race and dating
Mar. 1st, 2010 07:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zebeeYou've probably seen the OK Cupid dating site stats floating about, and discussions about people stating preferences for the race of their partner.
I did the "OMG" thing then forgot about it until....
I've always liked looking at men. Tall, short, thin, fat, hairy, odd faces, I like men. It's this heterosexual thing, presumably a very low level sexual attraction. I've felt the ping from blokes I'd never consider even hugging after all. That "there are men in the world, this is good" ping.
But looking around at work, where we have a number of men in their 20s/30s who are subcontinent Asians (South Asians? Can't say Indian because for all I know some are Pakistani or Bangladeshi) and I realised they didn't ping my radar. I just didn't see them as "like to look at" in the way I see Anglo men.
Which shocked the hell out of my middle class pinko chardonnay sipping self lemme tell you!
I've certainly been attracted to Asian guys (hi Thorfy!) and more of them trip my radar than the South Asians do. And the Africans I've seen have mostly been quite pleasant to rest my eyes upon. My Lebanese neighbour and most of the other Lebanese and Iraqi/Iranian/Arabs I see around the place (this being a migrant suburb) I see with this small pleasure.
Now sometimes I've seen in the various Bollywood posters some nice looking blokes but perhaps I think that because they tend to be good looking in a whitefella sort of way?
What got me was that these young men just didn't ping me as "man, mmm". It wasn't "ick" it wasn't quite "eyes pass over" either, it was edging close to "don't like".
I'm still trying to work out what is going on.
Some kind of atavistic "they want my job"? Maybe I'm cool with Chinese/SouthEastAsians because I grew up with them? A Malaysian Chinese as a boarder during my primary school years and a Japanese as my father's research partner and friend for many years? So they come up as "normal" and I'm just utterly unused to seeing dark skins? But then why doesn't the African DBA a desk or two over do it to me? More used to seeing them on TV?
Dunno, I have no debug code. But it does worry me....
I did the "OMG" thing then forgot about it until....
I've always liked looking at men. Tall, short, thin, fat, hairy, odd faces, I like men. It's this heterosexual thing, presumably a very low level sexual attraction. I've felt the ping from blokes I'd never consider even hugging after all. That "there are men in the world, this is good" ping.
But looking around at work, where we have a number of men in their 20s/30s who are subcontinent Asians (South Asians? Can't say Indian because for all I know some are Pakistani or Bangladeshi) and I realised they didn't ping my radar. I just didn't see them as "like to look at" in the way I see Anglo men.
Which shocked the hell out of my middle class pinko chardonnay sipping self lemme tell you!
I've certainly been attracted to Asian guys (hi Thorfy!) and more of them trip my radar than the South Asians do. And the Africans I've seen have mostly been quite pleasant to rest my eyes upon. My Lebanese neighbour and most of the other Lebanese and Iraqi/Iranian/Arabs I see around the place (this being a migrant suburb) I see with this small pleasure.
Now sometimes I've seen in the various Bollywood posters some nice looking blokes but perhaps I think that because they tend to be good looking in a whitefella sort of way?
What got me was that these young men just didn't ping me as "man, mmm". It wasn't "ick" it wasn't quite "eyes pass over" either, it was edging close to "don't like".
I'm still trying to work out what is going on.
Some kind of atavistic "they want my job"? Maybe I'm cool with Chinese/SouthEastAsians because I grew up with them? A Malaysian Chinese as a boarder during my primary school years and a Japanese as my father's research partner and friend for many years? So they come up as "normal" and I'm just utterly unused to seeing dark skins? But then why doesn't the African DBA a desk or two over do it to me? More used to seeing them on TV?
Dunno, I have no debug code. But it does worry me....
(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-02 02:57 am (UTC)Actually, i think it's media imagery. South Asians are generally portrayed in the media as terrorists/violent/etc, and have been for quite some time now.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-02 06:35 am (UTC)If it's about accent? That the dark skin and the accent/language (most I see at work are 457 short termers from the outsourcer so tend to have a thick accent and talk amongst themselves in what I presume is some variety of Hindi) is triggering "other" really strongly?
I don't consume much visual media. Don't want TV except the odd bit of ABC/SBS, don't watch any news, seldom see a movie younger than the 1970s....
I doubt I'd go as far as putting a race preferred on a dating page, but I have no idea what would happen if I got people of another race replying if I went to a dating site. I like to think I'd be open and would go as far as looking at everything else about them, but I have no idea.
Had a really creepy interaction with a South Asian guy on a train the other day where he went in 3 sentences from "is this the right train for Westmead" to "are you married" but I think that was "desperate and clueless" which is something no ethnicity has a monopoly of. (get it a lot from Africans on trains too, but never from Anglos or Asians, gotta be a PhD in that!)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-02 07:05 am (UTC)Hard to tell for sure, re the media thing... It's not just news media, and it's definitely not just visual media. And the media stereotype is quite a few decades old.
You're right about the creepy factor not being exclusive to any particular ethnicity though. :-)