You want to hear a funny joke?

Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse are up against each other in court, headed for divorce. The judge looks over all the paperwork, fumbles with his spectacles, and, after what feels like forever, exhales deeply. He takes his glasses off and puts the paperwork down, eyeing Mickey directly. “Let me get this straight, uh…Mickey…according to what I’ve just read, it appears you’re asking to divorce Minnie on the grounds that she’s…extremely silly?” Mickey, gripping the desk with controlled rage, shouted unexpectedly at the judge, “No, your honor, she’s not extremely silly, she’s fucking Goofy!”

Funny, right? I love that one.

You want to hear another one?

Asian guys have small dicks.

I mean, I lol’d.

And I laugh every time I hear it, but not for the reasons the racist White boys who tell it to me think.

For the longest time, I could never understand why, when I’d be out with an Asian beau or post a photo of me and my Asian s/o on social media, random White guys would feel the burning need to let me know that my significant other was supposedly lacking when it came to his equipment. “You’re with that guy?” they’d say, incredulously, “For real? Don’t you know that Asian men have small dicks?” they’d sneer, with an undeserved look of smug satisfaction on their faces.

I never knew what they expected from me after they’d say that. I mean, what am I supposed to do, push the guy I’m with away furiously, suddenly mortified by this “undeniably” true information, only to leap into the arms of my White savior as we ride off into the sunset on his “superior” cockhorse?

Like, seriously.

What I used to do was retort with something along the lines of “My boyfriend’s dick is plenty big — how sweet of you to be so concerned! I’ll let him know you were asking and I’m sure he’ll be flattered, but he’s taken. By the way, when did you become an expert in Asian dick? Sucked enough off to gather this data?” or something — and for some, that was enough.

Still, others would press on. “No, it’s true! It’s science! Science says his dick is smaller than mine. I’m clearly dating material!” (I’m paraphrasing, but you get the idea).

Of course, this research would rarely materialize, and when it did, it was usually horribly conducted — we’re not really gonna rely on self-reporting when it comes to dick size, right guys? We’re better than that.

Still, the joke was just SO FUNNY that guys insisted on telling it to us — random guys we didn’t even know were stopping us whenever we were together just to make us laugh. Sometimes they’d shout it from a car window as they drove by. Other times I’d wake up to a series of comments from a recently posted photo on Instagram where I’d be inundated with the joke. It was like we couldn’t escape it; to them, it was like the Asian man I was with was stripped of his humanity, whittled down to his wang and judged on something they hadn’t even seen for themselves.

It made me realize — not even I thought about dick this much, and I was the one supposed to be attracted to them.

Why, then, did White guys shout from the rooftops how small Asian dick supposedly was in comparison to their own?

After researching this long and hard (heh), I think I finally have an answer (and why it’s problematic).

To fully answer this odd question of why White guys are obsessed with Asian dick, we have to look at another thing they’re obsessed with: Black dick.

If there’s ever been a more fascinating stereotype than that of the big Black cock, I’ve yet to hear it. What started off as a rumor to scare White women and protect them from falling in love with Black men (seriously) eventually evolved into a means to secure romantic partners. Back when slavery was alive and well, White slave-owning men did whatever it took to ensure that they stayed on top by any means necessary — after all, the economy depended on the free labor they received from their ill-gotten chattel. To ensure their other “property” — White women — didn’t run off with Black men, slave-owners dehumanized them in every way possible — right down to their penis. They had already constructed the myth that Blacks were practically humanoid animals, fit only to till the fields and pick cotton, but they took it one step further and assured their wives and daughters that all Black men had long, scary schlongs that would sour their racial purity should they ever lay claim to the delicate beings.

If this sounds at all familiar, it’s because this ideology still exists today; the narrative of the Black man defiling the White woman is told and retold as almost a horror story to some White men, who still feel the visceral urge to protect “the (pale) fairer sex” at all cost. How many White girls are warned by their fathers to never to bring a Black boy home, lest she desire to invoke his paternal wrath? How many movies do we have where the story frames the Black male/White female pairing as “getting back at the establishment” or fighting racism simply through boinking? It’s cliche, but when screenwriters are largely White men, the rest of us are still going to be subjected to their way of thought — this method of conquest through penetration.

By contrast, the tale of the Asian man, as woven by the White male, receives the “short end of the stick”, so to speak. Historically, this hasn’t always been the case — Asian/White relationships don’t go as far back as Black/White relationships in the U.S., but their dynamics have evolved dramatically over the decades.

During the 1800s, the biggest ethnic group of Asians in the U.S. were the Chinese, who immigrated to the States beginning in the 1820s following the Sino-U.S. maritime trade agreement. This century saw contention and pushback from the U.S. against the Chinese, from levying unfair taxes, imposing laws to ensure Chinese lacked power over Whites, multiple massacres, and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Asians of other nationalities didn’t fare much better, their treatment laying the foundation for anti-Asian sentiments during the 20th century that made it possible for the U.S. to routinely strip Asians of their rights, such as going against the 14th Amendment to restrict their citizenship. Perhaps the most widely recognized act of oppression against Asians is the internment of innocent Japanese-American citizens during World War II, after which a shift in the perspective of Asians seemed to happen in the U.S.

From the Pacific Theatre in the 1940s to the proxy wars fought in Korea and Vietnam, the U.S. had over 30 years to become well acquainted with the armies of the East, painting them as bloodthirsty war machines with no regard for human life — even their own. The familiar narrative of the animalistic humanoid entered wartime propaganda, mingled seamlessly with the goofy caricatures that had predicated them from years prior. On the homefront, Bruce Lee waged a media war against racist Hollywood stereotypes, helping to define Asian male masculinity onscreen; still, Asians felt the sting of racism, with cruel experiences regularly reminding them that they weren’t fully equal to their White peers.

By the 1980s, however, Asian-Americans had begun to come into their own. More and more Asians were immigrating to the U.S., either as a refugee or through the brain drain of the era, and many settled down amongst not only their brethren, who had come generations prior, but in historically Caucasian enclaves. With Japan emerging as a worldwide economic powerhouse and the Four Asian Tigers trailing closely behind, it seemed like it was only a matter of time before Asians took top spot in the global markets. This put a fear into many White Americans, who felt threatened by potentially being overtaken by a foreign institution. Was the writing on the wall for the White American lifestyle? Would they soon bow down to an Asian master? What could be done about this new Yellow Peril?

Enter J. Philippe Rushton, whose work on penis size became suddenly relevant in the late 1980s. In his controversial study, he argued that there was a correlation between race and member size, with Blacks being the biggest and Asians being the smallest and Whites nestled neatly between the two. Since the findings fit conveniently into a narrative that served White men, few questioned his authority; it was only later that people noticed his statistics were questionable at best, coming from a book written by “A French Army Surgeon” in 1898. But by then, it was too late — the damage had been done, the Asian male labeled too small, unfit for female consumption.

In a sense, everything clicked for White supremacist types after that — the longstanding Black male stereotypes didn’t change, but now they had something to balance out their long-standing rivals. Despite the twists and turns of their dynamics throughout history, the Asians they now knew were intelligent, worked hard, and had good family values. They were a threat to a perfect White lifestyle, which desperately needed something to look down on them for. And if they couldn’t beat them in institutionalized racism, they’d have to get them through individualized racism — by limiting access to women and rendering them involuntarily celibate. How? By fighting dirty: a literal dick size contest with rules of their own making.

The consequences are tangible — how many women have turned down Asian men as romantic partners because of their supposedly small packages? How often has that been used as a comment to dehumanize the Asian man, to make him feel hopelessly inadequate in the dating arena? While some Asian men choose to rise above the nastiness and seek their own happiness, others feel weighed down, hopeless and depressed, by an oppressive stereotype that follows them wherever they go — even if, for some, it’s a prison of their own making, the shackles of assigned inadequacy preventing them from seeking potential mates.

When comparing the two POC dick stereotypes, Black and Asian, against the positioning of the White male, it becomes evident why the myths are perpetuated to this day — like a Goldilocks of dicks, the White woman, with her blonde curls and naivete, finds one cock “too big”, one dong “too small”, but one penis “just White right”. The White woman, should she continue to buy into the stereotypes, is supposed to fear the Black Johnson and ridicule the Asian Wang before ultimately seeking her White knight of dicks.

In other words, by regurgitating the myth of the small Asian dick, when juxtaposed against the stereotype of the big Black cock, White supremacy is upheld vis a vis the penis.

Hey, want to hear another joke?

Racist White men think that they can use a White supremacist pick-up line to get me to dump my Asian s/o for them.

Fucking hilarious.