The Dating Dupe―The Limits of Biosocially Unfriendly Sociology
1 Seton Hall University, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice, South Orange, NJ 07079
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Received: 20 Aug 2021 / Revised: 13 Feb 2023 / Accepted: 6 Aug 2023 / Published: 31 Oct 2023
Abstract
Curington, Lundquist, and Lin’s book, The Dating Divide: Race and Desire in the Era of Online Romance, demonstrates the limits of a moralizing sociological approach to courting behavior shorn of biosocial insight. In this essay, I summarize the book’s central findings and claims regarding the roots of systematic, racially exclusionary patterns in online dating. I question the adequacy of their social constructionist, power analytic explanation of such patterns; and I suggest additional interpretations from a multidimensional, biosocial perspective. I argue that reducing dating discrimination to “racism,” based on a totally constructed view of romantic desire, is both scientifically and politically shortsighted in today’s polarized ideological environment.
Keywords: online dating; racism; biosociology; evolutionary psychology; genetic similarity theory; cultural capital
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CITE
Horowitz, M. The Dating Dupe―The Limits of Biosocially Unfriendly Sociology. Controversial_Ideas 2023, 3, 7.
Horowitz M. The Dating Dupe―The Limits of Biosocially Unfriendly Sociology. Journal of Controversial Ideas. 2023; 3(2):7.
Horowitz, Mark. 2023. "The Dating Dupe―The Limits of Biosocially Unfriendly Sociology." Controversial_Ideas 3, no. 2: 7.
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