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<span style="font-size: 14pt"><span style="font-family: 'Arial Black'">White male seeking sexy Asian women</span></span>
[Richard]Bernstein (a columnist for the International Herald Tribune and former China correspondent for Time magazine) negotiates this territory with great delicacy and considerable historical knowledge -- which makes this elegantly written book doubly frustrating, as it's not always clear exactly what he's trying to say. The rage of the men who objected to ChinaBounder is, as Bernstein readily admits, founded in resentment against Western colonialism, a history in which the handing over of Asian women's bodies to Western men was merely the most intimate manifestation of a conquest that also demanded the surrender of Asian land, labor and wealth. No American, he astutely points out, would be so incensed if an Asian "bounder" wrote an online diary listing all the Iowan farm girls and Southern belles he seduced, "simply because," Bernstein writes, "there is no particular interest in the topic." OK, well maybe not no interest, but it wouldn't unpack the same cultural baggage.
As far as I can boil it down, Bernstein wishes to argue that the history of liaisons between Eastern women and Western men should not be condemned out of hand. In spite of the undeniable backdrop of injustice and exploitation, some of these encounters have been a Good Thing, offering to the men a reprieve from the repressive sexual morality of the Christian West and to the women a chance at a less traditionally patriarchal relationship than they might have had with many of their countrymen. There may be manifest inequities between these couples, but their trysts have sometimes blossomed into real affection, tenderness and love.
There's a complicated and fundamentally unsound historical algorithm at the heart of this argument, which may explain why Bernstein (no fool) tends to pussyfoot around it. It depends on a familiar villain -- Christian sexual puritanism in the form of the insistence on monogamous marriage as the only virtuous context for sex. Nobody likes puritanism these days, and even if you'd prefer to think that monogamy is an achievable ideal for some couples, it's hard to disagree with Bernstein's argument that it's not a particularly "realistic" institution in which to confine the sexuality of many people, particularly men.
The most pervasive paradigm for the East-West erotic reverie, as even Bernstein is forced to realize as he roams the streets of Bangkok, interviewing 73-year-old American men with 22-year-old Thai "girlfriends," is prostitution. The power and wealth of Westerners -- officials of colonial Britain, American GIs stationed in Vietnam, European expats in Thailand -- when introduced into poor Asian societies where women have few other options, makes commercial sex pretty much inevitable. For all the rhapsodies about silken hair, "surrounding sensuousness," esoteric erotic arts and the ultrafemininity of Asian women, it is this economic imbalance that makes places like Bangkok so magnetic to Western men. A dollar goes much further there, whether you're buying hours of someone's labor at a sweatshop sewing machine or sexual services.
When Bernstein writes of Western men who'd never dream of visiting a prostitute back home but regularly do so in Asia, he says it's because Asian prostitutes are "sweet, affectionate," and "unmarred by the businesslike qualities of common sex-for-sale workers in the West," who are supposed to be "sleazy, mercenary, cold, depraved, and vaguely intimidating" (though how the men would know this having never visited them is unclear -- it seems to be the way they view all Western women). Of course, there are plenty of Western call girls who can and do behave sweetly and affectionately, it's just that the men who flock to Bangkok's red light districts can't afford them. The difference is less cultural than economic: "Do the arithmetic," a grizzled Vietnam vet who has settled in Thailand said to Bernstein, nodding toward his girlfriend. "She's 51 years younger than me. Do you think I could have somebody like her in Pennsylvania?"
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[Richard]Bernstein (a columnist for the International Herald Tribune and former China correspondent for Time magazine) negotiates this territory with great delicacy and considerable historical knowledge -- which makes this elegantly written book doubly frustrating, as it's not always clear exactly what he's trying to say. The rage of the men who objected to ChinaBounder is, as Bernstein readily admits, founded in resentment against Western colonialism, a history in which the handing over of Asian women's bodies to Western men was merely the most intimate manifestation of a conquest that also demanded the surrender of Asian land, labor and wealth. No American, he astutely points out, would be so incensed if an Asian "bounder" wrote an online diary listing all the Iowan farm girls and Southern belles he seduced, "simply because," Bernstein writes, "there is no particular interest in the topic." OK, well maybe not no interest, but it wouldn't unpack the same cultural baggage.
As far as I can boil it down, Bernstein wishes to argue that the history of liaisons between Eastern women and Western men should not be condemned out of hand. In spite of the undeniable backdrop of injustice and exploitation, some of these encounters have been a Good Thing, offering to the men a reprieve from the repressive sexual morality of the Christian West and to the women a chance at a less traditionally patriarchal relationship than they might have had with many of their countrymen. There may be manifest inequities between these couples, but their trysts have sometimes blossomed into real affection, tenderness and love.
There's a complicated and fundamentally unsound historical algorithm at the heart of this argument, which may explain why Bernstein (no fool) tends to pussyfoot around it. It depends on a familiar villain -- Christian sexual puritanism in the form of the insistence on monogamous marriage as the only virtuous context for sex. Nobody likes puritanism these days, and even if you'd prefer to think that monogamy is an achievable ideal for some couples, it's hard to disagree with Bernstein's argument that it's not a particularly "realistic" institution in which to confine the sexuality of many people, particularly men.
The most pervasive paradigm for the East-West erotic reverie, as even Bernstein is forced to realize as he roams the streets of Bangkok, interviewing 73-year-old American men with 22-year-old Thai "girlfriends," is prostitution. The power and wealth of Westerners -- officials of colonial Britain, American GIs stationed in Vietnam, European expats in Thailand -- when introduced into poor Asian societies where women have few other options, makes commercial sex pretty much inevitable. For all the rhapsodies about silken hair, "surrounding sensuousness," esoteric erotic arts and the ultrafemininity of Asian women, it is this economic imbalance that makes places like Bangkok so magnetic to Western men. A dollar goes much further there, whether you're buying hours of someone's labor at a sweatshop sewing machine or sexual services.
When Bernstein writes of Western men who'd never dream of visiting a prostitute back home but regularly do so in Asia, he says it's because Asian prostitutes are "sweet, affectionate," and "unmarred by the businesslike qualities of common sex-for-sale workers in the West," who are supposed to be "sleazy, mercenary, cold, depraved, and vaguely intimidating" (though how the men would know this having never visited them is unclear -- it seems to be the way they view all Western women). Of course, there are plenty of Western call girls who can and do behave sweetly and affectionately, it's just that the men who flock to Bangkok's red light districts can't afford them. The difference is less cultural than economic: "Do the arithmetic," a grizzled Vietnam vet who has settled in Thailand said to Bernstein, nodding toward his girlfriend. "She's 51 years younger than me. Do you think I could have somebody like her in Pennsylvania?"
More...