Context: I’m married, monogamous, and have only ever dated three people. If have about as close as possible to no stake in this discussion, but I do find it interesting.
There’s a question that’s normally so obvious that it rarely gets asked, but that seems relevant here: Why is the racism bad?
In other words: Yes, there’s discrimination going on here. People are perceiving differences on the basis of observable features. You point out at least once that this does not imply that this makes them Bad People, but many other sections read like you do think that this is a state of affairs that should not be. What is not clear to me is: If the driver is perceived attractiveness, then how is this different from any other aesthetic preference, in terms of how either party should react to the preference’s existence? And what, in general, should such a reaction be?
If the driver is stereotyped perceptions of personality and culture, well, that can be very different. Then it becomes a question of whether the stereotypes are completely wrong, which they often are, or whether they are derived from an actually-racist-in-the-evil-sense distortion of some underlying-but-real trend, which they also often are. Ideally an individually would be able to discount the former completely, and discount the latter to a very large extent, and evaluate each potential partner as an individual, but the dating pool is large and life is short, so that doesn’t actually work in practice.
If the goal of finding a partner is sex, then that is also very different from when the goal is a deeper, longer-term relationship. In the latter case, it’s not just the individual you end up having a relationship with, but their entire extended family and social circle. Even if I, personally, had no attractiveness or culturally based racial preferences, I do have preferences for being readily accepted and being able to fit in and get along with my partners’ friends and family. Larger cultural differences don’t always make that more difficult, but they shift the distribution.
You also seem to be aware, though I missed if it was made explicit, that there is a difference between thinking “having preferences about attractiveness that correlate closely to race is racist” vs “being the kind of person who explicitly states racial preferences in dating profiles is evidence of racist attitudes.” If I’m white and you like white people, the former has no effect on me if we get together. The latter can permeate many other aspects of a life or a relationship.
If you are low-race status in the West and you want to be comparably desirable as your peers, you need to be prepared to compensate for your low-race status (on top, of course, of whatever other factors are reducing your general desirability). Your white peers ceteris paribus do not need to do this extra bit of racial compensation. Both Black men and Black women do have to do this. Asian men have to do this. Due to various asymmetries in desirability and endophilia, Asian women do not need to do this and Black women have to do more of this more than Black men. The means to increase this desirability could be pushing harder on the generic answers (working harder on your physical health, collecting more money, more status, etc.) or the less generic, exogenous answers that I’m encouraging readers to take more seriously (surgeries, & hormones). Alternatively, you could accept having lower desirability and tinker with low desirability strategies.
If you are not low-race status, I’m not telling you to do anything really, except perhaps, following Amia Srinivasan, I am encouraging people to reflect more on what affects what they see as attractive.
If the driver is perceived attractiveness, then how is this different from any other aesthetic preference, in terms of how either party should react to the preference’s existence? … If the driver is stereotyped perceptions of personality and culture, well, that can be very different. Then it becomes a question of whether the stereotypes are completely wrong, which they often are, or whether they are derived from an actually-racist-in-the-evil-sense distortion of some underlying-but-real trend, which they also often are.
I think there a case to be made that some of the important inputs to sexual attraction are culturally-scoped. I argue for this by elimination in much of the post (culturally-invariant theories don’t seem sufficiently explanatory w.r.t. particular asymmetries in endophilia across genders within a race).
Here’s an additional argument to suggest that important inputs to sexual attraction is culturally-scoped. Asian American men are seen by women of all races to be significantly less attractive due to being seen as under-masculinized. From the perspective of evolutionary psychology, the perception of masculinity is functionally meant to indicate good genetic health in men. The principle thing that should be approximated is free testosterone levels. If Asian American men had lower testosterone levels than the average American man, it would make sense that the lowered perceived masculinity levels are actually tracking an important, culturally-invariant measurement of genetic health. However, Asian male free testosterone levels do not differ from White males (link 1, link 2, link 3). This causes me to update towards believing that the racial masculinity gap has a culturally-subjective input.
Bayesian reasoning: there are two kinds of people who state their true racial preferences in their profile:
those considerate to other people’s feeling, so they don’t want them to send a message and get rejected needlessly; while sufficiently autistic to not realize what kind of a signal this sends
unapologetic racists
In population, the latter are way more frequent than the former. Which is what makes it a signal of racism.
Context: I’m married, monogamous, and have only ever dated three people. If have about as close as possible to no stake in this discussion, but I do find it interesting.
There’s a question that’s normally so obvious that it rarely gets asked, but that seems relevant here: Why is the racism bad?
In other words: Yes, there’s discrimination going on here. People are perceiving differences on the basis of observable features. You point out at least once that this does not imply that this makes them Bad People, but many other sections read like you do think that this is a state of affairs that should not be. What is not clear to me is: If the driver is perceived attractiveness, then how is this different from any other aesthetic preference, in terms of how either party should react to the preference’s existence? And what, in general, should such a reaction be?
If the driver is stereotyped perceptions of personality and culture, well, that can be very different. Then it becomes a question of whether the stereotypes are completely wrong, which they often are, or whether they are derived from an actually-racist-in-the-evil-sense distortion of some underlying-but-real trend, which they also often are. Ideally an individually would be able to discount the former completely, and discount the latter to a very large extent, and evaluate each potential partner as an individual, but the dating pool is large and life is short, so that doesn’t actually work in practice.
If the goal of finding a partner is sex, then that is also very different from when the goal is a deeper, longer-term relationship. In the latter case, it’s not just the individual you end up having a relationship with, but their entire extended family and social circle. Even if I, personally, had no attractiveness or culturally based racial preferences, I do have preferences for being readily accepted and being able to fit in and get along with my partners’ friends and family. Larger cultural differences don’t always make that more difficult, but they shift the distribution.
You also seem to be aware, though I missed if it was made explicit, that there is a difference between thinking “having preferences about attractiveness that correlate closely to race is racist” vs “being the kind of person who explicitly states racial preferences in dating profiles is evidence of racist attitudes.” If I’m white and you like white people, the former has no effect on me if we get together. The latter can permeate many other aspects of a life or a relationship.
If you are low-race status in the West and you want to be comparably desirable as your peers, you need to be prepared to compensate for your low-race status (on top, of course, of whatever other factors are reducing your general desirability). Your white peers ceteris paribus do not need to do this extra bit of racial compensation. Both Black men and Black women do have to do this. Asian men have to do this. Due to various asymmetries in desirability and endophilia, Asian women do not need to do this and Black women have to do more of this more than Black men. The means to increase this desirability could be pushing harder on the generic answers (working harder on your physical health, collecting more money, more status, etc.) or the less generic, exogenous answers that I’m encouraging readers to take more seriously (surgeries, & hormones). Alternatively, you could accept having lower desirability and tinker with low desirability strategies.
If you are not low-race status, I’m not telling you to do anything really, except perhaps, following Amia Srinivasan, I am encouraging people to reflect more on what affects what they see as attractive.
I think there a case to be made that some of the important inputs to sexual attraction are culturally-scoped. I argue for this by elimination in much of the post (culturally-invariant theories don’t seem sufficiently explanatory w.r.t. particular asymmetries in endophilia across genders within a race).
Here’s an additional argument to suggest that important inputs to sexual attraction is culturally-scoped. Asian American men are seen by women of all races to be significantly less attractive due to being seen as under-masculinized. From the perspective of evolutionary psychology, the perception of masculinity is functionally meant to indicate good genetic health in men. The principle thing that should be approximated is free testosterone levels. If Asian American men had lower testosterone levels than the average American man, it would make sense that the lowered perceived masculinity levels are actually tracking an important, culturally-invariant measurement of genetic health. However, Asian male free testosterone levels do not differ from White males (link 1, link 2, link 3). This causes me to update towards believing that the racial masculinity gap has a culturally-subjective input.
Bayesian reasoning: there are two kinds of people who state their true racial preferences in their profile:
those considerate to other people’s feeling, so they don’t want them to send a message and get rejected needlessly; while sufficiently autistic to not realize what kind of a signal this sends
unapologetic racists
In population, the latter are way more frequent than the former. Which is what makes it a signal of racism.