More Thoughts on Sexual Pickiness / “Erotic Racism”

I’m borrowing the term “erotic racism” from Queerscribe, and it refers to what I wrote about yesterday — using race or ethnicity as a way of screening out potential sexual partners. But although it’s a nice and pithy term, it presupposes a particular view, and I think we can just as easily call the issue “sexual pickiness.”

There were some particularly good comments appended to my last post. And I’ve been thinking about the issue a lot since yesterday. It’s such a complicated issue, because it combines much that society (particularly American society) obsesses over: race, sex, psychology, the right to hold your own beliefs, the right to control what you do with your body.

First, some excerpts from e-mails I’ve received. One person wrote that this form of sexual pickiness comes from an “amalgam of personal taste, [social] conditioning, and trepidation.” Another person wrote that “rather than this being racist, I think it’s more because people of a certain race are bound to have similar physical characteristics, and it might just happen that those features are not exceptionally attractive to a certain person.”

Finally, “Disappointed,” who wrote the original comment, sent me a nice and rather friendly e-mail, in which he wrote in part:

I almost never use the word “racist” because I can’t really say I know what it means. For one thing, the impossibility of defining either “race” and “racism” makes the label problematic, too fluid. Inevitably, the question of what constitutes racism is reduced to a problem of semantics. Instead of asking “Is conduct X racist?”, which can never be answered sufficiently, I find it better to ask how race is deployed in all these different social and textual settings, whether racially-conscious conduct perpetuates white privilege.

Here are just some musings as I try to figure out what I think and feel about this.

Isn’t there a difference between societal discrimination and individual sexual pickiness? If someone is denied a job or a place to live, that’s one thing, because people have certain rights. But if I deny someone the opportunity to sleep with me, I’m not oppressing that person. (In fact — to channel the spirit of Brad for a moment — some might say I’m doing that person a favor.)

But perhaps sexual pickiness is really a symptom of latent racial prejudice. And perhaps one of the best ways to overcome such prejudice is by experiencing the most extreme type of intimacy possible — skin against skin. Perhaps having sex with someone of a particular race will wind up erasing a person’s latent prejudice against people of that race.

On the other hand, what’s more important — physical intimacy, or mental and emotional intimacy? After all, there are stories of racist white men who rape or have consensual sex with black women while remaining racist. You can be sexually attracted to people of a particular race while still holding racially prejudiced views of that race. Having sex with people of a particular race won’t necessarily remove one’s prejudice.

And anyway, who says that sexual pickiness is a symptom of latent racial prejudice? I like Mike’s comment: “I am not attracted to women in general. Some of them have features that I find sexy, yeah, but they just don’t turn me on. Too squooshy. Too vocally high-pitched. Not what gets me excited…. And I refuse to provide any further explanation or apology for the sake of political correctness. I want who I want.” (I particularly loved the word “squooshy”…)

I’ve thought about this as well. After all, I already spent enough energy in my life trying to conform to society’s ideas of whom I should or shouldn’t find attractive. “Have you tried sleeping with women? How do you know you don’t like them?” Part of me wants to say, “I’ll be damned if I’m going to let people do this to me again.” (And let’s not forget this guy.)

If I don’t want to sleep with women, does that make me a misogynist? No. Just because I don’t want to sleep with women, doesn’t mean that I don’t respect women or that I’m prejudiced against women, right?

On the other hand, maybe you can say that this is all a false comparison, because, as many believe, sexual orientation is hormonal, and all men give off the same hormones, regardless of race, right? There’s more of a difference between a white man and a white woman than between a white man and a black man. Right?

Sex is one of humanity’s greatest mysteries. Lots of people have sexual hangups. Sex can be used to express intimacy. Power. Control. Revenge. Love. Pity. As a tool for procrastination. Sexual abstention can involve issues of health, purity, cleanliness, even self-discipline or autonomy. Many people are very conscious and careful of who they allow near (or in) their bodies. We don’t always understand our sexual desires. We can’t even pinpoint the exact cause of homosexual attraction.

So when it comes down to it, who are you to tell someone else what that person’s sexual criteria “really mean”? And is it really your problem? I’m not saying it’s not. Perhaps it’s our collective problem. Calling it “erotic racism” seems to imply a certain question, so I’ll get all Sex and the City now, and boil it down to one question typed across a computer screen:

Is screening one’s sexual partners based on race or ethnicity harmful to society?

Or, more succinctly:

Should we fuck for world peace?