About

AMWF is an internet slang and acronym that stands for "Asian Male White Female". Online, it is used to describe interracial couples that consist of an East Asian man and a White woman. Memes about AMWF often contain stereotypes, racism, raceplay or race-bait.

Origin

The origin of the acronym is unknown.^[1] Its origin is most likely from Instagram, where it is routinely used as an hashtag by AMWF couples, which over the years have amounted to over 121,000 posts.^[2]

History

Although it's impossible to trace historically to the first instances of what can be considered in the modern era as an AMWF relationship, an early example can be made of the famous Siamese Twins, Chang and Eng Bunker, who married in 1843 Adelaide and Sarah Yates, two White sisters from North Carolina, USA.^[3] It was described as one of the first legal marriages between people of European and Asian descent in America.^[4]

Accounts of marriages between White Russian women and ethnic Chinese men can be found in the accounts of American writer Olive Gilbreath. Gilbreath described her sighting of this phenomenon in the city of Harbin, in the 1920s, however she attributed it to Russian poverty and their degrading social status during that time period.^[5] In 1930, the Watsonville Riots started against the (overwhelmingly male^[6]) Filipino immigrants in California, as hundreds of White men reached in protest a newly opened dance hall where Filipino men were seen dancing with White women. In the following days, several Filipino immigrants were beaten, dragged or killed by White mobs.^[7][8] As response to the growing tensions, in 1934, California's government restricted the number of Filipino immigrants allowed in the United States to just 50 people per year.^[9]

Reception

Other than Instagram, AMWF couples can be found showing themselves or talk the topics of their interracial relationships on specifically dedicated Reddit communities,^[10][11] as well as on their YouTube channels.^[12] A popular AMWF couple that has over 278,000 followers on Instagram became the only of its kind on the platform to have a verified account: Sasha and Jay Song, a Belarusian/Russian-Korean^[13] married couple that is known simply as "International couple".^[14][15] On March 5th, 2022, Medium user Kristy Kendall, described her obsession (as a White woman) towards Asian men to be connected with her autism.^[16] Her article received over 1,600 claps in 10 months. Although not completely absent of lolcows in its circles^{[17][18][19][20]} and abusive incidents,^[21] the AMWF "scene" enjoys a rather peaceful reputation online, with even racist and alt-right spaces like /pol/ often not being concerned by the phenomenon, sometimes belittling and mocking it in the chances of it being used as bait in off-topic threads.^[22][23] However, as a type of relationship, AMWF is often worshipped or idealized toxically by Asian male-dominated communities on the internet, or Asian incels in general.^[24] One such example is the popular Instagram page Asians With Attitudes, whose admin made and shared various blatantly biased pro-AMWF memes, with the intent of pitting up the pairing against WMAF relationships.^{[25][26][27][28][29][30][31]} A collection of this type of posts made by the Instagram account was put in a single meme (shown, below) and shared as a main topic on lolcow.farm in 2021, and in the thread itself, other similar spaces were found on Reddit.^[32]

On Quora, the rumors of AMWF being commonplace in Russia or Eastern Europe, involving men coming from China,^[33] caught the attention of Alexander Novikov, a Russian Armed Forces officer who debunked the myth with statistics, adding that it was likely created by Chinese diaspora in America and Canada who have "lots of difficulty with the local women".^[34]

Spread

On December 22nd, 2016, a meme about two mainstream fictional AMWF relationships, one from The Walking Dead and another from the Fast And Furious franchises was shared by a Facebook page named Asians Never Die (shown below, left).^[35] The post received over 4,100 likes and 1,300 shares in 6 years. On March 24th, 2022, a meme featuring Taiwanese-American film director Justin Lin on the topic of AMWF relationships in his movies was shared on 4chan, /tv/ board.^[36]

On May 3rd, 2018, Kaziah Daum liked an AMWF meme on Twitter referencing the recent controversy surrounding her prom dress. The meme itself (shown, below) received 24 likes and 6 retweets 4 years.^[37]

On February 28th, 2020, DavidSo uploaded on his YouTube channel a video titled "Asian Incels and the Obsession with White Women". The video received over 103,000 views and 2,100 likes in 2 years.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References