Just Cause

Since I can't get it out of my mind, I might as well put it down in black and white.

In as small a nutshell as I am able to put it: when is it right to reject someone?

Rejection is already a terrible thing on its own, whether on the issuing or receiving end. And it's not true that it's worse to be on the receiving end.

As the one getting rejected, how would you feel if you've been told: "Sorry, but I don't date/like Singaporeans/Asian Chinese/females"?

I think it's a pretty awful thing to be rejected through no fault of your own. After all, you didn't ask to be born Singaporean/Asian Chinese/female.

Thus, in the same (or a similar) line of reasoning, those attributes (nationality, ethnicity, gender, etc.) make for really shaky grounds for rejecting somebody - and I feel I can't ever reject anybody on those grounds.

So what is a good enough cause for rejection?

C.J. who had a bad experience with a previous (Mainland) Chinese boyfriend warned me never to date Mainland Chinese guys, especially those from Shanghai (because they are, according to her, too glib and shifty). Carrie, on the other hand, just refuses to go out with what she refers to as "PRCs" as a matter of fact and principle.

Are they wrong?

Cute Chinese Chap from the Sunday market is the perfect sort of boy your mother will prostrate and kow-tow to the heavens for blessing her daughter with if you bring him home to meet the parents - the unfailingly polite, tall and strong, cheerfully clean-scrubbed type; the type that none of the guys I hang out with fit into. And he's cute too.

But.

"I'm very sorry, but I - you are a guy ..."






That's just not a just cause, is it?