You're not complimenting me by saying you're into 'brown boys'

I had been texting a guy and it was going really well. He was quite cute, the banter was flowing easily and the whole thing was showing real promise.

But then he said four little words. Words which, to him, meant nothing more than a compliment, but for me, on the other side of the screen, made me incredibly uncomfortable.

‘I like brown boys’.

When I first came out as gay in 2016 I was so ready to explore this world of queer dating that, for a long time, I hadn’t felt ready to partake in.

My 18-year-old self had, perhaps naively, thought the LGBTQ+ community would be different to the outside world. That a group of people who historically had been othered and excluded would make everyone – no matter their differences – feel included. 

As a South Asian man, some of my dating experiences were better than others and a lot has been said about the racism hidden behind the guise of ‘preference’ that is often found on gay dating sites. 

But what we don’t really talk about, which I find far more rampant, is the other side of the spectrum. Fetishisation. 

As an 18 year old newly-out gay man with a thin, slender body (known in the gay community as a twink), I would get a fair amount of attention on dating apps and I would revel in it.

After years of struggling with my identity while loved ones weren’t seeing me for who I was, it felt nice to be celebrated and wanted.  

But when a guy would tell me he liked my ‘chocolate’ skin it always made me uncomfortable. I found myself trying to ignore that squirmishness inside.

It was, after all, a compliment and as an LGBTQ+ person of colour sometimes you learn to pick and choose your battles, otherwise you grow tired of constantly debating everything. 

Feeling othered through over-sexualisation isn’t purely a queer Asian experience

I remember going on a date with a guy and at the end after we kissed, he told me he had ‘never done that before’. 

‘What, kissing?’ I had asked in response. It wouldn’t have been a big deal to me anyway if I had been his first kiss.

‘No, I’ve never kissed an Indian before.’ I didn’t know what to say. 

We didn’t see each other again after that, conversations died out pretty quickly and not long after he was in a relationship with someone else. 

Of course there was a strong possibility he just wasn’t that into me, and that’s fair enough. But by randomly highlighting my race in a situation where it wasn’t necessary, I started to feel like a token.

Like dating me was about ticking a box and making him feel more comfortable with himself that his dating pool was diverse. Once that was done he could go back to dating his usual types.

Things would only get more weird. Guys would expect me to automatically be into certain things in bed out of some stereotype that Asian people were kinkier than other races – as if we all spend our weekends studying the Kama Sutra. It’s an experience that both queer and straight Asian people, especially Asian women, have spoken out on.

When the guy I was texting told me he liked brown boys and continued to talk about his attraction to specifically Indian men I decided to say something.

The words felt othering to me, like he had held a mirror up to my face and screamed: ‘Did you know you’re brown?’ Of course I knew it and I often celebrated it, but it wasn’t the only thing worth knowing about me.

I explained to him how his words, though a compliment, made me feel – like when he looks at my picture he only sees my skin tone. He was genuinely cute and I was hoping he would understand but instead he got very defensive, calling me politically correct and overly-sensitive. We haven’t spoken since.

Feeling othered through over-sexualisation isn’t purely a queer Asian experience and many people of colour and transgender friends of mine have told me about their experiences of people excessively focusing on their body.

As a community of people who have all felt like an outsider at some point in our lives, queer people need to check ourselves and make sure we’re not making others feel like we only see their differences and don’t see them.

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