It’s 2023, and in other redundant news, we are all free to love who we wish and don’t have to justify it to anyone. Nor do we trade in blanket statements about an entire group of people, whether based on race, gender, or sexuality, right?
Apparently not! With the advent of short content format social media platforms, and despite the efforts of a few on said platforms who work tirelessly to dispel them, racial, gender, and sexual stereotypes have not only found a new home online but have also found a far more active vehicle of transmission.
TikTok and Instagram have, in the recent past, cemented themselves as the infotainment platforms of choice for those wishing to trade in or dispel said stereotypes, offering bite-size information colorfully packaged and presented, sparking debates and discussions, even sparking global movements and amplifying otherwise marginalized voices.
Content creators who have figured out how to work the platform’s often temperamental algorithm can curate content that is considered entertaining as well as informative for their audiences, especially those with a large LGBTQIA+ following. Often, however, content meant to inform and educate is turned into a conduit for ignorance. One such video was created by @jeffreycarterx on Instagram in which he shares countries with the largest population of “Tops” in the world according to data by Gay dating app Grindr.
Much to many commenters’ surprise, South Korea made the list, and soon after, a torrent of racist, body-shaming comments followed. One Instagram user wrote they believed that all South Korean men “all look like bottoms,” while another wrote: “[I]magine tops with 3 to 4 inches from (South) Korea” seemingly alluding to the long-standing stereotype of Asian men not being as well-endowed as their Black, White, and Latin counterparts.
Though other commenters pointed out the larger issue of such tabulations reliant upon self-reporting being heavily influenced by internalized homophobia and misogyny associated with being passive in the bedroom, and others humorously noted “every top has his own top. Case closed,” and how sexual roles are far more situational than they are permanent, comments about South Korean men’s seeming illegitimate claim to “tophood” stood out.
Nothing to See Here
Is the assertion that South Korean and, by extension, East Asian men, are more passive than active really a surprise? Conversations about penis sizes in relation to race have existed for as long as interactions among different races in the world have existed. From writings by European explorers and merchants in Africa about the remarkable endowment of the Black man in the 17th and 18th centuries, to seemingly light-hearted banter about the size of White and East Asian men’s penises in sitcoms, comparisons have long endured. But none so detrimental as the association of East Asian men with smaller members.
In the lore of masculinity, the penis stands out (no pun intended) as the primary feature to portend virility and sexual prowess, though it’s been proven that neither of these matrices is determined by penis size. In the modern-day representation of masculinity, be it in casual conversation or in pornography, the size of a man’s penis is highlighted as an important factor in the man being considered attractive.
And though penis size is also considered important among heterosexual daters, Gay men seem to place a higher value on it, as not only an erotic focal point in same-sex attraction but also as a way to denote degrees of masculinity despite it being between two men.
An article published on the Vice News website in 2020 detailed just how significant penis size is among Gay men and its far-reaching mental health and dating prospect implications. The article included accounts from four men with small penises detailing how they were rejected and insulted because of their size, leading to shame, pronounced body dysmorphia, and self-isolation.
Penis size is expected to coincide with sexual role – either active or passive – with smaller tops being dismissed and well-endowed bottoms being considered as “a waste.” Unsurprisingly, such preferences turned expectations have been cemented by popular media and the adult entertainment industry, both of which unequivocally declare that bigger is better. A research paper titled Size Matters: Penis Size and Sexual Position in Gay Porn Profiles by Joseph Brennan (Ph.D.) found that penis size as stated on porn actors’ profiles on various sites had a direct correlation to the performers’ roles in scenes.
“The figures confirm that these sites generally market themselves as featuring penises that are extraordinarily large and find a sample-wide correlation between smaller penis sizes (5–6.5 inches) and receptive sexual acts (bottoming), and larger (8.5–13 inches) with penetrative acts (topping),” the paper noted.
A similar study conducted among men who have sex with men (MSM) also found that penis size was a determinant of sexual position, with a majority of respondents who considered themselves to have average or above average-size penises identifying as mostly top, while the opposite was true of those with below average penises.
The study also found that men with below-average-size penises “fared significantly worse than other men on three measures of psychosocial adjustment.” It also noted that penis size has long been equated to power, virility, masculinity, and social status, associations perpetuated by the media, and begged the question, “To what extent are men with below-average penises being socially-sexually-scripted into anal receptive roles?”
Though the report also notes that these findings do not apply to all MSM, a multitude of research findings do all seem to conclude that men with smaller penises do fair worse in the dating market, and in the case of MSM, face increased psychological challenges, including potentially being coerced into bottoming when they would have preferred to top.
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A Kernel of Truth
What does this have to do with East Asian men, you may ask, and unless you have been living under a rock and therefore do not consume Western media products and their perpetuation of harmful stereotypes of Asian men, then it would be a seemingly easy question to answer on the face of it. However a large number of factors have gone into the creation and perpetuation of said harmful stereotypes, many of which can be traced back to the social emasculation of East Asian men in the West and the various forms in which it has continued over the years.
In 2016, MTV Impact released a video titled “The Weird History of Asian Sex Stereotypes,” in which the presenter provided a brief summary of how a combination of factors, including anti-miscegenation laws, being barred from working in “traditionally masculine industries” and owning property, and the “Yellow Peril” media representation of Asian men in the 1910’s and 1920’s as dangerous and primitive, all served to socially castrate the East Asian male and make him undesirable both to men and women.
With the prevailing winds of cultural change brought about by migration, two major world wars, the partition and colonization of vast swathes of Asia, and the slow adoption of Western cultural norms, Western standards of beauty and the definition of masculinity also began to permeate East Asian culture.
In the Korean Peninsula for instance, Korean society adopted circumcision as that was prevalent among American military officers stationed in the country, while in Vietnam, Hong Kong, Japan, and the Philippines, there was an emphasis on augmenting one’s appearance to better fit Western standards of beauty. This meant, for men, enhancing their otherwise leaner physiques, into larger more muscular considered more conventionally attractive in the West, a trend that persists to the present day.
Many scholars in the field of Asia studies and Gender and Sexual identity have noted that largess, often associated with the Western world has not only dictated the need for men in Western societies to take up as much space and “penetrate” society through their imposing figures, but has also extended to the perception of penis size as an extension of the same ability to take up space.
Among Gay men, research suggests that penises take on a more erotic place and are also compared far more given that, in any given cis Gay couple, there are two penises to be measured against each other.
Meta Conversations
Matters penis size are far from confined to the Gay world as TikTok and Instagram have proven. Conversations about ideal dick size and what women want have also gained popularity thanks to sex-themed podcasts, the contributors of which, while not claiming to be official authorities on the matter, still prescribe what is expected and what is entirely unacceptable.
The urban myth of nine inches being the ideal size required to satisfy any woman, as popularized by porn, and in a world in which the average male falls between 4.5 to 6.5 inches was hilariously dispelled by TikToker @ceragibson, who, with the use of a tape measure, demonstrated what 10 to 12 inches, the unicorn of penises, looks like, insisting that most women would be more than satisfied with the universal average.
This has, however, done little to banish the fantasy of big penises in both Straight and Gay circles, even in Asian countries like China, where the average penis size, according to available data is slightly smaller than the global average. In the more cosmopolitan cities like Beijing and Shanghai where interracial dating is popular, straight Chinese men are often less willing to date foreign women for fear that they don’t measure up. In contrast, Chinese women who date foreign men confess that penis size is certainly a motivating factor in their choice to date interracially.
Some might question the need to quote heterosexual preferences, and the answer is as simple as it is complex. As marginalized sexual identities gain visibility, especially in the West, what were once discrete sub-cultures with internally developed norms and tastes, increasingly align with the mainstream. Trends found in the mainstream are therefore replicated in sexual minority groups, and in the case of the phenomenon seen in China, Chinese Gay men who identify as tops rarely go for foreign (especially White) bottoms while many of those who date Foreign Non-Asian men predominantly identify as passive or bottom.
As the media’s portrayal of Asian men over the history of Hollywood has been a major culprit in sustaining the stereotype of the asexual, ineffectual “Asian” male, in recent years, it has sought to reverse course on such portrayals. More and more mainstream TV shows and big-budget films are casting Asian male actors as leads, as opposed to their erstwhile goofy, comical, often socially awkward and “unattractive” roles. But as some have noted, given the rise in the trend, Asian male representation in mainstream media is hyper-masculinized, an aspirational far cry from the average smaller-framed, less muscular Asian male body found in society.
In East Asia, the emergence of the overly muscular archetype among Gay men pursuing not only fitness but a hyper-masculine physique has also gone hand in hand with an over-emphasis on penis size and sexual performance, whereas fitness and virility may have taken on different forms in the past. Now, the image of the equine-phallic raging-bull muscle god stereotype which was, until recently, largely confined to porn, is now accepted as the ideal, and even the standard in highly competitive Gay circles.
Such a focus on hyper-idealism confers to those who are considered large enough to compete for the status of being just as good as the ideal Western man, outwardly beating the allegation that East Asian men fall short in the bedroom. It also creates a different dichotomy among those who don’t quite make the cut but still desire to reprise the role of active dominant top, a feature of penetrative sex among Gay men in East Asia, in which dominance and submission play a key role. The penis of the bottom is often disregarded altogether, while the focus of the sexual act becomes the ability of the top to “last.”
A fast-growing subculture of Small Penis Humiliation (SPH) has also sprouted from this negation of the bottom’s penis. Some go to the physical extremes of caging their penises in increasingly small and confining devices to further shrink their members, in a bid to create the illusion of the top’s penis being bigger.
Half-truths and Whole Lies
An argument can be made that views on masculinity in East Asia are highly influenced by the West and the historical denigration of East Asian masculinity, both physically and sexually. An attempt to remove the “sissy” from the public conscience as government policy in countries like China and the adoption of more Western clothing and grooming styles are all individual and collective efforts to make masculinize the image of the East Asian man for the sake of the Western gaze turn inward.
Depictions of men in the Boys’ Love (BL), meant for the consumption of a predominantly female audience, much to the chagrin of Western-style masculinity “traditionalists” has done little to beat the charge of the effeminate, de-sexed Asian man. Even K-dramas and K-pop groups which predominantly favor the boyish, youthful, androgynous look, are now shifting toward a more overtly masculine aesthetic.
Writer, artist, and Professor Emeritus at OCAD, Richard Fung, in his essay Looking for My Penis (1991) highlighted the socio-sexual castration of the East Asian male both as a result of persistent racist stereotypes and as the androgynous representation of Asian men, including in Gay pornography. “So whereas, as Fanon tells us, ‘the Negro is eclipsed. He is turned into a penis. He is a penis,’ the Asian man is defined by a striking absence down there. And if Asian men have no sexuality, how can we have homosexuality?”
This stereotype has far-reaching consequences for Black Bottoms and Asian tops, as the former are constantly encouraged to top so as not to let their natural gifts go to waste, while the latter are offhandedly dismissed as not being up to the task of true tophood. In East Asian countries like China, this insistence on the importance of size takes on a decidedly fetishistic turn, as self-declared size queens announce that they only go for foreigners, especially Black foreigners, to fulfill their Mandingo fantasies.
It is commonplace for Black men on dating apps in East Asia to have potential dates ask about their size and whether or not the myth about Black men being hung like horses also applies to them. Other than reducing these men to their anatomy, it makes it nearly impossible for those wishing to create meaningful and long-lasting romantic connections to do so, as they are firmly viewed as either sexual trophies or not sexually desirable depending on whether or not they meet strict size requirements.
As Fung points out, some of these harmful stereotypes find their origins in the writings of European explorers of past centuries who insisted on the hypersexuality of other races, further supported by social Darwinism and eugenics at the turn of the 20th century, and have been reintroduced in new ways through a series of pseudo-intellectuals like Canadian psychologist Philippe Rushton, who “posits that degree of sexuality – interpreted as penis and vagina size, frequency of intercourse, buttock and lip size – correlate positively with criminality and sociopathic behavior and inversely with intelligence, health, and longevity. Rushton sees race as the determining factor and places East Asians … on one end of the spectrum and Blacks on the other. Since white falls squarely in the middle, the position of perfect balance, there is no need for analysis, and they (White people) remain free of scrutiny.”
Fung’s own joy at finding an East Asian male porn star after noting the absolute lack of media representation of the Asian male even in the adult entertainment industry is short-lived as he notes the difference in representation, in the particular case of Sum Yung Mahn, a Vietnamese performer featured in several adult films at the time Fung published his article. “The scene constructs anal intercourse for the Asian Robbie as an act of submission, not of pleasure: unlike other scenes of anal intercourse in the tape, for example, there is no dubbed dialogue on the order of ‘Oh yeah. . . fuck me harder!’ but merely ambiguous groans,” Fung notes of a particular scene in which one of the White actors “turns Asian” in a dream sequence to bottom for another White character in the film.
Conversely, “As a White man, his role is completely reversed: he is at first sucked off by Stevie, and then he fucks him (Greek active/French passive/top). Neither of Robbie’s manifestations veers from his prescribed role.”
In his doctoral thesis titled Racialized Economies of Queer Male Desire, Alan Han echoes Fung, as he delves into his own experiences of being racialized as a Gay Asian man in Australia, through being described as “a member of a ‘smart Asian race’” and being expected to be party to anti-Asian racism in the dating world because of his history of dating White men.
Han also notes that, while there are categories that denote White men who date Asian men (Rice queens), and Asian men who date White men (Potato queens), “there are no terms used to describe queer white men who desire each other. Although there are fetishized descriptions of queer male desire like S&M, Bear, or Leather, these are not racialized descriptions like rice queens and potato queens.”
Even in cases when White men have smaller penises, this is hardly ever turned into a repudiation of the entire race, but an individual case of size difference that can, and often be turned into a kink or a fetish, in which the White man, trades his desirability in for private humiliation without having to lose his place at the top of the desirability food chain. This, according to Han due to the assumption that, under all circumstances, White men, and therefore their penises, are desirable.
Many other East Asian researchers and intellectuals have written about what Tony Ayres describes as a “culture where Tom of Finland is the pinnacle of what is considered desirable,” with not much of a solution found despite their extended scholarly efforts. And though cultural sensitivity and awareness have created a new language orthodoxy around desirability and “preferences,” underlying stereotypes still persist. Recasting East Asian men as objects of desire alone might not be effective, as seen in the response of one David Phillips to the use of an Asian on the cover of Campaign Magazine’s 20th-anniversary issue.
“There are only a few white men interested in the small Asian dick,” Phillips claims in his letter of protest.” You can show m a small dick and a big black one and it is more important to go off with the big black one than the small Asian one.” Granted, this was language used 20 years ago and it would be unthinkable for anyone to overtly declare their prejudice so publicly now. But does that mean such prejudices have disappeared or the language around the issue has evolved much faster than the issue itself? And if so, then how will it ever be resolved?
Photo: Unsplash
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