No fats, fems, or asians

[M]any people are not aware of [the] complex roots of desire ... . The phrase, "sorry, just a preference," for instance, dominates the world of online personals when it comes to racial and body type exclusions, an unexamined statement that potentially damages and further allows groups in power to define the sexuality of minorities.

- Zak Szymanski, "Some Fetishes Play With Double-Edged Swords", Bay Area Reporter Vol. 36 No. 38 (21st September 2006)

In this week's BAR, Zak Szymanski starts off by problematizing something that a lot of White gay men take for granted - racial preferences in their choice of sexual partners. The article then expands somewhat to a discussion of responsibility and sex-positivity generally, then returns to the question of racial preferences.

First, a minor gripe: the title is somewhat mismatched to the content of the article I don't think the article made clear why preferences and/or fetishes are a "double-edged sword", which I understand means something that may hurt as much as harm the person exercising/expressing the attitude, behavior or argument. In this case, racial preferences don't directly harm the (presumptively white) person who has them, but rather the racial minorities who are dehumanized or essentialized by them. I suppose indirectly it harms white men insofar as they consider themselves part of a queer community that includes men of color. As one member of a sex & politics discussion group quoted in the article noted, "racism [is] our problem as a community to solve". Or as John Donne might have said if he were an internet chatroom queen, "Ask not for whom the racist email notification chimes. It chimes for thee." So maybe the title sort of matches the article. But seriously. FOOTNOTE NEEDED!

Szymanski's piece is typical of the thoughtful writing found in the BAR, one of the finest LGBT local free papers in the U.S., especially when it comes to columnists and opinion pieces (this is hardly a scientific opinion, it's based on my limited experience with a few other LGBT locals). It also shows that BAR has enough trust in the community that it can challenge its readers to re-examine their beliefs about sex and race.*

* I still remember being at a screening in 1999 or 2000 at the Castro theatre of Rice and Potatoes, a documentary about Asian/White gay male relationships. The crowd jeered and booed at an Asian gay man who spoke about his negative experiences dating white men using an analysis that implicated white gay men in structures of racial dominance. To me, what he was saying rang true and seemed pretty reasonable. To be fair, perhaps the Castro audience was expecting some kind of soft-core film featuring Asian-White male pairings. In contrast, when I screened the film for Q&A (the Queer Asian group at my undergraduate institution), there was respectful silence throughout, and the discussion afterwards acknowledged the problematic nature of white male desire for the racial other. At the time I chalked it up to an academic/non-academic setting divide. Looking back, I think it may also have been a question of who controlled the setting. At the Castro theater, white men clearly had the upper hand. This was their neighborhood, their theater, their gay utopia, and who were these Asian theoryheads to come rain on their pride parade? At the campus screening, the hosts were an Asian student group, and we screened the film at the East Asian studies house (actually there were two separate screenings - the other was in the Asian American studies theme dorm, I believe, or possibly the LGBT center). An Asian man led the discussion. White men were clearly guests, and did not control the space or agenda.

Szymanski's article also notes that while a pattern of sexual rejection based on race can be hurtful and destructive, racial fetishes can also be problematic. The article quotes Midori of fetishdiva.com, who notes that "[s]ome subconsciously channel [the nervous energy that comes from social change] into sexual curiosity, reducing the object of anxiety into a simultaneously fearsome and yet controllable fetish icon." She "draws the line at desires that dehumanize people and treat stereotypes as truth rather than something to play with and challenge."

Yet, while all this theory may be appealing and easy to engage with in a newspaper article (or some fag's blog), when a person is out (or the net) and looking for sex, negotiations of boundaries are often not as nuanced or even verbalized. Rod Wood, a "noted local leatherman," expresses this reality when he says he "hate[s] to use" the term "exchange of power", because it "feels too much like processing." As he says:

In my experience, a man can walk into a room and spot the one that he's probably compatible with, and have a pretty good idea of what that person wants to do with them.

Though I must give props to Wood for using my preferred gender-neutral pronoun (the singular "them"), I take issue with his picture of appropriate gay male relationships to desire. Wood does seem to make clear that he's speaking only of his own experience, but by expressing a resistance to "processing", he may encourage others to compartmentalize their sexuality.

What I mean by this is that sexuality becomes this cordoned off area of life where ethics and morality no longer apply, and one is not a whole person. I am aware of such compartmentalizing tendencies myself, and notice it in other gay men as well. It's the seemingly-benign secret twin of the over-regulated sexuality (where an overreaching prudishness intrudes into sexual pleasure in the name of "morality"). In both cases, sex is seen as a special case, where ordinary moral notions of caring for other people and your community are negated. The prude sees morality in sex as impossible (or only possible within incredibly narrow bounds), while the compartmentalized-libertine sees morality in sex as irrelevant.

But again, the reality of the sexual drive intrudes. When I'm horny, I don't have time to wonder how my actions implicate structures of oppression and domination. How then, to incorporate morality and sex, if the act of seeking out sex seems to preclude any kind of thoughtful engagement?

My humble suggestion is that here, as in many areas of life, ethical behavior must become a habit, cultivated when one is reflective (reading newspapers and blogs), then implemented when one is faced with the situation that presents a moral problem. White men need to spend time when they are not looking for sex thinking about the implications of the racial preferences they express when they are seeking out sex, and sometimes making difficult decisions about how they are going to bring commitments to anti-racism and building a better queer community to this area of their lives.

Since they were such a big hit last time, I'm going to end with questions:
1) A lot of the article's discussion involves online cruising, where racial preferences can be made brutally plain pretty much from the outset. Do people think this is more or less hurtful than the more subtly revealed racism of the club/bar/park?
2) To what degree can people of color be said to be complicit in the curtailment of their sexual roles? Is a person of color who has sex with a white person who fetishizes them in an unhealthy and racist way responsible for that person's racism? For that particular racist act? Should the person of color affirmatively ensure the white person is not invested in racist fetishes?