The dating market is easier there. You'll get a boost in confidence, as well as experience in handling the other gender.
Edit: I’m not white either.
Just explaining why your comment might have rubbed people the wrong way, though you might not have deserved it.
Most of them were attracted to the different physic and the novelty of dating a foreigner.
Sure it doesn’t help the local men but well, I don’t think I’m doing anything wrong here.
That’s something that really bother me on HN. Where people play judges with no relevant facts.
It’s just applying Bayesian statistics. You seem to be taking this a bit too personally.
If someone assumed that a school shooter was a man, that would not be a ridiculous assumption, and I would not be offended even though I am a man and not a school shooter. Chill out.
When store security "apply Bayesian statistics" to black shoppers, the shoppers tend to take it personally. I don't see what makes the assumption here more okay. I'd venture that most people wouldn't take the suspicion that their relationship with their partner was in fact a commercial sex transaction particularly well.
And your example is not too parallel. Do you not see any difference between assuming that some stranger who did a school shooting shares your gender, and assuming that you personally are a sex tourist?
I read a story from a white guy somewhere in SE Asia who was confronted by a Western tourist who'd read a few too many Nicholas Kristof columns, and attempted to separate him from the child he was surely about to rape. It was his daughter...
I’ll just note that you’re seriously comparing someone posting “go to Asia because it’s easier to have sex there” with a black person walking into a store. It sounds to me like you are just disproportionately sensitive about this because you feel like in this case you are the one being profiled.
On top of that you’re equating harassing a shopper to not even accusing someone of being a sex tourist, just pointing out that sex tourism is a thing.
You need to step back and look at this in perspective. That’s it from me.
I'm not sure what here makes you think I don't know math, and that's not something I'm often accused of. The point at which sex tourism is a serious problem that deserves attention comes well before the point where any foreign man there can reasonably be accused of it. You could have raised the issue in a way that made it clear you meant no suggestion of that against anyone here. Most people still take "you might not have deserved [to be suspected of being a pedo]" as an accusation--"might" implies "might not".
If he'd said "New York City" instead of "Thailand", then would his comment have been fine? Must good honorable foreign men write off a country entirely once enough other foreign men do something bad? What's the tipping point? Is there some prostitution rate and GDP per capita at which Bangkok will be okay again? Do the thresholds vary with the man's race and income? Race only?
> It sounds to me like you are just disproportionately sensitive about this because you feel like in this case you are the one being profiled.
This was my first post in response to this story. So I'm not sure why I'd feel like I was being profiled, unless this is some kind of implication that I am (oops, "might be") a sex tourist too. I don't and have never lived in SE Asia, or had sex with anyone there.
I get that you think I'm wrong. You've expressed this clearly, but you've made no attempt to explain why. I'd venture that if you stepped back and looked at this in perspective, you'd find a more difficult moral landscape than you currently perceive.
ETA: Seriously, you're dancing around the idea that a poster here is a child sex tourist--an active pedophile, a man who rapes children, a criminal rightly considered among the worst imaginable. If there's no reason to suspect that he's a child sex tourist, then why was your (accurate) statement that that's disproportionately common in Thailand relevant? Given the opportunity, the closest you got to retracting the implication was to say he "might not have deserved" it. And you think I'm wrong to compare this to a false accusation of shoplifting?
A foreign man living in Bangkok really is more likely to be a sex tourist than average, just as a black shopper is more likely to be a shoplifter. (Yes, disparate enforcement against black vs. white shoplifters skews the raw statistics against black people. No, this doesn't explain the full difference. Controlling for income and other factors removes a lot of the difference; but store security doesn't have that information, so that's not relevant.) I think that's the "Bayesian statistics" you're talking about. The point is that these real, nonzero correlations do not justify making the lives of entire classes of people worse. I think you owe the poster an apology, not dismissive instructions to "chill".
I said I wouldn’t respond, but you wrote this:
> I think you owe the poster an apology, not dismissive instructions to "chill".
So for the record, no, I absolutely and without qualification* do not apologize, and yes, you and the GP need to step back as I have said and reevaluate objectively. The GP’s post clarifies that he is not a sex tourist. But as others have pointed out, his original post makes that suspicion entirely reasonable. Please don’t expect further replies from me, I haven’t gained anything from this conversation and I don’t think you have either.
EDIT: I will allow the qualification that this is obviously a painful subject to discuss, and ideally we could avoid pain like this altogether. But whatever bizarre viewpoint you are arguing is not one that will lead to less pain for those in loving relationships involving people from those countries, and it is not one which will help with the very real problem of sex tourism. If I see a post like the GP’s again, I will reply the same way (note I was not even replying to him, but rather explaining why people replied they way they did).
This exchange began when you posted a comment that I suspect caused some pain to a guy who (we have no good reason to doubt) was engaged in a loving relationship with someone from that region. Now, you've just said that your viewpoint is better than mine, by that specific standard. How do you make that consistent?
If I said that it was "entirely reasonable" to suspect that the black shoppers were thieves, on the basis of your Bayesian statistics, then I suspect you would call me a racist. I think you would be right. Where does the analogy fail here? It's wrong even though they really are more likely to be shoplifters, if we do statistics considering nothing but the color of their skin. That correlation by itself is not a reason to act, before considering the size of the correlation, and the social consequences to the group that you're about to harm.
If you see a post like his again, then you could reply "They are probably thinking of sex tourism. That's a bad problem in the region, which then also casts a hurtful shadow on any relationship between a local woman and foreign man. I hope any foreign man who dates there does so with respect for this problem." Why not?
Seriously, the rhetoric around dating foreign women is absurd. Gross and exploitative? A consensual relationship? /Really?/
Compare, for instance, the socially mandated opinions we're supposed to hold around adopting a child from a foreign country versus "mail-ordering" a bride. Most of the moral arguments for the former apply just as much toward the latter, yet the latter is "gross and exploitative"--why?
Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the first is associated with movie stars while the second is mostly low-status men?
More than one person I know is in a relationship with someone from a 'poorer' country and both parties seem to be pretty happy with the outcome. And wasn't just men who were from the richer countries either.
1. What's wrong with a relationship that isn't "organic". What does that even mean exactly? 2. Same goes for "genuine".
I can see how there's degrees of 'health' to various approach, as well as ethical concerns, but I strongly disagree that the approach should by default or ideally be (primarily) 'organic' and 'romantic'.
My friend is married to a Philippine woman. She worked at Apple and is quite well educated. Even is she wasn’t - I don’t know what the problem is.
With the metacrap done, I'll say it's weird, especially when there is this odd stigma specifically around white men dating asian women[0]. If anything, thinking it's usually "exploitative" furthers racial stereotypes that asians[0] are somehow more naive and childish than white people.
[0] The idea of an Asian woman itself is a little ridiculous because Asia is a continent, but that's a digression.
But that's exactly how it works in a bar in Detroit, or Edinburgh or wherever with people of the same 'group', just with a less explicit wealth signal.
Here's a thought experiment; start chatting to a [man|woman] in a bar. When the subject turns to drinks, ask if they'd buy because you're on unemployment benefit and don't have much cash. Expected result?
Now try the experiment again but buy the drinks and make sure to set your Porsche keyfob in sight when reaching for your wallet.
Unless you are very, very charismatic and symmetrically attractive I expect two differential outcomes.
Personally, I think trying to buff your sexual appeal using your wealth is kind of silly, but I understand it happens and I don't judge (in a moral way) people in the latter case I pointed out in the last paragraph.
Personally, I don't see a problem with a woman making a choice to support her family of her own free will. If that's the only way that an extremely awkward westerner can find a mate, I say go for it.
But on a different level, that person now has a family that wants his presence, that looks upon him as being important. So, maybe that's a big boost to the old self-esteem.
Romantic love (i.e. infatuation, to use less loaded language) isn't all its cracked up to be either. It's just a state your body produces to encourage reproductive behavior. It produces great highs now, at the cost of great lows later, and thus it's terribly addictive. It's no more noble than heroin.
It might or might not deal with their insecurity - people are complex, everyone is liable to be slightly different. It will almost certainly make them feel less lonely and isolated though, and that's worth something.
I doubt I could ever do that - I'm coming to grips with probably dying alone - but I'm not going to judge someone else for trying to avoid that fate.