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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   26794 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 23, 2024

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(I guess this comment may be somewhat low-effort and/or more suited to the Wednesday Wellness thread, but in light of recent discussion I feel that it may still be appropriate for this thread.)

Are racial sexual preferences natural and mentally healthy, or racist, unnatural, and mentally unhealthy? Is a white man who finds himself afflicted with "jungle fever", an Indian woman who feels a desire to become "bleached", or a black man who has succumbed to "yellow fever" suffering from a delusion that has been inflicted upon him by stereotypes in the media (both pornographic and non-porn)?* Or are these preferences inherent and natural? Is a person obligated to find sexually attractive all people who share the same general category of sex/gender, weight, and figure? Or is attraction permitted to hinge on such minor attributes as skin/nipple color, hair texture, and lip size?

*For example, perhaps the aforementioned black man suffering from "yellow fever" actually just finds skinny, demure-seeming women attractive, but has been brainwashed into thinking that the women who fit that role are overwhelmingly East Asian, and there's no use looking for them elsewhere. Maybe the Indian woman thinks that only white men are capable of building attractive levels of muscle, with few exceptions. Et cetera.

As a white man of Irish descent (in other words, very very white), growing up, I always liked darker girls more than whiter/paler girls. This was true as early on as elementary school when I was most attracted to a girl of latina descent. Even as I got older, I always felt more attracted to latina or middle eastern looking women, women who had a caramel skin, large dark eyes, and a curvy/muscular body. Don't get me wrong, I've dated and been with other types of women, but from a purely physical standpoint, it feels like my white freckly pasty skinny Irish genes are attracted to sunkissed tan curvy women.

As Scott has Noticed, humans are remarkably libertarian only when it comes to romantic love. This is the one area that has survived accusations of racism, sexism or transphobia. You can debate this all you want but people will always be free to “fetishize” other races if they want. I don’t think people even mind being fetishized themselves by their partners, those who complain always seem like humble bragging to me

A more interesting question - is miscegenation healthy? Obviously from a liberal perspective this is a taboo question to even raise. But hapas for instance often seem to argue they shouldn’t even exist, as though they are a crime against nature. And I’ve seen some research to suggest they have far higher rates of depression than other groups

As Scott has Noticed, humans are remarkably libertarian only when it comes to romantic love. This is the one area that has survived accusations of racism, sexism or transphobia. You can debate this all you want but people will always be free to “fetishize” other races if they want.

Free legally, perhaps, but not socially. And, of course, it depends on Who? Whom?

Men's preferences, such as that for female youth and chastity, are demonized as creepy fetishes. Women's preferences, such as that for male height and status, are deemed valid (to the extent they're admitted to exist, lest women appear more shallow and less Wonderful than previously thought). This goes for racial preferences, as well, but there are also differences based on which sex-race combination is the preferer and which is the preferred.

Here's the reaction in mainstream discourse when a man of $[Y] background says he prefers $[X] women:

White Women East Asian Women South Asian Women Latina Women Black Women
White Man Racist Nazi Bigot who fetishizes and stereotypes East Asian women as feminine and submissive; possible pedophile Bigot who fetishizes and stereotypes South Asian women as chaste and traditional Bigot who fetishizes and stereotypes latinas as fiery and sensual sex objects Might be okay, might be bigot who fetishizes and views black women as subhuman sex objects
East Asian Man Self-hating, white-worshipping, internalized racist who fetishizes white women Feels entitled and possessive of "his" women Hm, okay Hm, okay Hm, okay
South Asian Man Self-hating, white-worshipping, internalized racist who fetishizes white women Fetishizes and stereotypes East Asian women as feminine and submissive; possible pedophile Feels entitled and possessive of "his" women Hm, okay Hm, okay
Latino Man Conditioned by Eurocentric standards of beauty and victim of internalized racism, but slay, King! Might be victim of internalized racism, but slay, King! Might be victim of internalized racism, but slay, King! Might be okay, might feel entitled and possessive of "his" women Slay, King!
Black Man Conditioned by Eurocentric standards of beauty and victim of internalized racism, but slay, King! Might be victim of internalized racism, but slay, King! Might be victim of internalized racism, but slay, King! Might be victim of internalized racism, but slay, King! Slay, King!

Reaction when a woman of $[X] background says she prefers $[Y] men:

White Men East Asian Men South Asian Men Latino Men Black Men
White Woman Racist Nazi Weird, must be victim of K-Pop and anime propaganda Weird, must be victim of yoga and Bollywood propaganda Stunning and brave and should be encouraged for all Stunning and brave and should be encouraged for all
East Asian Woman Victim of internalized racism and conditioned by white male privilege Victim of Stockholm Syndrome and familial patriarchy Might be okay, might be victim of internalized racism Stunning and brave and should be encouraged for all Stunning and brave and should be encouraged for all
South Asian Woman Victim of internalized racism and conditioned by white male privilege Weird, must be victim of K-Pop and anime propaganda Victim of Stockholm Syndrome and familial patriarchy Stunning and brave and should be encouraged for all Stunning and brave and should be encouraged for all
Latina Woman Victim of internalized racism and conditioned by white male privilege Weird, must be victim of internalized racism and K-Pop and anime propaganda Weird, must be victim of internalized racism and yoga and Bollywood propaganda Victim of Stockholm Syndrome and familial patriarchy Stunning and brave and should be encouraged for all
Black Woman Victim of internalized racism and conditioned by white male privilege Weird, must be victim of internalized racism and K-Pop and anime propaganda Weird, must be victim of internalized racism and yoga and Bollywood propaganda Might be okay, but might be victim of internalized racism Stunning and brave and should be encouraged for all

Nor have sexual preferences been exempted from accusations of transphobia. Remember the colossal seethe that #SuperStraight triggered? People were doxxing and trying to cancel the young man who started it all, and his mother too. The subreddit saw a meteoric rise, turning into the SuperSexuality expanded cinematic universe (SuperGay, SuperLesbian, etc.), before getting nuked within a day or two.

What was funny was not only the bait and in-on-the-joke posting by rdrama types, but the heartfelt effortposts from LGB persons about their long-held frustrations with transsexuals invading their spaces and demanding to be treated the same as their desired sex. Despite their nominal alliance, it makes sense that LGB persons might have more exposure to and thus more frustrations with transsexuals than straight persons, having greater probability living in similar locations and running in similar social circles.

Yes if you’re a male and voice racial preferences you’re going to be demonized, especially if you’re white. But I think this is because males aren’t really supposed to have sexual preferences, period. Talk about how you prefer slim women and youlll be chastised too, although I doubt any average guy will care. Women just feel threatened by the idea anyone could find them unattractive for any reason ever, and society and popular media will cater to women’s feelings as a default usually.

But you as a man can still date whomever you want/can, and society won’t stop you or hinder you beyond some angry female friend cockblockers anyway, and those are easily brushed aside.

Eh. I openly said I liked abrasive blunt (autistic-coded) women who were caring. I got perplexed reactions for liking unruly hair and unshaven legs, but not much else.

Personality related traits are probably fine to have preferences for because they’re illegible and therefore less offensive than having physical ones

Please please please make this table into a template image. It's wasted hidden in the depths of the culture war thread.

Image

Miscegenation is definitely healthier than inbreeding , there's a point where the two genomes from your parents end up so far apart it starts getting unhealthy but humans are remarkably similar to each other as a species, I don't think for any two humans, even San Bushman + Aboriginal Australian pairings etc. are so far apart the distance becomes a negative.

there's a point where the two genomes from your parents end up so far apart it starts getting unhealthy

What would be an example

humans are remarkably similar to each other as a species

I wonder about this. SS Africans for instance have no Neanderthal DNA, unlike all other races. There is some speculation that there are other hominid species of DNA in each race unique to them. That suggests there is at least some degree of species variation.

What would be an example

It's so prevalent it even has a standard name (although it's still less prevalent than the opposite where crossing different strains leads to improved fitness): Outbreeding Depression.

From the article:

Examples of the second mechanism include stickleback fish, which developed benthic and limnetic forms when separated. When crosses occurred between the two forms, there were low spawning rates. However, when the same forms mated with each other and no crossing occurred between lakes, the spawning rates were normal. This pattern has also been studied in Drosophila and leaf beetles, where the F1 progeny and later progeny resulted in intermediate fitness between the two parents. This circumstance is more likely to happen and occurs more quickly with selection than genetic drift.

That suggests there is at least some degree of species variation.

Of course, we aren't identical. I'm saying more that any two random humans no matter are still more alike than each other genetically than for most other things we group into the same species. For example if you were to look at Maize you can get kernels in the same head of corn which are more than an order of magnitude more different from each other genetically than any two humans are from each other. Similar less extreme results hold for lots of bacteria etc. If we were to be as strict in calling things separate species as we are to call humans and chimps separate species we'd probably have at least an order and a half of magnitude more known bacteria species than we do today.

I meant an example from two humans, not biology writ large.

Anyhow the definition of what constitutes a species is a matter of debate within biology

My stance for a long time has been that, if you find the facial or bodily features typical to a particular ethnic group attractive, then that's no different to expressing a preference for redheads or petite women.

But I've met men who've explicitly said they're moving to Japan because they think Japanese women are more submissive than Western women, and they want a woman who'll submit to them and who they can control. I think there's something creepy about wanting a partner that you can control and dominate, and I think that believing that members of certain ethnic groups are more susceptible to being controlled and dominated is a perfect example of what activists are complaining about when they talk about ethnic fetishism.

The topic is a personal one for me, as I almost exclusively date foreign women (it's been nearly a decade since I was physically intimate, beyond kissing, with someone of my own ethnic heritage), a disproportionate share of whom have been Asian. I've been accused of racial fetishism on many occasions (with varying degrees of seriousness), but my counter-argument is essentially the above: it's not fetishism if you just like the way Asian women look, it's only fetishism if you find them desirable for creepy reasons rooted in ethnic stereotyping. (My girlfriend could be accused of lots of things but she's certainly not "submissive".) In my angrier moments I've suspected that some of the people accusing me of racial fetishism really just harbour some subconscious hostility to miscegenation that they won't cop to, so they're just dressing it up in progressive language.

I came close to broaching this topic last Wellness Wednesday, when I asked for dating advice, but I decided against derailing that particular thread. For context, I’m an American man of South Asian descent who is near-exclusively attracted to women of East Asian descent.

I’ve long struggled with the question of whether or not I “have” the “fetish” of “yellow fever”. Friends have occasionally asked me about this point blank but for the most part they keep quiet about my (probably fairly obvious to them) dating preferences, at least to my face.

In the first place, the term “yellow fever” is ill-defined. Does any strong preference for East Asian women count as ipso facto yellow fever? IMO such a definition would prove too capacious; it would include, for instance, the romantic preferences of a born-and-raised Chinese man who has only been exposed to East Asian women his whole life and thus is exclusively attracted to them. Most people would say that this is a very normal preference given the circumstances. Some might argue that this man uncritically accepts the cultural milieu of his upbringing, or has failed to Do The Work of deconstructing the factors which led to his romantic preferences, and as a result his preferences are Problematic—that’s as may be, but even those who advance this argument would, I think, not call his a case of “yellow fever”.

So I think a definition of “yellow fever” that matches colloquial usage has to be a bit more nuanced. It must be something like “an abnormal attraction to East Asian women”. Unfortunately this just pushes the thorny definitional question from “yellow fever” to “abnormal”.

What are “normal” reasons for being attracted to East Asian women? As we saw above, one generally-recognized-as-normal reason is having grown up being exposed primarily to East Asian women. Others might argue that it’s only “normal” to be attracted to those of the same race, and any cross-racial preference is abnormal. Still others might argue that the cause of the attraction is irrelevant, and what makes a racial preference abnormal is how essentializing/totalizing/fetishizing it is; for example, if someone can’t achieve an erection from nudes of non-Asian women, or would turn down dates with attractive non-Asians, he is abnormal.

Now, is my preference for East Asian women “normal”?

I grew up in heavily East Asian immigrant communities. Indeed, in almost every school year, I was one of maybe 3 South Asian kids in my class, with a slight majority of my peers being East Asian (primarily Chinese and Taiwanese, some Koreans) and the remainder being white. So, to the extent that having grown up around East Asians is a valid reason for my dating preferences to be “normal” and not “yellow fever”, I’m in the clear.

What about the claim that the only “normal” racial preference is for one’s own race? To this, I ask: how is “one’s own race” determined? Or in other words, how does a “normal” mind/body deduce what race is “one’s own” for the purpose of determining romantic or sexual attraction? One possible answer is that it comes down to biology: different races have different phenotypes—skin color and texture, amount and distribution of muscle and body fat, shape of the eyes and other body parts, perhaps pheromones—and a “normal” person is genetically hardwired to find the traits of his own biological race attractive. If this is the case, then I am guilty as charged of being “abnormal”. Curiously, though, I’ve never heard an accusation of “yellow fever” leveled at me or anyone else by someone who believes that race is a biological fact. Invariably, the charge is made by “social constructionists”.

So what is their argument for what “normally” constitutes “one’s own race”? On some level, it must boil down to nurture/socialization as opposed to biological nature. But as I said above, my upbringing was in heavily East Asian communities, so by “nurture” standards, it’s not clear my preferences are abnormal. Yes, yes, it’s true that my parents and relatives are all South Asian; perhaps that’s the only sort of “nurture” that counts for “normal” determination of “one’s own race”, but I’ve never heard it spelled out in those terms.

Is my preference for East Asians essentializing, totalizing, or fetishistic? Again, we run up against yet another inane definitional shell game. Some facts which may assist us in teasing out the truth of the matter:

  • I am capable—perhaps too capable, in some unfortunate circumstances—of achieving erections from photos or videos of naked women of any race, so at least I’m not that far gone; though in fairness, when it comes to porn, my eyes are inexorably drawn to the genitals, which look mostly the same regardless of race.
  • Moreover, I wouldn’t be attracted to an obese, severely disfigured, or even just ugly East Asian woman; indeed, purely going off of looks, I’d say only ~50% of dating app profiles of East Asian women in their 20s appeal to me.
  • Of the women I do find attractive, am I attracted to them “only” for their race? Put differently, if the traits I like about Asians were present in someone of non-Asian descent, would I find that person attractive? It’s hard to say definitively. It’s true that there are a few (e.g.) white women whom I find attractive; invariably, they are gracile, endearingly cutesy, and have dark hair coupled with fair skin and neotenous facial features. What makes it hard for me to answer with an unqualified “yes” is that one of the biggest turn-ons for me is East Asian eyes (either monolid or double) … and I struggle even to imagine a non-East Asian with that particular trait.

I think your peer group in childhood and adolescence plays a greater role in who you are attracted to than your own or your parent's race, though perhaps with some weighting according to the hierarchy observed anecdotally and in the OkCupid dataset i.e. East Asian women and White men being considered slightly more attractive by everyone. Looking at the edge cases, none of the Asian adoptees I knew who grew up in White supermajority communities or the single digit number of Black students who attended my elite high school seemed romantically interested in their co-ethnics.

There is a confounding factor here in many cases though, which is that the kind of person likely to move to an ethnically diverse community or one where they will be a tiny minority is likely higher in openess to experience to begin with, which would correlate with a willingness to date or marry outside their race. To the extent that this trait is heritable they will pass it on to their children who grow up in such an environment.

I think your peer group in childhood and adolescence plays a greater role in who you are attracted to than your own or your parent's race

Absolutely true of me. I do think it’s a weighted average of (a) parents, (b) peer group and (c) whatever factors drive the OKC data (slight bonus for white men and East Asian women, malus for black women)

The specific weights probably depend on how close one is to one’s parents (I have a fairly terrible relationship with mine) and how open (in the Big 5 sense) one is. In my specific case, if I’m being totally honest, a big part of it is also a thirst to prove myself, to prove that I am special and can attract a beautiful, high-status woman on my own terms without settling for an arranged marriage like a typical brown beta chump. Incidentally, my favorite Shakespearean drama is Othello

I ask: how is “one’s own race” determined?

By observing one’s parents in childhood

Interestingly, in cases of inter race parents, a child is most likely to grow up to be attracted to the race of the opposite sex parent, which suggests an imprinting occurs. If you’re white and mostly attracted to Asians, this suggests either your mother has more Asian features or perhaps you had a bad relationship with her?

I’m not white, nor does my mother look at all East Asian, but indeed I have a fairly bad relationship with my mother. Bravo, Holmes, very astute deduction!

You will never get anywhere in such a discussion unless you’re willing to admit that race is much more than just the tone of your skin, and males/females of different races are indeed substantially more or less attractive than each other in certain dimensions.

I think it's worthwhile to be introspective about what you like and why, but trying to shame other people into being attracted to someone they're not, as some black and trans progressives do, is worse than useless.

I mean, if you are shaming some random person on the internet, absolutely.

If there is a friend of yours that's falling into unhealthy thought patterns -- maybe turning down real-life dates or suffers from porndick or whatever -- and you are close enough to talk earnestly with them about it, then it's definitely worthwhile at least putting out feelers for whether they might be receptive.

This raises the more important question of 'what is a healthy/unhealthy sexual preference?' I am, like most heterosexual men, most attracted to healthy women in their late teens and early twenties. But broader society- and the arbiters of mental health- would like to pretend that being attracted to a man, or a disabled woman, or a tranny, is just as healthy for a man.

Whether I have a preference for white women, black women, yellow women, native american women, aboriginal women, mixed race women, etc pales in comparison.

I don't think anyone is obliged to find anyone else attractive but at the same time we should be willing to look critically at the preferences and beliefs we do have. When we're talking about racial preferences I think the natural investigation is to ask what that racial preference is rooted in. Is there some trait you find attractive that you think people of a certain race have that people of other races don't? My impression is these discussions tend to flatten substantial intra-racial variation in the traits in question and engage in a lot of racial essentialism.

Echoing other people in the thread that I think your use of the term "we" is rather misleading - I don't think you or any other left-leaning person really believes that they need to "do the work" of deconstructing their own sexual or romantic preferences. To quote myself:

Of course, the way this is framed is that heterosexual males are simply conditioned to think they find women of a healthy weight more attractive than overweight or obese women, and if we were able to remove the "toxic beauty standards" propagated by social media and the fashion and entertainment industries, straight men would instantly be deprogrammed and realise that of course they find Lizzo hotter than Emily Ratajkowski, and how could they ever have been so stupid as to believe otherwise! In this obese utopia, there would be no "feigning" of attraction.

There's a grain of truth in this observation to the extent that social contagion plays some role in what people find attractive (e.g. Hollywood actress starts wearing her hair in hairstyle, men start finding women who wear their hair in that style attractive). But the sad reality for fat acceptance activists slacktivists is that many if not most of the traits to which straight men are attracted don't seem to be culturally bound at all, because they are obvious proxies for genetic fitness and fertility, and this is true even of cultures which have never been exposed to the "toxic beauty standards" of white capitalist cisheteropatriarchy (e.g. African villages without a TV or internet connection to be found). Find me a culture in which most straight men find 40-year-old women more attractive than 20-year-old women (all else being equal), or in which the hourglass figure is widely seen as repellent, or in which facial asymmetry is seen as more desirable than facial symmetry, or in which women who are so emaciated that they've stopped menstruating are highly prized - then we can talk about how straight men's distaste for obese women is a "Western social construct".

You'll also notice that the traits which fat acceptance activists themselves find attractive in men are mysteriously exempt from having been conditioned into them by these toxic Western beauty standards they so loudly decry. The only reason the tall, lean gymrat next door doesn't want to fuck you is because he's been brainwashed into false consciousness; but the reason you want to fuck him is because he's just ever so dreamy. Awfully convenient, isn't it?

As I mentioned in another thread I've done this same reflection myself and it's changed my own perspective on who I would or would not date. In any case I don't imagine this reflection necessarily entailing any particular change. I suspect most people who experience any change will do so in a way that's the opposite of certain standards of beauty common in their cultural milieu but that doesn't have to be the case.

And has this "reflection" had any actionable results in who you actually have dated or had sex with? That is to say, have you been asked out by someone you were attracted to, but you refused the invitation on the grounds that it would be inappropriate for reasons pertaining specifically to identity characteristics (as opposed to e.g. you're their boss)?

No, but that's because I've been in the same long term relationship since I was a teenager. Also the changes are in the opposite direction of your question. Generally it has led to me being more willing to date people I would not have otherwise, rather than less willing to date people I was already inclined to.

we should be willing to look critically at the preferences and beliefs we do have

Other than the question of "who's we", I like a straight answer to "but why, though?". I'm not particularly impressed with the performance of rational analysis and deconstruction relative to instinct.

"We" is "everyone" in my mind. I've certainly changed my own opinions about who I would or would not date by doing the kind of reflection I have in mind.

As to "why" I think understanding oneself and one's beliefs is a good thing. Maybe one finds one's preferences are not grounded anything deeper than "I like this for reasons I can't articulate" and that's fine. But maybe one finds that one has a preference that could or ought be otherwise. I certainly did.

we should be willing to look critically at the preferences and beliefs we do have

Who is "we"? Because I have never once seen this phase used to mean anything other than "you".
We're always told that "White cisheteropatriarchal beauty standards" must be "critiqued", "deconstructed", "subverted", and "abolished", but only as a political project to harm the people who like those beauty standards. There is no effort made to explain why we can't equally critique the "brown queerhomomatriarchal" preference for wheelchair-bound lesbians with vitiligo, because the whole concept of "critique" privileges (even sacralizes) the identities and preferences of ally groups that work to oppose and undermine the majority. See the endless academic talk about the Powerful Holy Beauty of Black Trans Women. I have an entire folder full of papers on this theme.

"the process of changing that fact is much more a socio-cultural one" presupposes that it must be changed without justifying why, or why only that beauty standard must be abolished. "Because your beauty standards get in the way of the leftist political project" is at least a real answer, but one that's never made explicit outside of friendly territory.
When the argument is used around and against normal people, the justification is left out entirely in favor of a strong accusation to throw them on the defensive, leaving them struggling to justify their personal preferences to the satisfaction of an inquisitional critiquer.

So, let’s take black women — and my sense is that the plight of black women is the primary subtext of your comment.

I have met, interacted with, worked alongside, and befriended numerous black women over the course of my life. I think I have about as much intimate exposure to black women, black culture, etc., as any other white American who has lived in a large diverse city and attended public schools in a non-wealthy area. My perceptions of them are not informed by stereotypes and media portrayals, but by direct and repeated interpersonal contact.

I would never deny that there are attractive, feminine, intelligent, pleasant, and sexually-appealing black women. I’ve met several myself, I’ve flirted with them, I’ve even kissed a few. Like most men of any race, I prefer mixed and/or lighter-skinned black women with gracile features and smooth hair, rather than dark-skinned heavily African-looking women with heavy features and kinky/poofy hair. That’s not to say I’ve never seen or met attractive dark-skinned, non-mixed black women — I think most men would agree that, for example, Simone Biles is a very attractive woman — but they’re fewer and farther between.

That being said, it simply is verifiably true that rates of obesity are significantly higher among black women than they are among white women, and that’s to say nothing of Asian women. Average differences in temperament (whether you want to identify them as culturally-informed, or genetic, or some combination of the two) are well-documented, and so are average differences in physical build, and even more subtle things like smell. Black women smell different from white women. Their skin feels different. It’s understandable that someone whose primary romantic/sexual experience is with white women might find intimate contact with black women to be unfamiliar, slightly disconcerting, and just less familiar.

Furthermore, when it comes to the relatively small segment of black women who are genuinely hot, feminine, intelligent, and able to perform middle-class respectability, they generally seem to find themselves catapulted into high-status roles which give them the pick of the litter of nearly all high-status black men, plus some portion of high-status non-black men. Those women are highly unlikely to come into contact with lower-status white guys like me — both because they are unlikely to share the cultural hobbies which would put them into everyday casual interaction with me, and also because they’re too busy being wined and dined by wealthier men than I.

So, for the average white guy, the odds of regularly encountering the kinds of black women who may interest him are quite low, and the probability of both him and her being xenophilic enough to overcome significant cultural differences and fall for each other is even lower. It’s not primarily because they are stereotyping each other; rather, they are fairly accurately perceiving each other, and deciding that the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.

Is there a racial explanation for this difference?

Affirmative action plus the fact that the average of a certain subpopulation is different is more than enough.

Most men who went to college will, statistically, never have met a black woman who is attractive and on their level.

How exactly does affirmative action make black women fatter? I'm not sure it's about food prices.

It means every black woman you encounter in college is statistically an idiot compared to you.

Noted. But when I asked if there is a racial explanation for this difference I meant the difference in obesity rates i.e. the obesity rate of black women being much higher.

I mean, low iq and obesity go hand in hand in modern America.

More comments

Average differences in temperament (whether you want to identify them as culturally-informed, or genetic, or some combination of the two) are well-documented

Perhaps but my understanding is the Big Five does not co vary by race

I can't imagine that this is possibly the case, though I have no trouble believing that it's often insisted upon and that a lot of work has gone into plausibly maintaining the position.

E.g., SSAs are known to be more self-confident (i.e. lower neuroticism) cross-culturally, and inasmuch as 'openness' is at least partly a proxy for intelligence...

Self esteem and narcissism are also higher with them too, so much of social science is questionable so who knows

Obesity explains almost all the racial dating gap between BW - WM and BM - WW. There is no need for very online theories of facial structure or hormonal differences as per @TitaniumButterfly.

Most racial groups in the US have similar obesity rates between genders. Black people have extreme divergence, with men less fat than white men but women much fatter than white women. Almost 60% of black women are obese. Only around 40% of black men are obese. By contrast, obesity rates for white, hispanic and Asian groups are almost the same between men and women.

Is there a racial explanation for this?

I'll wager that if you poll men, white women college athletes will be more attractive than black women college athletes. I'm not doubting you about obesity explaining the lion's share of the difference, but I think if you control for that somehow you'd still find a pretty big difference. White* women are prettier, even at the same weight.

I’m sure that’s true for white men. I find Jewish men more attractive than other groups of men, that’s almost certainly in part biological/hereditary. As far as I know many wealthy, attractive and high status black men who could date out usually choose not to. Some do, most don’t.

Right, I don’t think anyone is denying that most human beings are always going to want to date within their own race. (Race being broadly construed here.) Most black men are most physically attracted to black women, and they tend to value the physical traits that are most typical of black women. Black men seem to go absolutely wild for Serena Williams, for example, whereas I think most white men find her somewhat mannish.

But if we’re talking about the subset of each racial group who are willing to date outside their own race, the disparities in the patterns we observe are surely instructive. Something like 20% of Asian-American women, as I recall, date outside their own race; of those, the vast majority go with white guys, and almost none with black guys or Latinos. Since white men aren’t that much genetically closer to Asians than black men are, it can’t simply be that dating preferences move along a predictable gradient of genetic similarity. Patterns between whites and Latinos are somewhat closer; while Latina women are more likely to date white men than white women are to date Latino men, the difference is not all that large.

I hesitate to stake out a strong position that some races are “just objectively more attractive than others”. I’m willing to say that if such an objective ranking exists, Australian Aborigines and Melanesians are at the bottom of it, with maybe African Pygmies also in competition, but past that, I agree that things like differential rates of obesity and vast cultural gaps confound the picture too much to draw definitive conclusions. It’s probably true that on a global scale, white men (including Jewish men and other Mediterranean ethnicities) probably beat out other races’ men in terms of the preferences of women willing to date outside their default race; the rankings for women are more complicated, with white (again, including Jewish) and Asian women fairly neck-and-neck, and Latina women who manage to stay thin also making a respectable showing.

Since white men aren’t that much genetically closer to Asians than black men are

They are approximately half as far:

English - Bantu is 0.23

English - Japanese is 0.12

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixation_index

If you were to divide humanity into 2 clusters it would be African vs non African (also Neanderthal admixture)

Latina women who manage to stay thin also making a respectable showing.

Latinas stay thin until they're married, or have kids, whichever comes first. It's not a 'some manage to stay thin and some don't' thing so much as a 'stay thin until optimizing for male attention doesn't make sense anymore' thing.

Some latinas will also manage to stay thin after having kids, or to be thin de nuevo, after their relationship/marriage with the baby's or babies' daddy/daddies didn't work out. It's a pretty common play from the latina playbook. A fellow latino man or extranjero will surely just recognize you and your bastard spawn's/spawns' Wonderfulness and he'll Step Up.

Counterpoint- mulatta women are considered more attractive in the African American community. I think European features are just more appealing to men.

Obesity explains almost all the racial dating gap between BW - WM and BM - WW

Ehhhh I don’t know about that. It’s obviously a significant factor — many black men certainly seem very interested in overweight white women, whereas nearly no white men are interested in comparably overweight black women — but surely there are a number of other important contributing factors as well. I’m not sure why you would be so dismissive of facial structure as an important consideration; I think it’s fair to say that the modal female Sub-Saharan facial phenotype is “more masculine” (i.e. less gracile, heavier features) than the modal female Eurasian facial phenotype.

And obviously personality and cultural differences are very important here as well. Black women, on average, have more domineering, more brash, and more extroverted personalities than white and Asian women. It’s understandable that many white men would be put off by this, whereas some number of white women would conversely be attracted to the similarly brash and extroverted personalities of black men. Men want someone feminine and demure, while women want someone forceful and confident.

Media, entertainment, and academia also put their thumbs on the scale for black men, in depicting them as more brash and exciting, and at least just as intelligent as white or Asian men. And women get much more of their worldview through memetic sources.

So men’s physical preferences are simple biology, completely unaffected by culture, while women’s physical preferences are determined largely by cultural forces?

This is a typical strawman/strawperson in such situations. And the subtle but Noticed insertion of "physical," when my comment did not specify "physical" or any physical traits. I would agree, depending on the form and qualifiers, that that's directionally true, though.

You're overstating the matter but yes, the truth lies in that basic direction.

I'll relay a similar overstatement I heard somewhere else: Men are attracted to youth and beauty; women are attracted to anything that wears a suit and treats them like shit.

Not entirely sure what to make of that but I do think about it from time to time.

women are attracted to anything that wears a suit and treats them like shit.

The ugly man in the suit who treats them like shit or the hot man who doesn’t? Seems more like a bitter divorcee statement than something based in reality; they just go for the guys who treat them badly is a way to cope with the fact that they’re more likely to go to for the hot men, good or bad, than for them.

More comments

I don't think anything in this comment contradicts anything in my comment. I did not have black women specifically in mind. I had some examples of women of various races that varied along some of the traits OP mentioned explicitly but decided not to post them. To my mind there is a pretty substantial difference between "I have not met (and may not be likely to meet) a person of a particular race who has the qualities I want in a partner" and "I could never partner with a person of a particular race due to some essential nature of the people of that race." I do think that many of our preferences are substantially influenced by the culture and environment we are raised in but the process of changing that fact is much more a socio-cultural one than an individual one.

Are racial sexual preferences natural and mentally healthy, or racist, unnatural, and mentally unhealthy?

Racial sexual preferences are natural, mentally-healthy, and racist.

Attraction is about reproduction. If you want your child to be like you, to psychologically, phenomenologically experience the world as you do, to live again in them, it's important that their genetic makeup be very close to your own and this means mating with someone relatively closely-related. If a Frenchman has a kid with a Chinese woman, he'll be genetically more closely-related to a random French kid on the street than to his own child. His child will not experience the world the same way he does. Can never be fully French, or fully receive that cultural inheritance. Instincts, inclinations, minutiae of perception and cognition and desire will be blended with something very other. So in general it's the case that, all else being equal, it's vastly better to reproduce with someone of your own race, down to a fairly narrow scope.

Is a white man who finds himself afflicted with "jungle fever", an Indian woman who feels a desire to become "bleached", or a black man who has succumbed to "yellow fever"

Oh, I thought you meant preference for one's own people. Yeah, no, what you're talking about here is different and occurs to me as sad but understandable.

So look, women are hypergamous and have been selected to be aroused by foreign conquerors since before we were human. They generally do prefer males of their own race! But if that race is broadly marginalized in social and economic terms, it becomes imperative to try to mix with the winners. This is how the race blends and survives -- its beautiful women, i.e. storehouses of positive genetic innovations and low mutation load, are folded into the superior population which will continue on into the future in a dominant mode. All else being equal she'd be happier with a male of her own race if that race were (evidently) superior, than she will be with a male of a superior foreign race, but life demands such sacrifices and the proto-women who got on board with this program vastly outcompeted those who did not.

As to the men, yeah, the incentives are very different. Sperm is cheap and all that, and men are wired to be aroused by what we see as cheap or free opportunities to copulate with what amounts to a lower-status female because, hey, why not? But actually marrying one is a sign that a man couldn't get a higher-status mate of his own race and we all understand this.

Economic/attractiveness disparities among races fuzz the dynamic a bit; e.g. a member of a low-status race managing to marry a member of a high-status race is obviously a different situation than the opposite. Probably the key thing to bear in mind here is that it's not like all races are identical but for cosmetic considerations and some aren't higher or lower than others in critical, objective, documented respects.

So, it depends.

black man who has succumbed to "yellow fever" suffering from a delusion that has been inflicted upon him by stereotypes in the media (both pornographic and non-porn)?*

Oh come on. Asian women are obviously more feminine in general than, e.g., black women. I speak in terms of physical gracility, hormone balance, proclivity to physical aggression, and so on. It doesn't take media programming or indoctrination by porn to notice this. It's right in front of our faces all the time. Unfortunately for Asian men, they're also obviously more feminine than the men of any other race along exactly the same metrics. Everyone can see it and this is all born out in spades by dating app data. (It's also why there are so few male Asian leading men in movies, etc.) Come to think of it, from where I'm sitting, your perspective (as I understand it) is the 'delusional' one that could only have come about by social programming.

Is a person obligated to find sexually attractive all people who share the same general category of sex/gender, weight, and figure?

No. I can't even imagine what that would look like in practice.

Or is attraction permitted to hinge on such minor attributes as skin/nipple color, hair texture, and lip size?

These 'minor' attributes correlate with all kinds of major ones. Reminds me of referring to race as being about 'the color of someone's skin' which is rather less than the tip of the iceberg.

If a Frenchman has a kid with a Chinese woman, he'll be genetically more closely-related to a random French kid on the street than to his own child.

Based on my non-expert investigation, I think he might be more related to his own kid than a random French kid, but more related to the random French kid than his grandkid.

Edit: but I would have to think that genetic testing would still be able to detect the grandparent/grandchild relationship based on which genes are different

If a Frenchman has a kid with a Chinese woman, he'll be genetically more closely-related to a random French kid on the street than to his own child

If a Frenchman has a daughter with a French woman from the same village as him, he'll also be genetically more closely-related to a random French boy on the street than to his own daughter, if you do the naive "sequence the genomes and count the differences" calculation.

Fun fact, for this reason men are more closely related to male chimps, and women to female chimps, than men and women are to each other.

By that metric.

Yeah, that's another good way to demonstrate why biologists defined the kinship coefficient as the probability that a pair of randomly sampled homologous alleles are identical by descent rather than identical by state.

If the metric you follow brought you here, then what was the point of the metric?

[ With apologies to NCFOM ]

So in general it's the case that, all else being equal, it's vastly better to reproduce with someone of your own race, down to a fairly narrow scope.

How narrow? The line seems relatively arbitrary here. If it is better our Frenchman marry a French woman than an Irish one for this reason, it is also better that he marry a girl from the same village than the next one.

Yes, closer is better up to a point, and there is no hard line.

Surely cousins or any existing familial ties is the hard line.

Well I did say all else being equal. The reason inbreeding is a problem is the propensity to double up on deleterious mutations, but hypothetically if those weren't a factor it'd be just fine and probably even preferable in many ways.

Attraction is about reproduction. If you want your child to be like you, to psychologically, phenomenologically experience the world as you do, to live again in them, it's important that their genetic makeup be very close to your own and this means mating with someone relatively closely-related

I concur with this, but on a deep instinctual level. On an intellectual level, I'd love to be attracted to a wide range of women, as that would grant me a lot more options in practice. But I instinctively practice assortative mating in a very fine-grained way. I am only attracted to women that have a body type and facial features similar to mine.

This has always made looking for a partner a needle-in-a-haystack problem for me, as they have been rare in all the places I've lived (but common in certain countries). It has also many times made it difficult for me to explain that I am straight while not being attracted to even model-tier women that are not my type.

The silver lining is that this preference seems to be mutual. Almost every time I met women that I was attracted to, the chemistry was instant and reciprocal, up to locking eyes as strangers on the street and striking a conversation.

You implied that you follow the related scientific literature. Could you please point me towards anything that would explain the mechanisms behind this instinctual preference, on a genetic or neurological level?

I'm also curious about its prevalence, as most people seem to be attracted to a much wider range of partners.

If a Frenchman has a kid with a Chinese woman, he'll be genetically more closely-related to a random French kid on the street than to his own child.

This is obviously factually untrue.

It's not obviously factually untrue, assuming we exclude the offspring of recent immigrants from randomly selected French kid and consider only those of legacy Frenchmen.

Chimpanzees and humans share about 98.8% of the genome, and two randomly selected humans share about 99.9% of the genome. Suppose you had an offspring with a chimpanzee, like in Next. The offspring would share .5 * 100% + .5 * 98.8% = 99.4% of the genome with you, less than that of a randomly selected human.

Similar principle within/between human populations. This isn't quite the right metric since it's a different one, on the population rather than individual level, and presumably using SNPs, but we can use it as a proxy for illustrative purposes (ran out of mental calories hunting for inter-individual genome-wide figures). The English have about 99% genetic similarity with Italians, so that puts a hypothetical lower bound on the within-English genetic similarity (which I believe is definitionally zero by this particular metric). In contrast the English have about 88% genetic similarity with Southern Chinese (same genetic distance ratio as the previous human-chimpanzee example, interestingly enough). Thus, .5 * 100% + .5 * 88% = 94%, well less than that of the English-Italian similarity of 99%.

In contrast the English have about 88% genetic similarity with Southern Chinese

This is so obviously and enormously untrue. Orders of magnitude off from a justifiable statement. Can we start defining our terms for what counts as related or genetic closeness? People here must be using very idiosyncratic understandings of these terms in order for their posts to make any sense.

Thank you for quantitatively stating this unlike other poster's baffling and wrong subjective statements about genetic similarity. The lowest outliers of estimating the genetic similarity of humans and mice are in the mid to high 80%s. I strongly suspect that Englishmen and Asians are more closely related than humans and rodents. In what manner do you mean 88% genetic similarity? How did you type any number other than 99.9%?

As an anecdote, we absolutely do see this with livestock. Females bred to a male of very different breed will visibly have more trouble relating with their own offspring than with non-relatives of their breed.

You don't really appreciate the importance of genetics until you see a group of young animals foraging in dense brush just like their sire's breed does (despite never meeting him), while the spooked mothers yell for them to come back and eat grass properly like they were taught.
Having noticed this is why Scott's line about "I don't understand why he's acting like his violent psychopath father: he couldn't have been a bad influence because they've never met!" made such a strong impression on me.

Before writing a chest-thumping, bombastic comment with an "obviously" and an additional adverb, it's good practice to pause for a beat and consider if you're having a Dunning Kruger moment, especially when I already pre-emptively explained the difference.

The key aspects are when I mentioned "genome" in the human-chimpanzee example, and "SNPs" in the English-Italian-Southern Chinese example. SNPs are sources of common variation within humans; researchers often use SNP data when working in human genetics, as SNP data is easier and cheaper to create and obtain, and easier and cheaper to work with computationally, than genome-wide data (since among most humans, most of the genome is identical or near identical). Usually the cutoff for what constitutes a SNP is if its rarer allele copy is present in at least 1% of a given population, or set of populations. So there was no such oversight nor contradiction on my part in the above comment.

Suppose, just as a stylized example, chimpanzees and humans both had only 10 loci in their genome and just one chromosome. Now suppose a chimpanzee (PT), an Englishman (EN), and a Southern Chinese (SC) had one-strand reads of:

PT - A A A A A C C C C C

EN - T G A A A C C C C C

SC - G G A A A C C C C C

Where the first three loci are SNPs, common sites where the base varies in humans. We can use a simple metric for genetic similarity, just if the letter at a given locus is the same or not. PT and EN share 80% of the genome; PT and SC share 80% of the genome. EN and SC share 90% of the genome. We could consider 80%, 80%, and 90% to be their genetic similarities. However, if we look at just SNPs, now EN and SC have a genetic similarity of just 67%.

So now we can go back to real-world data and extend the cocktail-napkin exercise if we want to get a proxy for genome wide; previous caveats still apply. About 1 in 1,000 sites in the genome is a SNP; most sites are rare variants. Thus, we have 99.9% common variant loci, 0.1% rare variant loci. Let’s assume the previous 88% EN-SC similarity as representative of all SNPs; this is likely too permissive. However, we can balance that out by assuming all rare variant sites have a similarity of 100%, which is conservative. Now we have our back of the envelope genome-wide genetic similarity between EN-SC of 99.9% * 100% + .1% * 88% = 99.988%, and EN-Italian of 99.9% * 100% + .1% * 99% = 99.999% as the EN-EN proxy. This exercise actually worked pleasingly well and got us in the right ballpark, since the 99.9% from before is any two particular humans (and lacking the additional decimal precision), and modern West and East Eurasians diverged relatively late in human evolutionary history.

Thus, a hypothetical EN-SC offspring would share 99.994% of the genome with the EN parent, less than the 99.999% from a randomly selected EN person. The conclusion remains—despite how triggering this thought appears to be for some—a father can be more genetically similar to a randomly selected person from his population than to his own offspring, if the mother of his offspring comes from a different population.

This isn't quite the right metric since it's a different one, on the population rather than individual level, and presumably using SNPs

The entire conclusion hinges upon this point, and I'm not convinced.

A quick search turned up this master's thesis (ok, not the most impressive source), according to which two random Europeans' genomes have 3.8 million differences. A random European and a random African have 5.5 million differences. (Numbers are from pages 14 and 15.) So a European/African mixed child would have 2.25 million differences with each parent, still a bit closer than two random Europeans.

The master's thesis is using an old version of that publicly-available dataset (1000 Genomes). For example, it uses about 38.2 million of what the author calls SNPs; more recent versions have at least 88 million genetic variants. His stand-in for "African" is "LWK," Luhya from Kenya, who like most Eastern Africans, have a material amount of European-appearing admixture in varying degrees.

I also don't know if his calculations were correct. Not only do I not wish to spend my time and effort replicating the findings, the thesis appears rushed. For example, Figure 1.1 has inconsistent digits on the labels, stretched images, panels that overlap one another, in addition to formatting looking like Microsoft Excel 97. My "pls fix" alarm is going-off. That being said, I'm not dunking on him and I can understand; you gotta do what you gotta do to graduate ASAP.

Even if we accept the thesis's findings as is, that still implies a woman from an earlier diverged and/or less admixed populations such as West Africans, San, and Pygmies could have a child with an European man that would be less related to the European man than a randomly selected child from his childhood street. In such a case, we'd be agreeing that she's a whore (in the generic, rhetorical sense, not the woman from the previous sentence); we'd just be discussing the price.

Sure, but Europe is a big place. Two natives of Aix-en-Provence(say) are likely much closer related than two random Europeans, and should one of them have a romantic evening with a Hutu woman, their child might well be less related to him than his next door neighbor growing up.

Thanks. I didn't feel like bothering with that. This stuff is super interesting to me and I'm very sure of what I'm saying but it really does seem to upset people and then they want to argue and no matter what it never seems to be enough, which leaves me wondering what their hangup is in the first place.

Depends on how you define it, I guess?

Defining it the way you do raises a lot of questions that feel fundamentally unserious. (If a Frenchman has a kid with a French woman, are there still some random strangers he might occasionally meet in the street who he's more closely-related to genetically than his own child? What if it's an Italian woman? etc) It feels like a reductio ad absurdum of a racialist mindset, and for that reason I would expect it to be rhetorically counterproductive for you.

It feels like a reductio ad absurdum of a racialist mindset

I guess I don't see what's absurd about it. That's just how it works.

(If a Frenchman has a kid with a French woman, are there still some random strangers he might occasionally meet in the street who he's more closely-related to genetically than his own child? What if it's an Italian woman?)

Possibly? But the gulf will be a lot smaller, which is the point. More genetic distance is, generally speaking, more phenomenological difference. More is more. That's... just obvious, yes?

I guess the absurdity being pointed out is an expectation that the modal response to this hypothetical would be something along the lines of "well of course I'd care more about my child than this stranger who happens to be more closely related to me", which seems like a reasonably strong argument that the primary object of value here is something other than genetic distance

I want to be clear that this idea (blood relations don't matter that much) is not what I was trying to get at here; I was not by any means calling TitaniumButterfly's ideas absurd on their face because they were pro-blood-relations-mattering. I was saying that it was absurd on its face to treat father-and-son-but-racemixing-happened as a looser blood relation than eighth-cousins-thrice-removed-but-you're-all-super-racially-pure, and it speaks, IMO, to running screaming away from the actual mechanics of how blood relations work because you're desperate for a kludged-together definition that supports your racialist worldview. It hits my ear the same way as something like "actually, black people have more in common with chimpanzees than they do with you or me". I don't think that that's true, and I don't think that you think that that's true. I think that you would like to think that that's true, and I think that that's very silly.

Instincts, inclinations, minutiae of perception and cognition and desire will be blended with something very other. So in general it's the case that, all else being equal, it's vastly better to reproduce with someone of your own race, down to a fairly narrow scope.

Kind of depends whether you find some value in the other.

We also know that combinations of traits can often be greater than the sum of their parts. Maybe the inclinations and instincts of a Frenchman are enhanced by admixture with those of a Norwegian or a Greek.

Of course, you've got to be selective -- but one has to selective about a mate in general.

We also know that combinations of traits can often be greater than the sum of their parts. Maybe the inclinations and instincts of a Frenchman are enhanced by admixture with those of a Norwegian or a Greek.

It can go either way. Yes, sometimes magic does happen, but given how massively-polygenic a lot of complex traits are it seems much more likely to me that in any given foreign matchup something is going to break.

Different populations have evolved different complex solutions to similar problems. Maybe a child inherits a full set of both and is extra-good at whatever that thing is. But inheriting two partial incompatible solutions is bad news.

But this is all theoretical. I haven't seen anything solid on this topic since https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/2017/04/is-mixed-race-breeding-bad-for-you/ which is hardly conclusive.

Kind of depends whether you find some value in the other.

Oh to be sure. It's an interesting exercise to imagine having children with partners of many different races just to see what it looks like for yourself to be blended with those things. But, a responsible parent does wish to ensure that he's at least not doing his children a disservice by creating them with internally-inconsistent genetic loadouts such that they have conflicting instincts, mental traits meant for highly-intelligent people but not the intelligence itself, etc.

Different populations have evolved different complex solutions to similar problems. Maybe a child inherits a full set of both and is extra-good at whatever that thing is. But inheriting two partial incompatible solutions is bad news.

Mixed race people exist. The data on whether mixed race people outperform the average of their ethnic ancestry should be pretty simple to come by.

AFAICT, Latinos act like the weighted average of Indian and Spanish people, but have slightly better health.

The data on whether mixed race people outperform the average of their ethnic ancestry should be pretty simple to come by.

If you click that link in my post (the one to which you're responding here) you'll get some insight into how not-simple that is, actually. Mixed-race people are almost definitionally born to outlier parents, e.g.

That's why I pointed to Latinos- a long established and not particularly selected mixed population.

Hmm, so continuing on that -- if it's true that mixed-race people are already positively selected (since the opportunity to intermarry is cosmopolitan and affluent) then actually answering the central question here may be nearly impossible.

This is the situation as I understand it, yes.

Different populations have evolved different complex solutions to similar problems. Maybe a child inherits a full set of both and is extra-good at whatever that thing is. But inheriting two partial incompatible solutions is bad news.

In a situation where the problems are relatively stable, this might be true. If you expect that the pace of change will increase (or even match the last 50 years) then perhaps a larger set of solutions is beneficial in that in increases the chances of having the right tool to address a new situation.

In other words, instead of having a loadout hyperoptimized for a given situation that might not even be there in a few years, a broader set of inclinations increases the fitness under a wider variety of potentialities.

In a situation where the problems are relatively stable, this might be true. If you expect that the pace of change will increase (or even match the last 50 years) then perhaps a larger set of solutions is beneficial in that in increases the chances of having the right tool to address a new situation.

Yeah, I'd expect that it's good for the population in general to have some of this going on. Not necessarily for most of the individuals in question, though.

It can go either way. Yes, sometimes magic does happen, but given how massively-polygenic a lot of complex traits are it seems much more likely to me that in any given foreign matchup something is going to break.

If anything it's likelier a mixed-race couple* would be much more likely to lead to things not breaking. Many of the worst genetic illnesses are inherited precisely because both parents carried the same recessive gene, which is obviously less likely with more genetically distant partners. This is the whole reason inbreeding is risky.

*This is accepting, for the sake of argument, that you could call a French-Norwegian or French-Greek couple "mixed-race" with a straight face.

Check out the article I linked; it goes into that. But in short, yes, that's also a consideration.

This is accepting, for the sake of argument, that you could call a French-Norwegian or French-Greek couple "mixed-race" with a straight face.

Race subdivides fractally.

Like many things in mental health, I think there is going to be a continuum in terms of healthy preferences and unhealthy paraphilia. For example, there is a healthy hobby/pastime of gambling (prototypically: weekly poker night with the bros) and an unhealthy gambling addiction, and the boundary between them likely centers around the extent to which gambling causes problems in other areas or life and/or crowds out other activities.

So for sexual attributes, I would probably delineate a fuzzy boundary between healthy and unhealthy around similar lines:

  • Does the preference turn into obsession where the individual fantasizes about satisfying them to the exclusion of available dating partners around them?
    • This is probably made worse by pornography that allows satisfying ever-more-granular requests. When that starts becoming preferable to real human connection, it's likely unhealthy.
  • Does the focus on those attributes crowd out all other potential properties of a partner: e.g. personality, achievement and compatible life goals? Does the individual see partners as people or are they reduced to a few dimensions?
  • Does the individual allow partners with those attributes to take treat them poorly?
  • Overall: do the preferences help the individual focus what they want, or are they an impediment

Obviously there isn't a bright line here, but I think one could construct a steelman of an unhealthy preference that could be shortened to, e.g., "yellow fever".

You can always tell when someone has had their preferences (or identity) overwritten by porn rather than irl experience, so that's a good place to start for any sort of "valid/invalid" distinction.

Personally I think racial preferences are just a healthy expression of racism.

The important thing is to never get stuck defending your preferences on the terms of some activist who's accusing you of internalized queerphobic racism for liking hot chicks. Laugh at them, ban them, hit them with a brick, whatever, just do not engage on their terms, ever. Just letting them be seen on the attack with you defending is a loss, even if you "win" the debate hard enough for them to call you a Nazi and storm off.

You can? How? My hope is that everyone I know is healthy and I'm not just oblivious.

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