I'm Cindy and this is a story of sex. In each episode of the story of sex, we explore the human experience of getting down and dirty, unpacking the hot topics you're afraid to discuss and going at it from every angle that the Kama Sutra will allow. So coming up in today's show, we explore the intersections of race and sexuality, diving into the sticky history of interracial sex laws, sexual stereotypes, and how race plays out in our romantic and sexual relationships.
So why are we talking about race on a sex podcast? We're talking about race because I am Latina and there's no escaping it. I grew up in a very white neighborhood. And so this is a topic that's very dear to my heart. I always had crushes on the white boys in my life. And growing up, there was only a handful of movies and books that had anything to do with interracial relationships. So everywhere I looked, I always got the message that people only married their own.
Disney, telenovelas. All my family told me it was easier to, as my stepmom said, which means to enjoy what your own land produces. On my mom's side, every single one of my 23 aunts and uncles married Latinos. So I have no mixed race cousins until recently when my cousin married a black guy. First mixed race cousin. Progress.
My parents are both immigrants, so I always understood that race was an important part of my life. And I understood more of what being brown in America was after I learned about Martin Luther King. Realize it wasn't as progressive as I thought it was that like the reason I could go to school and live the life that I lived and Even ride the bus was just because of all the work that people had done before me to get here
But even with these liberties, there were still unspoken rules on where I could go and who I could be friends with, who I could love, and who I could ultimately sleep with. Most of the Latino boys I met, they weren't in my band class or my theater class or my... AP classes and we didn't have a lot in common and also they always tease me for acting white because they have the mistaken idea that only white people can be educated.
My first real boyfriend was a white guy and the difference between us were very interesting to observe. Everything from my deep-seated belief that dreams hold meaning to my sheer horror when he told me his parents didn't mind if we had sex in their house as long as we closed the door.
Our lives are very different and we have a lot of discussions about how to meld our lives together when we work together. But the cultural undertones that made up my life were our relationship and ultimately it led to our demise. As I got older, race has continued to play a big part in the perceptions men have of me, both romantically and also if they're interested in me sexually. I've had partners ask me if I was slutty because Latinos obviously have a big libido.
If I wanted to do maid roleplay, because I was perfect for it. If I wanted a ton of kids. And also if I'd have unprotected sex, because I'm obviously Catholic, which I'm not. Well, that's to say that racial microaggressions, stereotypes, fetishizations have all played a part in relationships I've had and attempted to have. And I bet I have a hard time finding any person of color who hasn't had some similar experience.
But why is this even a thing to begin with? Why do people look at mixed race couples weird or ask offensive questions? What world does history have in my modern day date eating vegan mac and cheese and watching Jordan Peele's Us? That's where miscegenation comes in. you
So the dictionary defines miscegenation as a mixture of races. It happens when people of different races reproduce and create interracial offspring. And anti-miscegenation laws are laws that ban marriage and sex between people of different races. Now, unfortunately, such laws are nearly as old as human culture itself and have popped up worldwide from Mexico to India to Africa.
Even within the same country, like in Mexico, there's still an expectation of who you're supposed to marry. So when the colonizers arrived in America, They were eager to be more shitty than the rest of the world. And they drafted their own rules and eventually laws against race mixing. Some of the earliest recorded laws are from 1691. These laws were meant to uphold the oppression and segregation of U.S. slavery.
and the oppression of indigenous peoples, but they soon expanded to mean anybody who was non-white. It's interesting too to note that Mexico's colonizers accepted racial mixing to some degree as part of life, but they created this complicated racial caste system with 16 racial subcategories to make sure white was at the top.
A landmark case that changed everything was Loving v. Virginia in 1967. Until that point, only 52 years ago, anti-race mixing laws were still in the books and upheld in many states in the United States. the decision of Loving v. Virginia in the Supreme Court struck down all state laws about interracial marriage and changed the rules about miscegenation in America forever. Here's Bernard Cohen, the volunteer lawyer for the Lovings, on behalf of the ACLU.
The segregation of any group, religious or racial, either voluntarily or involuntarily is unthinkable and even dangerous to the body politic. He's arguing on behalf of this case proposed by Mildred Loving, a black and indigenous woman, and Richard Loving, a white man. Now, Virginia stands here today and in this Loving case for the first time. tries to find a justification other than white racial supremacy for the existence of its statute.
Mildred and Richard had been sentenced to serve time behind bars for marrying one another since their marriage violated Virginia's Racial Integrity Act. At the end of the court case, however, the Supreme Court issued a decision in the loving's favor and overturned their convictions.
This put an end to the enforcement of Virginia's anti-miscegenation laws and additionally ruled that freedom to marry is a fundamental right for all straight Americans and couldn't be denied on the basis of race. The opposing counsel in the Loving v. Virginia case was a horrible bigot. His speech is so dry that he almost missed the fact that the opposing counsel is comparing mixed-race marriages to incest and pedophilia with that sort of pervasive white supremacy ideology.
It's no wonder that sexual romantic relationships between white people and people of color can still be so fraught in 2019. It's hardly 50 years later. Maybe you're one of those that ascribes to the fact that race is a social construct. and you're right it totally is maybe you're thinking this was 50 years ago these laws are gone they don't apply to me i can sleep with whoever i want i can date whoever i want because our legislation lets us freedom
But actually, until 2003, there were laws dictating our sexual choices and they were more enforced when it pertained to interracial sexual choices. So in 2003... There was a Supreme Court case about whether or not people could have private anal intercourse inside their house. Yes, you heard that right. This went all the way up to Supreme Court. Your tax dollars paid for this shit.
The story goes that John Lawrence, who was a white guy, had three gay men over at his house late one night. They were drinking and talking. It was Tyrone Garner and Robert Eubanks. So Tyrone was black. Robert and John Lawrence were both white. The trio had a somewhat tumultuous history filled with romantic jealousy and this kind of love triangle thing. But they all got drunk and Robert was jealous that...
Tyrone was flirting with John Lawrence. And so he left the house and decided that it was a good idea to call the police and tell them there was a crazy black guy with a gun. So the police arrived at 11 p.m. Without a warrant, just burst into the house and they found Lawrence and Tyrone in the bedroom. Fucking. And the two were immediately arrested in violation of the state law. Luckily, Lawrence and Tyrone...
lawyers took this all the way to Supreme Court to challenge the case on the basis of privacy and the Supreme Court ruled the following. The present case does not involve minors. It does not involve persons who might be injured or coerced. The case does involve two adults who, with full and mutual consent from each other, engage in sexual practices common to a homosexual lifestyle.
The state cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime. I would like to note that this was a six to three ruling on the Supreme Court, which means that three fucking people on the Supreme Court thought that. privacy of your home is not guaranteed by the Constitution. The case was overturned.
And while on the surface it looks like it has more to do with sex than race, racial tensions and stereotypes were the whole reason for this mess in the first place. They were present in Robert Turd's feelings. They were present when he called the cops to falsely report that a black guy was armed and dangerous. They were present when the cops showed up without a warrant and burst in. And they were present to this day as I remember the case only by the name of the white guy, John Lawrence.
To quote from a New Yorker article by Dalia Lithwick, sodomy laws were almost never enforced, but their very existence legitimized a culture of homophobia. The same thing goes for miscegenation laws. Anti-miscegenation laws are still in the books in some places, with Alabama barely repealing theirs in 2000 with a 60% vote.
The presence of these laws and their long-lasting implications are intricate and vast. The segregation of different races and cultures, combined with U.S.'s love of isolationist nationalistic history, has fooled some crazy, some hurtful, and some ridiculous ideas of what interracial dating and intimacy is. look like one thing i actually hear a lot and i have also said myself is i'm not attracted to that race so this is a very delicate conversation
in the sense that a lot of times when you have it, all people hear is, you're calling me racist, and then the conversation ends. Or people don't even think it's something weird, which is kind of bad in its own way. I struggled a lot with how to discuss this topic, but I'm reading this book for another episode called Love's Not Colorblind. And...
The author is a sex therapist who participates in polyamorous communities. And one thing that he talks about is the fact that when you make that statement, you're basically eliminating an entire group of people. and showing the limitations of your experience with them. It's just a very overarching statement that tends to be reductive in the same way that racial or sexual...
stereotype is. Another aspect of that too is how there's a correlation between who you're surrounded with and what you find attractive. So if the media and the radio and the American world basically tells us that
White people are the epitome of beauty and the epitome of intelligence and the epitome of power. And this Eurocentric idea has been beaten into other cultures that, you know, white people are rich and they... are beautiful in all these things, then how does that, that impacts our attraction because we don't have as much exposure to other cultures as we like in the United States often.
And this is reflected by interracial marriages. They're split up. So the Pacific Northwest and California have like a 25% interracial marriage. And then the South has about... three to ten percent interracial marriage and most interracial marriages are actually somebody of a different race marrying a white person so this plays into race and sex and dating because who you swipe right on
Why are you swiping right or left? What baggage are you carrying into this scenario? And what ideas of race are you projecting onto that person? On YouTube, there's this video where people ask interracial couples questions. It's a video by Internet Action Force and one of the first questions they talk about and the title of the video is what's it like to have sex with a person from a different race? The question is interesting in what it displays that despite this
colorblind, progressive, post-racial bullshit of the 90s, of the Obama presidency, of our modern day. A prevalent thought for many people is actually that people of different races are different somehow, like innately different. Now, unfortunately, since it's considered impolite to discuss things like race, most people don't know how to discuss race. Most people don't also go out and research stuff on their own. So what becomes our education? The media?
porn and stereotypes passed on like urban legends about groups. So during our research we were also talking about how some races don't have as prevalent stereotypes or even any stereotypes at all that we could come up with or find on the internet. Not even on Urban Dictionary, y'all. Because they're just so ignored. And that's the point of discussion. The fact that we don't even consider them worth discussing as...
cultures or people. There's literally like nothing that we could find on them or they were very vague. Another thing was the sexual stereotypes for white people. So the most common one I heard growing up was that White people were more vanilla in bed. They lacked passion and warmth. What I've also heard is that white people are thought of as boring and safe with their Birkenstocks and their 401ks. And on the flip side of this...
Things like being LGBTQ or polyamorous are also often ascribed to being a white people thing because of the way it's represented on the media and within kink and polyam communities. We all have these cultural expectations for how people of different races will act in bed. But where did these arbitrary ideas even come from?
As Latinas, we have our own sexual stereotype, often of being hot-headed, promiscuous, jealous, with big boobs and dark hair. And here is Sofia Vergara in her Emmy award-winning role perpetuating stereotypes. You mad at me or something? I don't know. Did you do something to make me mad? Because then I am. But if you didn't, then I am not. I didn't do anything. Then I am not mad. I am mad. Last night, Jay had a sexy dream about some woman.
And yes, people are allowed their private thoughts, and I shouldn't be so angry. But I am laughing, so I get to feel whatever I want. And maybe you're like, oh, that's that's actually like a nice stereotype. Like that's harmless. People just think you're really hot. Well, I don't have big boobs. So I'm always a disappointment. Latinos actually encompass a large.
A large large, I cannot emphasize a large amount of space and culture. So now all Latinos are light-skinned with big boobs and dark hair. I hate to break it to y'all.
The stereotype of the feisty Latina comes from the turn of century films where Latinos often danced around and sang in a part of their own culture. But Latinos in the U.S. and Latin American governments were... grossed out by the portrayal and started to boycott the films so hollywood didn't want to lose the growing market so instead they made it more tasteful which is the sexy vivacious latina we see today or you have the madonna look that they're
virginal and waiting until marriage, like a good Catholic girl should. But many of these ideas about Latino sexuality don't just stay in the bedroom or in the Tinder conversations. Many Americans... I have this belief that Latinos are very fertile with very high libidos and we basically act like rabbits and just keep having lots of kids.
This crappy assumption has direct impact on politics with a conservative fear that Latinos are planning to take over the country and make white people a minority. If it's not so bad being a minority, why are people so afraid of it? Another group that has a pervasive sexual stereotype are Asian Americans. There's this idea that Asian women are sexually submissive.
and sexually naive. This became a thing during World War II when the Japanese government forced 200,000 women to become comfort workers for American and Japanese soldiers. After that, during the Korean and Vietnam Wars, there was so much organized prostitution in Asia that 85% of American soldiers had seen a prostitute at that time.
This means that for three generations of American men, their first experience was with an Asian woman as a sexual object. This is also translated into the idea that Asian women have really tight vaginas, which letters comedy shows like Amy Schumer's music. and even medical perceptions. There was a Healthline article that talked about how some Asian women have had doctors use teenage-sized tools for pap smears or ask them inappropriate questions about their vaginas.
Asian men, on the other hand, are rarely seen as sexy protagonists. Bruce Lee was the first Asian star to gain international status as a sexy, powerful, masculine symbol. And that was in the 1970s, y'all. In the 1800s, when a lot of Asian men were moving to the US, the law stopped them from working in heavy industries. And they often took on jobs and laundry, cooking and cleaning, which were seen as women's work.
And to make things worse, in the late 1800s, new Asian immigrants were prohibited from entering the U.S. altogether, and they were forbidden from bringing in brides, which left millions of men, including Chinese and Japanese men. without the possibility of getting married, and they couldn't intermarry because that was illegal. So whole generations of straight Asian men lived their lives alone, and they got the rep for being feminine and less sexual.
For black Americans, the sexual stereotypes are just as dramatic. Historically, the depiction of black men as strong and muscular and overly sexual was conjured by auctioneers and slaveholders to bolster their sales. And when emancipation came, these men were afraid that the newly freed slaves would take revenge against them by raping their daughters. So they shifted the thought to black men being more animalistic, brutish, and overly sexualized.
Another component of this is also the capacity to feel pain. There's this long-held belief that Black people feel less pain, and doctors will actually prescribe less pain medication. But this can translate into sex because...
If you are a person who has this internal bias that someone can feel less pain and you're in an S&M relationship, how much are you actually going to hurt a Black partner that you have if you're expecting your partner to be able to hold a larger capacity for pain than they are? actually are. The idea that black women are temptresses seems to stem from when European explorers first saw black
women in Africa and they misinterpreted women's lack of clothing for vulgarity and being temptresses. On the flip side, black women are also considered more angry and therefore less desirable. A lot of the sites like Match.com and even Tinder have said that Black women tend to get the least amount of matches because of the racial and sexual tropes that accompany them. So we talked to our friend Christina to hear about her lived experience as a black woman with racial and sexual stereotypes.
Well, my name is Christina. I am 24 years old. I live in Portland. I was born in Haiti. I lived there for nine years, moved to New York City, lived there for 10-ish years. No, until I was 17. to college in Buffalo, New York, and then I moved to the Pacific Northwest. So you've lived in a lot of different places, the East Coast, the West Coast, and Haiti. What has your experience been like the way that you saw race play out in Haiti within dating relationships?
I have a lot to say about that. I feel as though like, you know, there aren't many dating tropes, like everybody's black in Haiti for the most part. But in terms of sex and dating. He's a very Catholic, religious... epicenter. Religion is like the center of a lot of people's lives, including my family. While my dad was in America, you know, sending money back and supporting us, I was raised by my mom and my aunts. So I grew up in a household of women.
are very, you know, you wait until you get married. But I know for me personally, I grew up being so curious about sex specifically because we had American television, American and French television, and sex was so a part of everything. I never had the concept of like, this is what my life is going to be. I don't know. I feel like my experience, even within the Haitian realm, was a little bit different from everybody else, but it definitely translated to.
my dating experiences in america and beyond so you were a teenager in new york city dating how was that as a black woman how was that Oh, my God. Well, OK, so I moved to America and I lived with my dad for two years before my mom and my little brother joined us. So I wasn't allowed to date, but I wanted to know things and I wanted to experiment with things, but I never had like a safe way to like let any of that out. I remember.
Having a crush on this guy and I would talk about it incessantly, like at school, I was like in sixth grade. And I remember my dad going to parent teacher conference and my homeroom teacher told him that I had this crush. this guy and my dad came home and he was so mad at me. He was like, you're too young to be interested in guys. Like this shouldn't be like a thing that you're, you even have to worry about. And I remember being shamed for like my sexual wiles.
I was a 10 year old, but I just, I don't know. That memory is like burned into my. My memory. So, yeah, dating was really hard, but I still did it. Like in seventh grade, I started dating this guy and I lost my virginity to him when I was like 12 years old. I know it's really bad. I was really young, but it was something that I wanted to do. And I was so curious about it that I did it. And that was like a formative experience for me, obviously. Wow.
So what happened in high school and college with your dating experiences or romantic experiences? Yeah. In high school, I dated the same boy that I lost my virginity to. And that relationship was just, you know, it didn't go anywhere. But college. was very formative. At that point, I was mainly interested in men. I got a lot of my validation from men or from whoever it was that I was interested in romantically. So I remember stepping into college and being like, OK, I'm declaring my major.
I have my class schedule, but also I need like a boyfriend. I need like a partner and then I'll be complete. I went to a predominantly white university and that's when I. had to partake in interracial dating just because that was who was around me, which was really interesting. I feel like white men interested in Black women.
Like what a, what a topic, what a subject. Yeah. The most, like the most blatant thing that I had to deal with is just like my body. Like Kim Kardashian is such like a huge, like. sexualized kind of thing and like the whole like small waist big butt thing like it's like such like a woman of color figure like I grew up around women that looked like that all the time. But because of her, it was so sexualized to have a big ass and small waist and big boobs. And my body looks like that.
So I think a lot of white men were like attracted to me because of that, because I was like, quote unquote, exotic. They don't have to say that, but it's just obvious that that's what they want, whether it's like in how they touch you. That's like my butt is like the first thing that like they go for. And I'm like, oh, my God, you know, like that, like look that is so like sexualized these days.
I don't know, it's like thrust on me and like I felt I knew I just knew it. Does that make sense? Yes. I have no ass. So I get the I get the opposite of that. So it's interesting to see, because I was jealous of, I lived in Maryland for a while, and I was jealous of the black girls in high school because I had no ass, no boobs, and they were always, they dressed beautifully, they looked beautiful, and I was always, like, all the guys always paid attention to them.
And for me, I didn't have that in high school. So when I got to college and I was like, okay, I need to like highlight my big boobs and my big ass and like, like nobody looks like that at 17. And then I remember going like working out like I lost a ton of weight. I got my body to look like that. And then for what? Just for a lot of fetishizing and a lot of like.
you know outward yeah it just doesn't feel good to like i don't know be like a caricature of the stereotypical body that people want I think a problem with fetishization is the fact that too it's like only sex. And that makes it hard when you're trying to have like a relationship. Yeah, I definitely had one of like my affecting relationships was with this white straight man. At the time, I didn't feel like my race had anything to do with the fact that it wouldn't go beyond anything physical.
At that point, I was like my best self. I was, you know, it's, you know, in my mind, I was like, I worked hard to get here. And I liked him so much, but it would never go beyond anything physical. And I honestly. do think that race had a lot to do with it and it's really fucked up in my opinion because
I think like until white people decide that like something is worth it, it's not worth it. Like until white people decided Kim Kardashian was beautiful, that kind of voluptuous looking body, you know, like nobody wanted that.
think you know I was heavily influenced by like I want to look like this because I want to be wanted by so and so and if I do this if I do these things if I get a GPA if I run this organization then this guy's gonna want to date me seriously and that just never happened you know and I said I can't say for a fact that that's why it never worked out maybe maybe I sucked and he just didn't like me but
You know, I have to believe that I was awesome. And I think you're awesome. Thank you. It's just really sad. But then on the flip side of that, within the black community. interracial dating is also kind of frowned upon you know like well i don't know for for black men i feel like there's a lot more to unpack there just because the stories that i've heard black men kind of
hate black women for a lot of the reasons that Western society look down on black women. Society tells black women that we shouldn't, we don't have space within the world. Like we're too ghetto, we're too loud, we're too bossy, we're too this. or do that. A lot of Black men do the same thing. And I don't know, the anti-Black sentiment is strong within everyone, I guess. And the anti-Black women. sentiment is strong within everyone. We do have it tough. We do. So you talked about
kind of being policed for being black. And that's something that I experienced in some degree being Latina is I get told I'm too loud. I'm too unmodulated, I think is a nice way that I've been told that. So what are some ways in which you police your behavior? Yeah. Dating white men, it kind of started to feel like no one is going to see me beyond. you know, this sexual object unless I like police my behavior and like I hold back in some way.
A lot of dates that I went on, I would like immediately go into what are your political views? Like a lot of people that... date interracially that's like the main criteria for interracial dating is like I don't want to have to explain to my partner I know I'm a black woman you have to understand that I'm a black woman there are certain things you have to understand and
like confirm for me for me to engage in any kind of relationship with you no yeah that like a lot of white people can opt out of discussing politics and i feel like as a poc you really can't because it's always It's always on the table as a topic of discussion. Now, do you have any final thoughts to wrap up for our listeners today? I think I have always been curious about sex and about relationships from a very young age. But I also took care to go through that journey and I took my time.
in my own way to go through that journey. And I, I don't know, I think self care with whatever you do is really important. I don't know, I think Try different things, like go out there and try different things. I think as long as you know yourself and you're taking care of yourself, you will be okay if a situation presents itself where...
You don't feel safe or you don't feel like you're taking good care of yourself or the other person isn't taking good care of you. Leave that situation. Just practice good self-care and everything that you do and all your relationships and especially. When you're having sex, take good care. Thank you.
So I know that race is an uncomfortable topic to discuss. You may not know how to do it. I don't always know how to do it. This is a discussion that's coming up more and more. The way that you have a conversation matters because Well, what are you going to do when someone in your family brings home somebody from a different race or one of your friends does?
The thing about sexual stereotypes with regards to race, whether they're positive stereotypes or negative stereotypes, is that they rely on a stock image of a culture to try and fit everyone with the same color skin into the exact same box. They're reductive and stigmatizing and often wildly inaccurate and they don't allow for individualization but more objectification of entire populations.
In the next few episodes, we want to have a more complete discussion about race and sex. So we're actually going to talk about the flip side of this because we know people have fantasies and what are the ethics of things like that? What are the ethics of race play? What are the ethics of racial porn?
If you want to dress up like a maid and you are a Latina or a person of color, what does that conversation look like? Tune in next time to learn how race plays into kink and fetishes and whether it's ever okay to call people racist names during sex. We are going to be talking a lot about consent and what kinky interracial sex looks like.
This episode was produced by Adam Caswell, who is awesome, with music by Blue Dot Sessions. Find more of their music at www.sessions.blue. Special thanks to all our contributors on our show today. Show notes and resources can be found at soundcloud.com slash the story of sex. If you like what you heard, please rate, review, and subscribe on Spotify, Apple Player, whatever you find podcasts. And don't forget to share the show with friends. Word of mouth is the best way for our community to grow.
Tell us your feedback and fun sex stories or questions at thestoryofsex at gmail.com. And I may read it on air or use it for a different episode. Until next time, I'm Cindy and thank you for listening.