Self Loathing Asians

As a followup on one of my previous posts, I am reporting the following conversation, which was NOT INITIATED BY ME, which just took place in a gay.com chat room:

Him: hi
Me: hi
Him: wassup?
Me: nada. how are you?
Him: horned up

[At this point I feel the need to reiterate that I was NOT the one who initiated this conversation.]

Me: ah.
Me: where are you?
Him: nwdc-logan
Me: oh. i live near there.

[I should explain this. I'm typing this from San Antonio, where I am on a business trip. I am logged on to two different chat rooms on gay.com, one in DC and one in San Antonio. I'm asking where this guy is, because I need to know this information to carry the "conversation" further.]

Him: stats?
Me: 5'8 165 asian

[Having given out my "stats" on electronic chat fora before, I know that this is usually enough information. Sure enough, I'm right.]

Him: sorry
Me: huh?
Him: not into asians

Okay, this is wrong on many, many levels. First, "sorry"? Ex-squeeze me? Again, let's reiterate where the center of the universe is NOT located: your penis. There's no need to be "sorry." I'm not going to cry myself to sleep because I didn't get to jump into a bed with your "horned up" ass. Get a life.

More important was my last line, which went completely ignored:

Me: dude, you ARE asian.

Yes, indeed, in checking this guy's profile (I had to make sure he wasn't a bot, after all), I found out that this guy self-identifies as Asian/Pacific Islander, all the way down to identifying as a Buddhist. At least he knows his own ethnic background, I guess.

As it is, "I'm not into Asians" is tossed around so flippantly in the gay community, in much the same way as "I don't drink Pepsi" or "I don't watch The Bachelor" would make its way into conversation. But to have it tossed at you by an Asian man leaves me with a feeling between revulsion and immense pity.

As I've already mentioned before, it takes a pretty closed mind to dismiss, in a blanket fashion, all people of a particular race as unattractive from the get-go without undertaking a particularized, individualized determination of each person's attractiveness. It takes a special degree of self-hatred to toss this blanket over an entire race of people when you're one of them.

This guy said "I'm not into Asians" without even acknowledging the disconnect that necessarily must exist between his statement and his actual self. When he looks at himself in the mirror in the morning, does he see a handsome Asian guy, or does he see a hot white guy trapped inside an Asian shell? Will he, someday, undergo some kind of plastic surgery to widen his eyes, shore up his cheekbones, bleach his skin tone, maybe color his hair? Does he at all even realize that when he says "I'm not into Asians," he's really saying, "I am repulsed by myself. If I walked into a bar and saw me there, even I wouldn't talk to me."?

Frankly, it's attitudes like this that have forever prevented me from joining any gay Asian clubs here in DC. I feel like I would forever be some kind of interloper, some "new" Asian guy (despite the fact that I've lived in DC for ten years now) who shows up at "Asians and Friends" night to steal our white men from us. Yes, with such a limited supply of white men who find Asian men attractive enough to date -- and after all, if Asian men are allowed to cast away Asian men without a second glance, why whouldn't the majority of men of other races? -- with such a limited supply of this Wondrous Other, they're bound to be outnumbered by the Asian men who want to date them. So the addition of each new Asian man into the pool only further slims the chances that the Wondrous Other might look twice at any of the other ones there. I, for one, would hate to rain on the parade of these insecure GAMs who feel their lives need to be defined by having a trophy white man at their side. Count me out. My self-worth is measured not by the skin color of the man with whom I choose to share my life.