> we are only sexually attracted to people who are attracted to us
Taken literally, this is a pretty absurd claim. I think your post would be more convincing without it.
Taken literally, this is a pretty absurd claim. I think your post would be more convincing without it.
Which might still be stretching it a bit, but I believe it to be mostly true
At my workplace, there are probably 30 or 40 women I come into contact with during the course of my job, out of maybe 60 or 70 people in my area. One or two are over 50, and hence not very attractive to me (I'm 40). One is probably over 400 lbs, and I am not especially attracted to her sexually, but as she's a great person otherwise, she may be the only example of a woman I get along with at work with whom I would not have sex (were I single, etc...). So, I'm sexually attracted to all these women, though of course I have no way to know which are attracted to me -- certainly I hope they have no way to know that I'm attracted to them... it's the workplace, after all.
So, my experience bears out the author's assumption that if circumstances permit, sex would almost always be "in the way" of a friendship between two mutually possible sexual partners. I can only imagine how much more this must be a problem for those who are bisexual.
My point is that with a very few exceptions[1], apart from the occasional mis-fire or unrequited crush, we go through our life sorting people into "romance target" and "not-romance target", we tend to be very discriminating in our sorting, and gender is not the only criteria used for sorting.
[1]: The exceptions mostly involve very high hormones and/or very poor social skills. Example: A heterosexual male, borderline Asperger syndrome, 19 years old, just off to university to study computer science, far far too shy to actually talk to a girl is very prone to being quasi-obsessively attracted to a large number of inappropriate targets[2]. But this is not really a typical human experience[3].
[2]: Yes, I do speak from experience. :)
[3]: At the risk of stereotyping, it's probably a little more common among the HN readership than elsewhere though. :)
That's partly because you're attracted to a cartoon. A star's media image is very carefully crafted. People like that are much less impressive in person.
And that's partly because Lazare is right. You can be eternally attracted to a media image because there's a broken feedback loop. If you were displaying your attraction to an actual person, you'd be getting either positive or negative feedback. Eventually things would either heat up or cool down.
Think about all the people you know that you once felt strong sexual attraction for. How many of them do you still feel that way about? For me, the percentage is tiny.
Also: continuing to display attraction signals to somebody who isn't interested in you? That comes across as creepy. As would fantasizing about someone you know who doesn't find you attractive. For your sake, I hope they don't find out.
If the author's black-and-white statement still is bothering you, go ahead and insert some nuance. E.g., "normally" or "for non-creepy people".
Agree.