The Intersection Between Sexuality and Racism
Racism takes many shapes and forms and integrates itself into communities that you may not expect. The LGBTQ+ community is riddled with the soft whispers of racist rhetoric, especially across dating apps.
In the 2010s dating apps are now the most popular way people meet their significant other. Only a year removed from the pandemic, it is obvious to see the uptick in dating app usage. “Tinder’s usage surged during the pandemic,” said Bryan Li, a former developer at Tinder, “you can even see it in their stock price.” Bryan is right, according to the New York Stock Exchange MTCH, Tinder’s ticker, was priced at $71 in December 2019, before climbing up to $160 in February 2021.
Dating apps are a viable way to meet other people, but there is less depth in an interaction online than in person, especially if you are solely judging off appearance and a few sentences in their bio. This varies across dating apps as well. For instance, up until 2020, the most popular gay dating app in Grindr allowed for racial filters. Essentially you can pick which race you want and don’t want to match with, and it will only display people of the race you selected.
University of Illinois professors, Ryan Wade and Gary Harper found that racialized sexual discrimination, or RSD, is more prominent online than in-person1. Race filters are a contributing factor to RSD.
Rohan Patel is a young man of color who has visited these gay dating apps before. Rohan grew up in Cleveland Ohio. According to the U.S. Census, Cleveland’s population is 47.6% black and 39.7% white2. Rohan’s parents are from different cultures, one having Mexican heritage and the other having Indian heritage. Both are major minorities in Cleveland.
“I feel like the gay community is centered around cis white gay men, and people of color are out of the picture completely,” – Rohan Patel
In Rohan’s experience, the Cleveland gay community was dominated by cis white males, and it made him feel like “POC gays don’t exist” in the communities eyes. Even during pride month, Rohan would notice that the parades were mainly white men, and when discussing the history of the LGBTQ+ community, the discussion would only stay on white gay men. His problems were not recognized and he wasn’t included in the conversation. Rohan later moved to Los Angeles to attend the University of Southern California. In his experience, the gay community in Cleveland is vastly different than the one in Los Angeles.
In California, Rohan was able to be a part of a more diverse gay community, one that wasn’t just inclusive for only cis white men. Except that spawned another race-based issue, fetishization. Rohan has encountered people who see him as “exotic,” and are infatuated with his race, which evokes negative feelings. “It makes me feel disgusted, I am more than my color you know?” and that’s a feeling Rohan can’t escape in Los Angeles or Cleveland. There have been several times in which a non-Hispanic male will call Rohan “Papí” or “Papí Chulo,” or even refer to his multiple backgrounds and call him a “two-for-one deal.” Once again these people subject Rohan as merely a product of his race that can be used to benefit their sexual interests. These are not efforts to try and get to know a person to connect, instead, these are cheap race-based compliments that show the pursuer’s true intentions.
Whether it’s excluding him from the community entirely and making him feel like he is an outsider, or fetishizing his background, it seems as if many people in the gay community cannot see past the color of Rohan’s skin. He explains how ideally his personality would be what attracts another man, but when someone tries hitting on him whilst mentioning his race, it projects a sense of shallowness. Rohan is one of many people of color that share these experiences.
Given the experiences Rohan has received from some people in the cis white gay community, he will use the race filter to not match with white men. “I have always preferred POC gay men over white men because I can understand them more on a personal level just as another POC…” said Rohan, “I have just never felt comfortable around white gay men.” Despite using it, Rohan sees the toxicity of a race filter on dating apps.
Rohan using the race filter to exclude white people is extremely rare in the gay community. “Very few people say ‘no whites’” is the title of the scholarly article written by Chong-Suk Han and Kyong-Hee Choi4. This is a recent study delving into “sexual racism” or RSD. Research on dating apps indicates that most men of color, and white men prefer other white men compared to people of color. Considering that western culture values eurocentric beauty standards, this might not be all too surprising for some, but the data suggests that the preference for whites is overwhelming in the gay dating community.
Dylan Stickland is a bi-racial gay man who grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood in suburban Los Angeles. Dylan has accounts on a few gay dating apps as well, which has led to some interesting encounters for him as a black man. As Dylan recounts, you do not even have to do anything, just merely living means you are subjected to the fetishization of your race.
“You can just be existing and people will come to you asking for a BBC” – Dylan Stickland
BBC refers to a crude way of describing a black man’s genitalia. These types of comments wrap themselves in Dylan’s experience with gay dating apps, they are inseparable.
This is the duality of being a person of color on gay dating apps, there’s a duality to your race. You can either be subject to fetishization or discrimination, either way, your race is intrinsic to how other people see you as a sexual partner. Dylan recalled many instances in which he would be interested in a man on a dating app, but he will see in their bio some coded language like “looking for Prince Charming, not Aladin.” This coded language is a way to say “I am only looking for a white man” without being so explicit. Some coded language will just refer to physical traits and point out eurocentric beauty standards as their preference.
Dylan is not the only man to see this type of coded language. According to Han and Choi’s study, the men surveyed “clearly understood that race was a central characteristic in the way that gay desire is organized. More importantly, they recognized that being white afforded white men with more opportunities for sexual contact than gay men of color.” They then refer to an Asian man who was surveyed for the study, and he pointed out how “Caucasian tend to work very well for many people and there are very few people that say ‘no whites.’ You know some do say ‘no whites’ but it’s very rare compared to other ethnicities… but for ethnic people, there tends to be more bias. Like you see a lot of places ‘no Asians’ or ‘no blacks’ or ‘only attracted to whites and Latinos’ and stuff. And it’s everywhere.4” The gay men of color surveyed in the study all came to the realization, sooner or later, that their race played a major role in finding a partner.
It is a “jarring” experience for Dylan. As he points out, people do not talk to each other like this in person, at least in Dylan’s experience, so it can be weird to see this coded racial language on dating apps. Either way, his race makes him an object of desire or discrimination. As Rohan stated in his experience, people will reach out to Dylan fetishizing his race and it evokes negative emotions. No one wants to be appreciated from solely a fetishized angle, it is belittling and makes people feel outcasted as an “other.”
Belittling one and subjecting someone as just a product of their race can cause damage to one’s image. S is an Arabic gay man who grew up in Melbourne, Australia. Melbourne is predominantly white, and “43.3% of Melbourne’s population reported that they had British or Irish ancestry, 28.2% reported Australian ancestry,” according to World Population Review5.
S recalls that in Melbourne, it is more apparent that “Aussies just want to hook up with only white guys.” He postfaces this by warning that this view could be a product of his insecurities as a brown Arabic man in Australia. As a child, S recalled being made to feel like he was the “dirty Arab” in the group. This was internalized, as S grew up seeing himself in this same “outsider” light. In his own words, this has affected his dating life.
Even with that looming experience of being made to feel less than, S recalls a one-time instance where his Egyptian background was fetishized by a man in America. After seeing a picture of S’s cousin, the man went on to state how “they make them well in Egypt…” and “Egyptians are hot.” Contrary to Dylan and Rohan, S appreciated the other man’s statements.
This contrast in reactions may very well be attributed to the difference in backgrounds and where these men grew up. S had more to say about making felt “less than” as a man of color compared to the other men. Additionally, he could only recall the one instance where his race was fetishized, as it was uncommon for him to hear positive sentiments towards his race, even in a shallow fetishized way.
Arabic stereotypes were prevalent in S’s early childhood. He recalls the many times’ white Australian people would refer to middle eastern people as “filthy Arabs.” S was even called that by people in his school growing up, under the veil that they were just “joking.” It went even further than “filthy Arabs,” S states that there were several stereotypes that people would reference concerning him, and it was common. This confused S as he saw people in his culture as classy and clean. However, it did indoctrinate this idea into S’s head that he is “less than” when dating a white person because they probably prefer a white partner.
“Genuinely I’d feel lucky if a white guy was like ‘Yup!’ [in regards to dating] and I’m not going to get over that.” – S
He responds by telling himself that it shouldn’t matter if a white person wants to hook up with him and he is not lucky, but it is hard for S to shake that feeling.
Each gay man of color that was interviewed recalled an experience where their race was fetishized and an experience where their race was discriminated against. Although, each one had their race-based preferences. Rohan seeks men of color because of his experiences with white men in Cleveland and various other reasons. Dylan is open to anyone and does not use race filters on dating apps. Lastly, S prefers to date white men. They all come from different cities and backgrounds, but they have all experienced what it’s like to only be seen as a product of their race. Those experiences affected each person in different ways, and it affected their outlook toward other gay men in the community. The experiences were even more prevalent on dating apps.
Dating apps intervene with our private lives and the decisions we make. It is a personal and intimate experience, and the data found in these apps are starting to show the biases of desirability on a massive scale. Although the objective of dating apps can be seen as shallow, having this information is helping shed light on issues that intersect sexuality and race. There is no one way to solve this problem of racialized sexual discrimination, but as research continues to be done, hopefully, more people can become aware of their internalized biases.