Group Talks Asian Sexuality

William Lee’s hair was gelled into a mohawk, and he wore a purple velvet tie with his black suit.

He projected a photo of Jackie Chan in the Emerson lecture hall, and asked, “What’s the first word that comes to your mind?”

The dating coach and editor of BetterAsianMan.com led a discussion about Asian male sexuality to about 20 Asian Harvard students Saturday afternoon in an event sponsored by the Taiwanese Cultural Society.

Lee first divided the participants by gender, and then asked women to sit in front of the men so they would feel more comfortable voicing their reactions. Throughout the discussion, he compared their responses to the more negative stereotypes he had received from an all-female group at Wellesley.

Showing pictures of black, white, and Asian men, along with same and mixed race couples, Lee asked participants to say the first words that came to their minds.

When pictures of Asian males and Asian male celebrities were projected, the associations were sometimes unflattering: “nonsexual,” “dorky,” “metro,” and, when shown a picture of Jackie Chan, “buffoon.” Others photographs brought more positive associations, like “charming” and “built.”

When discussing a publicity shot from the television series Prison Break, Lee noted that the Asian character was pushed into the background, and in fact, “invisible.”

During the workshop, participants suggested reasons for and exceptions to stereotypes about Asian male sexuality. One participant said there was a lack of attractive Asian men in the media, while another mentioned a friend who didn’t understand the effeminate Asian male stereotypes—in her hometown, the Asian men were all hyper-masculine.

Ultimately, Lee placed the responsibility of breaking the stereotypes on Asian men themselves.

“If there is any fixing to be done,” Lee said, “that’s going to come from the men.”

Sharing his own experience with dating, Lee admitted that he used to be shy with women until he was able to break out of the rigid Asian male stereotypes. “I had to be taught how to talk to women,” he said.

Jeremy N. Tran ’09 said after the event that Lee made “some valid points,” but overall, but that most people were already aware of negative Asian male stereotypes. “At Harvard, it’s a little different. People in general think that you’re intelligent, Type A, confident people.”

But he said from personal experience, that the situation was different in the “real world.”

“It’s a weird dynamic. If you go to a club, you won’t get as much attention,” Tran said.

On his Web site, Lee gives his advice to Asian men, to “romantically connect, in an honest and sincere way, with all the women that they desire to connect with.”

And if they don’t know how? Well, according to Lee, go learn.

—Staff writer Lingbo Li can be reached at lingboli@fas.harvard.edu.