%0 Journal Article
%A Horowitz, Mark Horowitz
%D 2023
%J Journal of Controversial Ideas

%@ 2694-5991

%V 3
%N 2
%P 7

%T The Dating Dupe―The Limits of Biosocially Unfriendly Sociology
%M doi:10.35995/jci03020007
%U https://journalofcontroversialideas.org/article/3/2/254
%X 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.