[quote=“Huang Guang Chen”]A minor issue, the occasional specifics. Back in Oz many automatically assume a white male with an Asian female is somehow an exploitive relationship. Actually you can see it when travelling, especially in Thailand. The first reaction is often wary if not a tad hostile. But then I don’t give a f*ck.
Just my thoughts (nice link Smell my glove, saw that awhile back).
HG[/quote]
I can vouch that HG is not in an exploitative relationship with his current love from Thailand. I worry, however, about the way she makes him walk around in that G-string without any pants on. I guess it matches the dog collar he has to wear as well, but ya gotta wonder if she really respects him…
Inter-racial dating. Hmm… I’m a white Ozzie, my girl’s a white Ozzie, but we met here in Taiwan and share an interest in Chinese language and politics, etc. I had one long-term relationship with a Mainland Chinese woman - we also met here a lot of years ago. It was a fraught tie-up, and many of the problems we had arose from complete ignorance of each-other’s cultures. A brief period of holding hands with a white American woman a few years back had strangely similar problems. The racial component of dating/loving is a red herring IMHO - it may be important for a small number of people who genuinely discriminate on the basis of skin color (throw some hate into that equation and you probably have a ‘racist’), but for most of the people I know and am friendly with (including, probably, most of the contributors to this forum), it’s a non-starter. The real clincher, however, is culture. If you can’t read your partner’s cultural subtext, and that’s so much more than a linguistic exercise, then communicating gets really, really difficult. I guess one of the reasons I ended-up with a girl from back home (getting married over Chinese new year BTW) is that things are just so much easier with someone that has a similar background to me. I happily concede that love can transend the cultural chasm - as I think it has done in HG’s case - but I think it takes a hell of a lot of love to really make it work.
I am not sure what growing up in a liberal area had to do with your tolerant attitude. I grew up in a very conservative family (I am the liberal black sheep of my clan) in a rather conservative area (Pittsburgh democrats are conservative re social issues), and few people ever cared (or at least they rarely vocalized any care) one lick about the race of a person anyone else was dating or married to. My father’s associates included three Jews and a black man. The first time I was operated on, my father selected a black surgeon to open me up… the second time I went in for surgery, a white Jewis man married to a black woman operated on me.
I think education has much to do with shaping attitudes… and that is both the education you get at home and in schools that shapes those attitudes.
I never did until I came here (Taiwan). However, I had several relationships (of the very fleeting kind) with black girls back home, and I tried to get a black girl I knew in college interested in me… but, she just wasn’t interested…
So, no, I never dated interracially before coming to Taiwan… but, I have always been attracted to black girls and tried unsuccessfully to date a black coed classmate while in college.
Man Tigerman, those chicks must have been blind!! You are one big ole hottie. I was ticked off when I found out you were married. WAAAAA
I’ve done plenty of interracial dating in my life and it gets old after awhile or after you get older and start seeing what makes a real relationship, black,white,yellow,brown,etc. It’s all the same in the end.
Sometimes I feel embarrassed that now I only really want to date Taiwanese girls and could never really see myself ending up with anyone else. Then again, I don’t think it’s what you would call an ‘asian fetish’ - I’m not interested in Japanese, Thai, Korean, whatever girls. Before I came to Taiwan I dated girls of various nationalities and haven’t ruled out a future relationship with a Western girl - just that from experience I’ve learned that I don’t get on very well with most of them. What can I say? I’m just a cultural transvestite.
Whether they be friends, lovers or otherwise I’ve always found it easy to click with Taiwanese. And as I live and do business in Taiwan, I use so little English that I feel more comfortable chatting in Chinese. I agree with your observations about cultural barriers - just that my biggest barrier seems to be with people in my ‘home’ country.
I never did until I came here (Taiwan). However, I had several relationships (of the very fleeting kind) with black girls back home, and I tried to get a black girl I knew in college interested in me… but, she just wasn’t interested…
So, no, I never dated interracially before coming to Taiwan… but, I have always been attracted to black girls and tried unsuccessfully to date a black coed classmate while in college.[/quote]
Kinda reminds me of something from childhood. My family and I are watching a HK movie in a theatre. It’s a romantic comedy between a man and a fox-woman (ie witch). At the end, the woman sacrifices her life for the man, but being a fox-woman, is reincarnated. The only thing is, she reincarnates as a black woman. The whole audience is laughing… except for me. A) I thought, if it’s love what does it matter B) I thought, she’s not bad looking, so what’s the problem.
I think I was around 8, and growing up in a Canadian city with few blacks. So I dunno.
[quote=“Namahottie”]
I’ve done plenty of interracial dating in my life and it gets old after awhile or after you get older and start seeing what makes a real relationship, black,white,yellow,brown,etc. It’s all the same in the end.[/quote]
I agree. I started dating outside my own race/ethnicity initially back in high school, no doubt the explosive combination of curiousity and a nagging apprehension about some of the racial attitudes of my friends.
I was an army brat, most of the time in Europe, but with a stay in Ghana as well. All the international schools I attended were multi-ethnic, so I was exposed to different stripes at an early age.
Dealing with other people’s attitudes is the most challenging thing about any interracial-relationship. And it can range from outright violence, or the gormless stare, thru to a shrug of indifference. I’ve experienced them all.
All in all, race and ethnicity is no big deal, or it shouldn’t be anyways. Humanity’s history is rife with interracial interaction. The very idea THIS or THAT race has more idiots than OURS is ludicrous. Surely the powers that be had enough sense, they would spread out the fools amongst all the races. “Let No One Race Cast A Monopoly On Idiocy”.
Also not just being attracted to some races but some races being more attracted to you. In general I get positive reactions from black girls and white girls. However Asian girls don’t seem to express much interest in me by comparison. I don’t know whether it’s because they are too shy in Taiwan or they just don’t find me physically attractive, which is kind of odd since lots of girls of other races do. Not that I’m saying I’m super-hot or anything, I think I’m just an ordinary guy, it’s just that I find dating in Taiwan and getting attention from girls a lot more difficult than back at home. Maybe the language barrier is a big issue, girls are afraid to talk to me because they feel their English sucks.
I’m white and from SA where inter-racial dating in the last fifteen years has become quite common (with even a few famous couples such as Ex-Guateng - Johannesburg and Pretoria area - Premier Tokyo Sexwale and his wife). Before coming here I’ve dated White, Coloured (Mixed race, mostly black and white, but also Malaysian - and that’s a government term, not my own) and black woman. The East Asian and Indian groups in South Africa keep very much to themselves socially, except for the guys. It would be easier for a white woman to date an Indian guy back home than for a white guy to do that. Although I have a mate back home who married an Indian girl, much to the protest of her parents. However, they eventually relented when he promised to convert to Islam. So before I came here I never really had much experience with East Asian and Indian ladies (even though we have quite a substantial minority in SA).
Now, having been here for a while I actually just feel mor comfortable dating Tw woman. No particular reason other than I just feel more comfortable in such a relationship.
What BS. Interracial relationships in SA are still extremely rare. I’ve encountered maybe 3 or 4 IR couples, one of which was between an American WF and a central African man. I’ve seen more IR in Taipei in 2 weeks than my +22years in SA. Any IR will still elicit hostile stares and comments. Nobody in my HS dated interracially, I was the only one. The university I attended amount to about 35000 students and for the 5 years I was there (I still make regular visits) I have yet seen an IR couple.
In general, South African girls are super stuck ups with Afrikaners leading the pack, I however found Anglophone white chickas the most approachable but still no where near the Europeans.
Face it boet, the dating scene here is at least 30 years behind North America and Western Europe despite the entire media chest pumping about IR. I don’t recall any publications/studies regarding interracial marriages because it’s statistically irrelevant.
I had interracial relationships with girls before I came to Taiwan. In fact the only reason I came to Taiwan was because I met a Taiwanese girl at university in Melbourne, Australia. Previously I had girlfriends from Brazil, Phillippines, Panama and Japan. Apart from the Japanese girl I met all of these past girlfriends in Melbourne.
In Melbourne interracial couples are quite common and it seems that even in the last 5 years or so there are so many more young white Australian guys dating Asian girls. In Taiwan my girlfriend and I receive many more odd looks than we do in Melbourne. In Melbourne it is rare to see anyone even look at us curiously ,however, it was very common in Taiwan to get lots of curious stares. There are also so many Asian students in Melbourne which makes it very easy for white Australian males to meet Asian girls at university. I think the nature of this environment in Melbourne means that the likelihood of mixed relationships is greatly increasing because of the growing ethnically diverse population.
The discrimination happens just about everywhere there’s a majority/minority distinction. When I (Asian) walk down the street in Mexico with my friend who looks Hispanic, we get plenty of curious stares too. I think more because they’ve never seen an Asian rather than the interracial aspect.
When I was in London last year, I was quite surprised by the number of married (with kids) interracial couples. That city sure has changed a lot from 13 years ago when I last visited.
Funny, I never think of it as “inter-racial” dating, or dating outside your race. To me, Masitsa, Sawako, Ronit, and Yi-Mei are great girls I’ve had the pleasure to be with. The fact that they were Kenyan, Japanese, Israeli sabra, and Taiwanese was not a factor in selection or post-facto identification. Love the one your with, wherever you are.
ImaniOU, I don’t know whereabouts you hail from in the USA, or when the last time you spent significant amounts of time in the States was, but in my neck of the woods (NYC), and many other parts of the country "inter-racial"dating is uttterly common-place and has been for ages. No one gives it a second thought, nor does it impart the social stigmas of the whack old days. My little nephew’s elementary school looks like the United Nations of intermingling - kids of incredibley diverese backgrounds.
I likewise never really thought of the ethnicity of my partner. The SOs in my life have included a Japanese, a Taiwanese, an Australian/Dutch woman and currently a Thai.
Interestingly the most flack I’ve copped is with the Thai. This from another thread is sadly all too typical:
Repugnant as that is, predominantly this sort of response is from Chinese, many of whom seem to regard their South East Asian neighbours as unter-mensch. This manifests in its most ugly form in the horrific disregard for foreign labourers/domestics in Taiwan/HK.
Personally I relish reminding like-dumb-minded Taiwanese how their grandmas were clambering over themselves to act as maids in the Philippines. It’s a valuable lesson on how fortunes can shift.
As for the quote, that particular poster best hope he never meets my SO. His balls will be severed in a flash. In general Thais are especially nice people, just don’t ever piss them off.
I’m so mixed up (ethnicity wise) I don’t think I have ever dated anyone of my own “race.”
WTBD? Really!
Never could figure out the problems people had with folks of different cultural/ethnic heritage gettin it on.
Wish you both all the best!
