Comment sections on social media are where healthy discourse goes to die. They’re the last place on earth you’d think to find facts, figures, or concrete evidence. And so it’s no surprise that over the last few months, TikTok trolls have started commenting “Oxford study” under videos of couples comprising an Asian woman and white man, in an attempt to stereotype and shame them. According to TikTok, the study apparently purports that Asian women largely prefer white men, subsequently making them race traitors. But this is a baseless misogynistic and racist stereotype with little basis in reality.

It all started in April 2023, when a TikTok user joked that “the power of the Caucasian [male] over the Asian female subconscious needs a full Oxford study”. Then TikTok stumbled across an Oxford paper written by Dr Murali Balaji and Dr Worapron Worawongs Chanthapan, titled “The New Suzie Wong: Normative Assumptions of White Male and Asian Female Relationships”. The study looks at TV advertisements and how they have shaped perceptions of romantic relationships between white men and Asian women.

Both co-authors were shocked to discover that their research has since been misunderstood as an investigation against interracial relationships. “What our study really looked at was the way in which historical tropes of Asian women in Western society have significantly othered them, and how the vestiges of these notions may have filtered into the US advertising industry,” explains Dr Balaji, a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication. He noted that “these ads normalised white male and Asian female pairings on screen the most [compared to] all other interracial combinations”, but stressed that their research did not touch on the behaviours and preferences of heterosexual Asian women.

Despite TikTok’s obsession with the so-called Oxford study, there’s simply no merit to the idea that Asian women shun men of the same race. Kyra*, a Chinese-American working in the entertainment industry, dated white and Asian men upon entering university and had unsavoury experiences with both. “This white guy once told me that he really liked how exotic I was and it made me wonder if he was just fetishising me or if he was actually interested in me for who I was,” she tells Dazed. But at the same time, she also experienced a “toxic situationship” with an Asian man, who had her questioning her self-worth. Choosing not to date him wasn’t a result of internalised racist biases, but simply “because he made [her] feel like shit”.

Like literally everyone else, Asian women choose potential partners based on several factors informed by their personal experience, direct environment and cultural expectations. Filipino-American social media manager Jess* understands that her immigrant parents would have loved for her to end up with a fellow Filipino, or at the very least, a fellow Asian. But her parents eventually realised they just wanted to see her happy. “I met my boyfriend back in high school, where there was a sizable population of white people. He’s the person I vibed with, got along with, grew together with. He just so happens to be white and I’m glad that my parents accepted it,” she says.

“Dating a white man has me reflecting and discussing what it means to date someone who doesn’t share the same family values or social context as me,” Charlie*, a Filipino product designer dating a white man, adds. “Because he’s white, he’s less family-oriented, and they value that independence in some sense; as a Filipino, there is this expectation to care for our parents when they get old.”

The so-called Oxford study perpetuates the same kind of racist stereotyping that Asian women have faced for years: Wei Ming Dariotis, professor emeritus in Asian American studies from San Francisco State University, said that they have always been stereotyped as the domineering Dragon Lady or the subservient Madame Butterfly – “a fantasy of white domination over an Asian woman, as a symbol of domination over the country”.

But TikTok users don’t seem too concerned with this fetishisation and hypersexualisation of Asian women. “[Asian women still face] very real issues of colonisation and exploitation,” Charlie* says, citing the ongoing ‘passport bros’ phenomenon where white men travel specifically to Southeast Asian countries to find a partner. “But based on what I’m seeing on TikTok, it seems that [people] don’t care about these dynamics.”

Asian American men on TikTok are instead more offended by women’s exercise of free choice, seeing their personal preference as a racialised attack on their masculinity. “Asian American men are often seen as hyperfeminised compared to their white and Black counterparts, which deems them ‘lesser’ dating prospects among other races,” Dariotis said. “There is this misconception that because of this emasculation, only their fellow Asian women would date them.”

This is further reinforced by tropes in early 21st century media, where Chanthapan says that Asian males were often depicted as asexual ‘friend’ or ‘big brother’ figures and never the main love interest or the hero. “There have also never been any conversations with Asian men about how these tropes that have been fed to them have affected the way they view themselves,” she adds. She also notes that it’s only in recent years that Asian-led narratives have reached critical and commercial success in the West, with films like Crazy Rich Asians, Shang-Chi, and Everything Everywhere All At Once.

Although the issue has been a topic of contention for decades, Asian men – along with other young men across the world – are now in the midst of a masculinity crisis. “COVID stunted the emotional development of the average man, which has hampered their ability to have healthy relationships of whatever kind with women. So as a result, Asian women are becoming increasingly dehumanised and caricatured,” Balaji said. Rather than direct their vitriol towards the oppressive power structures that set them up for failure, Dariotis says Asian men believe it’s much easier to blame women instead. “Framing them as actors that lack agency serves the racist, colonialist project and keeps us from true liberation,” she says.

The reasons behind who we love and why we love them will vary from individual to individual. Academic studies can never neatly extrapolate all the intricacies of real-life relationships, and interracial dynamics will persist as long as people are free to act on their attraction. Rather than police those who were lucky enough to find their person, Dariotis says that much healing needs to be done with the Asian community. “At the root of this is the pain and fear of not being loved,” she says. “We need to understand who is feeding us this fear and telling us to fight one another, and hopefully come out of the other side as better people.”

*Name has been changed