ahhh...preference or fetish, my favorite (?) topic.

My friend Karen Eng wrote a nice piece about her experience with the Yellow Fever phenomenon that is pretty forgiving, realistic, reasonable and goes over all the basics in case you need a history lesson: http://www.zukazuka.com/cv/YFelectronic.html .

I'm not going to use this space to go over the "basics." Yes, forgive me Lord, I have dated a lot of white men and white women. Please do not confiscate my yellow badge of courage!

My history has to do with a coming of Asian American empowerment at UC Berkeley in 1995. I planned an entire Asian women's conference and festival and one of the topics was "Asian women: fetish or preference" in which we invited a bunch of mail-order bride owners, alongside Asian student activists of all kinds to be on this panel. Even though I started angry and then moved to understanding and wanting a dialogue, it is still a phenomenon that I am keenly aware of. My political history and traumatic experiences remain, but have definitely been made more patient than many of my fellow activist friends due to my years of working in the sex industry where I heard political voices from all walks and views. But yes, YOU CAN STILL OFFEND ME. It's a lot harder given my experiences, so you've definitely got to be a raging moron to make me angry. My other good friend Kristina Wong, has a mock mail order bride site (big bad chinese mama.com) that made her famous for her political views that can also be good background fodder. She gave me this awesome line: "It's not my responsibility to micromanage everyone's politics." And I fully second that emotion.

I BELIEVE IN LOVE. And I will fight for it when it comes my way, regardless of what ethnicity, background, gender, or sexuality that person happens to be.

I have only had 3 long term relationships (2.5 years, 3 different straight white guys, 27 years of my life) therefore you can imagine I've already done a lot of fighting for them and opening them up to my world as a visible queer API activist.

I don't waste my time getting into unneccesary arguments with people, and I certainly don't believe that white men are the only ones with ethnic/gender preferences or prejudices. In fact, I admittedly have a ton of my own. Let's see...I have fetishes or preferences for conscious people of color, activists, artists, queer boys with fairy wings and fur, hapa boys, hapa girls, Pamela Anderson types (although not usually for relationships), and any intersection of the above. There are a probably a ton more, but I think the short list is that I understand to a certain degree where some of the misunderstanding comes from because I feel that ultimately we are looking for someone that we can relate to. That being said, I also have zero tolerance for people who are looking for someone that is something that they read about, heard about or have dated in the past and learned was easy to categorize because I have not met too many women, Asian or not who are similar to me.

I went on an active search for the "ideal Asian man" in hopes to try to date my own race and all I came up with was a bunch of non creative, unimpressive guys who lived at home with their moms and had zero consciousness about the struggle of "our people." In many ways, an Asian person who has no clue is far worse than white guy who knows how to speak more Japanese than me. Even though I've had my ethnic preferences more often than not the results of trying to fall for someone based on these preferences has been a flop.

I became the asianprincess to reclaim my own ethnic/gender identity and my own sexuality. I believe a lot self hatred comes from trying to over compensate for stereotypes you are trying to avoid. I am extremely tired of the white man, asian geisha/dragon lady conversations and pretty much avoid getting into them. I've done a lot of research on the topic at hand, so I've heard a lot of things to death, many things that I'd rather not hear as well. If you have something new to say, then I'm listening.

White men are not the only oppressors in this dichotomy. Anyone who cannot see past the exterior skin of their fetish or preference to the soul IS GUILTY. Take for instance my impression or affinity for Korean women: Most of the Korean and K.A women that I've met are gorgeous, strong, fearless artist, leaders and/or academics. My stereotype about mysoginist Korean men causes me to believe that this causes the women that survive this to be tough as nails. I have crushes on all of them. But I don't use these thoughts to think that every korean woman is my future girlfriend and every Korean man should go to hell. It's more like a point of laughter between us.

Lots of folks only date within their comfort circles. More power to them. I am doing pretty much the same thing, although my work engages me with lots of people outside of my normal circles. I do not own my culture the way that I should. I am a child of immigrant parents, born of the first world American superpower and reap all of the benefits of a pop culture middle class liberal San Francisco upbringing. But I am conscious of all of this. I work towards constantly developing this consciousness which is something I cannot neccesarily say for everyone, white, black, Asian, female, or fill in identity here__________.

I do get pissed off, however when people are ignorant about their positions of power and priviliege. I get pissed off when people of color become the voice of the oppressor; like a Black-American rapper in his new video making a mockery of kung fu flanked by his Asian hos.

Because I am a dragon master at subversive people skills, lots of men seem to feel free to tell me about all the prostittutes in Thailand that they fucked. I've heard the Thai prostitute story from white men and even a hapa Asian man. These stories hit me deep in the stomach of my Asian and sex worker activist soul and I want to scream. Instead, I usually (3 out of 4 times) just take it all in and instead of argue, lose all respect (and gain disgust) for the person saying it. I do not wish to convert everyone to my way of thinking. I gave up on that a long time ago. Folks should be free to do their own things, not hurt each other and maybe we can learn something from each other's cultures (and we all have some culture, even sub culture) along the way. I may not date or hang out with those people, I may make fun of them on my website or talk shit about them to my friends, but hopefully I have raised the consciousness a little. And if I haven't well, there's plenty of energy better spent.

I'm all about being conscious of one's identity and one's actions. If you are black, white, Asian, if you are heterosexual man, if you are wealthy, born in the first world, born in America, born in the ghetto-just be conscious of your priviledge or lack thereof, the implications of others in your same grouping and you'll get along with me (and probably others). But, please, spare me the story about how many Filipina prostitutes you screwed while you were part of the occupying military power in the 3rd world.