There you go. Like I say. It’s useless. There is a limit how a person reframe, see problem in fundamentally different ways. One does what one wants. If it is about your desire to create personal project that manifest equality from your point of view. Then that’s it. This is fairly fundamental and whatever I say you gonna interpret as a threat to your project instead of me telling you things you can’t see.

http://hugoschwyzer.net/2008/04/03/love-trumps-aesthetics-of-books-music-desire-and-deal-breakers/

1. That is Japan. Japan may well be different. A lot of these sorts of social issues (racism, sexism, homophobia) are at different points of acceptance there. I’ve never been in an interracial relationship in Japan, so I can’t speak for what it’s like.

2. I feel like white male / East Asian female relationships can be kind of problematic, in terms of the cultural assumptions white men often make about Asian women. Not everyone’s intentions are honorable, and feeling like a walking blowup doll sucks, regardless of your race. Feeling like a walking blowup doll BECAUSE of your race is probably even worse.

3. If either or both members of the couple are far away from home and completely outside their cultural comfort zone, that obviously adds another level of difficulty, to ANY relationship, regardless of racial issues. Moving from the south to New York City to be with my Upper West Sider boyfriend and live 10 blocks from all his friends and his family when I was 2000 miles from anyone else I knew was HARD, and it was one of the things that ultimately killed our relationship. He was also white, by the way.

Try wearing jilbab and run around the airport then.

OK, so what you’re saying is that white people shouldn’t date outside their race because some of the prejudice their partner faces might spill over to them, or because they might have to see such prejudice up close and personal.

That’s bigotry if I’ve ever heard it, sweetheart.

Not to mention that, no, the simple wearing of Muslim-oriented clothing is not enough to get you harassed in an airport. I’m not saying it never happens, but it’s not a given, at all. I once sat to a woman in jilbab on a train crossing into the USA from Canada. She was traveling on a Canadian passport. She got exactly the level of scrutiny I got, which is to say pretty much none.

Also, I would assume that if someone who is “blatantly” Muslim is traveling with their obviously white spouse and biracial children, they are far less likely to be bothered. The folks who have real problems are people traveling on Middle Eastern or South Asian passports, not US citizens who happen to pray to Allah instead of Jeebusssss.

Regarding some of the other examples — As I said before, almost half of my neighbors are multiracial families. Most of them are homeowners. I would assume that they probably were able to secure financing for their half-million dollar condos. The couple I mentioned above are also homeowners, even in rural America where it’s still possible to face discrimination just on the basis of the one mortgage broker at the one bank in town being a fucktard.

Of course it’s not colored/white drinking fountain type of thing and much more subtle, but it’s there. And this type of things put strains and demand extra skills than average relationship.

In my experience, this just isn’t really true in terms of interracial relationships and mundane everyday interactions with “society”. As I’ve said, I didn’t ever experience direct racist behavior as a result of “dating outside my race”. Is it possible that there were racist people out there who saw me walking arm in arm with my non-white partners and thought all sorts of untoward things about us? Sure. It’s not worth not being with someone I love. And, yes, to follow the line of thought that because some people might not approve, therefore I should change my behavior, is, in fact, totally fucking bigoted.

Carry on. Nothing to see here. We have achieved utopia. la la la …. *yawn*

It’s not so much that utopia has been achieved, but that, in my experience as someone who has been in multiple interracial relationships, you are not really Fighting Society in any way that is particularly dramatic. Nobody is burning crosses on your lawn, or refusing you admittance to the club, or anything overt like that. You are not really confronting others so much as constantly having to confront your own issues. You really do have to work harder at communicating and understanding and really thinking hard about yourself.

This is part of why I consider your line of reasoning so bigoted. What you are really against is the idea of people fighting their own racial demons. To you, it is important that people’s prejudices remain intact, and living life up close and personal with a person of another race might challenge that.

Conversely, don’t assume that my wacky musings and occasion ramblings are from a movie. Especially if you’re going to argue with me about a movie that I haven’t seen/heard about, and insist it’s from that movie. Bonus negative points if it’s a film that only you and five other people have seen.

Not that that’s a sore spot for me or anything….:)

Besides the usual homophobic/racist/sexist dealbreakers, not reading at all, not paying attention to what I’m saying, and assuming that you know me well. Hell, I’m still trying to figure myself out. I’m also neither stupid nor smart, I’m just average. I’m not a genius or less intelligent than a pile of rocks.

-Anyone who shows undo deference to the state. Patriotism is a huge turn-off for me, any kind of flag-wearing, national-hero-worshipping or troop-supporting gets a big rejection from me. I’m pretty strict about this. This is as much about taste as it is about politics, in some ways (although the politics are important). The whole aesthetic of nationalism disgusts me.

-Somewhat connected to the last one: Anyone who actually is in the military (or has been but never reformed) or a police service is very much out.

-Ayn Rand fans are a definite no. Actually, at this point even people who read Ayn Rand and “just don’t see why everyone hates it so much” are a definite no.

-While I enjoy the occasional goofy cartoon-for-grownups, people that watch family guy/the simpsons/South Park/whatever else constantly and quote them in conversation are a no.

-While I don’t expect potential lovers to share my love of Star Wars (it is, let’s face it, something that comes primarily from nostalgia), it cannot work out with someone who would ridicule my love of star wars.

-While I’m not going to pick a particular band as a dealbreaker (I think it’s pretty petty, and my current partner likes rush for some strange reason and I love her anyways), chronically bad taste in music is a dealbreaker. That said, there’d need to be big plusses if I find out someone’s into Diana Krall or something.

-People who judge other people harshly based on consumer politics. I mean, everybody engages politically as a consumer some of the time, but if someone thinks really badly of someone because they don’t do some particular consumer politics thing, (be it vegetarianism, organic food, fair trade coffee, hell, even recycling) I think it reflects a controlling, judgemental streak.

-Religion isn’t a dealbreaker but it definitely is an issue. I’m not religious, and I don’t have any respect for people who identify with a religion when they don’t have well-thought out reasons for it. Actually, I have similar problems with atheists who go out of their way to bash religion without knowing much about them. It’s one thing to simply ignore the whole issue, but if you’re going to say vehemently mean things about christians as a group you should have some vague reason why you think those things are true or you’re just an ass.

And does the same thing apply to other “talents”? My partner really cannot do maths. I studied Japanese with a guy who really could not do languages. Does this reflect a hidden fact about the person? Or is it just art?

(And why do you hate Neil Gaiman?)

I live in Japan at the moment and see a few mixed race couples around the traps (Japanese-white, mostly). The cultural differences are huge and most of those couples don’t seem happy. I don’t know if this is the mixed-race issue particularly, or rather: a) very different cultures b) the white person involved is usually an arsehole c) the white person is very much isolated from their own culture, but it makes me suspicious that mixed-race couples can work.

I’m not American though, so I don’t know what the term “race” means in connection with black Americans. I can’t imagine that they actually have that different a culture to whites. I read squashed’s comment as simply saying that mixed-race couples suffer more shit, and therefore are less likely to work out. I have no idea if this is controversial or not, but it doesn’t seem to be. My parents always used to ask me “Your girlfriend isn’t aboriginal is she?” Obviously there would be trouble if she was. Similarly, my high-class girlfriends’ parents always hated me, but people from the same class tended to not mind.

As for class, I didn’t say anything about inherent qualities. It just tends to work out that way. I haven’t tested the theory enough times to be sure, it’s just my impression. And (as a commy Italian-migrant friend’s parents told me once), it doesn’t matter what you do now: it’s where you came from which determines how people of a different class will view you. I like to hope these differences can be surmounted, but I have never seen much evidence of it.

What are your deal-breakers with someone you’re dating? Apart from the bleeding obvious (heroin habit, crippling mental illness, violent streak, dumb as a sack of hammers)…

Willful ignorance. Not everyone shares my interests. That’s okay. But a complete lack of interest in anything substantial is something I cannot damned well work with. It doesn’t have to be something I like from the get-go, but be passionate about something.

Rank bigotry. It’s not something I’ve encountered (yay for a rather claustrophobic social network?), but I’ve heard tell from a friend who saw someone change from a loving family member to someone capable of vicious violence in an instant when their prejudice was triggered.

A deep conviction that sex is bad and it necessarily defiles one or more of the people involved. I’ve come into contact with this before and it’s just an recipe for an inevitable conviction that one is inherently yecchy. No fun there.

That’s pretty much it. Oh, there are things that get on my nerves–fawning appreciation for smug “conceptual” art combined with disdain for anything representational, a refusal to read comics or SF ever, failing to recognize that DragonForce is in fact the Hardest Metal Known to Man–but those are just preferences, not deal-breakers.

As for the various belief systems that other posters talk about (fundie Christianity, 9/11 Truthers) I think that people can believe weird things and compartmentalize them. I’ve believed plenty of weird things in the last ten years or so, but they’ve correlated very little with the essential nature of who I am.

dooflow: People who find any pleasure in Neil Gaimin’s body of work

junk science: If everything out of your mouth is a quote from a movie or tv show, you’d better have some damn awesome redeeming characteristics before we can spend much time together.

It makes it a lot less fun to talk with my folks, though, as they can speak entirely in quotes from the works of Mel Brooks.