An Asian fetish is a strong sexual or romantic preference for persons of Asian descent, especially East or Southeast Asian descent and to some extent South Asian descent.
The fetishization of East Asians by people of other ethnicities is sometimes described by the derogatory term yellow fever. A well known stereotype of Asian women is that they are subservient , passive, and quiet. This image persists today, along with the idea of Asian women being exotic and submissive. In the afterword to the play M. Butterfly , the writer David Henry Hwang , using the term "yellow fever", a pun on the disease of the same name , discusses Caucasian men with a "fetish" for east Asian women.
The pun refers to the color terminology for race , in which persons of East and Southeast Asian heritage are sometimes described as "Yellow people". The term "yellow fever" describes someone who is inflicted with a disease, implying that someone with an Asian fetish has a sickness. Hwang argues that this phenomenon is caused by stereotyping of Asians in Western society. The slang term used for a gay man, usually Caucasian, who exclusively dates men of Asian descent is " rice queen ".
In a two-year study on dating preferences among Columbia University students, researchers did not find evidence of a general preference among Caucasian men for Asian women. Furthermore, the study found that there is a significantly higher pairing of Caucasian men with East Asian women because East Asian women are less likely to prefer African-American or Latino men.
The study took data from "thousands of decisions made by more than daters from Columbia University's various graduate and professional schools". An Asian fetish places a psychological burden on Asian women, who may experience doubt and suspicion that men who find them attractive are primarily attracted to features related to ethnicity and culture rather than other traits or characteristics.
