# Do sexual preferences make one a bigot? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 12, 2021, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-sexual-preferences-make-one-a-bigot/948544 "2021-08-12T20:08:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 13
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2021, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-sexual-preferences-make-one-a-bigot/948544/241 "2021-09-03T15:08:59Z")
The question _we’ve_ been addressing, you’re right. But I was just now (second half of post #235, also post #238) responding to **DemonTree** who wrote that our examples were implausible. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2021, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-sexual-preferences-make-one-a-bigot/948544/242 "2021-09-03T15:12:14Z")
But like my personal example shows, aesthetic skin colour preferences _aren’t_ implausible. And if they are non-bigoted for any one set of skin tones, I’d argue that _the possibility exists_ of them being non-bigoted for any other arbitrary subset of tones. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2021, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-sexual-preferences-make-one-a-bigot/948544/243 "2021-09-03T15:19:11Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > But like my personal example shows, aesthetic skin colour preferences _aren’t_ implausible. I don’t think aesthetic skin colour preferences are implausible. I think @Max_S’s example of objecting to the skin colour of _other patrons or waiters_ while on a date, as opposed to the person you’re actually dating, is implausible. That’s just bizarre. ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2021, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-sexual-preferences-make-one-a-bigot/948544/244 "2021-09-03T15:25:01Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > Say what you will, if someone says they prefer pale skin to the exclusion of all other colors, that’s a big red flag. Maybe the situation is different in South Africa or Great Britain. Maybe - but that’s not the only skin color preference that a person can have. I know more than one person whose preferred skin tones might appear in almost any group - I’m not sure how that can be bigotry. They aren’t attracted exclusively to blacks or Hispanics or whites - they might be attracted to members of any of those groups who has a skin tone in the preferred range. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2021, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-sexual-preferences-make-one-a-bigot/948544/245 "2021-09-03T15:37:04Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > Say what you will, if someone says they prefer pale skin to the exclusion of all other colors, that’s a big red flag. Maybe the situation is different in South Africa or Great Britain. Possibly. AFAIK there is more ethnic diversity in the US than in the UK, and I suspect that makes a difference. But still, not everyone develops this preference (I didn’t) so who knows? ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2021, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-sexual-preferences-make-one-a-bigot/948544/246 "2021-09-03T16:31:37Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > But like my personal example shows I don’t want to offend you, or violate any rule by arguing that you are personally bigoted, so unless you’re explicitly okay with it I won’t go into your personal example. Not going to a restaurant because patrons and waiters have dark skin and would ruin the romance is a little bit out there, but I feel like it was not unheard of before/during the civil rights movement. Mind you white people wouldn’t want to use the same toilets or showers as Blacks, or even occupy the same beach. And restaurants were actually segregated. But the example of hugging or not hugging someone in distress based on whether you find them sexually attractive is plausible, I think. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2021, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-sexual-preferences-make-one-a-bigot/948544/247 "2021-09-03T16:33:33Z")
Every person has the moral duty to search within themselves for possible bigotries and purge these from within. They also have the moral duty to not treat other people disrespectfully, not waste people’s time, etc. In other words, a moral duty to not be an asshole (it should be left unsaid that standing up to bullies and other assholes is not being an asshole). If one has some physical romantic preference, regardless of what causes it, one shouldn’t waste others’ time – in other words, the moral thing re: dating is to not go on a date with someone (including going out to dinner or whatever) one knows there’s no chance of a relationship with. At the same time, if that preference is caused by bigotry, the moral thing to do is to try and kill the bigotry within one’s self. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2021, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-sexual-preferences-make-one-a-bigot/948544/248 "2021-09-03T17:50:05Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > But there are some aspects that seem to be more universal across cultures, like the preference of women for taller men, and the common preference of men for women with lighter skin (or lighter hair in Caucasians). The former example does make sense as a sort of “cultural universal”, given that in all human populations men tend to be taller than women on average, and human cultures generally tend to prescriptively normalize the way things usually are into the way things are supposed to be. The latter I find a little more suspect, given the massive global reach of European colonialism and its concomitant racist cultural biases over the past five hundred years or so. A whole lot of cultures have absorbed the notion that lighter skin is better because European cultural imperialism told them so. In particular, I think light-hair preferences among Caucasians are likely to be strongly influenced by the same racist biases that influence light-skin preferences. It would be a whole doctoral dissertation to try to figure out how various non-white peoples really viewed light skin, light hair, light eyes, in the absence of white imperial culture. I can think of a few scraps of evidence suggesting that lighter wasn’t always perceived as better: e.g., the Indian poetical trope in Sanskrit works like [that of the mid-first-millennium poet Dandin](https://archive.org/details/dli.bengal.10689.16413/page/n383) praising the beauty of pure black hair which is “not brown even at the tips”; and the reference by Lawrence of Arabia in the Seven Pillars of Wisdom to an old Arab tribal woman telling him that his “horrible blue eyes” looked “like the sky shining through the eye-sockets of an empty skull”. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2021, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-sexual-preferences-make-one-a-bigot/948544/249 "2021-09-03T18:00:38Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > light-hair preferences among Caucasians Is this an attested trend? ~Max ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2021, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-sexual-preferences-make-one-a-bigot/948544/250 "2021-09-03T18:11:06Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > Is this an attested trend? I don’t know, it was DemonTree who said that. There is of course the learned opinion that [gentlemen prefer blondes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentlemen_Prefer_Blondes), 😄 but I don’t know whether DemonTree had in mind any more scientific evidence for that assertion. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2021, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-sexual-preferences-make-one-a-bigot/948544/251 "2021-09-03T18:49:37Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > I don’t want to offend you, or violate any rule by arguing that you are personally bigoted, so unless you’re explicitly okay with it I won’t go into your personal example. No, let’s, it’s why I brought it up. What’s bigoted about finding a range of skin tones attractive? ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2021, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-sexual-preferences-make-one-a-bigot/948544/252 "2021-09-03T18:52:07Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > A whole lot of cultures have absorbed the notion that lighter skin is better because European cultural imperialism told them so. A lot of other cultures had that prejudice before they ever were colonized - [colourism was a thing in Asia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrimination_based_on_skin_color#East_Asia,_South_Asia,_Southeast_Asia) way before the Silk Road was a goat track. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2021, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-sexual-preferences-make-one-a-bigot/948544/253 "2021-09-03T18:57:22Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > [colourism was a thing in Asia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrimination_based_on_skin_color#East_Asia,_South_Asia,_Southeast_Asia) way before the Silk Road was a goat track I guess in the somewhat “cultural universal” sense of urbanized societies in general idealizing the complexions of leisured classes that didn’t have to work outdoors in the sun. But what I’m not convinced of is the notion that inter-ethnic skin tone differences were perceived in the same way, prior to colonial-era racism. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2021, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-sexual-preferences-make-one-a-bigot/948544/254 "2021-09-03T19:09:41Z")
Indian skin tone prejudices were/are inter-ethnic, and I’d not be surprised if the same weren’t somewhat true of much of Asia - China, for instance, the Han are from the more northerly Yellow River Basin, the Manchu from even more northerly, and the minority ethnicities they dominated are from further south. In a lot of other places, there’s a Negrito or Austronesian indigene population. And even in a place like Japan, there were prehistoric Austronesian groups. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2021, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-sexual-preferences-make-one-a-bigot/948544/255 "2021-09-03T19:21:33Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Indian skin tone prejudices were/are inter-ethnic That is certainly true now, but I just don’t know how much it was true pre-colonialism. Confounding factors of caste and language make it more complicated, of course. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2021, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-sexual-preferences-make-one-a-bigot/948544/256 "2021-09-03T19:54:11Z")
Obviously colonialism didn’t help, but the standard argument that it didn’t exist pre-colonialism - that the Vedas feature dark-skinned heroes - seems a bit thin to me, in the face of the existence of caste and N-S ethnic differences stretching back that far. ---
**Author:** ![Summerday](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/22d042/32.png) [@Summerday](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Summerday)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2021, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-sexual-preferences-make-one-a-bigot/948544/257 "2021-09-03T20:47:19Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > Not going to a restaurant because patrons and waiters have dark skin and would ruin the romance is a little bit out there, but I feel like it was not unheard of before/during the civil rights movement. Definitely unheard of. Waiters, busboys, doormen, bathroom attendants, the musicians, and cooks/chefs were often times black before the Civil Rights movement. It wasn’t uncommon for the entire staff to be African American in a restaurant where black people weren’t allowed to be patrons. White people often went to black nightclubs and black restaurants before the Civil Rights movement. One of the issues raised at that time by black people was “they can go to our clubs and restaurants, but we can’t go to theirs.” ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2021, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-sexual-preferences-make-one-a-bigot/948544/258 "2021-09-04T14:08:56Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > I don’t know, it was DemonTree who said that. There is of course the learned opinion that [gentlemen prefer blondes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentlemen_Prefer_Blondes), 😄 but I don’t know whether DemonTree had in mind any more scientific evidence for that assertion. Blonde women are [more likely to be approached in a club](https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/why-bad-looks-good/202002/do-men-really-prefer-blondes) (but blond men are _not_ more successful in asking women to dance), they [earn higher salaries](https://econpapers.repec.org/article/eeeecolet/v_3a108_3ay_3a2010_3ai_3a1_3ap_3a10-12.htm), and blonde waitresses [get more tips](http://www.aabri.com/manuscripts/141934.pdf). Lighter hair colours in women are associated with [perceptions of youth, health and attractiveness](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224545.2017.1395791). After reading about the salary bonus I’m kind of tempted to try going blonde, lol. ---
**Author:** ![actualliberalnotoneofthose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e79b87/32.png) [@actualliberalnotoneofthose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/actualliberalnotoneofthose)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2021, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-sexual-preferences-make-one-a-bigot/948544/259 "2021-09-04T19:33:50Z")
I’m a greyromantic hetero-demisexual cis man he/him, at least that’s about the closest I can get to putting an accurate label on myself. In other words, I guess as “sexual preferences” go I’m attracted to only women, but rarely and 99.999% of the time non-physical factors. I have a lot of acquaintances all over the place and I spend a good deal of time on forums related to aro-ace stuff and “queer” stuff. I have come across some truly absurd things, such as “gay” men telling other gay men they are bigots if they do not want to have PIV with hairy mtf trans women. As well as the typical shaming of straight men who would not have sex with trans women (pre or post up and regardless of presentation). Of course a lot of identification stuff comes down to however people want to call and present themselves, and I’m fine with that. If you are a hairy burly person with a beard, a penis and testicles, and look like a man to everyone else but call yourself a woman, I have no problem with that. I am not a bigot if I don’t want to have sex with you, and for me personally the presence of your male-looking physical traits wouldn’t even be the primary reason for that. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2021, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-sexual-preferences-make-one-a-bigot/948544/260 "2021-09-07T20:40:07Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > I think @Max_S’s example of objecting to the skin colour of _other patrons or waiters_ while on a date, as opposed to the person you’re actually dating, is implausible. > [@Summerday](#): > > Definitely unheard of. Waiters, busboys, doormen, bathroom attendants, the musicians, and cooks/chefs were often times black before the Civil Rights movement. It wasn’t uncommon for the entire staff to be African American in a restaurant where black people weren’t allowed to be patrons. You are both right, and I withdraw that example as too far-fetched. Thinking about it now, if a person objects to the presence of dark-skinned patrons, it probably has nothing to do with sexual preferences. ~Max [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-sexual-preferences-make-one-a-bigot/948544.md?page=12) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-sexual-preferences-make-one-a-bigot/948544.md?page=14)