I decided being a dragon lady would be more fun than being a geisha. And when I think of dragon lady the first person I think of is Lucy Liu’s character (Ling Woo) on Ally McBeal. Wikipedia describes Ling Woo as “a cold and ferocious Chinese American lawyer who spoke Mandarin and was knowledgeable in the art of sexual pleasure unknown to the Western world.”

I crafted my personals ad based on that description. This is what I came up with:

I am a cold and ferocious Chinese American lawyer who speaks English and Mandarin and is knowledgeable in the art of pleasing man. Do you think you can handle me? Message me with picture. No c*ck shots pictures please.

I posted this ad at 3:30 on a Saturday morning and I got emails right away. Actually, an entire mailbox full. For your personal pleasure, I will post some of my favorite responses:

Hey sweetie. My man saw ur ad and he wants to see if he can have a try to handling u. If u think u might want to give him a chance i have enclosed his pic and his number. Feel free to text him or email back and see whats possible (My response: I give this guy credit for ingenuity. He pretends his girlfriend/wife is writing the message. It makes him seem less scary. However, I would be REALLY surprised if there really is a girlfriend/wife.)

and i am extremely attuned to the manners in which a woman’s pleasure is induced
hard, deep, wet, scented, gushing, profound
can you handle me? (My response: Gushing? Profound? WTF?)

I’m a hot and ferocious Latino, 5’5″ 155# hard body and ready for anything you got. But I don’t post pictures of myself, May we could talk? (My response: No pics? Seriously? It probably means you’re ugly. Learn to Photoshop buddy.)

hello girl i am 30 years old living in pasadena i can do every thing for you dont play with me no game i send my pic and you send yours lets meet each other today (My response: Is this English?)

How are you today? I’m a Caucasian man. I stand 6′ tall. I have blond hair and blue eyes. I train in jiu-Jitsu. I enjoy working on and ridding my Harley. (My response: Jiu-jitsu? I’m curious; would you write that if I didn’t say I was Asian? I doubt it. Here’s some advice, don’t mention jiu-jitsu to the next Asian woman you try to hit on. Actually, just don’t talk to her. You’ll be doing her a big favor. Trust me.)

good morning, i am a very real tall american white guy, who has a real desire to be with a fiesty, Chinese woman! i find asian women so very sexy, and they never seem to age, and i just hope that the wild tigress inside you comes out to play today! im 31 6’6 shaved head blue eyes 240lbs, and would love to see how much fun, thrills, pleasures, and mischeif we can get into today! i am very serious, real, d/d free no BS no DRAMA here. just a fun open minded guy looking for a woman, who knows what she wants and isnt affraid to go and get it! (My response: I wish dear readers you could see this guy’s picture. He is not 31 years old or even 41 years old. More like 51, but who’s counting?)

i have an attraction towards fine, smart, chinese lawer ladies. i am fluent in the art of pleasing women. (My response: lawer?)

I’m Origanaly from Orange County, just moved to Compton recently. I’m not Armenian my parents were both born in Mexico. I’m a good friend and handy Man. If you ever need one of those or want to know more about me call me. (My response: The “I’m not Armenian” line  is a little unusual because it seems to come out of nowhere. The handy man is useful but kind of a turnoff. Here’s some helpful advice: Next time you respond to a personals ad, instead of writing that you are a handy man, write that you are a corporate executive and that you are wiling to give them some inside information so that they can make millions of dollars on their next stock buy. That will get you the woman. Your welcome.)

Before I could get more response, I got this message: “Your posting has been flagged for removal.”  Apparently I broke some rule. It was probably the use of the word “c*ck.” I’ll know better next time.

What life lesson did I learn from all of this? What wisdom can I impart to you? Sadly, nothing. No life lessons. No wisdom to impart. I was a little surprised that I didn’t get any messages from any “nice” guys, someone I actually could see a woman really liking. Maybe my ad was a little too risque. But I have a sneaking suspicion that if I wrote, “Nice Asian American woman looking for love,” I would have gotten the same kind of responses.  I would love to hear from some of my female readers who have used personal sites, are these the same responses you’re getting too?

I’m not quite sure what this short film is for, except that it’s the result of a sponsorship between Energizer batteries and Manikako, a Filipino non-profit organization that provides self-expression and an emotional outlet for underprivileged children through doll crafting. In this video, a robot finds love in a beautiful doll but learns what the ultimate sacrifice can be. Oh, and here’s a box of tissues.

To the white guy who tried to give me pointers on how to snag a white guy:

My professional obligation in the context at hand was to convince you to sign a contract that would fork over half a million dollars to my company and so I couldn’t say then any of what I am about to say now.

First, sit back, sailor, no even farther. Do you see what I am doing here with the gesturing? I am drawing a circle with a 10 foot radius around me. This is my personal space. Do not enter. We each have our own copies of the file. You do not need to crawl so close and peer over my shoulders. In fact, you probably shouldn’t. My hubby is a very big, brawny (Asian) man and you know those Asian men… they’ve got tempers… you wouldn’t want to incite his. Plus, he’s got youth on his side. You evidently do not. So don’t get zippy with me, old man.

No part of the conversation reasonably opened the course for your digression into how wonderful Asian women are, how wonderful white men are also, and how the two are perfect for each other. Adam and Ai-Ling, was your joke. I bet you were set out to bring it up. I could have said, “Pluto.” And you would have replied, “Yes, Pluto, you know that reminds me of Asian women and white men…”

You started in about Asian men first, yes, if I recall, that’s how it started. “Why are Asian women marrying out in staggering numbers? It’s because Asian men are so horrible to their women. They mistreat them. They neglect them. They don’t know how to make a woman happy.”

In the instant with no chance for aforethought, I didn’t know what else to say but a dull, contrived “now we’re just stereotyping.”

“That’s why every Asian woman I know is so desperate to snag a white guy, but for some reason they just can’t. They don’t know how. They’re shy, they’re more traditional, they don’t know how to talk to a white guy. Let me give you some pointers.”

Up to then, my strategy for dealing with you had been to be completely non-responsive to the shit you’d been saying.

Then you asked me, “Is your husband white or…”

I stopped you right there and said “he’s Asian” in the same tone one might say “fuck you.” But you didn’t have a clue. You said “oh.”

You paused before you went at it again, croaking on. Shall we summarize? Let’s see, you mentioned how high the divorce rate is in China, how easy divorces are to get over there, and you know why there are so many divorces in China? Because the Chinese men there don’t know how to take care of their women. And now these Chinese women divorcées. What are they to do? A Chinese man would never agree to marry a divorced woman! These Chinese women now have no choice but to marry a white guy. We white guys, we don’t care about things like that! We’re open-minded.

Oh, you mentioned something about Japanese men being short, so someone as tall as me (I’m not actually that tall, but you’re right, I’m taller than you) wouldn’t ever want a Japanese man. You asked whether my husband was tall. I said yes, a whole head taller than me. You said, “huh, that’s odd.” By the way, you urge, I really oughta visit Tokyo. Fascinating place. Lots of single Japanese women there, you said. You know why? You weren’t even really asking, you know. I didn’t say a thing and you jumped right on. Because they’re so intelligent and so beautiful that they can’t find any Japanese guys to match. My attention was on the wall clock. You realize this part of the conversation took 32 minutes, by itself, right?

Believe you me, I was on alert for any chance at all to reel the conversation back to business, but you kept yapping and yapping and yapping away. Every statement out of your mouth was even more incendiary than the one before. I bet you thought you were complimenting me, or at least the women from my race? We’re so intelligent. We’re so driven. We’re so beautiful. We’re so feminine. This segment of your drivel went on for about 15 minutes before you tied it back to white guys.

You: “So this Asian woman, she has a Ph.D., she’s stunning like a supermodel. She marries this white guy. A janitor! Can you believe it?”

Me: “How unfortunate for her.” Since unresponsiveness was failing miserably for me, I opted for a little subtle snark to your inane remarks. Oops. Too subtle. You missed it completely.

You: “No! You’re missing my point! He may be just a janitor, but he worships her! He treats her like a queen! He treats her better than any Asian guy ever could. It’s not about money. Asian women just want to be loved!”

Me: “No, we like the money.”

You forced a laugh, a big howl of a laugh. “You’re funny,” you said. Perhaps you don’t know Asian women as well as you think. Because, no, we really do like the money. I cast my eyes purposely down at the dotted line and slid the contract a little closer to you.

20 more minutes of rambling and then you told what you thought was a joke, I’ve already forgotten it now, but then you did one of those smiling sighs that people do after a laugh and before the last bit of air from that breath left you, I interjected. “Well then, shall we wrap up?”

I stormed out of there pissed off, but no, not at you, not directly. I was pissed at myself for not saying everything I wanted to say. I was pissed at my job, and at life for being put in that situation. I was pissed at the world and its injustices, because people like you will end up winning anyway. You will be the Adam to your Ai-Ling, not a clue in the world about the reality of interracial dynamics. You will be convinced until the day you die that you saved your Ai-Ling from a horrifying fate of being married to an Asian man. No one will ever be there to successfully refute you.

And to the 8A community, yeah, I know what I did here. I brought it up, IR. It was about time or something. The Asian Godwin strikes again. On a humorous note, one of the things that white guy said: “You know, people don’t talk about interracial dating between white men and Asian women enough.” To which I wanted to reply, “You obviously do not read 8A.”

Let’s look at a snippet of the data Khan uses. The real percentages from the 2000 census are in the top row. Each following row is the average of the estimates of percentage of each racial group racial by given the group in the first column, from a study also done in 2000 (since this each item in each row is an average of estimates, the perceived percentages do not add up to 100). The last two columns show the difference between estimates of whites and minorities compared to the census numbers. You can clearly see how whites are underestimated and minorities overestimated.

How does Khan conclude that Americans overestimate the extent of Asian American interracial marriage? He says that they underestimate that amount of homogamy, or marrying within a group. If you look at the 2000 census numbers for Asian Americans, you will see that 3.6% of the population is Asian American. If interracial marriage was done a purely random basis (a person has the same chance of marrying someone without regard to race), then the chance of two Asian Americans happening to marry would be 1.3% (3.6% times itself), or an interracial marriage rate of 98.7%. Compare that to the  2008 interracial marriage  rate for Asian Americans of 31%.

What’s the cause for these findings? Regarding the overestimation of the percentages of minorities, Khan guesses that the mainstream media, produced mainly in New York and Los Angeles, reflects diversity in those locations that are not present in much of the country. I’m highly skeptical of that, as I suspect as are many readers of this blog. Some studies instead suggest that mainstream media is actual becoming more white. Perhaps Americans are buying into “minorities are taking over” sensationalism.

Regarding homogamy in Asian Americans, he seems to have more reasonable answers. He mentions that there is a great deal of residential segregation, which increases the likelihood that people with marry within their group.  Indeed, some cite the rise of Asian ethnoburbs as one of the reasons for the slowing of Asian American interracial marriage rates.

Take note, unoriginal-guys-thinking-of-organizing-flash-mob-proposals. This is how you combine viral pop culture with sappy milestones in your life. Timothy Tiah in Kuala Lumpur decided to take the jump and ask his girlfriend, Audrey, to be his wife. And the creative part is that the entire proposal was done through flash cards incorporating popular Internet memes, like the Y U NO guy and Lord of the Rings. The result? A sweet, endearing, funny, relevant (at least for the next month or so) moment that will live forever on the Internet.

So I guess all those hours on Reddit was time well spent.

[Via: The Daily What]

I’m not exactly sure how Kong and Jesse are different from the The Asian Playboy pick up artist, but I thought the segment itself was interesting, showing how some of the guys were even able to get phone numbers when they were in wheel chairs and when a woman was responding to how she thought women responded more to confidence in men than looks. A Salon blog post described Simple Pickup’s videos:

Think of Simple Pickup’s videos as the male equivalent of the Hollywood 48-hour miracle diet; after all, men gaining confidence may be the closest corollary to women losing weight. By capturing evidence that they can pick up a girl in any situation, Simple Pickup is essentially saying, “I lost 30 pounds in two days! Here’s the proof! And you can too!” They make picking up numbers look easy; when you watch it enough times, you’ll realize that it actually is.

I’d be curious if any 8Asians readers have come across the Simple Pickup videos and if they’ve had any success using their techniques.