Every Time I Date an Asian Guy, People Ask Me if He Has a Small Dick
But I can’t tell because of my ginormous white-woman vagina
A few years back, I was walking down the street with an Asian guy I was dating, and some homeless guy shouted “I’ll bet that guy has a tiny dick,” at us. And, in a moment of selfishness, I was like what the fuck am I supposed to in this situation? I still have no idea. We didn’t acknowledge it verbally, but I gave him a hug as we waited for the bus.
It wasn’t the first time someone had intruded on me with assumptions about an Asian boyfriend’s dick size. I had a serious boyfriend in college (well, as serious as my boyfriends ever get) and people kept asking me about his dick even after we’d been together for over a year. At first, I thought it was sort of funny and would laugh it off.
“I’m bisexual, half the people I date don’t even have dicks. What do I care about dick size?”
That isn’t just some politically correct thing I say (though, it is very PC.) It’s also like.. I am legitimately kind of confused by this line of questioning. This XKCD basically sums up my view on penises:
As a bisexual woman, this obsession with genitals seems… I don’t know. I mean, I guess I get it to some degree, but it also seems kind of “5 year old unwilling to try broccoli.” I feel like, if I’m into someone, my default attitude to whatever junk they’re rocking is “ok, let’s give that a whirl.” I’m never really hoping for anything, and I don’t think the shape, size, or type of someone else’s genitals has ultimately influenced the amount of sexual pleasure I’ve been able to have with them.
I guess, for me, the primacy of sexual intimacy is the experience of arousal while being witnessed by another. We have the technology to match basically any part with any other part at this point, so like, why get hung up on the details? The worst thing anyone’s privates could ever be is an engineering problem in compatibility.
But, we do get hung up, and Asian guys really take a beating on this front.
People usually presented the question as sort of a joke as if they’re not really serious, and initially I took their questions in that spirit. However, after a while, it just got too fucking weird. Like, why is everyone asking me this same joke question? Do Asian guys get this to their face? Clearly sometimes, like that time my bf got shouted at in public, but I also suspect as a white woman I was particularly likely to get questioned about this.
It would be mean to ask an Asian guy, and it would probably seem racist to ask an Asian woman. But, as a white woman, I was a “safe” place for people to sate their racist curiosity. I have observed that, sometimes, white people will test me a little bit by saying slightly racist things that they wouldn’t say in mixed company. So, what do I do? Do I go full PC police? Do I ignore it? I suppose the answer depends on how racist, what their motivations are, and how often I’ve heard this particular piece of racism and if I have something intelligent to say on it.
I’ve had a lot of time to hone my answer to the Asian penis question. I’ve used the “coy bisexual” evasive routine, I’ve demonstrated liberal offense to shut people up, very occasionally I’ve honestly divulged the size of my boyfriend’s penis (only to my closest friends.)
But, I think “what do you want the answer to be?” has been the most illuminating of all my responses.
People are usually hoping that I’ll tell them that the Asian guy I’m dating has a *huge* dick. Which… is interesting. I run in liberal, “sex positive” circles, so it’s possible that this influences people’s motivations. But, deep down, even though this is a very racist question, I think what people want is to find out that someone doesn’t fill the stereotype. I think people are pushing this because, for some reason, they expect that the guy I’m dating will turn out to have a huge dick. Maybe because my boyfriends frequently *are* huge dicks? I kid, I kid. Sort of.
Anyway, I guess I have some sympathy for that line of reasoning. Deep down, we all feel trapped by the stereotypes thrust upon us, and I get the impulse to want to seek some strange feeling of hope from someone else not falling to stereotype, no matter how perverted a form that may come in.
However, that still doesn’t negate the effect this stereotype has on Asian men. What effect is that? Well, to start, I can tell you the effect this stereotype has on me. Whenever I hook up with an Asian guy, I secretly worry that my vagina’s too big. The flip side of the “small Asian penis” stereotype is the “tight Asian vagina” stereotype, which in turn implies a “largeness” of white vaginas. However, “large white vaginas” is not an articulated stereotype because of white supremacy. Anyway. Even if the man I’m sleeping with well endowed, I make the (racist) assumption that he’s slept with Asian women with waaaay tighter vaginas than mine. Even if I don’t know if he’s actually slept with any Asian women, and even though the Asian women he’s slept with could have had huge vaginas, I always worry that my vagina is too loose.
And, like, I don’t want to ask about it, because what if he’s like “yeah, this is some serious hotdog in a hallway shit happening right now.” Like, what the hell would I do? Cry, probably. Even though I know *I* don’t care about penis size, I assume the people I date care about vagina size because society tells me that they do.
Anyway, I assume Asian guys are basically having a parallel internal monologue. I assume they’re secretly wondering if their penises are small, but like, don’t actually want to ask in case the answer is yes. It becomes this kind of awkward thing that neither of you ends up addressing, but you’re both secretly insecure about. And, it’s painful. It’s a point of separation, a point you can’t get intimacy on. It’s a sad thing. These jokes people make, we carry them with us into our most intimate moments long after the joker has forgotten about them.
Anyway. I’m fairly sure that variation between individuals is greater than variation between races, so even *if* Asian men have smaller dicks on average (and, I’m not sure they do), any individual Asian man might have a huge dick. But, he’d probably never know it, having been brainwashed by society into believing the “small Asian dick” theory.
