And how many of Looking’s main characters are Asian? Zero.
I can forgive Looking’s creators for lot of things – the contrived dialogue or the way they make San Francisco’s MUNI look like the New York Subway. I mean, you have to take a few liberties to make a show interesting. Continue reading Gay Asians Should Boycott HBO’s Looking→
Who doesn’t like being a hot white guy? You’re pretty much a Greek god in the gay community and there really isn’t anybody you can’t get. For others, you often find “no asians, no blacks” in dating profiles, which shows how racist and white-centric gay dating can be.
You see, there’s a totem pole of races in the gay community, with white people at the very top. It sorta goes like this: White, Latino (honorary whites), Mixed, Asian, Black, Indian, etc. This hierarchy is responsible for all kinds of phenomena in the gay world. Take, for example, the fact that Asian-White couples often consist of an older white guy with a younger Asian. Or at the very least, an Asian who’s substantially more attractive than his white counterpart. It’s never the other way around.
The bias extends to pop culture. When was the last time you saw an Asian Abercrombie model? All of the main characters on Queer as Folk were white. Heck, all the main characters in the latest HBO gay drama Looking are white even though the show is set in San Francisco where a third of gays are Asian. And of course, how can we forget about gay porn?
And so I wanted to find out for myself what every gay Asian knows – no matter how hot or young you are, you’ll suffer the inevitable Asian “discount” that’s applied when you hit the dating/hookup market. What better way than on the most shameless, unapologetic, and narcissistic venue: Grindr.
Many gay Asians have a problematic addiction to potatoes, aka white guys. I was there myself. For years, I always pictured the “ideal guy” for me to be a dashingly handsome white guy with the perfect features – blue eyes, sandy hair, and a bit taller than me.
Lucky for me, I woke up in time to smell the coffee. Many of my fellow gay Asians aren’t so fortunate. They stick to their proverbial guns and hang to the pipe dream of landing a white male model, even when they’re years past their dating prime.