…or black guys or latino guys or whatever you claim not to be interested in sexually. This letter isn’t going to scold you. I think that you’re wrong, that you are in fact racist, but I also think I know why you believe you’re not.

I think the racism everyone accuses you of you see as something different. You see it as being mindful of your own body’s desires. And I want to write about that.

One of the hardest things to do in life is to know yourself and then to be okay with it. The first time we gays reckon with this process is in the closet; it takes a lot of time and pain and then courage to take ownership of what you’re attracted to and to refuse to be ashamed of it any more.

In fact, we queers are stronger than straights in this regard: every out queer person has done far more sorting of their sexuality than any straight person has had to. You trust yourself, is what I’m saying, to know very intimately what turns you on and what doesn’t. You should trust yourself. You’ve earned that trust.

Now here comes somebody taking you to task for being clear about all this in your app profiles.

I get it. Some guy you want to hook up with is trying to tell you that this element of your sorting—I like men but not Asian men—is racist. Which then sheds light on the flimsiness of the hard work you spent all those agonizing years on. No no no I’m not racist I just know what I’m attracted to.

Here’s the problem: “Asian” doesn’t mean what you think it means. The only thing “Asian” means in a context of bodies is “from a certain racial background”—and even that is up for debate. An Asian body can’t be more or less attractive than a white body, it can only be more Asian.

Or, more accurately, less white.

So this is, I’m afraid, a sorting of your attractions that is informed by racism. And it makes you a racist. It’s okay. We’re all racist. You’re not the first person to look at somebody whose skin color is different from yours and erroneously bring in a whole bunch of stereotypes and associations. The best thing you can do is own up to this—accept it, the way you did your sexuality—and do the work to treat people better.

Here’s a quick story. I used to be A Guy Who Wasn’t Racist, I Just Wasn’t Into Asians. When I clicked on the “Asian” porn category in the websites I’d visit, I wouldn’t want to watch any of the videos through to the end. I wasn’t very attracted to thin men with little to no body hair, and when I thought of Asian men, this is what I saw in my mind.

Then, I was lucky to get to move to San Francisco, where men from all over the continent of Asia are everywhere, and I thought, “Oh, it’s not that I’m not into Asians, I’ve just been racist.” Some I wasn’t attracted to, but many I was. The same with all the white people I’d been living around in Alabama.

I know you know yourself, and that you’ve worked hard to understand what attracts you. But this categorical exclusion you’ve made is built on the lie that there’s one physical way to be Asian. Or Chinese, or Korean, if you want to get into it. Variation in human bodies is as wide as your imagination, and saying no to a whole group of them shows your imagination to be very small.

So just decide to stop. I know you can’t choose who you’re attracted to, but you chose to be gay. You chose to take on that identity. Choose to be the guy open to someday finding the Asian—or black or latino or redhead or whatever—guy of his dreams.