Unfortunately, the thing I'd most like to do to widen my dating pool--care less about appearance--is probably not humanly possible to do. Caring less about age would help too, and I might be able to get better about that.
i wonder who was bpl, someone not matching all the exclusions criteria, like, an ideal lady
i'm like excluded multiple times there
The combination of 22 and 23 in the linked thread saddens me.
A great way to up the chances of truly epic fail, hot grits, I'm talking hot grits fail, burn down the mansion fail, is to shrink the pool of your potential partners.
I'm confused--this sounds exactly backwards.
Here we see read, the 4'11" Russian Asian who smokes, wears high heels, has a squeaky voice and a big butt.
4: think of it in terms of prejudice.
When I first read that thread, I thought, Okay, reason enough to stop wasting my time on this stupid blog. It's sobering to be reminded that, more than four years on, I'm still wasting time on this stupid blog.
care less about appearance--is probably not humanly possible to do.
Not that I have any advice about how to go about doing this, but I bet you'd be surprised at what's possible. I used to think of myself as much fussier about appearance until I found myself attracted to people I would have thought wouldn't have been possibilities.
I don't know you specifically, but I tend to believe that people paying close attention to who it is that they actually are attracted to will find that it's a broader group than those consciously seeking out the kind of person that's the sort of person they know they're going to be attracted to. If that made any sense at all.
Jms, you've been around that long? Is my mind truly gone or have you only been commenting since somewhat recently?
4, 6: I think Brock's right. This:
I stick with black women because I wonder, in this climate, if an honest relationship with anybody else is possible.
indicates that his prohibition was not about prejudice, it was an honest assessment of how the world he lives in is likely to affect himself and a potential black or white mate.
9: I haven't been commenting on a regular basis that long (although I had a previous spate of commenting under a different pseud).
(although I had a previous spate of commenting under a different pseud).
abc123?
5 corrections: speaks Russian, used to smoke other criteria are about looks
so it could be whatever
i recalled, during our classes we used to practice on ourselves, so i was an exhibit before the class during our stomatology classes and our instructor told us how my jaw will drop asymmetric over time coz there is mandibulo-temporal arthrosis something
got like pretty indifferent to looks after that
I had thought based on the title that Becks was talking about the "Mental Whateverness" post and that the anti-ogged would be Lyle Lovett.
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The secret of Tina Fey's scar revealed.
>
I'm sympathetic to TNC's younger, angrier self. In fact, if you switch out "black" for "Asian" and "women" for "men," his position is not dissimilar from how I felt not too long ago: because of my politics, I thought it was tremendously unlikely that I would find a sympathetic partner who was not Asian American; and that furthermore, dating a white man would make me complicit in a racial narrative that I rejected.
Now, I'm older and don't care so much. This is easy enough to say now, since I am in a stable relationship with an Asian American man. But even if I weren't, I'm not sure that race would matter in the same way; and I recognize that other people's ethnic politics may be different or less central than mine, and that for them, race shouldn't have to matter at all.
This is very different, I think, from the positions articulated in the linked thread, where people are like, I wouldn't date [insert race] women because they have attitudes/talk funny/are acquisitive.
I have a certain amount of sympathy for that part of Ogged's list that involves not wanting to be in a relationship with someone across cultural barriers. This is a knee-jerk reaction that I try to suppress when looking at actual individual relationships, but I find myself believing that people involved with people from other countries, or foreign in some other way, are not primarily motivated by the individuality of the other person. But I do try to not think this way about actual people I know in such relationships, and I'm certain I'm often wrong.
Wow, Ogged really *was* sexist. All those restrictions on women and none on men. (Well, other than being named "Pedro", which apparently applied to both genders.)
My favorite cross-cultural relationship
Of course, the international language of science is even more universal than that of love.
22: That's truly excellent. Science makes for wonderful and strange bedfellows.
22: Mine was Jim Brown and Gloria Steinem.
Partially, I'm channelling Ogged here by saying pointlessly inflammatory stuff. But seriously, I saw people in the Peace Corps dating locals with the attitude that they were involved with "a Samoan guy", without all that much apparent interest in the difference between Tala, Sione, and Molimea. The attraction was the cultural difference ("They're all so warm and open!"), rather than the specifics of the individual.
And I've seen other relationships like that, where someone appears clearly interested in dating "an Italian girl" rather than the person they're actually individually involved with. I end up suspecting any relationship where there's, e.g., a significant language barrier, as being about attraction to a stereotyped image of the foreign partner rather than being personally based. But I'm sure that I'm often wrong about that.
And, again like Ogged, I'm about to leave the computer. But I'll check in again later.
26 -- I guess I've led a sheltered life. In the sense of not really having been around much status-seeking dating behavior. Are there women/men who want to date an Ivy League guy/gal, or an investment banker? Guys/gals who want to date a yoga instructor or a college professor? I suppose one can't rule this sort of thing out, although it would seem that the individual would overwhelm the stereotypical by the end of the first date.
My ex is Brazilian, and I am a cultural mutt but my mom is from English middle class stock. During the early days of our dating my total emotional range of expression was no larger than the error margins on her ability to read emotions. That should have been a warning sign, but we got along so well otherwise that we sort of blustered through it. She is one of the few people I can get into humorous exchanges with that have me paralyzed with laughter. That I still miss. The soul murdering hell beast part I'm pretty much over, though.
Long story short - women from cultures that are very emotionally expressive are on the caution list for me. I guess I'll have to make do with Finns, Japanese, and Canadians.
28: The whole Midwest is there for you, togolosh.
One would have thought the whole of Scandinavia as well, but togolosh is a connoisseur, it seems.
I have met some frighteningly expressive Norwegians. The Danes seem quite calm, though.
Can't really top the Finns for emotional repression. Except for Tom, of course.
I think cross-class is much harder than cross-cultural, but that's not to say cross-cultural is easy.
Re: 27, I do think this thing is very strongly affected by your social circle. If you are in a diverse group of people where cross-cultural relationships are at least a norm, if not the norm, it's somewhat easier for any given relationship to be about Andy being attracted to Bea. But there certainly exist people for whom their ideas about dating are pretty much "I'd like this flavor, please, and I expect it to behave in X ways."
It's a lot easier for me to be compassionate about people who have seen/experienced X cultural trait and say it's really not something they feel comfortable with than the people who seem to fetishize it. I guess it's because the first group is saying "People in Group X seem to have a higher likelihood of doing Thing Y that is going to really not work out well in a relationship with me," while leaving open the possibility that there might be a person in group X who doesn't do that thing, whereas the other just assume that all Group Xes are, y'know, sexy and submissive. Or whatever.*
*I have an acquaintance -- let's not call him that; let's just say he and I are both members of an activity group -- who is extremely creepy in the 50-something-white-man-who-wants-a-Chinese-girlfriend way.
Further to 33: I mean, as in, he's actually traveled to China and acquired a girlfriend, but given visa issues in bringing her here, he talks in a disturbingly interchangeable way about how he'd like to replace her.
33: He isn't an academic of some sort, I hope...
Is "I'll never date another attorney!" more acceptable than "I'll never date another Korean!" I think the answer is "yes", but I'm not really sure why.
Attorneys undergo training to become the way they are.
Y'know, I wasn't sure which of ogged's posts that would be, and I'm not inclined to reread, but sure, one remembers that one. If it was even 100% serious in the first place, I expect the guy's mellowed a bit since.
There's still the whole judgmentalism bit, which people on this blog seem to share at times, and which chagrins me, but I often can't tell how seriously it's meant.
And yeah, Coates seems a really sweet guy.
No, he's not an academic. Although I haven't found that kind of attitude to be any less common among academics, so I'm not sure of your point...?
36 is bringing home to me that some of my own prejudices are based more on observation than experience. Ugh, humbling.
28: Here's a New York Jew's guide to interpreting Wobegon emotions:
Silence: Used to express any emotion, from boredom to fascination, seething contempt to passionate love.
From here.
it's somewhat easier for any given relationship to be about Andy being attracted to Bea.
Wouldn't Opie be weirded out if his dad and great-aunt started a romantic relationship?
39: I work in a field of science where a professor of that attitude could acquire a number of girlfriends rather quickly (and they would be equally interchangeable.)
41: Ack, cultural blind spot.
Speaking of cross cultural issues, it's hard to remember which names signify "generic" properly.
I thought "Andy" and "Bea" were chosen simply for beginning with "A" and "B".
field of science
This phrase amuses me no end. "Field ... of SCIENCE!".
42: Yes, but they would a) have US degrees, and b) potentially have immigration status that was not based on the professor. So the power differential would not be as appealing (to someone who wants that level of power in his relationship).
I thought "Andy" and "Bea" were chosen simply for beginning with "A" and "B".
Awww, W-lfs-n gets it.
This anti-miscegenation stuff bugs me. It came up on Kotsko too. I understand that there are some really weird loser guys looking for Russian or Chinese wives or girlfriends, but it's almost as though that's the presumption now.
...it's somewhat easier for any given relationship to be about Aishah being attracted to Bjorn.
In the german class that I've apparently stopped auditing we read two bits of Russendisko about Russian brides.
This anti-miscegenation stuff bugs me.
Huh? I haven't seen anyone in this thread expressing an "anti-miscegenation" viewpoint.
I've seen the viewpoint that tends to presume that a given act of miscegenation is likely motivated by orientalism. Which is an anti-miscenegnation viewpoint in practice, if not in theory.
It seems to me that Emerson and my father are the last two people in the world who use the word "miscegenation" naturally, and if I hadn't seen so much of Emerson's writing I'd be deeply suspicious that he is my father. Please don't start using an apostrophe in front of "phone," JE.
Hmm. Bad link on the scar thing. I guess you can google it.
The "exotic"/school year abroad relationship described in 26 is pretty common, but it's also not really much worse a reason to date (or sleep with) someone than any of the other multiple other fetishes that can spark attraction, and there's no very obvious reason why something that starts out on that questionable ground shouldn't develop into something better. I've seen it happen -- e.g., a friend who married her school year abroad Italian boyfriend.
In a long term relationship, I think the cultural fetish thing either goes away completely or isn't a problem. If living with someone for years doesn't mean confronting them as an individual, it's hard to know what would, and if both sides get off on some frisson of being from different worlds, more power to them, because they'll need some kind of strong glue. Maybe that's Coates' point.
I have a old friend who started out as a contemptible white male Asian fetishist of precisely the kind that (I assume) Witt and LB would deplore. This seemed disgusting to me in our 20s, but the subsequent life story is telling. After a number of casual affairs (that, when you get right down to it, didn't seem to have worse consequences for anyone involved than anything anyone else was doing), he ended up in a long-term relationship with an interesting, strong-willed Japanese woman who henpecks him to death, and they seem as happy, committed to each other, and as respectful of each other as any other couple I know. The fetish probably got them together, but they're certainly far beyond that now. If you're worried about people using each other shamefully for sex, worry about that, not about the specific issue of cross-cultural dating.
Not only did I miƒspell miƒcegenation, but I may have uƒed it incorrectly. I refer merely to the joining together of two people, not neceƒsarily a joining that produces a child.
People seem to be assuming that cross-cultural relationships, specifically American men and Asian or Soviet bloc women, are for the wrong reason. In Ogged's case he was just confessing his tastes, but even so it seemed weird. I was especially thinking of an old Kotsko thread where someone said that they wouldn't think of dating an Asian woman for fear of getting involved in the stereotype.
Alabama only repealed its anti-miscegenation law in 200, with 40% of the voters voting to keep it.
Yes, but at that time most of the people were Choctaw, or something.
I agree with very nearly every word of 55. The thing is that there's a continuum, and even teenagers or 20-somethings who are attracted to people because of certain cultural cues or assumptions can still react to and treat them as individual human beings.
Or, you know, not. And it's the "not" end of the spectrum that to me is a problem, rather than any particular cultural combination. It can just as much be a black sorority girl exoticizing her Latino boyfriend as a white frat boy talking about his Asian girlfriend.
2000. The Bush-Gore year. It would be interesting to graph the Bush vote against the anti-miscegenation vote.
I hadn't been taking the fetish thing seriously, but I remember now that a college roommate who's Egyptian (culturally Anglo) did have to be on guard against men who were merely fascinated by her petite Egyptian look. And there were a lot of them in college.
The oddest thing to me about cordoning off certain cultural groups is not that it seems arbitrary, but that I just don't register such things: Oh, your people are Eastern European? Oh, well, I don't think so!
What? My bewilderment about this is probably a function of the fact that I'm a mutt (adopted at that), and grew up in a military family, so that there were never enclaves of one or another ethnicity in my purview.
This is a test.
Could post salacious content later ...
I am pro-miscegenation, indeed, regard it as my socialist-international duty.
64: You don't seem to have gotten very far in your pursuit of the cause, though. At least given the classical definition.
You mean the having-children part? Damn, I knew I was forgetting something!
52, 55, 57 and others:
"Orientalism" or fear of fetishization isn't really the point. After all, I can't know whether someone else's relationship is motivated by fetishism; and I don't much care.
What I do know and care about: You very frequently see Asian women sexualized in movies and tv and other media, and very rarely see straight Asian men that way. You very often have an Asian woman as a peripheral girlfriend character on sitcoms; very infrequently an Asian man. I have a friend who is a screenwriter, and whenever she tries to pitch a story with an Asian girl in it, she is told that it will only fly if the boyfriend is white. This set of facts can't but affect me, and I don't like it. It makes me sad, and it gives me the icks, etc.
I would rather not,* as an Asian woman, be part of the above-described cultural narrative. My feeling has nothing to do with miscegenation -- after all, I don't have any feelings whatsoever about Asian men who date white women. But it is also not really about whether a particular man will have a fetish or a stereotype. It's just that I'm aware that as a woman of color my personal choices have political meaning in the world, and I want to be careful about my meanings.
*I'm stating my position more strongly than I should; as I've said above, I really have relaxed about this.
I blush to admit that when I was in high school there was a nice African American gal that had a bit of a crush on me. I was oblivious to the signals because she wasn't even on my radar as a potential date. My intellectual self had no problem being her friend, but my libido had not yet developed the omnivorous appetite that it had in college.
67 -- Yeah, I don't disagree with any of that. No question that Asian guys (and black women) both get shafted in the current USA sexual/cultural hierarchy, and I can totally see Asian women (and black men) making a political choice to consciously resist that system. Good thing I don't have to deal with those choices here on white privilege island! It was LB's default assumption that any cross-cultural relationship is fake/fetishistic on some level that I was resisting.
There was an in retrospect quite attractive nice african-american jewish girl in 5th or 6th grade who basically straight up told me that she wanted to date me, and it freaked me right out, but mostly because I was extremely immature, aggressively shy little git, I think, and not because of any race thing.
If you're immature and shy in the 5th grade, you're a loser. The fourth graders get a pass, but if you haven't learned to pull some action by grade 5, you're doomed to a sex-free life. Those are just the facts.
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LB: to answer your question: sure, yes! I would e-mail, but there's the stupid thing.
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Luckily, my ELizardB@hotmail.com address is accessible from home. But I don't check it very often.
I'm reading Jms's comments with great interest. I totally sympathize, as I've met plenty of creepy yellow fever fetishizing guys in my day (one of whom used to follow Asian girls around in law school and address them in what he assumed, based on our names, to be our native language).
But I've also had the other experience of recoiling from the opposite impulse towards insularity. When I co-chaired Asian American student orgs, I heard a lot of gossip and recriminations towards girls who dated outside of race--"OMG she dated a black guy, can you believe" and lots of "I've thought about dating white girls, but I don't think it would work because they wouldn't get me" and I got frustrated with the whole singular social identity axis of being Asian.
I also hated the implicit hierarchy of the Asian races, that Taiwanese guys wouldn't go for Southeast Asian girls, and that they would say that being Filipino is "basically black." So if anything all those experiences made me recoil in horror at any kind of pigeonholing and hate identity politics of any kind, and now I think the only way I can stay sane and not think of everything as symptomatic of post-colonial anxiety is to be equal opportunity with respect to dating, and try not to stress about implicit power differentials on the basis of race.
I've dated whites and Asians, and my current boyfriend is white. Race doesn't come up much between us except when we talk about how it's likely I'll be disowned for dating outside of race. Oh yeah, my father's racism has also made me pretty militant about keeping an open mind about these things rather than fetishizing my own race as the only one who could possibly be relatable.
A Jewish girl in college used to flirt madly with me, but would always laughingly back off because it was really important for her to marry a jewish guy.
She wouldnt date any non-jewish guys for fear that she might slip into a serious relationship.
76
I've met plenty of creepy yellow fever fetishizing guys in my day (one of whom used to follow Asian girls around in law school and address them in what he assumed, based on our names, to be our native language).
That seems like it should be creepy or scary, but to me it's just funny. White male privilege, I guess. Did he ever guess right? Did he actually speak all the languages, or any of them, or did he just know how to say "hi" in eight different languages?
The closest I've come to interracial dating happened when I answered a personal ad from a woman born in Calcutta - but adopted and raised in Vermont since she was a couple months old. Presumably it's been an issue for her, because she said in her ad "don't expect me to be Indian."
My somewhat sad (in the pathetic rather than forlorn sense) interracial dating story from college. Taking a walk together with a fella I've been seeing. We pass a bi-racial (black/white) couple on the street. My fella says to me, "Do you think interracial relationships can really work out?" I pause, contemplatively. "I suppose there are cultural issues that make things more difficult," I say. "But I can't really say -- I've never been in that situation, so I don't really know."
Long pause.
"Uh, Di? Maybe you didn't notice, but you and I are not actually the same race."
For a kid who got good grades, I really wasn't very bright.
79: Was that when you found out you aren't black?
Technically, it's when I discovered that black and white are not actually the only two races, or something like that. Like I said, I wasn't really very bright.
"You're Iranian and I'm Mexican, Di."
"Right, we're the same race."
Mmm. That's a really annoying/weird feature of US race relations -- the black/white issues are so historically and socially different from all other racial issues, and African Americans have historically been by far the biggest minority group, that it's hard not to think of black/white racial issues as all the racial issues there are. Which is not accurate, but it happens.
79: awhile back, my extended family went kayaking together - a tour of sorts of an estuary, with a guide pointing out the otters and other animal life and making sure we didn't drown, &c. Afterwards, when we packing up to go, I remarked on how impressive the guide's kayaking was; I had been rather frustrated by my inability to translate effort into speed. "Yeah," my sister replied, "especially for somebody with only one arm." "What?!?" I exclaimed, shocked. "Really?!" Everyone stared at me. "He helped us into our kayak," my gf pointed out gently -- "did you really not notice he was lacking an arm?"
"I only see people," I insisted, defensive but feeling rather principled.
84 is funny. Kayaking efficiently is mostly technique, something it's hard to pick up on your first few goes (your arms are weak, use your back).