TY  - EJOU
AU  - Horowitz, H. Mark
TI  - The Dating Dupe―The Limits of Biosocially Unfriendly Sociology
T2  - Journal of Controversial Ideas

PY  - 2023
VL  - 3
IS  - 2
SN  - 2694-5991

AB  - 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.
KW  - online dating
KW  - racism
KW  - biosociology
KW  - evolutionary psychology
KW  - genetic similarity theory
KW  - cultural capital
DO  - 10.35995/jci03020007