Being gay and mixed race in the LGBTQ+ community has been, to put it politely, an interesting experience. Leslie Clarke on dating app bios, fetishisation, the spaces he grew up in, and why who we choose to put on the page is hugely influential.
Open any dating app and give it five minutes. Somewhere between the torso shots and the blank profiles, you will find it. “No fems, no fats, no blacks, no asians.” Sometimes it is packaged up as “just a preference”. Sometimes it comes with an emoji, as if that softens anything. Sometimes it does not bother with the dressing at all.
It is 2026. We have marched, lobbied, fundraised and fought our way into rooms that once had absolutely no space and time for us. And still, in the most private corners of our community, there are men who feel perfectly comfortable writing a list of the kinds of people they would rather not see.
This issue of Scene is about bodies: how we see them, how we judge them, and how we are taught to judge our own. For me, as a gay, mixed-race man, the conversation about bodies has never been only about weight, muscle, age or height, although age and weight play a ridiculously prominent role. It has always been about skin, too.
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