BLM Update 2: Preference vs Prejudice

This one is not as informative as the previous post, it's just a think-aloud session.

As I was considering my own self-biases in my thinking towards others I think it was inevitable that I would begin to ask the question of preference vs. prejudice.  When is it "okay" to gravitate towards some people rather than others based on their traits?  Despite a lot of people's claims otherwise, this issue is about as black and white as the actual skin color of Black people and White people.

Consider for example a wide spectrum of statements:

"I don't date Black people."

"I'm better friends with people whom I perceive as female rather than male."

"I'm attracted to people with red hair."

"I only date Asians."

"I'm not attracted to women, only men."

"I'm only friends with other White people."

"I tend to dislike Europeans."

"I have a thing for older guys."

I'm sure you could show these statements to any number of people who would be MORE than willing to point out which ones are "racist" or biased vs which ones are "justifiable", but the reality of the fact is that statements and thoughts like this carry enormous social baggage that it doesn't really make sense to ignore.  When someone says "I would never be friends with a Black person." it's so easy for us to point to it as a marked example of prejudiced racial bias, but when we hear "I'm straight.  I only date women." suddenly it's an everyday comment that nobody bats an eye at.  Is it because 90+% of people we know are also straight?  Is it because you get a free pass to "date" anybody you'd damn well like but as soon as you exclude certain groups from your friend circle you're being prejudiced?

This issue has maybe bubbled up a little more to the surface in recent times because people are suddenly being told (or more like, they're finally listening) to confront the racial biases inherent in our everyday lives and suddenly a lot of people are perhaps realizing (or just confirming) that they only really associate with people of similar racial and ethnic backgrounds.  It's a natural extension, then, to ask oneself, "Is that...okay?"  And yes, you should probably ask yourself that even if you "have one Black friend and hey...that makes it all okay right?"

I don't know WHAT I was expecting when I searched up what other people thought of this issue but it sure as heck wasn't a lot of reflective and deep thought.  It seems that the world would have us believe that there is a very simple manifesto for how to interact with other people in this world.  You become friends with people of the same gender, you follow codified rules (see "Billy Graham Rules") for interacting with people of the opposite sex, you "date" people of the opposite gender so that you can get married and raise two children in a wonderful little family unit.  I...don't even know where to begin here.  For those of us who are not trying to fit into the pretty little Hallmark-standardized picture of society these guidelines are laughable at best.

So like all other complex issues, these sorts of questions really beg for critical thought, not blanket statements.  Using "Racism is baddddd.  Don't be racist!" as your guiding principle is useless, but using "Treat every single person the same." as a guiding principle is equally useless.  If given the choice between surrounding myself with people who treat me very poorly and people who treat me very kindly, I think I'd have a pretty good idea of which I'd choose.  But of course, if I made a snap judgment on an entire class of people and assumed that they'd treat me poorly, that's called prejudice and it's not doing me any favors nor anyone else.  It's important to examine both the context behind our tendencies and biases as well as their effects on our social interactions.

For myself, for example, I find that most of my friends are people whom I identify* as female, and I also happen to be physically and romantically attracted to people whom I identify as female.  I surely have racial biases in my social interactions as well, but they're dwarfed by my gender biases by far (we're talking order of magnitude), so we've gotta start there if anywhere.  Race doesn't exist in a vacuum after all -- race, gender, culture, nationality, ability, ... all intersect (see "Intersectionality") in forming social identities.

A couple of questions beg to be asked...

"Am I mostly friends with females because I make friends with people whom I'm attracted to?"

To answer this question it helps to ask other questions, such as "am I attracted to most of my good friends?", and "is attractiveness a quality that I find desirable in a friend?".  As well as consider scenarios such as "If my female friends switched bodies and were male friends to me, how would I feel toward them?"

These are all very personal questions and nobody can really answer them for you.  If you honestly just enjoy being around people you find more attractive, maybe that's just what is good for you.  Perhaps attractiveness is something you find desirable in a potential life companion and by spending more time around people that fulfill that criteria you hope to find one.  That's totally your prerogative.   But it's important also to realize that if you choose to only spend time with people whom you find attractive, you are by virtue also NOT spending time with a whole swath of other people.  Could it be that those other people would have provided a great amount of value to your life otherwise?  Again, this is simply for you to answer.  What's important is not an abstract sense of whether you are being "shallow", but whether the way in which you carry yourself matches with what is actually going to make you happy.

So let's say I'm mostly friends with girls because the traits I value in friendships happen to be more traditionally associated with females and femininity.  It's 2020 but even in today's world there's simply no denying that the institution of gender forces =drastic= differences in upbringing, perception, and opportunities (mostly for the worse) based on perceived gender.  So I'm pretty sure that if you removed gender from the world entirely and placed everyone in identical robot bodies I'd still end up making friends with more people who were previously female.  In other words, if I'm selecting based on these traits themselves, then maybe I'd end up with a bunch of female friends simply because the deck is stacked towards that.

But of course, there are still more questions that need to be asked.  For example, am I =really= judging people by those traits?  Or am I perhaps using gender as a shortcut to place people in a bucket before I've even gotten a chance to evaluate them?  If I look at all of the males that I'm choosing to not be friends with (and conscious or not, that is a choice), is it because they lack these traits?  Or is it simply because they're male?  If I meet a stranger in a social setting, am I likely to treat them differently before I've even met them, based on my gender perceptions?

Because it's fine to prefer "feminine" traits (although the underlying fact that I have to call them "feminine" is a problem with the world).  And it's even fine to reason that because of that most of my socializing is going to be with females.  But once I find myself cutting off an interaction with a man before I've even given them a chance, that's when I need to check myself, to think about my prejudice, and to consider whether it's really doing me a favor, or simply making me closed-minded.

Gender dynamics are of course blatantly obvious in social dance, so those of us with experience in that space have already experienced some of these "question-raising" situations.  Most leaders are male.  Most followers are female.  As someone who leads the majority of the time, I dance with mostly women.  Does that make me sexist?  Obviously not....that's simply the numbers.  But there's always that time when you happen across someone dancing a non-traditional role.  And in that moment, if your reaction is, "Oh....actually, I don't like this", then maybe you ought to consider why that is, and whether you're being honest to yourself about your preferences and prejudices.

And it gets more complicated than that.  Of course it does.  Because when a lone woman encounters a man in the street instead of another woman, you bet your ass that she's going to be "prejudiced" against him, because statistics don't lie.  Don't forget that sometimes people don't even have the privilege of even being ABLE to avoid prejudgment.

Though the ways in which race, gender, and sexuality are perceived in our society can be....problematic, to say the least, the fact that we are trained to look at these facets differently can perhaps help elucidate the nature of our biases and tendencies.

In writing this post, I can't claim to have found all of the answers, but I think I've got an idea of what the right questions are.  And that, of course, is the important first step.  To think about what you should be asking yourself.

Personally, my considerations toward gender preferences have changed a lot over the years, but bumping into this subject made it clear that there is still a lot of self-reflection and evaluation to be done.  I am no longer in the misandrist "boys are stupid throw rocks at them" phase of my life, but I also can't claim to have the experience necessary to really be satisfied with my approach to this problem either.

Anyways, lately my BLM homework has taken the backseat as I've been turning this over in my head instead.  But I feel like it's impossible for me to try to tackle any racial biases I may have without also stopping to look at the huge elephant in the center of the room.  I think something like this really needs holistic thought and reflection.

*Why am I wording this as "people whom I identify as female" rather than "people who identify as female"?  It doesn't happen to matter in my actual circle, but it's because we're trying to talk about my own judgments and classifications of people.  In this context it's already a given that the focus is on my perception rather than the other person's view of themselves.  Of course, everyone is entitled to their own gender identity and it would be grossly disrespectful to say that I "still see xyz as gender A" when that is not their identity because even if that's true, it isn't something worth saying or hearing.  But in the case of a stranger for example, I would by definition only be able to perceive a notion gender identity that is derived from my own preconceptions.