I want to ask th Dopers a moral question, that really I cannot answer on my own.
Is it wrong to find only people of your own ethnic group sexually attractive?
I feel that it is wrong to want your child to marry someone of the same ethnical group as your own, but have never considered what it would mean if someone only found members of their own ethnic group to be sexually attractive. Clearly sexual attraction is so complex and personal that someone could be attracted to any subset of people the choose (or is chosen for them by their psychological mind-set), but the idea of only going out with members of your own race seems very close to rasism.
For a long time I was only attracted to people of the same race. But now I can see beauty in all races. It wasn’t something I forced myself to do, it just happened.
No. Why should it be? Some people are turned on or off by weight, hair color, height, proportions, and any number of other physical traits. If one is not attracted to one set of physical characteristics or only attracted to a different set of characteristics, then they are not attracted to people whith those physical characterisitics. No big deal.
I think it would be foolish (not immoral) to decide to avoid people of one appearance or another. Limiting one’s options in an a priori manner does not seem to be particularly fruitful.
I think it would be immoral to demand that other people (such as one’s children) adhere to one’s own preferences. We do not have a right to dictate to others based on mere personal preference.
– thanks for the quick responses, just a note that myself I tend to be attracted to people of other than my own ethnicicity more than those of similar ethnecicity, viv la difference as they say in France. –
I feel much like sleeper says but that got me thinking …
Is
“I prefer my children to have sexual relationships with people of their own race”
that much differnt to
“I prefer to have sexual relationships with people of my own race”
The first seems racist to me, while the second not so. Yet the difference in the two phrases is not the race part, but the person being talked about.
I can see that the first phrase raises more questions about motivation of the speaker than the second, but I am not sure that is sufficient ‘real’ reason to see the first as racist and the second as not.
Your question seems to be founded on the assumption that we are at some level responsible for the nature of our sexual proclivities. I assert we are not. If one could say you somehow have a choice (or should) about what color skin you like, then it’s not a huge leap to saying sexual orientation is a matter of choice. I don’t think morals really apply here. People like what they like.
Now, some folks are saddled with proclivities that are patently unacceptable, like pedophilia and other harmful paraphilias. I think it’s a stretch to say pederasts are responsible for their attraction, but they are (and should be) held responsible for how they act on their desires.
While the pederast is obliged to keep his hands off of minors, you and I are not obliged to want sex with people of a particular ethnicity. I can think of no moral conflict if you simply don’t want to have sex with Eskimos. Sure, maybe you’re a bigot, maybe you just go for blondes. It really doesn’t matter.
I don’t think its “immoral” to want your child to marry within certain ethnic parameters. What would be wrong (imo) would be to try to restrict your child’s options in accordance with your personal desires, should your child be mature enough to handle sexual activity, and be seeking out relationships with other consenting adult types. I don’t even think it would be immoral to tell your child “I would hate it if you married a Scandanavian, but it’s up to you.” Your desires are your business, and you have a right to them.
I also have found that my sexual attractions have become more “liberalized”, if I can use that word, as I’ve grown older. In my teens thru late twenties I would find very few women of anything other than the caucasian model to be physically attractive, and I would think that in those years my sex drive was a lot more indiscriminate than it is now some twenty odd years later…
I would see the occasional woman of another race that I was EXTREMELY attracted to , but those times were few and far between.
Like Lobsang, It’s been a gradual growth of my natural attractions to different types of women, at least on the physical level. I like to think that I wouldn’t mind if a child of mine were to date or marry inter-racially, rather that my acceptance would be on my perception of their real happiness.
I see as absolutely proven fact that the more we interbreed racially, the stronger our organism becomes. It would be a much healthier thing for us to do if we were to enhance our own genetic diversity by bringing a wider grouping of race-borne traits ito our lineage.
Brings to mind that song from HAIR where the black girls are singing about the white boys being so sweet… :eek:
Both are wrong only if you view racism as a bad thing. If you don’t, then excluding certain races from your or your child’s romantic life is perfectly fine. But there’s absolutely no difference between the two except that one is arbitrarily (and hypocritically) more socially acceptable than the other.
and it’s just plain ignorant to compare sexual prefences with sexual orientation. Orientation is fixed, while prefences are purely whimsical; they can all be reprogrammed with a new issue of the latest fashion magazine (and they usually are).
I’m not sure if either is entirely true. I’ve known some gay guys who said they really considered themselves ex-heterosexuals, not merely gay men who hadn’t come out to themselves. They honestly felt attraction towards women once, but at some point men piqued their interest, and that was it. I knew a bisexual woman who said she went through “phases” of liking boys or girls, during which she lost respective inerest in girls or boys. She says these phases could last a month or a year or longer. She had no idea why.
As for me, there is a “type” I’m pretty much defenseless against, and I’ve been that way my whole life. When I see a woman who looks like this, I feel tight in my chest; my heart jumps a beat; it’s totally beyond my control. Fashions have come and gone, but when I see that type of her, it’s always the same. For all I know I was born to like her. I never felt like it was a matter of choice or conditioning.
I would call the second not necessarily so; it doesn’t preclude the possibility, but racism isn’t the only explanation possible. I wouldn’t presume racism of people who had that preference, necessarily; I might presume it of someone who made a point of stating that preference outside certain sorts of conversations, though. (On the, “No other reason for this to come up in conversation” rule of thumb.)
Basically, the distinction I see boils down to statement #2 being plausibly a statement of personal tendencies of attraction; statement #1 is pretty explicitly a case of “I don’t care what the facts of the situation are, I want actions to be taken on the basis of ethnicity.”
Or, to put it a different and perhaps slightly more coherent way: one set of qualifications for the job of “my lover” is how attractive that person is to me. Choosing on the basis of attraction isn’t intrinsically racist (though only finding members of a certain ethnic group attractive (or potentially attractive) could well indicate racial biases). On the other hand, if someone is qualified for the job of “my lover” through the attractiveness qualification and I reject them on the basis of race, I’m displaying racism. So the reason the “my kid” statement comes across as clearly racist is because the attitude is rejecting someone for the job of “kid’s lover” on the basis of race, not on the basis of qualification for the job.
I hesitate to post this, but figure I will go ahead and hope for leniency. I have thought about this issue, because I am perfectly able to lust after women of any ethnic persuasion, save one. I quite literally have never been sexually attracted to an Asian woman. Not Lucy Liu, not Tia Carrere in her heyday, not a one. I have many Asian friends and have no racial issues that I am aware of.
I can’t for the life of me understand my own criteria for sexual attraction. I usually cast a pretty wide net and find many types of women attractive. I can appreciate Asian women aesthetically, but I just don’t get the tingle of sexual attraction. I can’t imagine this makes me racist as I have examined my feelings and found no rational explanation for them. I can’t deny though that I find it somewhat disturbing.
You also have to consider the reality that one can be sexually attracted to someone of a different race and have no problem saying so, but choose not to date them because of real or perceived cultural differences.
When mothers encourage their children to marry a nice black/Puerto Rican/Chinese/Jewish person, they are doing so out of a desire to perpetuate a particular culture. They want their grandchildren to resemble them in not only appearance but also behavior. I don’t think this is racist. Selfish maybe, but not racist.
Many black people equate having a strong sense of racial identity with dating blacks exclusively. This has nothing to do with people having an aversion to white people (at least for most).
I think people who are not attracted to others outside of their “race” have simply not been exposed to that many different types of people. It’s not racist unless people try to make out their group to be more objectively beautiful than others based on these feelings.
I don’t think there is a rational explanation. I think there exists a purely physical element to sexual attraction that defies logic. After all, most of us can simply look at a photograph of a person, and knowing nothing about that person other than his/her appearance, decide if we are attracted to them. I definitely have a heirarchy of races that I find, on average, attractive. It has nothing to do with any perceived characteristics of the culture - only appearance:
Asian
Hispanic
Indian and Middle Eastern
White
Black
I’d say that’s roughly the order in which I’m likely to be attracted to a particular race. It doesn’t mean I don’t find any black women attractive; I quite often do. It’s just that an Asian woman would be more likely to cause me to turn my head. Of course, for me, there’s no race that I’m not attracted to, just some that I’m more attracted to. I think it’s just the way our brains are hard-wired; I see nothing racist about it. And if one were only attracted to one race, I don’t necessarily see anything racist about that. Now, if you’re saying stuff like “I don’t like [insert race] because they smell bad”, or because they’re stupid, or they’re lazy, or whatever, that’s a whole different kettle of fish.
“Is it wrong to find only people of your own ethnic group sexually attractive?”
“Is it wrong to want your child to marry someone of the same ethnical group as your own,”
The two cases are not analogous. Sex and marriage entails vastly different levels of commitments. But neither is, by them selves, racist.
What has sexual attraction to do with racism? Even slaveholders were attracted to their slaves. Doesn’t mean they weren’t racists. Some people are sexual attracted to animals; does make the rest of us hate animals? I prefer my women within certain age groups, doesn’t mean I hate children or old people. While, if the truth must come out, I’d have sex with anything remotely Homo sapiens of the female gender, I do have my preferences regarding body types, facial build, hair, skin eye colour, height, weight, etc. If that makes me fall under any definition of racist, I think such a definition is so ridiculous broad as to lose any meaning. (Reminds me of how some women in the seventies felt themselves pressured to have sex with men, or else they’d be considered old fashioned or bourgeoisie or something.)
Everybody knows there’re few things more annoying than your parents sticking their long noses in your business. No doubt about it, over controlling and overprotective parents is a pain in the arse. Doesn’t make them racist.
Anyway, though you may not be explicitly aware of why you have a racial heirarchy in sexual attraction, that doesn’t mean that your brain has arbitrarily fixated you to certain races. A little self-exploration may reveal some logical reason or causes for your preferences. Perhaps you’ve always been the type of person who is bored by what’s familiar and enamoured by what’s foreign, and that naturally carried over to your sexual attraction (just a wild guess from looking soley at your heiarchy).
Of course, because racism is supposed to be a bad thing, and you’re perfect, so you can’t be racist. Actually, your definition of racism is so ridculously narrow that it has no meaning. Can anyone be racist these days, according to you? If you value certain races above others in terms of sexual attractiveness, you are racist. If that means you have a flaw, so what? You’re not perfect, you’re going to have flaws. You can either accept that on some level, you’re a racist, or try to change it by understanding why you have these preferences if you think that not being a racist is worth doing so. I know were all familiar with the truisim “nobody’s perfect”, but it seems we keep forgetting that we’re included in “nobody”. It’s pathetic (and so transparent) to rationalize every single one of our thoughts and behaviors so that we always come out on top.
That is one of the silliest definitions of racism I have heard here and I’ve heard some doozies. Our sexual attractions are not under our control, it is the reasons for sexual attraction that may or may not be racist. Though you are on a high horse I would suspect that there are any number of racial or ethnic groups you would find generally unattractive because of your cultural programming. Do you find the average Samoan attractive? Pygmy? Australian aboriginal man?
I would guess there are exactly 0 posters who are equally attracted to all races and ethnicities. Their preferences may be more or less broad than others, but everyone has preferences. As long as you do some self-examination and the reasons for those attractions are not based on racism, you are not a racist.
