A fiction. Not the actual Mr. Kanasawa’s words.
In a parallel universe, Satoshi Kanasawa gives this exclusive interview to our very own Sweat and Sprezzatura correspondent about his recent blog post:
“Why are Asian Men Less Physically Attractive than Other Men?”
sweat and sprezzatura asks:
Mr. Kanazawa, tell us about your process in researching and writing this post?
SK responds:
I was interested in exploring racial differences and the relationship between race and physical attractiveness.
My first impulse was to court controversy by focusing my findings on black women. Black and women: It’s a winning combination.
Scientific findings of black inferiority have the air of daring in the politically-correct West. But, really, it’s just good business. Both sides of the culture war mobilize, and that means buzz! Eventually, the buzz subsides, and both sides go home even more entrenched, but my name is on everybody’s lips.
As for women, I know what I’m doing when I talk about women. Women have beauty, and beauty is power. And men, at their most vulnerable, resent the power of female beauty. I successfully harnessed that resentment in a blog post called “Are All Women Essentially Prostitutes?”
Great title, huh? And, by the way, they are all whores.
And so are popular writers.
For this post, I intended to advance the thesis that black women are less attractive than other women. Our male frustration at female beauty, and its inaccessibility, is assuaged by reminding women that some of them are dogs. It’s a reassertion of power. That’s the marketable concept.
sweat and sprezzatura:
And, yet, Mr. Kanazawa, that’s not the post you wrote. Why?
SK :
I remembered David Chappelle’s Black White Supremacist, and how Chappelle used humor, even a self-deprecating humor, not to exploit prevailing controversies swirling around race, but to force people to think about race and racism. It’s funny, unexpected, perverse and effective. And I thought I could do the same, if I turned my own theory against myself.
Everybody likes an Asian girl, as t-shirts proclaim. But on the hierarchy of sexy, Asian men rank fairly low. I point out that Asian men have less hair than men of other races. I throw in the cringe-worthy assertion made by Psychology Today that Asian men have sex less frequently than men of other races. Asian men, I conclude, have less testosterone than other men.
Men with lower levels of testosterone have less masculine features and are therefore less physically attractive. The race differences in the level of testosterone can therefore potentially explain why Asian men are less physically attractive.
And the sad truth is that I don’t stand a chance with Beyoncé.
Mr. Kanazawa, that’s the blog post you could have written. It would have made your point with humor and elegance. Beautifully, really.
Beauty: we yearn for it. In women. And in writing.
Imagined by a woman with enough testosterone to enjoy competing in the arena of taking A Look at the Hard Truths About Human Nature.
sweat and sprezzatura 
I would comment, but I am too busy rolling on the floor laughing loud enough to frighten the cats.
“Our male frustration at female beauty, and its inaccessibility, is assuaged by reminding women that some of them are dogs. ”
You are a Goddess.
Happy to make you laugh. Sorry to frighten the cats. 🙂
With each piece of writing you do, I’m more and more overwhelmed by your brilliance and creativity. The technique of a fictional interview with a luminary is a wonderful way to stumble serendipitously upon hidden truths.
If I may address Mr Kanazawa directly, I agree with you, sir, that men desire sex much more than do women, with the result that women have all the power in a relationship. Doubtless you are aware, Mr Kanazawa, of those studies which show that the average man thinks about sex every 52 seconds, whereas the average woman thinks about sex only every 4 months.
These shocking findings enable us to see that the powerlessness of men vis a vis women is far more abject than commonly supposed.
Regarding Asian men, that they have less sex than do other men in the US may have less to do with their having less testosterone, than with the possibility that Asian women think about sex only every 8 months, compared with the 4 months of other women in the US.
You say that Asian men are less physically attractive because their testosterone is lower. But, could the real reason be that Asian men tend to be short? After all, aren’t women attracted to tall men, so that tall men get all the chicks, and short men consequently get hardly any chicks at all?
You said to Jenny, “…….Women have beauty, and beauty is power. And men, at their most vulnerable, resent the power of female beauty. I successfully harnessed that resentment in a blog post called ‘Are All Women Essentially Prostitutes?’……..”
Given that our pontifications about people and the external world invariably say more about us than about what we pontificate about, I feel I know you better now, Mr Kanazawa. Continued happiness at the LSE.
Philippe, don’t get me started on who gets all the chicks, or all the guys, in my case.
I’m still mad that I’m not a sultry redhead, like Sled.
I tried dying my hair blonde when I was thirteen. Not great results.
And, then, there’s a terrific poem by Ben Jonson, at age 47, called “My Picture Left In Scotland” that addresses (humorously!) the sorry effect that aging has on the whole thing.
Here it is.
I now think, Love is rather deaf than blind,
For else it could not be,
That she
Whom I adore so much, should so slight me,
And cast my suit behind :
I’m sure my language to her was as sweet,
And every close did meet
In sentence of as subtil feet,
As hath the youngest he
That sits in shadow of Apollo’s tree.
Oh ! but my conscious fears,
That fly my thoughts between,
Tell me that she hath seen
My hundreds of gray hairs
Told seven and forty years,
Read so much waste as she cannot embrace
My mountain belly and my rocky face,
And all these, through her eyes, have stopt her ears.
The only man I married was twenty five years older than I was at the time. And remained so, now that I think about it.
So we are only considering statistics, and Mr.Jonson’s misfortune in falling on the wrong side of them.
I didn’t know I was sultry. Most days I am sort of a big galoot, like Ron Weasley.
But that’s a really fun poem, isn’t it? It sounds great when you read it out loud.
Ron Weasley? Never seen his boobs, so I don’t know…
🙂 🙂 🙂
Your point is beautifully made, Jenny.
(Whatever it is.)
It’s all about me, Richard, as per usual.
Then that explains it. 🙂
Are you saying that if you are going to be controversial, not only have you got try to say what you really mean, but also say it attractively?
Richard,
Writing is a series of choices: What to put in, what to leave out, where to put your focus.
Kanasawa’s choices persuade me NOT that he is a racist (I have no opinion about that) but that he is willing to pander to our deepest anxieties and resentments about race and sex in order to sell himself to an eager public.
As a whore myself, I know one when I see one.
Really, my gripe with his post is the same gripe I had with EAT, PRAY, LOVE: I do not believe that the writer addressed me in good faith. He’s selling a product. That serves science badly and race relations even worse. That is what I find ugly, unattractive, if you please.
How does this tally with what you wrote over on HB, jenny?
(I quote):
It’s entirely proper (and productive) to have a shtick, and for the shtick to be offending people. I like it.
It might be unrealistic, though, to ask me to call it science.
Why do you think it doesn’t tally, Richard?
Aren’t the second para here and the first para there contradictory?
I suppose you’ll ask me how next. 😀
You know, Richard, it is a Jewish thang to answer a question with another question.
There’s no contradiction for me. Can’t I have respect for prostitutes but dislike it when one pretends that she is in it for true love?
I’m totally befuddled now, jenny, and ready to give in to your every like or dislike.
Well, this is all just a load off my mind. As a mixed-race individual of predominantly European ancestry, it’s nice to know that I have the testosterone to hold my own, sexually, in this topsy-turvy world of ours. What with homosexuals and bald men, two groups that have been shown to have higher than average levels of testosterone, I’ve got my work cut out for me. Because if I’ve learned anything in my 28 years of life, it’s that women all but hurl themselves at both gay and bald men, sexually.
I am also relieved to read that all women are manipulative prostitutes. This in no way trivializes the violence and horror of sexual objectification and human trafficking. Cuz, really, that’s just the logical conclusion of what women really are, and it’s futile to try to change that. It does cast my relationship with my girlfriend in a new, scientific, light. Here I was thinking I wanted to genuinely connect with her, to share my life, my insights, and my vulnerabilities, to offer my support and encouragement and humor and compassion and intimacy to her when she needed it most, to enlarge my own life by sharing it with her and sharing in hers, when all I really wanted to do was flop around between her legs, and all she really wanted was the benjamins. Which is a little strange, perhaps, because in the four years that we’ve been dating, she’s been making more money than me. Perhaps she’s just sitting on it, like any investment, waiting for the interest to pay out. Also, feminism is evil, scientifically.
It’s also nice to know that Beyoncé is just waiting to submit herself to me, manipulatively of course. I’d give her a call, but who wants to have sex with someone as scientifically unattractive as she is, I mean really.
Chris, you should (if you haven’t already) check out Mr. Kluth’s post on the Hannibal Blog about the fallout to this story. That (duh) is how I got on to this.
And, yeah, Beyoncé…YEECCH!
Such wisdom – and so young.
Ha ha … I’m not even sure how to take your comment … but it made me giggle, so I’ll certainly take it.
Jenny, as so often before, parachutes onto a topic with sprezzatura and no sweat, and, by the use of fiction and poetry, forces us to engage brain parts (often lumped together as “the right brain”) hitherto unused.
Aside from all that: I was planning my own little series on understanding sex — I mean gender, or rather men and women and all the resulting ado — from the perspective of evolutionary biology. But now that I know you’re refereeing, I need to be more careful…..
“Refereeing” — sounds like something a mom does. Stop shoving me in gender-specific pigeonholes!
“Refereeing” — sounds so butch. Stop impugning my femininity!
(That’s joking, btw. I look forward to reading your series. And to taking it personally.)
But Beyonce is done up like a white girl.
Yes, Mr. C, we had to straighten her hair, otherwise she’s just fugly, I’m sure.
In the next room, white girls are having botox (or whatever) injected into their lips.
Isn’t it more fun when we write limericks?
There once was a dame named Beyoncé,
Whose peers were all having a bad day
But they are survivors
With skin like Godiva[r]s
And g’luck ‘toshi finding a fiancée.
Chris, there is a special place for you in heaven for reminding me that this is exactly the approach.
That’s a zippy limerick! And now I have a great mental image of this poor guy being spurned by an endless procession of the Supremes, Aretha Franklin, Nina SImone…and I think Billie Holiday kicks him in the ass at the end. Oh, sinnerman, where you gonna run to?
I just gotta figure out how make “gitchi gitchi ya ya ta ta” scan properly for a limerick!
way
Ha ha ha, you wouldn’t be nearly as impressed if you knew how much I struggled to rhyme “Beyoncé” and “suvivors.” It helps if you recite it with a lower-class English accent.
No way would Billie Holiday stand for this!
All I noticed
Was she’s not tightly bodiced.
I had missed this. Damn brilliant and interesting. I had spent time replying to Sledpress, you and Paul over at Manius. I’ll be back (it is 1:48 am here now).
Good night Jenny
I am totally lost but, as Richard said, whatever the points are they are great because we are here with Jenny. Clearly, we do LOVE her!
Jenny, I don’t think it’s a problem if you’re not a sultry redhead, you are sultry tout de meme, and WTH, men love variety – the more colours, the better. And pls, for your readers’ pleasure, no hair dying, the natural colour is always the best. Also a lot of tresses too pls, it may be a fetish but you are not a minor so I guess it’s ok.
Philippe, I think women think about love and sex more than men. I know. They told me.
Chris, bald men could teach you a few tricks with chicks, believe me.
Andreas, when you said: “I was planning my own little series on understanding sex….” I said YEEEES! But then you added “I mean gender” and I got wilted. Frankly I don’t see the point of always thinking about sex and never speak about it.
But in any case.
Cheers to all and a kiss to the landlady.
Thanks, Roma. I do love to be loved.
I’ll just stop trying to be an inscrutable woman and settle for being a woman who writes inscrutable blog posts. Practically the same thing.
@MoR – ….I think women think about love and sex more than men. I know. They told me…..
The studies I saw mentioned only “sex” – so that men think about sex infinitely more frequently than do women.
What’s love got to do with it?
@Philippe
[@Jenny]
[The usual moronic rant, my mind is rambling, I badly need a vacation]
Those studies are not good dear Phil, since in women love and sex are often linked (and in us men they should also be, for the sake of joy let’s face it). It is the secret of the (in)famous Latin lovers after all: they give sex (and love), tho, very moronically, to many.
And in fact women spend their time ‘reforming’ men, more often succeeding than failing (these Sibyls’ power upon us is almost unfair tho fascinating).
Of course, women who just need to get laid and go to swinging clubs are getting very numerous in the West. No good thing. Women are the spine of a society, hence we are getting spineless and prepared to servitude vis a vi Cindia (China & India). I am ready to sing opera tunes in a restaurant in Mumbai. My women will be dancers.
THAT – ie casual, no-feelings sex – is not the kind of sexual liberation that actually ‘liberates’ people. I don’t like it and also dislike I sex lived as dirt (tho, wel, it may be spicy). I mean, how revealing that most porn is dirty even tho at times men, when desperate – like with prostitutes –, have recourse to it, what can they do, they are men.
So at the end we get back where we were at the start: we men need to be reformed.
I believe women to be genetically apt to this task. I really do, no kidding.
@MoR: I’ve got hair on my mind because I am watching the mailbox for the delivery of Ovid’s Love Poems, Letters and Remedies, translated by David Slavitt. In a blog post called “Ovid Cares Not For Your Hairdo” (already funny) I read one of the translations. It begins:
How many times did I tell you to leave your hair alone?
Well, look at you now. There’s nothing left to dye.
Great! I’m really looking forward to reading.
@Philippe: TINA TURNER!
A very promising translation Jenny!
Ovid is after all our Western Kama Sutra, in the real sense, id est, as it is known, Kama Sutra being mostly dedicated to how to enjoy love with grace, joy, refinement.
Kama Sutra dedicates only little space to sexual-intercourse positions, which, in any case, now that I am practising Ashtanga Yoga, I barely perceive how crucial they can be (the Western, Platonic, ‘spiritual’ view of sex is limited to one side of the thing).
The Indians were superior in this and other stuff to the Greco-Romans, no doubt, this has to be said aloud.
But Ovid, and all the Latin poets, I find so ‘dolce vita’ and expand many themes that the Indians possibly didn’t touch (but who knows) and most of all they concern us Westerns deeply, since, together with the Judeo-Christians, they have shaped us (more than the Greeks if we analyse the West’s history well).
PS
And, let us leave the Germans alone in this, that are, since Winckelmann onwards, obsessed by the Greeks only 😉
And, by the way, Philippe, thanks for reminding me of Tina. I was sliding into a real funk last night, and then I watched Tina and Ike sing “Proud Mary” and now I’m ready for life to be nice and rough, again:
🙂 🙂