Alexis and I led a discussion on sexual racism and I thought that we covered a lot of really fascinating topics. To start off, I thought the readings were very interesting. The first reading was about how multiracial women navigate racial politics. For example, since black and Asian women are consistently the least likely to be messaged on a dating app, mixed-black women describe using attitudes toward the BLM movement as a way to vet potential dating partners. Multiracial women also want to be able to talk about race with their partners, so they have conversations around politics or current events to see the way they respond, which is called the vetting strategy

The next reading was about gay men of color where we see the exclusion of gay men of color within sexual fields. For example, the idea that gay spaces are viewed as white spaces for gay men of color was something that I was completely unaware of. This is why we decided to use Grindr as an example of sexual racism because it provides firsthand experiences with people of color in the LGBTQ+ community using the app. This naturally led to the discussion of whether having at person preference makes you racist. I think this is such a complex question because it has so many different aspects to consider depending on the circumstance. There is no right answer to the question, which is why it is so hard to determine what having a personal preference means. One point that was brought up multiple times was that everyone inevitably has a “type”, and it’s just whether you outwardly express it and how you express it.

Another area where we see sexual racism being portrayed is in the porn industry. We decided to explore this industry because it isn’t talked or thought about ever. First, we presented a couple of examples about whiteness in porn and posed the question of whether porn stars should be allowed to have a race-based sexual preference. We don’t see a lot of non-white porn stars due to individuals such as white actors that have a policy against working with African American or Asian actors. We then had the class think about why Pornhub categorizes their videos and discuss whether there should be categorizations and how that preserves racism. Most people agreed that there shouldn’t be categories, but there are categories because people have a personal preference over what types of videos they want to watch.

After leading the discussion, I started watching the Australian version of Love Island over Thanksgiving break, and since this concept of sexual racism was still fresh in my head, I began to connect that idea to the TV show and my attention was drilled towards that. I noticed that every time a new man was introduced to the girls, white, blonde girls were always the first to be picked or “coupled” up with, leaving any women of color to be picked last. I decided to do some research, and I found articles that talked about how this show is tainted by racism. One of the contestants, who is a black woman, was not chosen by any of the men and did not get kissed by any of the men during the challenges that they were supposed to carry out. Fans of the show have also observed that the same woman was also given less airtime and received the least attention. I think this connects back to how society sees whiteness as the beauty standard. When white people are seen as superior, by the transitive property, they are also considered more attractive. Although this show is entertaining, it has also been heavily criticized for underlying racism.