Rick Lee isn’t your run-of-the-mill pornographer. For one thing, it’s not his day job. He prefers to think of himself as a sexual adventurer who happens to record his exploits. Videos of his sexual encounters with about 600-700 women are on his Asian-man.com porn site.
We first learned of Lee back in 2004 through an interview he had done for Masters of the Pillow, a one-hour documentary by James C. Hou featuring a porn film project undertaken by UC Davis Professor Darrell Y. Hamamoto. Goldsea had detailed that project in the article Liberating the Asian Libido, including a brief writeup on Lee.
“My sex life is what I would call ‘diversified’” Lee said on that occasion. “I have friends who are swingers, adult models, and casual dates that I meet online, etc. Many girls on my site are amateur models trying to get into the adult business but there are also swingers, professional porn actresses, girlfriends, dates, etc.
“I don’t choose women to have sex with based on their ethnicity. I choose women who are ok with having sex on camera and they happen to be mostly white. But because they are mostly white, I think it does help the straight Western Asian man image and I feel, like Dr Hamamoto does, that we are emasculated by the media and that we suffer more negative sexual stereotypes than any other race. By being with women of other ethnicities, it brings a bit more balance to the sexual equation and it helps assert the Asian male sexuality.”
As evidenced by the recent Q&A below, Lee’s views on the Asian American male image haven’t changed much, but his life has undergone a dramatic turn.
Goldsea: What motivated you to start Asian-Man.com?
Rick Lee: I noticed there was a lack of straight Asian men in adult entertainment and basically wanted to produce something Asian men (in the west) could relate to. Also, I was tired of all the negative sexual stereotypes Asian men had and I wanted to provide a more balanced view of Asian men. When I first came up with the site, the only Asian men you could find on adult videos were gay men and lady boys.
GS: Is your site a statement, a hobby or a business?
RL: When I first started, my intentions were to just put images of straight Asian men having sex. I was really tired of the stereotypes so in that sense you could say it was more of a statement than anything else. As the site progressed and gained notoriety it became more of a business operation as there were significant costs involved in running the site. However, I always kept it personal and always stayed on the message. My goal to this day remains the same — to help promote the straight Asian image. Money is pretty much last on my list to this day for the site.
GS: You mentioned that porn acting and the site are not your occupation. What is your day job?
RL: Well, first off I never really considered myself a “porn actor”. I shared parts of my sex life with the public but I was never an actor for hire or anything like that. When I started I used to be a business consultant in Silicon Valley but I quit the corporate life in 2002. Right now, I am an investor and have various business interests in different areas.
GS: Is Rick Lee your real name?
RL: This can’t be a serious question :)
GS: Tell us about any experiences that helped motivate you to start Asian-Man.
RL: I’ve always loved women and I’ve always been fortunate in my love life. And when the internet came, I saw it as an opportunity to share my lifestyle with others and show that a regular Asian guy like me can have an extraordinary sex life. I noticed that many Asian American guys had low sexual self esteem and this was my way to help improve that.
GS: Tell us about the first tasks you had to accomplish to get Asian-Man started.
RL: Learning how to build a website. I had everything else I needed to put up the website when I first conceptualized the site, the girls, the cameras, etc. So I pretty much had to learn how to do websites on my own and that was perhaps the most challenging task. Next
