Precisely. Bigotry can’t be the unforgivable, original sin if it’s ubiquitous.
I can’t agree with those saying you like who you like, as I’ve seen who I find attractive expand as I’ve grown older, and even sometimes with deliberate exposure. When I was younger, I would have said I rarely found black women attractive, and when I did, they had to be lighter skinned. I remember when attractive to me meant skinny. I actually can think of people who I thought were just kinda ugly as a kid and now find gorgeous. I’ve gotten more used to trans women voices—as in, literally their voices. My brain used to interpret them as male, but does so much less now.
But the one thing I have never been able to change is that I am not attracted to the male gender. It just doesn’t work for me. And the science seems to back up that this can’t be changed.
That’s not to say you have to change how you feel. My argument has been that it’s only bigoted if you categorically dismiss people with x trait. I am of the opinion that, if you are not bigoted, then there will inherently be someone with that trait that you will find attractive, even if it’s in spite of that trait.
The sole exception is gender.
Do you mean the male sex here, or just specifically gender?
Sorry, that didn’t come through at all.
We can certainly act less bigoted. We can self-analyze and reduce our fear of the other. But I was considering eliminating bigotry, and that I doubt. Reaction time tests have shown that even those who display no overt signs of bias are still biased. So, the best way of being less bigoted to others is not trying to convince ourselves we’ve reduced or eliminated our internal biases, but admitting we have them and rejecting our first impulses.
I grew up in liberal NY with a lot of diversity for the time. (The '50s.) My father worked for the UN. Yet I was surrounded by stereotypes and what was acceptable then isn’t today. I hate to imagine what people who grew up in the middle of segregation had imprinted on them.
That, of course, is evidence that race is a social construct rather than innately biological. Back in the day the “white” Americans might have divided themselves into French, English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, Belgian, Spanish, German, etc. Even further back those Germans, rather than being generic Germans, would have been Vandals, Goths, Visigoths, Saxons, Angles, and so on. What if someone from one of those groups had asked the same question the OP asks when those divisions actually meant something? Or what about during the Roman times when, I assume, people from what is now England possibly felt like they were members of the same race as people from what is now Libya but a different race from people in what is now Germany?
This. One (sexual attraction based on what gender(s) you are attracted to) is mostly innate. The other (sexual attraction based on being attracted to people of a particular “race”) is learned.
I mean gender. Sure, it can be more complicated than that, as it get into a question of how you define sex. I could see an argument that making physical changes in your body actually changes your sex, since sex is not merely defined by chromosomes. However, I think most people tend to think of one’s sex as being what gender you were assigned at birth, so I prefer to use “gender” for what I’m describing here.
If I use “sex”, people might think I’m saying that it makes sense to not be attracted to a trans woman who is indistinguishable from a cis woman. That I believe is entirely cultural, in that you still think of them as male when they are in fact female. Sure, their genetics may be XY, but there are those who were assigned female at birth who have XY chromosomes.
There are various aspects of sexual attraction: visual, emotional, chemical (e.g. scent. These are likely what causes that “spark” feeling), etc. I think there are some traits that we innately find attractive, and that these correlate with gender as described above in those who are not pansexual. Since neither sex nor gender is entirely binary (there are 32 different characteristics that biologist use define sex), there’s going to be a spectrum.
That said, you could argue that the innate traits that I think we can’t change are attractions based on biology, and thus sex. I don’t, for instance, think I can make myself find a penis attractive. I can desensitize myself to it, but I can’t override that trait.
Then again, there sure are a lot of men who identity as straight who seem to have penis preferences in their porn, and consider them part of the enjoyment. So I’m not sure that my lack of attraction of them is the norm among straight men.
Decades ago, my then GF and I visited some friends at a ski resort. The couple were both ski instructors.
On one ride up the chair lift, I asked one of them whether or not he could tell at a glance who grew up skiing and who came to skiing later in life.
He said it was just about easy for him – the people who grew up skiing never had to think about what they were doing. It had become second nature.
Those who came to skiing, let’s say, past puberty could achieve similar proficiency to those who began as toddlers, but – in my friend’s mind – there was always a perceptible, if subtle, hesitation in those who took it up later.
They had to think before they could do – no matter how briefly.
I think there’s a similar usage distinction in 2nd languages – fluency vs. bilingual.
I think, for many, leaving that gut-level bias entirely behind – particularly for those who were ‘carefully taught’ – may never really happen, but translating it into the right action is a helluva lot better than not.
Sorry, no. There’s no get out of jail free card.
Thus the twisting and redefining of words.
thanks! I’ve just never heard someone say they weren’t attracted to a specific gender. As opposed to a specific biological sex and the anatomy that usually accompanies it.
Spare me. None of us are perfect, but accepting and trying to fix our failures is a far cry from accepting them and calling it a day. Or refusing to accept them at all.
The truth of the matter is, we as a society allow far more leeway and tolerate a lot of attitudes in the dating-relationship sphere that we would never tolerate in any other context, because it hits a lot closer to home and demands a far greater price to pay by the person.
If an employer said: “No black people need apply” - we’d all call it racist in a heartbeat.
If someone on a dating app says “No black people, sorry” - we hem and haw and say “well, that’s just his/her preference, everyone has a right to their preference, and you can’t force someone to date someone they don’t want to; it would be bad for both parties involved.”
Edit: In dating apps, I’ve generally found it more common to see someone say “Sorry, white people only” rather than “No (insert race) allowed.” In other words, framed in more of a pro-white sense than anti-minority sense. Nevertheless, we’d still never tolerate that sort of attitude by a school, employer or business.
Exactly. But we dare not call it bigotry because some people are just trying to be better and using language accurately would prevent this self betterment. Actually, it would remove a cudgel and we can’t have that.
This goes both ways which many people in this thread ignore. Many black women just wont date outside their race. I understand because a relationship requires common understandings of social situations and how many non-black people are really familiar with working class black culture.
If someone puts that in their profile, I doubt they care if they’re called racist.
There’s no way to legislate dating, and there shouldn’t be. And quite notably, if someone is renting out a bedroom within their own house in which they live, there is a carve-out in housing laws such that discrimination (by race, gender, or anything else) is entirely legal. Our society and courts have, properly IMO, determined that it would be impossible to legislate someone’s personal life WRT discrimination.
What’s the alternative? I can’t think of one.
Sometimes I think certain words get in the way of understanding. I’ve written before about how I prefer to think and talk about “having a drinking problem” as opposed to “being an alcoholic,” because the latter has so much baggage. Lots of people and organizations promote the idea, for example, that an alcoholic can never just cut back and learn to enjoy alcohol in moderation. That may be true for some people. But I know people who used to drink too much, and now they drink an appropriate amount. So were they not alcoholics? Was it never appropriate in the first place for someone to point out to them that they might be drinking too much? Do we have to make a whole lifelong identity out of every blind spot and poor choice?
Bigotry is another hot-button word like that. So my non-answer to the OP is this: You should make every effort to interrogate your possible biases in every area of your life. You should remain aware of the possibility that you might treat people differently based on race without even realizing it. And when it comes to hiring people or otherwise doling out opportunities, you should make active efforts to ensure you are treating people equally, including sometimes pushing back on your intuition (which might just be your unconscious bias). But in dating, don’t force yourself to be with someone you’re not really attracted to. Use celebrities to challenge yourself on your thoughts that you’re not really into Black women or Asian men or whomever, but don’t drag regular people into your personal growth experiments.
Right - I’m not saying we should legislate - I’m just pointing out that the societal attitude is very different towards discrimination in one context, and discrimination in another. And the reason is because a relationship with someone you aren’t attracted to poses an immense psychological burden, whereas a racist boss having to hire (or at least consider hiring) people of a race he doesn’t like isn’t much burden.
I think the reason is because personal relationships are considered in a very different way from public economic activity, like looking for housing or a job. As it should be.
Be that as it may, we still consider a lot of discrimination in personal relationships to be racist - i.e., if someone says “I don’t want to sit next to black people,” or “I don’t want black neighbors,” or “I don’t want to go to a church that has black people.”
It’s only when it crosses a certain threshold that we consider such discrimination acceptable - i.e., if a white couple looking to adopt says “no black babies please,” or a white person says “no Hispanics” on their dating profile. At that point, society decides that the personal burden of inconvenience is high enough that such discrimination is OK.
So it’s not about personal relationships vs. public economic activity, as it is “Does this cross a certain threshold of personal burden?”