this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2023
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I mean my room mate is Desi, and she very much avoids dating men specifically of her cultural background owing to the traditional cultural views on proper womanhood, feminism, and queerness. I'm sure if a super progressive guy of her culture came around she'd consider dating him, but I don't fault her for having a heuristic to avoid ending up in another abusive relationship.
On the one hand, I'm not in a place where I can question the lived experience of your roommate. On the other hand, a sexist-racist heuristic is still sexist and/or racist.
If I, as a Chinese dude, stated publicly that I don't want to date Chinese women because they're hyper materialistic and status seeking (not a belief I hold irl), I would hope that people would speak up and tell me that that's a fucked up thing to say.
Or, to remove the gender and patriarchy angle from it, if I got mugged a few times by people of a certain racial group, it would still be really fucked up of me to claim that I have a heuristic where I avoid people of that race.
Speaking specifically to your last example, I don't think that's quite the same, as it would imply mugging is held up as an ideal social standard to adhere to in that certain racial group, which is doubtlessly untrue. In her particular case, there are social standards of manhood and a woman's proper place that her ethnoreligious group promulgates, and she's very clear she wouldn't date anyone that adheres to those views, much like she wouldn't date a republican for the very same reason. That's going to, in effect, result in her not being willing to date a large portion of that group.
Like would it be racists or discriminatory (with all of negative connotation entailed) for an ex-Amish person to not want to deal with dating other people of Amish background?
I've seen people like her of almost every ethnicity/race (Hispanic, Indian, East Asian, Black, Middle Eastern, White). Them saying "men of my ethnicity are so misogynist, men of X ethnicity are so much less misogynist" is usually just an excuse to avoid confronting the fact that they're self-hating, since I can find someone exactly like them of X ethnicity who says the same thing.
I don't find that explanation particularly compelling, not in the general, negative way "self-hating" is typically applied, otherwise I qualify as a self-hating white person for having a strong disaffinity for capitalism and Weberian protestant work ethic.
Yeah, that's a very different thing from not dating anyone from a certain ethnic group based on their ethnicity. As long as the criteria is the individual's beliefs (which they can change) and not their place of origin or background (which they cannot) then she's not unfairly discriminating imo.
That's why she dates men from the culture that invented lobotomies specifically for their wives ofc.
She mostly dates women now, for what that's worth.