Asian fetish is a slang term which usually refers to an interest, attraction or preference for people, culture, or things of Asian origin by those of non-Asian descent.[1][2][3][4] The term Asiaphile is sometimes used to describe the same phenomenon as is yellow fever.[5][6]
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For example, one website is called the "Asiaphile Homepage",[7] while a Western academic specializing in Japanese miniature carvings prefers "Asiaphile".[8]
Ronald Lake uses the term as a label for people who invest mainly in Asian financial products.[9]
Other slang names for a preference for Asian sexual partners include "yellow fever", and "rice kings", "rice chasers", and "rice lovers" for the men who espouse it.[10] The gay slang term used for a man, usually white, who exclusively dates Asian men is "rice queen."[11][12]
In the afterword to the 1988 play M. Butterfly, the writer, David Henry Hwang, using the term "yellow fever," a pun on the disease of the same name, discusses white men with a "fetish" for Asian women. Hwang argues that this phenomenon is caused by stereotyping of Asians in Western society.[13]
In a collection of writings from Asian American females, YELL-Oh Girls!, Meggy Wang calls a man "Mr. Asiaphile".[5]
In 2007 economist Ray Fisman, in a two-year study he co-authored on dating preferences among Columbia University students, did not find evidence of a general preference among white men for Asian women. Furthermore, the study found that there is a significantly higher pairing of white men with East Asian women simply because East Asian women discriminate racially against black and Hispanic men. As quoted on Slate.com,[14] and also reported in The Washington Post and the Review of Economic Studies (a publication of the London School of Economics):
| “ | We found no evidence of the stereotype of a white male preference for East Asian women. However, we also found that East Asian women did not discriminate against white men (only against black and Hispanic men). As a result, the white man-Asian woman pairing was the most common form of interracial dating—but because of the women's neutrality, not the men's pronounced preference. Men don't seem to discriminate based on race when it comes to dating. A woman's race had no effect on the men's choices. | ” |
The study was carried out over two years and was conducted by economists Ray Fisman (lead researcher from Columbia University) and Emir Kamenica (University of Chicago), as well as psychologists Sheena Iyengar (Columbia University) and Itamar Simonson (Stanford). They took data from "thousands of decisions made by more than 400 daters from Columbia University's various graduate and professional schools."[14]