In my upcoming novel “The Rice Queen Spy” I pay homage to a British Caucasian homosexual who spent his entire life having sexual encounters only with Asian men. In essence, “No Caucasian Needs to Run” was his motto. A rice queen is a black or Caucasian gay man who is wholly or partially devoted to Asian men. It’s something of a slang term, as is the term potato queen, which means an Asian man fond of white men.
I have even heard Asian men who had a soft spot for black men called sweet potato queens or yam queens. Do not blame me. This is all part of the jargon of gay life. Gay terminology and slang have always been a lively and rapidly evolving feature of the gay subculture.
Until the mid-1980s, before there was a national crackdown, rice queens went to the Philippines in large numbers. For many decades, Thailand has been the favorite place of the queens of rice. Sex tours to Thailand have been organized not only for gay men, but also for large numbers of straight men seeking female sexual partners. Often the sexual partners are too young. Many gay Caucasians have permanently moved to Thailand due to the availability of sexual encounters with Thais.
After World War II, Japan was a haven for rice queens. Then, when the economy improved markedly, there was a decline in the availability of Japanese men for the rice queens. Also in those early postwar years there was still a great reverence for the elderly; that’s why so many older western gays felt at home there. The compassionate attitude of the young towards the elderly has become something of a victim of youth culture, westernization and now globalization.
That leads to a conclusion. Many gay men became or were labeled rice queens because they went to Asian countries where economies and poverty forced some of the men into the sex trade. Caucasian homosexuals went to these poor Asian countries because sexual partners were available and abundant. Not all Asian-Caucasian gay sex is financial, but a sizable portion is.
But for a rice queen, why an Asian man? Numerous reasons are given: Asian men are less hairy, have smoother, silkier skin; many are smaller and less intimidating and threatening than white men; they are better lovers, more accommodating; they are often willing to play a less than dominant role, to be more subservient to their Caucasian partners; ascetically they are more attractive; if they ask for money, it is often to buy food and to support their families because they are in dire need of financial assistance; gay Asian men often look much younger than they actually are; there is less bs with asian men, and so on.
Some of this may be rationalization. Sex and sexual motivation is often a maze and maze of contradictions and obfuscations. It often comes down to a simple “I feel good.”
In my most recent novel, “The Daemon in Our Dreams,” I dealt with the phenomenon of the rice queen, but in a somewhat tangential way, and in my first novel, the terrorist thriller “Nine Lives Too Many,” I dealt with it without absolutely. However, in “The Rice Queen Spy” it is, in many ways, the central theme of the book. It is what makes the hero tick, the motivating force of his life. If you read the book, you’ll see the truth of the statement: Philip Croft (the hero) wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for his rice queen persona. (For a complete discussion of my novels, please visit my website at http://www.senneffhouse.com).
The thoroughbred rice queen makes no apologies for being a rice queen; on the contrary, he is proud of it and boasts of it. Lifelong loving relationships have been formed between Caucasian and Asian gay men.
Often what the queen of rice finds in Asia is the young man who passes himself off as gay for economic reasons. A gay strip club in Bangkok had over thirty straight men entertaining and dating gay patrons. Their jobs involved a great deal of acting and role-playing. There’s even an informal school for scammers to learn what to say and how to act and act. One thing they learn to do is turn their tummy in what some people think is a provocative way.
The rice queen may often want to separate the scammers from those men who are genuinely gay. The percentage or proportion of homosexuals in the populations of Western and Asian countries is probably about the same.
Since the 1980s in some of the Asian countries where there was a lot of commercial sex and the mixing of Westerners with the indigenous population there has been a serious HIV/AIDS epidemic. The spread of the disease has been acute among gay con artists and their families. This consequence of sexual activity was completely unexpected and devastating.
Ever since the first rice queen saw her first love object, this syndrome has been growing, luring strangers with questions about the meaning of it all. The explanation is really simple. It is the desire and need of a human being to find love, compassion, friendship, kinship, and sexual gratification from another human being. Love makes the world go round and in the end, love will conquer all. The true queen of rice is a mistress, plain and simple.
