I talk to leading Asian dating expert JT Tran about whether you should date outside of your immediate type?
Science of dating
It's my true pleasure to be joined by a friend and colleague (If you have that in the dating industry). His name is JT Tran, he is the founder of ABCs of Attraction. He's a leading Asian dating coach and lectures at Harvard, he has all the scientific facts. What we're going to talk about today really is should you date out of type. And this is particularly because you know JT recently did quite a controversial YouTube video so maybe we should start there. What did the YouTube video depict?
JT
Well, what is depicted were white girls kissing Asian men for the very first time. And I don't know if you girls have ever thought of dating someone outside of your race, or more specifically Asian it's very uncommon, especially in the United States. There's not a lot of media representation that shows Asian men as masculine, confident, sexual and romantic.
So this is my part of introducing the idea into your minds that an Asian guy is just like any other guy. We can be shy but we can also be confident. We can be sexy, we can be a little bit awkward. And this video went viral and think in one week it hit like 500,000 views, but what happened was there are only like 30 seconds, 45 seconds of kissing. It's complete PG, almost G rated. It sets off a bit of a firestorm and got age-restricted.
I've since then had an unrestricted because there are so many other people doing worse stuff. Why would you guys flag it only to end up being pissing off? A couple of racist reasons, for one they did not appreciate their white women kissing Asian guys. I know, you can't have those Asian guys getting our women. Other aspects are these girls.
For those of you who aren't really familiar, there's kind of a subset of girls who do want to date Asian guys. But they don't like the idea of Asian guys dating well, because they themselves aren't necessarily in the best space.
Hayley
For those of you listen to this interesting subcultures it's AMWF.
So just for the women because they can't see- can you describe yourself?
JT
I am five foot five, an average looking Asian guy, supernormal. I'm a former aerospace engineer and founder of the ABCs of Attraction. And I'm Asian, with black hair and slanty eyes. And the thing is, most of the girls I've ever dated, 90% of them have never, ever dated an Asian guy.
First of all, we aren't a big set of population in America. But generally speaking, culturally, a lot of us Asians don't go out of our way to introduce ourselves. So women outside of our own race, because of religion and family and culture. But also it's, it's, there's an intimidating factor, at least when I was growing up, that non-Asian woman would never give an Asian guy the time of day. I just believed that for so long. But it is this vortex of misunderstanding, right?
Hayley
I find lots of times that women I work with wonder why are guys not approaching me. And it's because there are these deeply held beliefs that you're gonna take one look at him and go NO. You are gonna be rude, hurt him or reject him. And whilst I think the primary female fear is the abandonment, the primary male fear is rejection.
So if you're not having any men approach you, there are things that you have to think about. Maybe you should date out of your type. And what I actually liked about what JT is saying, is part of the reason for doing this viral YouTube video was to... Did you say it was that like that iCloud storage or something, right?
JT
Well, people, we have this iCloud of knowledge-based off of who we've dated before, what is in the media. And if a girl has never dated an Asian guy, there's a sort of iCloud so to speak of, what would it be like to date an Asian guy you draw on Hollywood. And unfortunately, there's a lot of stereotypes against Asians. So this video is my way of introducing the idea to women's minds.
More women shared the video than men did. And it was very surprising. I think that's very gratifying in the fact that I was seeing comments by women as I've always thought of what it'd be like to kiss an Asian guy. And now that I've seen it, I know that they are just like any other guy. There's nothing weird about Asian guys they just like any other guy.
So for you ladies listening, I think Asian guys, whether East Asian or Indian. We want to be accepted by other people. But sometimes these things are holding us back the media says a white girl, or black or whatever, would never date someone else out of a race, out of type.
Hayley
So whatcan you say? Or if you got any advice for women is listening to this, and want to date more. In her mind, she has a physical type. This is the guy she goes for. He's Caucasian, he's six-foot-tall. What do you think? Should she just accept that's her type? Or do you think that she should question and challenge what her type is?
JT
Ideally, I would hope that she questions and challenges that but, realistically, you can't force somebody to change their mind. What I do when coaching my own students is presenting us as the best option. I am strong and confident. And we ourselves are completely viable partners.
Hayley
What you said is one of my favourite phrases, it's suspicious of what you want. Sometimes, a lot of what we automatically will go to whether that's the relationship or the partner that we choose, or particular physical preference, or how we feel about something. Sometimes the option we go for isn't the one that serves us best. It could have been something that we've picked up because we haven't fully considered other options. That could be due to biases that we've had from our childhood.
A lot of the time how we engage with our parents affects the kind of partners we choose. If you dig into it, a lot of the time your instinctual reaction to things or instinctual reaction to a type isn't the best person to give you the partnership that you want.
If you are ready to learn how to date out of type, how to reset your boundaries, and give up on that checklist, have a look at my amazing coaching program Going Renegade. And for the full interview between me and JT click on the link below!
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