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Comment by GFK_of_xmaspast | Hacker News Reader

I'm gonna assume you and Paul12345534 aren't white dudes b/c that'd be a behavior for creeps.

I'm a white dude. Why is that creepy? Because I'm dating someone of a different race/culture? She's exactly my age, college educated, speaks excellent English, makes more money than me, etc. I was explicitly trying to minimize any sort of power differential (which is part of why I looked online in the first place, the subset of women who are computer literate tend to be more affluent / socially mobile).

By the way, I live in Cambodia... what the fuck am I supposed to do? Not date anyone? I guarantee you I would be more likely to end up with a mismatch of power if I stuck strictly to IRL dating.

Not going to go into personal issues on an open forum :) but you're pretty quick with your assumptions. The gf isn't poor and only trying to escape and we don't have a large gape.

ugghh, typing before morning coffee, I meant age large age gap hahahha

There's a big difference between dating someone specifically because she's Cambodian and dating someone who happens to be Cambodian. If I read the GP right, he's talking about the latter.

Is there anything actually wrong with dating specifically because they're Cambodian? Anymore than dating someone specifically because they have a certain body type, or certain hair color, or certain sports team affiliation?

Limiting your dating pool to just Cambodians is just as stupid as limiting the pool to just blondes or just Yankees fans. Because in the long run, these things don't matter. Unless you're a special little snowflake who just can bare to sleep with a Mets fan.

I can see body type making a difference, because it's important to find your mate attractive. But even then, don't harp on it too much. I know a guy who refuses to date any girl who isn't a size zero. Unsurprisingly he gets no dates. If he just gave other girls a chance, he might discover that he's attracted to a wider variety of body types than he thinks he is.

I agree with everything you said, but it seems as though dating someone because they're Cambodian is often judged more harshly than dating someone because they're blonde. Yet, from my uninformed guess, I'd speculate that people from a specific country have more specific cultural or personality traits than people of a certain hair color or sports fandom. For example, despite millions of exceptions on each side, Australians are more extroverted and gregarious than Swiss. I can imagine an extremely extroverted Swiss person trying to find a similar companion saying, "I'd like to date an Australian person" instead of the much more complicated process of finding similar personality types among their compatriots.

I happened to have made hundreds of Filipino friends online beforehand, the Philippines speaks English, there's a large % of Catholics, and I find Asians attractive in general. I don't live near a big city and I was looking for someone who's a devout Catholic, educated, reasonably attractive, without excess baggage (kids, prior marriage, etc) so it seemed like a reasonable choice.

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