Do sexual preferences make one a bigot?

Great Debates
221

The trope of the young man who’ll do anyone with a pulse no matter what the specifics is common in fiction and entertainment, but even there it is more often portrayed as a joke on the character, not as an universal absolute. Entertainment media also as mentioned tends to portray that as the young man wanting any attractive person they run into (whatever the writer/director/producer chooses to portray as “attractive”),

And the men who do not act up to the trope owe nobody an explanation of “why” nor proof that they are a larger or smaller group of the population.

Yep, several of us have touched on this at various points in the thread.

I mean, is the proposition “everyone’s a bigot”, then?

222

I think the biggest difference between non-professional interpersonal relationships and employment is that while every adult should have the right to earn a living (barring prison or severe enough disability), no one has any right to a sexual, romantic or any other kind of non-professional relationship with a person (except when it comes to some family type relationships, like parent-child). This is because of (intimate) bodily autonomy.

Therefore, a person can refuse to have sex with someone for any reason or no reason, with one possible reason as finding some facial feature unappealing. An anallogy would be something like not liking strawberries. A person is not bigoted towards strawberry farmers for not buying strawberries if they simply don’t like them.

It would be better for strawberry farmers if no one disliked strawberries as it would generally be better for ugly people that others wouldn’t find them too ugly to want to have sex with them (at least for free). Both may be unfortunate but neither are bigotry.

If your sexual preferenes are influenced in some way by bigotry like racism, working on become non-bigoted would be worthwhile, not because we care about some group getting more access to sex but because of the other harmful effects of racism.

There are can be no immoral reasons to refuse sex since a person should always be able to refuse it. So if being a bigot is immoral, sexual preferences cannot make one a bigot. There might be better and worse reasons for those sexual preferences but they are all valid reasons.

223

Fair enough, thanks for sharing. I can only remember one time in my life, and it was with my wife at the time because I was tired and annoyed that she came home way later than she said she would. But she kept bothering me until I just did it so she would shut up :slight_smile:

224

Right, you made two points.

Your two points, in my own words (based on posts #216-218):

  1. The right to refuse to hire a person is not absolute, the way the right to refuse consent is.
  2. The gynophobic man’s right to refuse to hire people is trumped by the woman’s right to be hired, because women are historically discriminated against in employment, whereas gynophobic men have historically not faced discrimination in the workplace due to male dominance of workplaces.

Now, you’ve nearly convinced me that aesthetic sexual preferences are justified and therefore not necessarily bigoted. I only have two lingering concerns.

A. While you are on very strong footing when it comes to acts of sex, I don’t think the right to refuse consent is so absolute the further removed you go. I wouldn’t say the right to refuse to go out to dinner is absolute like the right to refuse sex, it’s still pretty strong but not absolute. If you refuse to have date night at a place with Black people because Black people are a turn-off? That’s a you problem and you are the asshole. Moving further away from sex, the right to refuse to associate with a person in one’s social life because of mere sexual preferences is really really weak. It’s wrong to refuse to hang out with a Black person who wants to be your friend, just because you don’t find Black people sexually attractive.
B. You may have read Velocity’s linked article from post #2. The history of Black people in online dating obviously pales in comparison to the history of women in the workplace, but apparently there is discrimination there. Maybe thirty years from now there will be an established history of dating discrimination against Black people. Would that affect your opinion, or rather why wouldn’t it?

~Max

225

I disagree. Strongly. The right to refuse romantic contact of even a non-directly-sexual nature is paramount (even if it comes from a place of bigotry).

Yes, you’re the asshole in that situation, but you are allowed to be the asshole. Others are free to comment on your assholishness, but they are not allowed to remove that choice from you.

No argument there. But it’s wrong to refuse to hang out with anyone as friends because you don’t find them sexually attractive, whether that be Blacks, short people, or busty blondes. Or weird and stupid, would be a different way of putting it without the overt moral slant.

Why should it, and why wait 30 years, the discrimination is already established to my satisfaction. That there is an explanation for the behaviour of most people in no way invalidates the possible existence of purely aesthetic reasons. We know this because of all the other purely aesthetic concerns that do come into play, like people turned off by tattoos or dyed hair or clothing choices.

226

( even if it comes from a place of bigotry)

It’s been a few days, but where I wrote “Black”, pretend I had written dark skin. My mistake there.

Perhaps I didn’t explain the scenario I had in mind well enough. I am imagining myself thinking dark skin is really unattractive, having a light-skinned date, and refusing to go to a restaurant with dark-skinned waiters/patrons because it will totally ruin the romantic vibe for me.

Of course, I am absolutely the master of my own evening plans. The question is whether I am morally justified in exercising that right. If I am justified in changing my plans because I find dark skin aesthetically disgusting, that decision cannot be bigoted.

Okay, so your point about the woman’s right to be hired in the workplace - while valid - is kind of a wash when it comes to discriminating against dark skin color in dating. Those two situations are similar when it comes to the historical disadvantage aspect.

~Max

227

The point is that in one case the historic disadvantage outweighs the aesthetic choice (if you can call misogyny that) and in the other case, it does not, because of the different spheres of intimacy involved. I can be morally in the right overriding the misogynist in a way I can not with the skin colour bigot. And note that that applies too to a skin colour bigot in the workplace.

228

the op is just like asking when does a sexual preference turn into a fetish…

229

Only if we’re talking some hypothetical alien world where the beings there have aesthetic opinions that are not created by culture

In humans, on the other hand, that is not the case. Aesthetic preferences are almost entirely created by culture. If someone finds darker skin aesthetically unattractive, that is due to being part of a culture where that is taught or treated as the norm.

I will again point to my own personal experience. I used to first thing I was not attracted to black women. Then I later thought that I was only attracted to lighter skinned black women. But, because I kept being exposed to attractive black women, that changed. If this was some pure aesthetic preference, not caused by my culture, this should not be possible.

And I do not seem at all to be an outlier. When you look at people who seem to have these racial or color-based preferences, it very much seems like they are mostly not exposed to alternatives. Unlike with gender-based attraction, there does not seem to be any innate aspect to these aesthetic preferences. It is not something that can’t be changed.

And apparently I need to argue what I’ve left unsaid before, based on other posts in this thread. If something is in fact motivated by racism, and we have the ability to overcome that, then there is a moral responsibility to do so. No, no individual person is entitled to have sex with any other individual. But if a person rejects people because of racism or colorism or any other form of bigotry, that is wrong. That is harmful, even without there being such an obligation. It’s not about that particular individual.

This is, in fact, true if sexism is the issue. However, we know that sexism, whether individual or cultural, is not the overwhelming reason why someone has a gender-based sexual or romantic preference. There really is something innate. I’m all for saying that someone who is bisexual but rejects one sex due to sexism should fix this about themselves, but that just generally is not the case. The misogynist’s sexuality is so strong it tends to override their bigotry towards women when it comes to attraction. So bigotry is not generally the issue in this particular case. But this is the
exception, not the rule.

Bigotry is wrong at a fundamental level. There is no case of harmless bigotry. There is no such thing as harmless racism or harmless colorism or harmless sexism. We all have an ethical duty to remove the influence of these things our lives, and to push for a culture where such is not accepted.

I do not agree with the idea that there is no great harm if people of a particular race is generally treated as less desirable as a sexual partner by another race or races.

Hence my argument that, if you categorically reject a particular race or color of skin, there is a problem. It may be direct racism. Or it may be aesthetics informed by society’s racism. Either way, it’s still something we as a society should not want to promote. Our goal ultimately is to eliminate bigotry, after all.

(You may say it will never entirely happen, but that’s always the case with things that are morally wrong. It doesn’t mean we don’t try to get as close as we can.)

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Humans are not just the products of their culture, or we wouldn’t be individuals.

I disagree. Aesthetic preferences arise out of an interaction between culture and the individual psyche.

I acknowledge that that is almost always the case. But I believe that there can be an individual aesthetics that finds darker skin unattractive, without the cultural baggage, just like all the other aesthetic preferences people have when it comes to sexual attractiveness. I mean, why prefer redheads? Or brunettes? Or freckles? Or some kind of tattoos and not others? Those are appearance-based and yet not cultural norms.

Your personal experience is irrelevant for deciding what is possible. I didn’t say anything about your skin colour preference being purely aesthetic.

That doesn’t mean it can’t be aesthetics. Aesthetics are developed, not innate. Newborn babies don’t cry if you put them in the wrong colour onesie.

How, exactly, are you proposing we “overcome” a bigotry-based entrenched sexual preference? Other than indicating our own opposition to it in some form, I mean.

I’d argue that history argues exactly the opposite, that some elements of expressed sexual preference are cultural, not innate. Man-boy love was a thing in more than one historic locale way beyond the degree of homosexuality we consider “innate”, for instance. And nobody develops a preference for lotus feet without cultural conditioning.

You’re preaching to the choir here.

And I haven’t said there is. I don’t think you understand my argument, if you think I think there isn’t harm there.

Sure, but it’s not one we can actually do anything direct about for the individual. We can’t force people to have romantic involvement against their will.All we can do is change society to make such bigotry untenable.

231

That’s probably true to an extent. Although if it’s just about exposure, is that really racism? Probably it is if you’re talking about what is shown in the media, rather than who you meet in daily life.

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). This explains why difficulties finding a date can vary between the sexes for people of the same race.

And it can’t all be about culture anyway, since lots of people have preferences that don’t line up with the most common ones. What causes that?

232

Okay, I get that.

And when we’re talking about actual sex, I agree that a person has an absolute moral right to refuse. But in other situations I don’t think it’s moral to refuse a non-sexual or possibly less-sexual act on the basis of aesthetic preference alone. I’m not saying it’s more moral to force someone to act against their will, just that it is wrong to refuse in some situations where actual sex is not involved, on the sole basis of aesthetic preference for a certain skin color.

I already gave this example,

I am imagining myself thinking dark skin is really unattractive, having a light-skinned date, and refusing to go to a restaurant with dark-skinned waiters/patrons because it will totally ruin the romantic vibe for me.

A second example might be if a friend in distress wants to hug you, but they happen to have the wrong skin color. Yes, it is more wrong to hug you without your consent. But it is still very wrong for you to withhold that consent solely on the basis of skin color - you would not be justified and withholding consent in that case is bigoted.

~Max

233

Didn’t @MrDibble already say that the latter is bigoted, but that nevertheless the state/society isn’t justified in overriding your preferences in the personal sphere the way it is with employment?

And these examples seem awfully implausible. Are they meant to be analogous to refusing to go on a date in a gay bar because you’d find the PDAs off-putting, and not wanting to hug a gay friend?

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I didn’t say they had an absolute moral right, just that they had the right. Morality doesn’t come into it - their motivation could be moral or immoral, they still have a right of refusal. Having the right of refusal doesn’t confer any moral worth on the refusee. Their refusing is not in-and-of-itself a positive moral exercise.

I didn’t say it was moral. Merely a right. Freedom of intimate association is a fundamental human right, personal autonomy being the only one that even remotely surpasses it, IMO.

You may never have been under a system that limited your specific freedom of intimate association. I’ve lived under a couple, and they were all abhorrent. Denying that right just because you judge a person immoral would be equally abhorrent to me. Even if that person is racist scum.

Wrong, as in others can feel free to judge me for it, I have no quibble with.

Wrong, as in I can be forced against my will, not a damn.

235

I don’t believe so. Our recent debate has been whether sexual preferences on skin color are necessarily bigoted. I have admitted that in the case of actual sex acts, preference for skin color is not necessarily bigoted. But MrDibble and I are now, I think, trying to convince me that there are other contexts where preference for skin color is not necessarily bigoted.

Admittedly, but so is a person whose sexual preference for certain skin colors isn’t plain bigotry.

~Max

236

I have a personal preference for certain specific skin tones, and it is in no way grounded in bigotry. Nothing implausible about it. Granted, they are at various extremes of the range of possible tones, but they exclude others.

I haven’t mentioned this in the discussion about aesthetics because
a) I didn’t want to personalize it; and
b) very dark brown is one the tones I like, so didn’t match the hypothetical (The others are bronzed and pale+freckles)
but it did inform my opinion on aesthetics and does speak to the plausibility of having purely aesthetic preferences, so I think it worth mentioning now.

237

I don’t see that at all. Many people have preferences for certain hair colours (I do myself), or different features within people of the same race, and that obviously isn’t due to bigotry. It’s probable that some skin colour preferences are caused by bigotry, or to your amount of exposure to people with different skin colours, which could be related to societal bigotry, but it’s not inevitable that that is the case.

238

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.

ETA:

~Max

239

I had thought we were talking about moral rights all along, since at least this:

If a person’s skin color aesthetic preference is immoral, if not morally justified, then that satisfies the ‘unjustified’ criteria for bigotry. The people who judge such a preference will say it is bigoted.

~Max

240

No, no different.

But the question we’ve been addressing, I thought, was not “is having a skin colour preference a strong indication of bigotry”, it’s “is having a skin colour preference necessarily bigotry”. And the answer there is “No”.

I was only making the moral right argument for the right of women to employment. I added the moral part there for emphasis.