In Defense of Taiwanese Men Part II

Not Effeminate! 

Here's Part I.

I’ve been trying to write this for awhile, but have struggled with it (as I did with cultural appropriation, which, as you may have noticed, I gave up on. The words just weren’t forming, and the thoughts just weren’t coherent).

Not long ago I wrote about how, while Taiwan is still a country that has room to improve when it comes to sexism in society and in the workplace, that I appreciate how I don’t feel subjected to the same hate and vitriol that I hear lobbed at women back home.

Now, I’m going to take aim at another issue – the pervasive notion that Taiwanese men are “effeminate”.

I’ve decided to write about this now because of something I heard recently – in a nutshell, that jokes about Taiwanese men being girly aren’t funny. I was hoping the reason given would be that this is because it’s lazy and stereotyping thinking, but no. Apparently it’s because duh we all know they are, so it’s not a good joke.

Ugh, no.

I just don’t think it’s true – but don’t just ask me. Pretty much every woman in Taiwan I’ve ever talked to on the subject – local or foreign – has agreed: there seems to be very little support among women for the idea that Taiwanese men are effeminate (although there are certainly also women who would disagree – imagine that! We are individuals!). I can say that exactly one woman I’ve talked to, a Taiwanese friend of mine in her twenties, does believe that their dress sense can be a bit girlier than she’d like (OK, Imma let my bias show: I agree with her in that I’m not a fan of skinny jeans on anyone, male or female, but especially on men, and I really do not understand the fedora thing). She doesn’t extend that to a judgment on personality, though. I’ve heard a few people relate secondhand anecdotes (ie “well my wife who is Taiwanese thinks Taiwanese men are effeminate!”) but really, none from anyone’s mouth directly.

So where is it coming from? I don’t hear it from women, generally. I hear it from Western men. Why? Well, here’s a handy list!

The judgment of Taiwanese men from a Western cultural standpoint

So…uh, Western men? Your “home culture” definition of masculinity, and what differentiates it from femininity, is not universal and to be honest, not even all that good. I can see how a man carrying an umbrella, or carrying his girlfriend’s purse, or wearing skinny jeans or drinking 2% mango beer (which is pretty good, by the way, just don’t call it beer when it’s only 2% alcohol) or spending an hour getting their Pop Star Hair just right would be seen, from a Western perspective, as effeminate.

But that’s just one perspective. From that same perspective my husband wouldn’t be seen as “masculine”, because he doesn’t care about sports, or my friend J would be seen as effeminate for carrying an umbrella (J is ridiculously fair, I’d carry an umbrella under the Taiwanese sun too if I were that fair – but we tease him anyway because that’s what friends do). I don’t think either of these men are effeminate in the least.

Frankly, I’m just not into a definition of masculinity that says you must drink, you must dress a certain way (either completely lacking fashion sense, or James Bond, apparently), you must not care about your hair and it’s best if you like sports more than, say, museums. Where catcalls are maybe kind of jerky but basically OK (and don’t tell me they’re not that common), but using hair product isn’t. I’m not into a definition of masculinity that says you shouldn’t have too many close female friends, that taking an interest in their interests isn’t OK, and that if you do have female friends they should either be hot, or know other women who are hot. And, y’know, is it really a huge deal for a man to carry an umbrella when the sun is beating down? It’s not my cup of tea but is it really so important that you find it appropriate to form a whole worldview on who is a man and who isn’t based on that?

Let’s go ahead and add the wearing of pink and purple to that – pink and purple are only feminine colors in the West because we’ve decided as a culture that they are. They didn’t used to be, and they are not universally so. I don’t think it effeminizes a man to wear a pink polo shirt. If anything it looks less ridiculous than the many ways of wearing a baseball cap, or a popped collar on a shirt of any kind.

While we’re at it, let’s add the peace signs in photos and the interest in family (there’s a reason why 聽媽媽的話 was a hit song here) to the list of things that are culturally based and can’t be judged to be objectively feminine or masculine – they can only be so judged through the lens of culture. In this case it helps to try not to judge another culture through the lens of your own (although we all do it – I do it, too). And purse-carrying – which I do believe says something about how the sexes in Taiwan relate to one another and show commitment in a relationship (and has its own pros and cons), but which I absolutely do not believe is related to effeminacy.

The family thing is an important side note – I saw on one forum a post that said that Western women aren’t interested in Taiwanese men (not true! but I’ll get to that later) because Taiwanese men are so beholden to their families. While women do tend to be wary of men who need to cut the apron strings, generally speaking this is not true, and I wonder how many Western women that guy talked to: my guess is none, and he was mansplaining. If anything, a such a commitment is a total turn-on. I know I think it’s great to see a guy who really cares about his family. We may not want to visit every weekend, and we’re not going to procreate on a mother-in-law’s schedule – cultural hurdles that needs to be negotiated – but women generally like, rather than avoid, men who love their mothers. It is generally a sign that he was raised right.

Frankly, I’ll take umbrellas in the sun and mango beer over “huh huh women don’t know anything about cars or football they just care about shoes and books with pink covers huh huh” anyday. I’ll take skinny jeans – even though I really don’t like skinny jeans on anyone – over “we’re totally privileged and refuse to admit it”.

Don't discount these guys just because they're carrying an umbrella and have Pop Star Hair.

Taiwanese men are more indirect and can seem more introverted

Well, on a general basis – I’ve met individuals who have broken that mold. To a man who’s been raised in a culture of “if I want a woman, I go ask her out” or in some more extreme cases “if I want a woman, I go get her – she won’t say no because I’m entitled to her”, the Taiwanese and Chinese norm of talking to a girl, then hanging out with her, and then slowly easing intodating her can come across as effeminate. Whatever – that’s not so different from how I started dating my husband (although it took 8 years) and both methods have their pros and cons.

There’s an assumption that they’re effeminate based on their portrayal in the media.

I don’t need to go into detail on this – it’s been covered.

Also, Taiwanese men on Taiwanese TV. They often look ridiculous. But they are not representative of typical Taiwanese men, just as Real Housewives aren’t a representation of typical American women.

Western men just don’t seem to have Taiwanese male friends

…unless they’re his girlfriend’s family or friends.

Seriously, though, I don’t know what local men, if any, most expat men hang out with, but if they knew my Taiwanese male friends and acquaintances, I don’t think they’d use the phrase “effeminate” to describe them. Honestly, the one who might be described as the most effeminate is the one who, until recently, said he “never” wanted to get married because he didn’t want to get too attached or spend too much time with one person, which isn’t a very effeminate thing to say at all (he recently did a 180 and is now married to a wonderful woman, though). I’ve had to call a few of them out for Facebook posts – “check out [the back of] this hot girl running in front of me on the track” or a post of a photo of a book entitled “不會跟老婆做的事” (well, I just teased him for that one by posting a picture of Daniel Henney for his wife under the phrase “不會跟老公做的事”, his awesome wife did the calling out).

Otherwise, they’re just normal guys.

Single expat women in Taiwan totally do want to date Taiwanese guys – but nobody seems to believe this.

Why? Why??

Well, probably in part because there aren’t that many expat women in Taiwan in the first place, so you’ll see fewer Western woman-Taiwanese man pairs just based on statistics. In part because it’s harder to get over that initial cultural difference – we’ve been conditioned to wait for a man to directly ask us out or make his feelings obvious, whereas that’s not always how it works in Taiwan – it is, so my single female friends have told me – far too easy to miss the signals that interested Taiwanese men are sending. When Western women complain about dating in Taiwan, it is generally not “I can’t get a date because I don’t want to date the local men”, it’s “I can’t get a date because the local men don’t seem interested”, even though that is quite likely not true.

Another reason could be that expat men don’t seem to have that many expat female friends – I mean, they do, but fewer of them because there are fewer of us. Those of us who are here are looking for a cultural experience and are likely to spend our time with local friends, or need women to talk to and make female friends. I can’t deny that many of the expat-centered events I’ve attended seem to be overrun with men with very few women, and the expat women I know here don’t have very many expat male friends (but do have on average more local friends). Anecdotal evidence, but that’s what I’ve observed.

And with that in mind, it is easy to see how there might be a misconception that expat women don’t “want” to date Taiwanese men – based on misinformation or a dearth of firsthand or informed observation.

There’s probably some mansplaining in there too – men deciding they know better what expat women think of local men than the women themselves do.

From here - this is Daniel Henney. Feeling threatened, white guys?

Expat men feel threatened

I say this because I rarely hear expat women saying “Taiwanese men are effeminate”. I almost always hear it from men. I am sure some women do say it, but it is notable that that has not been my experience. Why would they feel threatened?

Well, first, the fact that we expat women don’t want to date them.

No, really, we don’t. OK, some of us do, but mostly, nope, not interested, sorry. The expat women here who want to date Western men (who are, say, single and don’t have a cool “we were friends before and got together in Asia” story as I do) will usually go home after a few years because they’re not going to lower their standards and the pickings are so slim. The rest of them generally either want to be single for awhile, or want to date Taiwanese men.

It’s true: most of the Western women I know here are either attached (and many are attached to Taiwanese men), or feel alienated by the dudebro culture of their home countries and are totally down with the local fellows. If I were single, that’s how I’d feel. When a Western guy approaches them – if he does – they feel not relief that a man wants to talk to them, but a sense of cynicism and guardedness that stems from the aforementioned alienation (and please, no, don’t try to mansplain that away: go talk to some women and see how they feel about it rather than telling us how we really feel. I know it alienates me). One refrain I frequently hear is “Expat men are the worst, so entitled, so arrogant, so in love with themselves, and the ones who have it worst are the biggest losers!”. That’s not always true, of course - there are good and worthy expat guys here (see – my husband and my friend J, and a few others I know who are pretty cool).

The way to tell the difference – do they have true local friends (more than “my girlfriend and her friends”)? Have they learned Chinese or are they trying (I have found a correlation between a foreign guy being cool and how earnestly he studies Chinese)? Do they not prattle on about how “effeminate” Taiwanese men are, or how hot the women are? Do they do things on the weekend other than get blotto at On Tap? Do they actively seek out cultural experiences rather than be, well, this guy? Good – you’ve probably got a winner.

Still, the idea that a Western woman would actively choose an Asian man over a Western one, when Western men have had it hammered into them that Asian men are effeminate (see “the media” above) has got to be somewhat threatening.

I’ll end this section on an anecdote. A few weeks ago I was at Carnegie’s (we wanted to witness the train wreck that Cougar Night promised to be, and some friends of mine would be there so I figured why not go this one time – yes, I do have to justify this) and I was alone for a few minutes. Brendan did not come. Some older guy – fiftysomething? Not ugly but too old for me and not exactly a handsome older man -  started talking to me. I tried to make my wedding ring obvious and tried to insert into the conversation that I was married, but I don’t think he heard me. Then, this:

Him: “So, do you speak any Chinese?”
Me: “Yes.”

“So a little Chinese?”
“No, dude, I speak Chinese.”

“Speak some Chinese for me.”
“{sigh} 我快要回家因為我老公比你帥喔.”

“Oh, you speak with an American accent. That’s so terrible, isn’t it?”
“No, I don’t think so at all.”

“Oh, OK, I guess not. I’m going to go find my friend.”
“You do that.”

Seriously, dude? Negging me? You’re a fiftysomething dude in an expat bar and you’re negging me like it’s going to work? And foreign guys wonder why we don’t want them? Fer serious?

Men don’t understand women’s preferences much of the time

Not all of the time, but much of it. It starts with the whole “women don’t like nice guys, they like jerks” – if a man says this, he’s probably a jerk who thinks he’s a nice guy. It’s not true – we like nice guys. We just don’t like pretend nice guys. They think we want “tall, dark and handsome” when what we really want is an equal partner who respects us as we respect them. They think too-fine facial hair or a lack of chest hair or a man being of slighter build is a problem for us – it’s generally not (well, the last one is for me because I’m tall and built like Magda the Polish Plow Pusher – and I am part Polish so I can say that).  They think we want the hypermasculine traits that their dudebro culture prescribes – but we don’t. We want the sweet guy who has Facebook photos full of himself playing with his kids, who isn’t afraid to say they don’t want to drink, who is secure enough in who he is to be who he is without worrying about whether it makes him “effeminate” or not. Like my husband – a man who is who he is and he doesn’t need to be aggressive or dismiss others as “chick stuff” to prove that he’s a man. We want men who can take criticism, talk openly, not be afraid to be called out by women when they’re wrong, who won’t whine about museums, concerts or what-have-you but who instead enjoy cultural immersion.

You can find that anywhere, but just due to numbers – there are more Taiwanese men in Taiwan than there are Western ones – expat women here are more likely to find that among locals than among expat men. That idea is even weightier when you consider this: most of the bodysnarking, the “[Insert Nationality Here] women are too fat/loud/angry!” and the Asian fetishism I’ve heard in my life I’ve heard from expat men in Taiwan and China…and much of the sexist remarks, too (of course, I’ve spent most of my adult life in Asia so that does dirty my lens a bit). They are absolutely not all bad, but the loudest among them do great harm to their image overall.

In summary…

No, I don’t think Taiwanese men are effeminate. I hear it a lot, but usually from men who are likely either uninformed, prejudiced or threatened. The reasons I hear to back it up either don’t stand up (“Western women don’t want to date them”), or aren’t markers of effeminacy vs. masculinity (“He’s carrying her purse!”), aren’t things women think of as effeminate (“They are so tied to their family!”), or things we actually prefer (like not being catcalled or harassed or hit on by sketchy dudes) or are skewed through a cultural lens (“They don’t go after the women they like”).

In the end, one big reason why Taiwanese men are not effeminate is not a good one, and I am saving it for last for that reason – because sexism is still a huge problem in Taiwan. It just doesn’t really compute that men are both effeminate and sexist. I suppose it is possible, but generally those aren’t two traits that go together (and not all men are sexist – the culture can be in some ways, and that is perpetuated by men and women alike, but not all men or women). If anything, Taiwanese men are just as prone to the pitfalls and downsides of masculinity as Western men – being afraid of losing face because of, shown up or called out by a woman, justifying paying women less for the same work, not doing a fair share of housework and child-rearing, having unrealistic ideas about what women should look like: all the good ol’ sexist crap we put up with in our home countries.

Rather than whining about some pink polo shirts and funked-out hair (I kinda like the funked-out hair – I didn’t always but it’s grown on me), let’s work on that, shall we?

Asian Women Aren't The Problem

This is totally worth a read -

Asian women are not "too tempting" for your husband or boyfriend.

Exactly. Ex-actly.

Are there women in Asia who will try to get into your partner's pants, even knowing he's attached? Sure, but that's true around the world. There are also women in America, Europe, Burkina Faso or wherever who will try to get into your husband's pants knowing he's attached. There are also men who will try to get into yours, knowing you are attached. That has nothing to do with being Asian, either racially or culturally.

Are there Western men who seem like stand-up guys, who go to Asia and suddenly turn into philanderers with a fetish?

Sure...

...but the problem is not the women. It's him.

I don't know where this tendency to blame other women when a man turns out to be a prick came from, but I sure wish it'd stop. I've seen it back home, where race or culture aren't blamed along with the Other Woman, and I've seen it in Asia, where they are. I do realize that plenty of people also lay blame on the cheating man, but so often that's either minimized or, before any cheating has taken place, fear of infidelity is placed on the shoulders of "those women" rather than the truth: either you trust the man you're with, or you don't. And if you don't, then don't go blaming "those women".

Musings on Intercultural Relationships

I want to start this post by saying that I have no answers, I have no conclusions – I only have my own experiences and am approaching this topic with personal thoughts and anecdotes, not proclamations. I don’t even have anything particularly deep to say, because it’s all been said before. All I can do is add my own story to the mix.

That aside, as I mentioned in a previous post, I recently received news that a friend’s marriage had dissolved. The marriage happened to be an intercultural one (American/Hispanic). I won’t give details – that would be inappropriate – but one of the things that caused the whole hot mess is something that is more acceptable in one culture than the other. I’m still not necessarily inclined to believe that the resulting split was caused by cultural issues – in fact, it’s more likely irreconcilable differences between two individuals.

Regardless, it’s caused me to muse on intercultural relationships – both of the romantic and friendly kind. I’ll be focusing on romantic relationships for this post, and am planning a future post musing on making Taiwanese male friends (as a foreign woman)…because, y’know, it’s quite hard to do!

Obviously, “intercultural” does not necessarily mean “interracial”. That’s the first thing I want to mention: I know plenty of couples of different races who share a common culture, and my husband has observed that while we’re very much the same race, there are a lot of cultural differences between our families.

When we first started dating, I didn’t think of it this way: I thought of it in terms of “I’m outgoing, and my family is predisposed genetically to be loud, boisterous and extroverted. He’s more laid-back, and his family seems more predisposed to a quieter approach to life”. It never occurred to me that it might actually be a cultural difference.

Then, in the middle of wedding planning, we rented My Big Fat Greek Wedding Subconsciously, somehow, I wanted him to see it – he had seen it but didn’t remember much, and I remember how the film really hit home for me. If I had such a strong reaction and he could barely remember it, there was clearly something worth exploring there.

After watching the comparison of the two families – one laid-back and the other a big pile of boundary-crushing madness - and as a result of those two environments, some of the differences between Tula and Ian in the film, Brendan turned to me and said, tellingly,

“Now I understand.”

“You understand what?”
“All this stuff with the wedding planning, and all of the stress…it’s cultural. It’s like with your big Armenian family, I just don’t get yet how they work because my family is more like that guy’s.”

Note that he did not say I’m like Tula – because I’m not. I have no problem striking out on my own, nobody tried to stop me from going to college, my family is devoid of the sexism seen in the Portokalos clan, and I am happy to stand up for myself (even if an argument ensues).

And that’s just it – the difference isn’t simply between two families – the fact that my family (at least the biggest component of it) immigrated to the USA in living memory and we have relatives who still speak the old language – an Armenian-based polyglot with elements of Turkish and Greek – does have something to do with how my family works, how I was raised, and as a result, to an extent, what my personality is like.

I do have Polish relatives as well, but other than my beloved Grandma G and aunt, I unfortunately see them far less often.

So we visit my family home and drive up to Grandma L’s. People begin arriving, often there are young cousins underfoot. Hummus, olives (real olives, not canned or jarred), cured string cheese and babaghanoush are set out. It’s mid-afternoon and uncles are already double-topping-up their drinks – often, Ararat Armenian raisin brandy. Grandma asks me when I’m going to lose weight and have babies. Like in a Taiwanese family, in my family this is considered fine (I personally consider it a major breach of boundaries, though). Jokes are made about sleeping arrangements - “She made us sleep in twin beds before we got married, and M was visibly pregnant at the time!” – all fine.

Brendan says nothing – “not my culture!” – or whispers something dryly amusing to me along the lines of “So apparently losing weight and having babies go hand in hand?”

Despite my own Daoist/agnostic inclinations, my family is fairly religious, and grace is said, often in Armenian. I am as lost as Brendan is for this part – I don’t have two words of Armenian to rub together (well, I have two: ‘vart’ means “rose” and ‘yavrom’ means “dear”). We eat at a big table – lamb kebab, pilaf and lahmajoun are served. The dishes match, but are kind of tacky. It’s too crowded. I’m asked again about the babies. We argue about politics. My grandparents still hate Turks (and Muslims generally) for the genocide Turks unleashed upon the Armenian people in 1915.

I don’t dare say that Turks alive today can’t be blamed for the actions of their ancestors, just as you wouldn’t shun a German woman born in 1975 because of Nazi atrocities. It’s a shame that they are educated to believe that the genocide never happened, but nobody has control over what their teachers tell them, and many lack the intellectual curiosity to question. I don’t speak; I think these things, though, and Brendan knows it.

(Yes, I realize my family might well read this, but I mention below that I’m OK with how they work and anyway, if they’re going to ask me at the dinner table about popping out babies, then they lose any right to wring their hands when I write about it).

Brendan smiles like it’s a particularly lively television show (and in a way, it is). We don’t quite get to the part where we start dancing in a circle and breaking plates, but I’d say we stop just short of it – that’s Greek, not Armenian and probably an urban legend, but my family lived in Greece for years after running from the genocide and before immigrating to America.

You know who doesn’t ask me about babies and weight loss? My in-laws. You know who doesn’t argue about politics and ask personal questions around the dinner table? My in-laws. You know who isn’t all up in everybody else’s, ahem, bidness?

And yet, I wouldn’t trade my family for the world. I love them and their intrusive questions to bits. It’s taken me years, but I agree with my husband. These differences are cultural, even though Brendan and I look similar enough that we could probably pass for distant cousins (it’s mostly the coloring – fair skin, blue or green eyes, light brown hair). I resemble Brendan more than some of my actual cousins, who tend to be olive-skinned with dark features and coal-colored hair.

Another point I’d like to make – I have been in more obviously intercultural relationships: the last two men I dated before Brendan were Jewish and Indian, respectively. This is where it gets quite hard to draw a line between the cultural and the individual – did those relationships fail because there were cultural differences, or was it entirely that we, as two individuals, were incompatible?

My experience? I do generally default to “we’re just two people who weren’t compatible” but I also think cultural differences had some role to play in why we were incompatible. I was simply not that attracted to the first, although part of that had to do with the fact that he sincerely wanted to have children and raise them in a Jewish home (I don’t even want kids, and am not religious – if I had kids I’d encourage them to follow an ‘ask questions and find your own path’ sort of philosophy, hippie that I am). While, in the end, it was really a lack of a physical spark that did us in, I admit that part of that lacking was caused by my being a bit turned off by such disparate life goals.

The second? Well, we had plenty of chemistry. Culturally I think the only real issue was that he did believe that couples who have children ought to have one parent stay at home, and that that parent ought to be the mother (I have no problem with mothers who choose this path, but deciding it’s the only correct path for everyone really rubs me the wrong way – and I hadn’t gotten to the “don’t really want kids” decision yet, so it was relevant)…and when he said it, I could really hear, behind his voice, a lot of the defenses of the traditional order of things that I heard in India. I’d like to say that this is why we broke up, but it wasn’t – it was (im)maturity on both our parts. Had we been more mature, though, this would have become a dealbreaker. (We agreed on religion and other issues such as telling his parents – mine were totally cool with it and even met him – never came up because it was fairly clear that we weren’t going to last despite all of our chemistry).

That said, such a dealbreaker could arise between any couple regardless of cultural background – I do feel that this sort of dealbreaker is more likely to arise between intercultural couples.

This is not to say that such relationships always face these issues, or that they can’t overcome them. As I’ve said before – and I’ll say it again (I’m secure enough in my relationship with my wonderful husband that I feel I can do so) – if the world had moved a little differently on its axis and I’d spent my time in Taiwan single, well, I’ve met Taiwanese men that I would have dated. Just because things didn’t work out with two other men for reasons that can be partially attributed to cultural differences doesn’t mean they never can.

And, as I said, I have no deep insights. I have no final proclamations. I have only my own experiences to add to public discourse.