"Those of us who actually care about Starved Men culture aren't worried about this at all."

Well that's just an ad populum. People do care, considering Failbetter has struggled a LOT with this in the past. I understand your points, especially where it's being done by choice, but at what point does "within London's tastes" become a bit bad. We are, after all, playing a game set in the horribly antiquated and frankly very racist era of Victorian London while dealing with a culture that's very much treated as a parallel to non-European ones. There's nuance here, more than just "if you think it's bad then you're nitpicking and biased."