childhood references, religion, role models, sense of humour. I could be stereotyped as an English eccentric. Most English eccentrics are not black.
You must know, F, that you are very much in a minority in being of dark skin yet are a great fan of typical English bands like the Smiths. Gradually, the stereotypes of Indie bands are being eroded (see Kele in Bloc Party), but we have a long way to go before Black/Asian/White British culture is anywhere near homogenous. Maybe globalisation IS a good idea after all... ;)

They (?) bothered me ...

[(Anonymous)]

This was to be my first post under a psudonmym that is not anonymous, but I don't have the time to register. Momus, irrespective of the topic being discussed I want to humbly express my appreciation of your intelligence, wit and candour, perhaps as an anodyne to a small number of bitter, naively polemical recent posts that have sprouted up like unwanted, unattractive weeds to spoil the garden.

Re: They (?) bothered me ...

[(Anonymous)]

Oh give over Momus you tit.

[(Anonymous)]

It really wasn't Momus unless he's somehow now English and living in Okayama.

[(Anonymous)]

Let it go wouldya?

[(Anonymous)]

"I don't believe that any culture is behind any other culture. We all have different ways of organising things like femininity."

Would you apply this to societies which practise female circumcision as well? Is that simply a question of "different ways of organising things like femininity"?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Well, it's the textbook example, isn't it?

While I don't approve of female circumcision, I also don't approve of tolerance which only tolerates things it already approves of, or understanding which only understands things it already believes in.

[rainermaria.livejournal.com]

in a way, you're not all that different from my mom, who decided to marry a white so she can come and live as an american.

[cargoweasel.livejournal.com]

I think we're confusing preference with discrimination. Get a bunch of liberals together and we will unconsciously compete to show how tolerant we are and how virtuous we are by deliberately proclaiming how we are not conscious of race, disability, sexual orientation etc. South Park spoofs this all the time to amusing effect.

Momus, you have a penis and that penis is attracted to certain qualities you find in asian women. You are no more racist for this brain chemical composition than I am sexist for being attracted to pudgy males. The whole debate is fairly ridiculous. But clearly it has a lot of strong emotion around it.

The real problem of racism is people not renting houses/giving jobs to or beating up/killing those who are different from they. I always had problems with this very logical and worthwhile goal, eliminating this behaviour, being extended to a sort of enforced love of other groups. I am gay. I don't want people to love me for being gay, i want them to not kill me (and not discriminate against me for being gay in a situation where they have power and it is an arbitrary choice.) If someone hates fags it is not my concern as long as it does not harm me directly. that is tolerance. and the price of a democratic society. It is not intolerant to have positive preferences one direction or the other.

[(Anonymous)]

Of course you are paranoid, it strips you of your uniqueness. It reduces a human being to facial angles and scales and proportions and shapes. It suggests that person just admires the 'difference' (relative to them)rather than what you actually are.

A tangent: submissive girls

[zazie-metro.livejournal.com]

To those of you who believe that Japanese women have it bad with chauvinistic men, look behind you and find a whole slew of problems women face in the west. Body image issues abound, for one. Crazy rape drugs and domestic violence. It's all there but people make so much noise about "go, women!" that you tend to forget.

Some cited examples of knowing Japanese females who are angered by feelings of oppression, who are tired of adhering to cultural decorum and be feminine, Japanese style. Maybe it's because of exposure to the western, outspoken brand of feminism pertaining to the equal rights, suffragettes kind of history. Speaking out is so "empowering", I've been told. And don't underestimate the influence of "Sex in the City" worldwide, either.

When observing girls around me in Hong Kong, I notice that they may *appear* more submissive than their male counterparts. Yet upon closer inspection, there are much more complex, subversive workings taking place. Example: white folks here roll their eyes at girls throwing public tantrums at boyfriends. I wouldn't do that; but really, why can't they? Hey, the boys they're with buy into it.

Of course, Hong Kong isn't Japan and the girls there are different, but this is merely to question those who quickly lump politeness/ passivity/ non-confrontation in women from certain Asian countries as a sign of being submissive. Delve further in before you make that conclusion.

Re: A tangent: submissive girls

[artysmokes.livejournal.com]

Interesting stuff.
I've never been to the East, so I shouldn't really be expounding at all, but I would say that the "politeness" thing is definitely something I've picked up on from watching TV and reading Japanese authors. I presume you are confirmning the auntheticity of this "cliche". The submissiveness of Japanese (or Western) women is much harder to ascertain, I would think.

Cultural bias

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

I haven't read all of the comments here so please take this as the usual caveat about repetition.

I think this is actually quite an important issue, but it only tends to become really prickly in public forums (which are subject to much hypocrisy).

I have the following experience, which I find to be relevant: When I was teaching English in Taiwan, I was sitting in the school office one day, idly reading over the contract I had not read thoroughly before signing, and I came across a statement that teachers must not make 'culturally biased' statements in the classrooms or at the schools.

"What's this meant to mean?" I asked, "We're bound to make culturally biased statements. We ARE culturally biased."

"I'm not culturally biased," said one of my fellow teachers, "Are you?"

"Yes," I said, "Of course I am. I grew up in Britain, in an Anglo-saxon culture. That is my bias."

But all of my fellow teachers denied point blank that they had any cultural bias. One of them then proceeded to talk about how he despised Taiwanese food. Apparently this was not a cultural bias - presumably it was a universal truth, or merely a personal preference with no cultural content whatsoever.

This is an example of the kind of double think that goes on around the question of race and culture.

Re: Cultural bias

[imomus.livejournal.com]

This is one of the biggest fallacies in "reasonable, normal" thinking: the idea that there is neutral space to stand on, some piece of intellectual ground that belongs to no-one and is outside every society, or inside every society, but beyond question. It fosters the belief that "they do it over there, but we don't do it here", which leads to bullying. And of course we do it too, but somehow we don't see it when we do it, because when we do it it's neutral, normal, invisible to us. It's built into our habits, our institutions, the very way we frame the question. "They do it over there, but we don't do it here" is the peevish evil cousin of "people are the same wherever you go". It's Paul McCartney in a bad mood. It's someone actually noticing that cultures differ and are thus relative, but not being able to draw the conclusion that his own culture is just another in the continuum. It's our old friend Marxy, in other words, able to say "they're different" but not "we're different".

[w-e-quimby.livejournal.com]

In aggregate, then: deconstruct everything or deconstruct nothing. Make everything taboo, or nothing

Is this a wry, sardonic jab at the very binary political thinking that you purportedly decry?

Just a thought...

[(Anonymous)]

If I had a very fervent belief system, my personality would most certainly clash with somebody else with a very fervent belief system. I would not be able to handle an interdependent relationship, and would search for a dependent partner - a partner who would support my belief system, and did not offer criticism.

I would seek out somebody who was submissive, avoided altercations, and ultimately appeased my fundamental convictions.

That person, in turn, would seek comfort in my intelligence, and take refuge in the perceived incisiveness of my belief system.


And as long as I could conceal the asymmetrical nature of our relationship from my own probing intelligence, I would be happy.

Re: Just a thought...

[(Anonymous)]

Hmm. Don't have a belief system, then. Enjoy the dialectic. ("Hey tell that to my landlord/boss/etc!")?

Being called a "racist"

[(Anonymous)]

Given how overuse by the Left has rendered the word "racist" meaningless, you shouldn't let that label bother you. You're a racist, I'm a racist, we're all racists. Woo-hoo. The world goes on.

[saikoutron.livejournal.com]

Ah, I was just considering the fact that being attracted to a black woman or any other person from a different race from my own to be an act of racism, when I read the opening of the 3rd installment to Nipponsexual. It seems that the more things are broken down(or deconstructed as you put it) and labelled, segregated from the initial dynamic impulse that it stirred in us... the less point there is to it.

In this case it's much preferable to just into the ocean, instead of boxing everything and trying to will see a world in a grain of sand.

Nice touch with the golliwog;)

[(Anonymous)]

nick hasn:t told us what it is to be "japanese" in the first place (for obvious reasons) and so he needs to rewind this whole thing and start over from there.
basically, nick wants to keep the japanese on a short leash as far as their identities. he wants the ethnic/cultural/nationality paradox to resolve with no great pains under the same rubric that the japanese govt. of old wanted to.
taking into accound post-colonial thought would probably make quick work of his theories.
F. FANON would probably want to sit you down for a quick tongue lashing...or worse.

[(Anonymous)]

nick hasn:t told us what it is to be "japanese" in the first place (for obvious reasons) and so he needs to rewind this whole thing and start over from there.
basically, nick wants to keep the japanese on a short leash as far as their identities. he wants the ethnic/cultural/nationality paradox to resolve with no great pains under the same rubric that the japanese govt. of old wanted to.
taking into accound post-colonial thought would probably make quick work of his theories.
F. FANON would probably want to sit you down for a quick tongue lashing...or worse.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

No doubt you can make up one of your amusing little dialogues in which you puppet such figures (Franz Fanon, Korean immigrants) with great regularity and zero comments, Robert.

[(Anonymous)]

Nick,

Here is the definition of Asiaphilia from asianavenue.com. A much as you like to bullshit in the most masturbatory fashion, you are a classic case of an Asiaphile:

http://www.geocities.com/feigned_justice/asiaphiledef.html

[abc-eats-dirt.livejournal.com]

I agree, finally someone who speaks sense.