The Women Fighting Creeps On OkCupid

Online dating can be anxiety inducing, demoralizing, and just plain horrible. The interactions can be painful, and it takes a ton of interaction with sketchy, profane or just uninteresting people to find someone who might be a good match. 

On this week's episode of the Reply All podcast, This American Life producer Stephanie Foo talks about the particular difficulty of online dating as an Asian woman.

The story begins with a woman named Suzanne. Suzanne met her boyfriend "John" on OkCupid. They'd been dating for six months. Suzanne describes John as sweet, loyal, and spontaneous: one of the best boyfriends she'd ever had. John offered Suzanne keys to his apartment, they went furniture shopping together, they even made a date out of a trip to the DMV. Suzanne was happy. Until one day, she discovered a stash of photos on John's computer. The images were of John and another woman, kissing. And they were take recently. Just as Suzanne was clicking through the photos, messages meant for John popped up on the screen. They were from other women. Several other women. Suzanne scrolled through the conversations. They were flirty, jokey messages.

[Stephanie is] always on high alert with online dating, because of what she calls 'yellow fever.'

Suzanne texted John demanding he return home immediately. He did, and they argued for hours. Suzanne discovered that her loving, loyal boyfriend had been dating multiple women simultaneously. And all of these women had one thing in common: every single one was Asian.

When Suzanne left John's apartment she was determined to warn every Asian woman he knew in case John was secretly dating them too. She sent out a mass message to John's female Asian Facebook friends telling them what she learned. A few women responded who had also been deceived by John. And what she found was that John did this. A lot. He built up a cadre of several women — all Asian — and then he would get found out, they would all go their separate ways, and he would begin anew.

Suzanne and the other women who met due to John's dishonesty decided to take action, to warn future victims of John's true character. They created a fake OkCupid profile, with John's picture and a slight variation on his username. The profile was filled with warnings: "I'm a serial cheater." "If you see me on here don't date me."

OkCupid removed their profile, but not before several women reached out and thanked Suzanne for warning them.

This is Stephanie's nightmare scenario. But she says that she's always on high alert with online dating, because of what she calls "yellow fever" — the tendency of guys to fetishize her for being Asian. She says her OK Cupid inbox is full of guys emailing her about how "exotic she looks, or about her "almond eyes," and how it all seems to feed into particular stereotypes about Asian women. That they are exotic, that they are submissive. It makes dating, especially dating online very difficult.

And it is not just nightmare scenarios like John that make her nervous — Stephanie received warnings about men herself. A lot. A few months ago, a woman that she didn't know saw an innocuous interaction Stephanie had had with a guy on twitter. She wrote to tell her to watch out–that the guy had yellow fever and would try to hit on her. He did. And then, a couple months ago, Stephanie matched with this guy on a dating website, who actually got her on the phone to warn her about another guy who only dated Asian women, was abusive, and had herpes.

"They'll actually have to look into my eyes and hold out their hands. And that's when they'll find out that I have teeth. And they are sharp."

And Stephanie found herself wondering: Was this guy telling the truth? Or was he one of those guys? Was he making up a story so he could take advantage of my fears about yellow fever and try to be a hero so he could hit on me? She couldn't decide whether to be grateful or terrified.

In the end, Stephanie decided it was easier to delete all of her online dating profiles than it was to date online, all the time wondering if she was matching with some guy who had messaged her because he had set his filter for only Asian women. Nowadays, she only meets guys offline. As she says, "they have to come out from behind their screens. They'll actually have to look into my eyes and hold out their hands. And that's when they'll find out that I have teeth. And they are sharp."

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