Sexual racism encounter #74

On Grindr:

Him: I’m Italian Canadian. What’s your ethnicity?
Me: (hesitantly) I’m Chinese. May I ask how old you are?

Five seconds later, the conversation disappears. I’ve been blocked.

Racists feel hurt too

Called out a guy who said he “wasn’t into Asian guys” as a racist. He told me it was “hurtful” and that I was “extreme.” I thought that was funny that he was playing the victim, but did my best to calmly explain to him that sexual attraction is not “simply chemicals in the brain”, but that sexuality is complex and has influences, including porn, hypermasculinity, and femmephobia. I don’t think he really cared though. Oh well.

Where did you go, Douchebags of Grindr?

Why are you unavailable when I need quotes for my personal essay? Noooooooooo!

Also, in general, where did you go???

www.douchebagsofgrindr.com

Dear Gay Guys: What “Preferences” Really Are

http://endracismandhomophobia.tumblr.com/post/32576200361/what-does-the-word-preference-actually-mean

There’s something about the “It’s just a preference” defence that really gets under my skin. So many gay men use this as an excuse for their racist and homophobic/femmephobic remarks, as though it exonerates them from all wrongdoing.

It doesn’t.

I’ve been thinking about what this word “preference” actually means.

preference | ˈprɛf(ə)r(ə)ns | noun

a greater liking for one alternative over another or others: her preference for white wine | he chose a clock in preference to a watch.

a thing preferred: nearly 40 per cent named acid house as their musical preference.

from Latin praeferre ‘carry in front’

See, my problem with gays who are using this word to defend their shitty attitudes is that THEY ARE USING IT WRONG! As usual, THEY DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT THE WORD MEANS.

Not surprising, is it?

Preference is the word to use when you like more than one thing, but like one or more of those things more than others on the list. It’s like ice cream. You like chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, cookies & cream. If you didn’t have a choice you’d be happy with any of those flavours. But if there was a choice, you’d prefer chocolate.

A sexual preference is no different. You might find Asian, Black and Latino guys attractive, but your preference, if given the choice, is Asian. Or you may have a preference for really butch masculine men, but also some that are not so masculine do it for you on occasion.

So to say you have a preference, in the spirit of the word, is to say you pretty much have an open mind to a variety of things. Or at least to more than one thing.

Yet, as we all know, there’s a lot of gay men out there who have absolutely no attraction to anything other than WHITE, HYPER-MASCULINISED MEN. And when these guys try to defend themselves using the word “preference”, they are not genuine in the slightest. There’s no preference there at all, and they are hiding behind words they don’t even understand.

The word they are looking for, but refuse to use, is REQUIREMENT.

requirement | rɪˈkwʌɪəm(ə)nt | noun

a thing that is needed or wanted: only one type of window fits the requirements of this building.

a thing that is compulsory; a necessary condition: applicants must satisfy the normal entry requirements.

A thing that is compulsory. A thing that is wanted. COMPULSORY. WANTED.

COMPULSORY WHITENESS. COMPULSORY MASCULINITY.

Why do you think we don’t hear, “It’s just a requirement?” I can tell you why. Because for the everyday gay, that word doesn’t feel so easy to hide behind as preference. Preference sounds so benign, so unobtrusive, so open-minded, so nice.

“Oh no, we’re not trying to tell anyone how they should be, we really believe all the diverse people of the rainbow community are equal, we’re just expressing our personal preferences.”

No, you’re not. You’re demanding whiteness and straight-actingness, to hell with anyone that doesn’t fit your neat little manufactured ideal of hotness. And you’re hiding behind a word that doesn’t apply to you, in order to make yourself feel less like the total arsehole you truly are.

If there was a more balanced representation of requirements in our community, if there were more races and gender-expressions promoted as “hot” over a sustained period of time, rather than just the one version, things wouldn’t be so bad. This really wouldn’t be such an issue. But with the white masculine male promoted as the overwhelming frontrunner in the attraction stakes, these requirements have the stench of “master race” written all over them.

So I say STOP listing your requirements altogether. STOP calling those requirements “preferences”. START removing language you KNOW offends others. If you’ve been conditioned to find only one “type” of man attractive, so be it. But STOP promoting that conditioned attraction as a personal “preference” because it isn’t. Not even slightly. In fact, you have no “preferences” at all, since you have been brainwashed into thinking only one thing is “hot”. And every time you put that one thing on a pedestal, anyone not fitting into your narrow definition of hotness feels like rubbish.

Sexual racism exhausts me

Spent the day asking friends about their views on racism in the gay community and many of them don’t see “NO ASIANS” as a problem. In fact, they think it’s acceptable, which was incredibly infuriating and frustrating. Tried not to get overwhelmed and upset and tried to diffuse the conversations with questions (“Why do you think that?” “How might you feel if someone said, ‘Not into white guys’?”) but then that just lead to more angering words. It’s the end of the day and I’m just exhausted .

Who would’ve thought arguing with people could be so draining. All in a day’s work, I suppose.

 

The Common Multiples Theory

In math, fractions can be divided by other numbers called multiples; some numbers have more common multiples than others (this is about the extent of math skills as evidenced by my near-failing grade in Math 11). This can also be applied to people, I’ve found.

He’s young, outgoing, and really good-looking. As much as people in general frown upon (okay, more like hate) racism, it still goes on quietly, with little or no backlash. It seems that if you’re white, it’s almost the “standard”, or the most common denominator, at least among gay men (I don’t know about the heteros, but I”m sure it’s at least similar). Being a denominator with many common multiples means you’re divisible by more people — more people are into you, essentially.

Take my friend Dan. He’s intelligent, outgoing, and good-looking and the kind of guy that a lot of people would be into — Asians like him because he’s, well, white and attractive (another topic altogether of how/why Asians are into white men); the other caucasians like him since he’s probably holds the same ideals, has had a similar upbringing, and can speak English (though of course, that’s an assumption nonetheless); and everyone else… well, North American society is so saturated with white folks — think of all the movies, music, tv shows that feature prominent white characters or have an all-white cast — that it’s become the standard of beauty. Dan is a common multiple amongst many, many people but it works both ways too. He sees past the color of your skin, and he doesn’t hold any sort of sexual racism. As easily as people are into him, he’s into them the same; the greater amount of multiples (in this case, people), theoretically, the greater the chance of liking.

With that principle in mind, the laws of sexual racism come into play. Browse the men for men personal ads on craigslist and you’ll find the most unabashedly open racists there. Nothing suggesting death or a one-race by any means, but something different. I particularly like how, in an attempt to cover up their racism, some guys write “Sorry, it’s just a preference” after stating something like, “Not into Asians”. The term “Asians”, in this case, encompasses those of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean backgrounds and it appears that most of the people who say such things are caucasians or other races. Rarely do you find ads saying, “Not into caucasians” (I won’t delve too much into sexual racism because I could go on and on and since this is about The Common Multiples Theory, I had to mention it briefly).

Does this mean that being Asian automatically puts you at a disadvantage to having multiples? Not necessarily. Take my friend Matt. He’s quirky, humorous, and fun to be around. He’s also half-filipino and half-vietnamese and although not “Asian”, he is clearly is. But he’s had relationships before (how many, I don’t know but they all seem fairly significant); and having been born and raised in Vancouver, he has an air of Western culture to him that make him seem more “white” than traditionally Asian. I believe Matt and others similar to him are the exception — not because they are white-washed but because they are outgoing and charming enough to allow others to see past their skin and into their personality. It also probably doesn’t hurt that he dresses not flamboyantly, but attractively, in the sense that people would notice him on the street. Matt strikes me as the kind of person who doesn’t have to look very hard to find someone who would like and want to date him, and despite the fact that he is Asian, he also has many common multiples.

So where do I fit into this theory? Shortly put, I feel like a prime number, only divisible by 1 and itself (one being my left hand and itself being me).

I’m not as outgoing as Dan nor Matt (or at least not upon first meeting), and I don’t feel like I particularly stand out against a crowd like Matt. I’m not super Asian, having grown up here in Vancouver, so I don’t hold those traditional beliefs nor am I taking any ESL coursese. Though Asians are attracted to other Asians, I’ve found that a lot of them are closeted or looking for someone more like them/a white boyfriend, and I’m not that. Caucasian guys probably rule me out because of how I look (unless someone tells me otherwise, that’s what I’m going with because honestly, very few have actually even replied to my messages or whatnot). At the same time, I’m not super white-washed — I’m sort of this in between hybrid of the two. At times I feel like an anomaly while everyone around me and their multiples are out getting it on.

Perhaps I’ve failed to taken into account another common factor between Dan and Matt — that both go out clubbing. Though this may seem trivial, clubbing is equivalent in the gay world as Comic Con to the geeks. It’s the meeting place (among other things) for the queers to go and meet others like them, and where I don’t particularly have fun.

Whatever the case, I remain a prime number, at least for the time being.