Earlier this year, I went on a date with a man who told me he had a thing for Asian women. We were sitting across from each other at a table in a fancy restaurant and he stood up to do a head-to-toe scan of me.

"Your body is just so soft and perky and tanned," he said.

I am sick of being fetishised because of racist stereotypes about "small and compliant" Asian women. Credit:Stocksy

I told myself to run. Here was yet another man with what is not-so-jokingly referred to as Yellow Fever: the lazy and discriminatory hyper-sexualisation and fetishisation of Asian women, primarily by white men, solely based on race.

When I tried to break it off with him, he texted: "I hate you. Thankfully, there are thousands of gorgeous Japanese, Chinese and Korean girls in Sydney, so I will be okay."