Here's What 'Yellow Fever' Really Means

Here's What 'Yellow Fever' Really Means

"All my ex-girlfriends are Asian."

If you've ever come across this charming come-on, you've probably been exposed to the social phenomenon known as "yellow fever."

A step-by-step takedown of "yellow fever," or the desire to date Asian women often accompanied by bizarre, offensive attempts to do so, could start the healing. Luckily for us, YouTuber Anna Akana was more than up to the video-making task.

"Men with 'yellow fever' look at you and they only see school girls or sexual geishas," she explains in "Why Guys Like Asian Girls." Akana gets to the root of the real problem with yellow fever: It doesn't see women as fully-formed individuals, but as the living embodiment of offensive stereotypes.

But in reality, courting women who are three-dimensional and real when what you want is a paper-thin cutout of a character from an anime you half-watched isn't "yellow fever" -- it's a character flaw.

"I don't understand why, why you should romanticize an entire race as being submissive or weak or docile," Akana says. "When the only prerequisite for me to become your potential partner is the color of my skin? That's cheap. That's offensive. You're an asshole. Go away."

There you have it.

Oh, and if women as a group are anything at all, it's definitely not weak.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article had misinformation about the disease yellow fever, which, according to World Health Organization estimates, affects 200,000 people a year.

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