So I know I already mentioned this Gawker piece but I just went back to read the comments, and holy shit:

“Asian is the last stop before Gay.” #

“My wife already knows when she’s tired of me and kicks me out that my next wife will come from Korea or Sri Lanka.” #

“Mr. Butterfly Champion gets his Madame Butterfly*.” #

“He so horny**!” #

“White nerds dating Asian girls is a trend. I don’t think it’s offensive to point it out.” #

SERIOUSLY?!

• My friends and I make plenty of offensive comments about each other’s race/sexual orientation/etc. but we do so in private. So though I’ve been referred to as a Madame Butterfly, these things are said in jest and directed toward me specifically by my friends specifically, not directed at an entire group of people by anonymous commenters who don’t know them.
• Some argue that there’s truth to some stereotypes like “Asians are the last stop to Gay”. However, I can think of lots of stereotypes out there (“Blacks are thugs,” “Gays are diseased,” “Fat people are lazy”, etc.) that shouldn’t ever be said out loud. Why? Oh, that’s right. Because they’re stereotypes, which by definition, means that they have no empirical basis.
• Interracial relationships are not “trends”. Trends go out of style. I’m pretty sure this isn’t just a hot commodity for the season.
• People have no filter on the Internet, especially not on websites like Gawker, because they mistake “being offensive” for “being controversial”. A racist remark isn’t snarky humor, it’s just racist.

Call this an overreaction, but I’m seriously disturbed by some of these comments. The Gawker article is offensive, sure, but considering the website’s habitual outrage at other people’s displays of ignorance, I’m going to chalk this up to a poor attempt at humor. The commenters, though? I guess they demonstrate that some people out there — educated or not — clearly need a crash course on racism and its seemingly harmless manifestations.

* For those unfamiliar with the opera, Madame Butterfly depicts the relationship between a condescending American and a self-sacrificing, exoticized Japanese woman, who gets abandoned (after marriage, mind you) for a new and improved American wife.

** A reference to the Vietnamese prostitute in Full Metal Jacket. Everyone’s heard “Me so horny. Me love you long time”; no one ever knows where it’s from. Now you do.