Except I'm not. I'm not making any judgements. It's "what I'm attracted to" vs "what I'm not attracted to". I don't act differently towards those people because of it. I don't think of them any differently. I just don't think of them as datable. And most people I don't consider datable. Which shouldn't really be the concern of anyone, since I'm only going to be in a relationship with one person (ideally) anyway. Except you are totally butchering what it means. And you are applying both definitions onto the person. Which is wrong. I'm not racist. I just don't want to date them. I'm not nose-ist. I just don't want to date them. You aren't age-ist, you just don't want to date them. "ist" would imply you treat them differently and as less-than. If it's a choice, I should be able to choose otherwise. And I can't. If it's not a conscious choice, it's not a choice. I'm willing to bet it's approximately the same thing that "causes" gender preferences and any other sexual related thing. Considering it's all effecting the same thing anyway. As I said, gender is thrown into the mix with everything else. It's not "special". It's just yet another preference on top of the hundreds possibly thousands I already have. There's nothing special about it. So stop acting like there is. Edit: Skin Tone / ethnicity isn't special either. And I'm surprised you latched onto this instead of continuing the discussion from earlier. I think you just wanted to call someone racist :Pyou are making a judgment about an entire class of people based on their skin tone.
In ways, dating is about discrimination. Yes, you're nose-ist, and I'm age-ist.
Can you back that up? Moreover, just because you don't think you've made a conscious decision, doesn't mean that a decision hasn't been made - a choice that you weren't born with, already formed in your consciousness.
I don't pretend to be an expert on sexual fetishes or what causes them but I suspect it is a multifold scenario with many variables and that many people have different "causes" or what-have-you behind their fetishes. I would posit that is far too broad a subject and one in which I have too little knowledge for me to comment on.