What do gay men mean by the word âpreferenceâ?
Something about how gay men use the phrase âItâs just a preferenceâ unsettles me. I get the sense they think the phrase is self-explanatory, and excuses away any form of racism, misogyny, homophobia, or bigotry, exonerating the user from all accusations of wrong-doing.
But hereâs the thing:Â it doesnât.
One dictionary defines âpreferenceâ in the following way:
preference | ËprÉf(É)r(É)ns | noun
a greater liking for one alternative over another or others: her preference for white wine | he chose a clock in preference to a watch.
a thing preferred:Â nearly 40 per cent named acid house as their musical preference.
from Latin praeferre âcarry in frontâ
Based on this definition, the gay men who use this word to defend the language they use online are using it wrong! They donât seem to understand what the word actually means!Â
Preference is the word one uses when one likes many different things, but likes one of those things more than the others. Take ice cream as an example. Most people like more than one flavour: chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, cookies & cream, etc. And most people, if they didnât have a choice, would be happy to eat any one of them, but if they did have a choice, theyâd probably decide on their favourite (letâs say chocolate). This is called having a preference for chocolate ice cream. And even if chocolate ice cream was your personal preference, you would occasionally still decide to eat something different, just for a change.
A sexual preference is no different. You might find Asian, Black and Latino guys attractive, but your preference, if given the choice, is Asian. Or you may have a preference for really butch masculine men, but also some that are not so masculine do it for you on occasion.
So to say one has a preference, in the spirit of the word, is to say one pretty much has an open mind to a variety of things. Or at least to more than one thing.
Yet, as we all know (many of us first-hand), thereâs a lot of gay men out there who have absolutely no attraction to anything other than white, hypermasculinised men. They have no preferences, because what they are attracted to occupies only one single point on the entire racial and gender spectrum. So, when these guys attempt to defend themselves using the word âpreferenceâ, I donât think theyâre being very genuine, or that they understand what the words they use even mean.
The word they are looking for, but refuse to use, is requirement.
requirement | rÉŞËkwĘÉŞÉm(É)nt | noun
a thing that is needed or wanted: only one type of window fits the requirements of this building.Â
a thing that is compulsory; a necessary condition: applicants must satisfy the normal entry requirements.
Let me repeat this definition:Â A thing that is compulsory. A thing that is wanted.Â
And again:Â COMPULSORY. WANTED.
And in context:Â COMPULSORY WHITENESS. COMPULSORY MASCULINITY.
So why donât gay men say âItâs just a requirement?â I suspect itâs because for the everyday gay, that word doesnât feel so easy to hide behind as preference. Preference sounds so benign, so unobtrusive, so open-minded, so nice.
"Oh no, weâre not trying to tell anyone that they are excluded, we really believe all the diverse people of the rainbow community are equal, weâre just expressing our personal preferences.â
No, I donât think you are. I think youâre demanding whiteness and straight-actingness, to hell with anyone that doesnât fit your neat little manufactured ideal of hotness. And youâre hiding behind a word that doesnât apply, in order to deflect the guilt one normally associates with exclusion and prejudice.
If there were more races and gender-expressions promoted as âhotâ over a sustained period of time, rather than just the one version, this really wouldnât be such an issue. But with the white masculine male promoted as the overwhelming frontrunner in the attraction stakes, these requirements masquerading as preferences have the stench of âmaster raceâ written all over them.
If youâve been conditioned to find only one âtypeâ of man attractive, so be it. Many people canât help being who they are, including all the aspects of ourselves that have been conditioned into us from birth. We have to find ways to love and respect ourselves, and that includes all our imperfections (even the unconscious ones). But perhaps it really is time to stop promoting that conditioned attraction as a personal âpreferenceâ, mainly because it isnât. Not even slightly.
Every time a gay man publishes online his long list of (white, hypermasculine) sexual requirements, anyone not fitting into that narrow definition of hotness feels like rubbish. Personally, Iâd love to live in a world where gay men threw a little queer into the mix and took into account how their words, and their sense of entitlement to those words, affected the rest of their community.
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