Humans with hearts and souls and not just penises and butts

I promised myself when I started this column that I wouldn’t write about race in a direct way; rather that I would allow my stories to talk about race in a natural and flowing way, seeing it as incidental to the larger narrative.

My regular readers will have seen that the race and colour of my various dates has suggested that I am catholic in my taste. And this is true, I am open to many possibilities. But perhaps I have been naïve in thinking that, because race is not an issue for me (or not obviously anyway), it’s also not an issue for everybody else.

What’s prompted this is yet another fascinating article in Attitude, for me one of the best gay mags around. It’s a UK mag, but you can get it elsewhere. A lot of the stuff in it is quite provocative. Entitled The Internet: the New Racism, the article gave examples of what some profiles said: No Orientals or Asians: Caucasians only; Cute white boy for black man; the darker the chocolate, the sweeter the taste. And the ones I’ve seen are not much different, many of them being quite explicit, others more vague, hinting at preference.

I have to admit I’m torn about this – on the one hand if you have a preference for men of a particular size, shape, height, colour, shouldn’t you be able to say this so that everything’s clear from the start?

(I’ve got a Caribbean friend who will only sleep with white men, or very light skinned men who might be mixed race, and he’s unapologetic about it.) On the other hand, if your preferences have been shaped by distorted societal values, shouldn’t you examine them and try to move out of your comfort zone?

And we all know stories of younger black guys being dated by older white men – who knows what to make of these relationships? What is clear is that our view of whether they are exploitative, mutually beneficial, or just yet another variation on Adam and Steve, is probably based on our own histories of love, race and politics.

I suppose what’s really important is that we don’t reduce our preference to an object or part-object. Oh you know what I mean. Seeing black men as powerful, well hung stallions who can go on all night, picturing bears as hairy beasts who will dominate you, and viewing skinny, androgynous boys as “play wives” who will be passive in the bedroom and bossy in the kitchen.

The minute you do this, you stop seeing the whole person. Of course there is a place for role-playing and game-playing, and if a black man wants to punish this uppity white boy by dominating me sexually, hmmm that could be fun. But no, I’m talking about the world of relationships, where conversations about mortgages, career plans and mutual needs go beyond bedroom (sex club?) games.

In this world, it’s really nicer to see people as whole humans with hearts and souls and not just penises and butts. So if I was to give any advice to you, dear reader, heaven forbid, I would say, take a risk, move out of your comfort zone, try something new. Of course you are entitled to your preferences, just don’t impose them on anyone else and don’t put them out in a way which hurts other people or reduces them to an object. Let’s be kind to each other!