Race/Ethnicity
I don't want to wade into the p!$sing contest that most of this thread is made up of. Ooh what a mighty battle these web warriors fight, sight unseen!
Anyway, I want to make an observation or two. I don't think you can fault women or men in Toronto. It is EVERYONE. Kids, roaches, trees. Seriously, people in Toronto have bad attitudes. I don't know if it's because there are so many immigrants mixing all together, with no social graces, along with the mainly working class background locals. The city and the metro are comprised of mainly visible/audible minorities. I have travelled to some other countries, and adjusting for the fact that one perceives places differently when away from home, and for the "big city" excuse, I don't think Toronto compares well at all, at least in the friendliness and attitude departments. Surrounding town and area tend similarly.
The insecurities men and women have - and we all have them - are universal. If you are short, bald, etc. there is not much you can do about those things, and the benefits you would get from doing something drastic would not be worth the effort or cost. I suggest you accept yourself, and it is easier to do this if you are more forgiving of the weaknesses of others. One dynamic that wasn't touched on in the thread, as far as I could tell, is that of the mingling of races. And I want to emphasize I am only talking about the pool of people we are interested in. Say certain immigrants from a part of the world, for cultural reasons, stay only with other people like them. Maybe it is a language issue. I am not talking about them. I am not talking about people who believe in only arranged marriages, or dating only people with an identical background. I would say white and black are in one category since mass media treats those as normal, and unfortunately, most people take their cues from films and TV, especially American media; and most people includes you and me. All others, are to varying degrees of acceptability, "the other", and treated as such, in the workplace, in the classroom, and elsewhere. Therefore, my question is are we talking simply of white men hitting on white women, or white women who are curious about if they can come back after going black. Look around downtown on a mild day, and you will note that there are white men/Asian women couples. There will be hardly any Asian man/white woman couples.
During a discussion in a group (mostly women), the issue of accents came up. The women swooned over the European accents. To guage reactions, I suggested mischievously that studies had shown most women found heavy Indian and Chinese accents to be irresistable. Just to be egregious - I guess I could have picked Somalian and Japanese. The uncomfortable silence that followed was priceless! Then one brave lady finally said, "Not me."
It is obvious that people's social conditioning will influence their decision on what is acceptable. Does that make them racist? I guess, if we were to define it, sure. So as long as we are discussing the insiders and outsiders, let's not be naive. Ethnicity, perceptions associated with appearances, all of these have a lot of power over not only how the approached woman reacts, but also how the man approaches, or whether he makes an approach to begin with. Sadly, I conclude that Toronto is a model of why the world's intercultural problems are a long way from being resolved, and evidence that they are probably unfixable.
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