Swiping left on Asian men

By Jason Lim

Three years ago, Christian Rudder, a founder of OKCupid, a well-known online dating site, who also happens to be a Harvard-trained data scientist, analyzed the interactions on his site and came up with interesting generalizations about how people behave in dating situations.

TIME Magazine summarizes Rudder's findings as such: ''According to Rudder's research, Asian men are the least desirable racial group to women… On OkCupid, users can rate each other on a 1 to 5 scale. While Asian women are more likely to give Asian men higher ratings, women of other races ―black, Latina, white ―give Asian men a rating between 1 and 2 stars less than what they usually rate other men. Black and Latin men face similar discrimination from women of different respective races, while white men's ratings remain mostly high among women of all races."

Tinder, the dating app that broke onto the scene five years ago, uses the revolutionary “swipe” user interface to register one’s immediate judgment on whether a person ―based on the profile photo ―is attractive or not. Eric Francisco, writing in Inverse Culture, explains, “The app’s data proves that black women and Asian men are the demographics on which the highest number of people swipe “left,” thereby rejecting them. By distilling dates down to a profile picture and a swipe, Tinder encourages users to act on their knee-jerk reactions, and that lightning fast process lights up corners of our minds we haven’t fully grappled with as a society. Black women and Asian men make up two demographics that have been long stigmatized as not-ideal sexual and romantic partners. It’s not that Tinder made anyone racist. It’s that the app compiles data on the quick preferences, and prejudices, of millions around the world, exposing an uncomfortable and racist reality.”

Based on the data, it’s pretty apparent that there are widely shared preconceptions ―at a deeper, subconscious level ―that impact how people in general are sexually attracted to different ethnicities. Call it racism, stereotyping, or whatever label you prefer, but there is definitely a hierarchy of sexual preference that strongly correlates to how you look from an ethnic perspective. And if we take at face value (oversimplification, I know) the maxim that women choose partners for their ability to provide security and status, it’s no surprise that the hierarchy of sexual preference mirrors today’s hierarchy of perceived power.

I don’t think this is a huge enlightenment. We know that we are essentially an amalgam of preconceptions that have been constructed upon our subconscious through myriad ways before we have a conscious say. Our choices and decisions will reflect those preconceptions ―albeit modulated by our later-life experiences and conscious deliberations ―in everything we perceive and do.

But what we also have to remember is that a hierarchy of power is constructed within the context of a particular culture. In the dating space that Tinder and OkCupid mined, the mainstream narrative was defined by the centrality of the European white male superiority ―this so-called “white advantage” is a cultural narrative that assumes certain positive traits associated mainly with white men from European ancestry. If we were raised within this narrative, the above results are not so surprising.

What I am actually curious about is whether this hierarchy of sexual preference organically changes to fit the hierarchy of power in other localized cultural spaces. For example, is there a “Chinese Privilege” in Thailand, Indonesia, or other southeast Asian countries in which the Chinese ethnicity are acknowledged to hold more wealth and power over the indigenous populations?

Or is there a “Korean Privilege” in the same region in which K-Pop has had such a huge influence, especially among the young people? In other words, is there a different hierarchy of power in other countries ―apart from the dominant “white privilege” narrative ―that impact the hierarchy of sexual preference in the local area?

This would be fascinating to know and would bring to light other wrong assumptions that we make about the nature of physical attraction. For example, it’s pretty common to hear that facial features that indicate the presence of more testosterone attracts women physically; this includes a big jaw, a broad chin, an imposing brow, among others. Well, I have seen K-Pop actors who are immensely popular almost to Beatlemania status, and they don’t seem to have big jaws or a broad chin. In fact, they are all pretty boys, sexual only in a very safe, androgynous way. So, where do big jaws, broad chins come from? It’s probably valid in the dominant cultural narrative but perhaps not so much in the K-Pop narrative.

Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter. I am not trying to guilt anyone for liking one face over another. We are all free to make dating choices according to our individual preferences. The only question I am exploring is ultimately about our agency and free will. Do we really have any when it comes to our most basic choices, or are we all conditioned to decide how we decide before we even have the opportunity to decide?

Jason Lim (jasonlim@msn.com) is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture. He has been writing for The Korea Times since 2006.