It seems to me that while sexual racism needed to enter into public conversation in the gay world, it’s not going to go away – either sexually racist behaviour or discussions about it. Tim and I were talking about Sexual Racism on gaydar, Sen’s just written an article about it on grindr, so the issue is going to carry through in different forms and places.
fab Magazine from Toronto is an old friend of mine. Alex Rowlson published this article about sexual racism in its pages called “Not just a preference“. It’s sharply-written and smart: “Words can beat people down, but it’s within our power to change how we frame our desires, and even to change our desires to create more inclusive screwing.”
Over on The Sword (NSFW), a site that reviews gay porn, a writer has gone off (i.e. reacted badly) over Alex’s article. Each of his arguments could be lifted from my old blog entry and article where I rebutted the kinds of things that we heard in the early days of SRS. He gets it wrong from the first sentence, imagining that Alex’s article equates having a preference to being racist, which of course, it doesn’t. The interesting thing about his rant, which I see, oops, is written by the editor of the site, Zach Sire, is that it seems to have given rise to some healthy and energetic debate. I’d refer Zach and other readers to this site… but the conversation seems to be going quite nicely without us!
Meanwhile, another porn website points to both articles. I like Fleshbot (NSFW) and its writers – they have a real healthy and positive view about celebrating men of all colours and ethnicities, and they’re writing in a milieu that actually counts, one that gay men are viewing and one that has daily conversations and images about sex. Their posting simply points out a hot Asian guy getting f*cked and then casually refers readers to the other articles.
Sexual Racism Sux 