TY - JOUR
T1 - ‘I’m Just Stating a Preference!’ Lookism in Online Dating Profiles
AU - Midtgaard, Søren Flinch
PY - 2023/4
Y1 - 2023/4
N2 - This paper considers the potentially wrongful discriminatory nature of certain of our dating preferences. It argues that the wrongfulness of such preferences lies primarily in the simple lookism they involve. While it is ultimately permissible for us to date people partly because of how they look, I argue that we have a duty to ‘look behind’ people’s appearance, which I take to mean that we ought not, on the basis of their appearance, to regard them as absolutely out of the question for us to engage with in a romantic setting. Further, constraints similar to those suggested by a duty to look behind people’s appearance gain support from another duty we have, namely, a duty to counteract, also in our daily lives, the fact that people are undeservedly disadvantaged in various ways
AB - This paper considers the potentially wrongful discriminatory nature of certain of our dating preferences. It argues that the wrongfulness of such preferences lies primarily in the simple lookism they involve. While it is ultimately permissible for us to date people partly because of how they look, I argue that we have a duty to ‘look behind’ people’s appearance, which I take to mean that we ought not, on the basis of their appearance, to regard them as absolutely out of the question for us to engage with in a romantic setting. Further, constraints similar to those suggested by a duty to look behind people’s appearance gain support from another duty we have, namely, a duty to counteract, also in our daily lives, the fact that people are undeservedly disadvantaged in various ways
KW - lookism
KW - racial lookism
KW - indirect discrimination
KW - Xiaofei Liu
KW - Bernard Williams
U2 - 10.1515/mopp-2021-0046
DO - 10.1515/mopp-2021-0046
M3 - Journal article
SN - 2194-5616
VL - 10
SP - 161
EP - 183
JO - Moral Philosophy and Politics
JF - Moral Philosophy and Politics
IS - 1
ER -