If Kaj_Sotala tells me that emotional compatibility is more of an issue for him than sexual attraction, I’m prepared to accept that… I don’t see the value in challenging his observations about what “the main problem” for him really is.
That said, like you, I don’t consider it likely that this describes very many people. Then again, I also don’t find it likely that “If you’re attracted to one penis, you’re probably attracted to all of them” describes very many people.
Then again again, the world is full of unlikely things.
Well, think about it like this. I also get along better and generally find it easier to get closer to women than to men. But there are some men I can connect with as well, because there is so much variation in men’s personalities. So the problem here is just finding the right ones.
Now compare this to sexual compatibility, which requires the right sex organs. This is a much bigger obstacle. I’m attracted to female genitalia and not male ones. Unlike with personality, this is a binary issue: you either like male genitalia or you don’t, and if you don’t, this rules out half the population.
Then again, I also don’t find it likely that “If you’re attracted to one penis, you’re probably attracted to all of them” describes very many people.
Really? Why not? I would think it obviously describes everyone. You may not be attracted to the person attached, but you’re either sexually attracted to male genitalia, or you’re not.
Well, the short answer to “Why not?” is “Experience.”
The longer answer is, I suspect, longer than I feel like giving, since it’s clear that you and I have very different models of how attraction works.
Suffice to say that there are various attributes along which individual genitalia vary, to which I expect different people assign more or less value, resulting in different judgments. For many people I expect that this list of attributes includes the contexts established by the attached person.
I may not have spoken clearly. Let me try again, and tell me if this makes sense to you.
A lot of people are strongly monosexual: that is, no matter what a person looks like, what their personality is, or how emotionally compatible they are, if the other person has the “wrong” genitalia, this will preclude any possibility of dating, sex, or a relationship, because they won’t be able to sexually connect.
If you think about dating as going through a series of hurdles, the first and most important hurdle is having the “right” genitals. After that, there are other attributes, like looks and personality, which I think is what you’re talking about. But if someone has the “right” genitals, there is at least the potential for a sexual connection. That doesn’t mean there will definitely be sexual attraction.
I think you’re being clear; I just don’t agree with you. Yes, I think you’re missing things.
For one thing, you treat gender as equivalent to having particular genitalia. It isn’t. Even people exclusively attracted to men sometimes find themselves attracted to people without penises.
For another, you treat all genitals of a particular category as being interchangeable for purposes of attractiveness. They aren’t, any more than all voices or all hands or feet or all eyes are interchangeable. You may not care about individual differences in a particular category, but that doesn’t mean other people don’t.
For a third, your whole structure of “the first hurdle” and “the most important hurdle” strikes me as arbitrary. The idea that someone to whom I am not attracted is someone I have a “potential sexual connection” with simply because they are a particular gender, or have the proper genitals, is a perfectly legitimate perspective… but to privilege that dimension over the myriad other parameters that allow or preclude attraction is not obviously justified.
For one thing, you treat gender as equivalent to having particular genitalia.
No, I was thinking of gender as a separate hurdle. For instance, a straight cisgender male is most likely primarily attracted to persons with vulvas, whether they identify as men or women. He might secondarily prefer women, but that’s a lesser “hurdle”. that is, there would be a possibility of sexual attraction to a FtM (gender = man, bio-female) but not a pre-op MtF (gender = woman, bio-male) because of genital incompatibility.
I don’t think the attraction is “exclusive to men” as much as it is “exclusive to people with specific genitals.” Though this is probably very variable, and monosexuals may well be divided on whether genitalia or gender is more important to them. I’d be curious to know the breakdown.
For another, you treat all genitals of a particular category as being interchangeable for purposes of attractiveness.
to privilege that dimension [genitals] over the myriad other parameters that allow or preclude attraction is not obviously justified.
I was thinking like this. Suppose you are a monosexual on a desert island with one other person. You will likely want sexual contact. At least for me, the most important quality of your island-mate (for purposes of sexual contact, that is) is that they have the “right” type of genitals; while other qualities may be unattractive or undesirable, they can be overcome if you want sexual contact enough, but having the “wrong” type of genitals can’t. To put this another way, as a straight male, someone I am not attracted to who has a vulva may be less than ideal, but still sexually satisfying; someone without a vulva couldn’t possibly be.
I had thought this would be universal for monosexuals; your comments lead me to think I was wrong, and it’s more complicated than that. I’m curious how common my view is, and the specifics of other views.
(BTW, I wish I could upvote you several times just for using ‘myriad’ correctly.)
a straight cisgender male is most likely primarily attracted to persons with vulvas, whether they identify as men or women. He might secondarily prefer women, but that’s a lesser “hurdle”. [..] I don’t think the attraction is “exclusive to men” as much as it is “exclusive to people with specific genitals.”
Huh.
So George, a straight cisgender male, walks into a dance club and sees Janey dancing. He can tell she presents as female from the way she dresses, her hair, her body shape, etc. He talks to her for a while, and he can tell she identifies as female—or at least claims to—from the things she says.
But her pants are still on.
If I’m understanding you correctly, you’re saying George does not know at this point whether he’s sexually attracted to Janey, because the “primary hurdle” hasn’t been crossed yet?
If so, you and I have very different understandings of how sexual attraction works. It seems relatively clear to me that George makes that determination within the first few minutes of seeing her, based on a variety of properties, many of which are components of gender.
If not, then I’m not really sure what you’re saying.
It seems relatively clear to me that George makes that determination within the first few minutes of seeing her, based on a variety of properties, many of which are components of gender.
Yes, he does. And you’re right: he is attracted to her even though he doesn’t know what her genitalia are like. He’s probably making an assumption that might or might not be correct, and this assumption is based on the gender properties he observes. If he’s not correct, this may change his attraction. Or not.
My mistake was using the word “attracted” in the quoted portion of my comment. What I should have said was “capable of sexual satisfaction with,” “sexually compatible,” or “genitally compatible,” which aren’t the same thing. While he may be initially attracted, he still doesn’t know whether or not he’s sexually compatible with her (though he assumes he is, which inspires the attraction).
I think you are also right that genitalia is not the most important thing for all monosexuals. I would bet it is for most, though. And at some point this is just a matter of how we define ‘monosexual’ (or ‘straight’, or ‘gay’). We could think of a 2-D version of the Kinsey scale, similar to what you discuss in an earlier comment, where gender is one axis and genitalia is another.
What I should have said was “capable of sexual satisfaction with,” “sexually compatible,” or “genitally compatible,” which aren’t the same thing.
I’m not sure that helps. Many people, even entirely monosexual people, are perfectly capable of sexual satisfaction with one another despite injury to or loss of their genitalia. So I would similarly object to defining “capable of sexual satisfaction with” and “sexually compatible” primarily in terms of genitals the way you do.
I’ll agree with defining “genitally compatible” that way, though.
If you’re willing to define people for whom genital compatibility is not primary as not-really-monosexual, then your claim is trivially true. That said, at that point you have also defined a lot of people as not-really-straight who would disagree vehemently with you.
I think that given that not all traits are observable, we make assumptions about common ones. Someone who doesn’t know that a female-appearing person has a penis is attracted to a false image of what that person’s like, said false image not completely matching the real person.
It seems unjustified to claim that in this case, they are attracted to that person because of their (false) belief that this person lacks a penis, or that they are attracted to that person because of their (false) belief that this person has a vulva, without further data.
I think “genetalia” is being used as shorthand for all sexual characteristics, both primary and secondary. Otherwise the idea of slowly going from women to futnari to men would be nonsensical, right?
I don’t know how to make that interpretation compatible with, for example, Blueberry’s claim that a straight cis male would not be attracted to a pre-op MtF, given that many sexual characteristics typical of women are present in a a pre-op MtF. (And, indeed, my understanding of the real world is that straight cis males are not infrequently attracted to pre-op trangender MtF people.)
But I would certainly agree that the claim that the “primary hurdle” for sexual attraction is the set of all sexual characteristics, both primary and secondary, is a much more sensible claim than the one I understood Blueberry to be making.
Blueberry’s claim that a straight cis male would not be attracted to a pre-op MtF, given that many sexual characteristics typical of women are present in a a pre-op MtF.
Did they actually make that claim? I saw you say it followed from their claim...
Well, whatever. As you say, it’s a more sensible claim regardless of whether anyone was actually making it :-P
For instance, a straight cisgender male is most likely primarily attracted to persons with vulvas, whether they identify as men or women. He might secondarily prefer women, but that’s a lesser “hurdle”. that is, there would be a possibility of sexual attraction to a FtM (gender = man, bio-female) but not a pre-op MtF (gender = woman, bio-male) because of genital incompatibility.
I’m pretty sure “a straight cis male would not be attracted to a pre-op MtF” is reliably implied by that quote, though of course I could be wrong.
This is precisely why I asked them to clarify the claim in the first place.
(Well, you can—just create multiple accounts for the purpose—but I’d rather you didn’t.)
As I understand it, there are many cases of men who identify as heterosexual but who, in all-male environments, nevertheless participate in sexual encounters with other men.
That suggests to me that for many heterosexual men, having the “right” genitals isn’t as singularly definitive a property as it is for you.
Granted, another possibility is that such men aren’t actually heterosexual, they merely think they are, and your description is accurate for genuine heterosexuals. If so, it seems genuine heterosexuals are noticeably rarer than people who identify that way.
One theory is that there is a difference between sexual orientation and relationship orientation, so that there are men who prefer romance and relationships with women, but are sexually bi. Since our language and culture don’t typically make this distinction, such people might just identify as straight.
Another is that sexuality is flexible, so in the desert island example, or in all-male environments, the men adapt over time to become capable of getting sexual satisfaction from other men in a way that they weren’t before. This is similar, in a way, to the gradual-exposure techniques khafra talked about.
But—and this was my main point—before such a shift in sexuality occurs, a straight man would be out of luck even if he had 100 males to choose from. But once such a shift occurs, all he has to do is find one out of the 100 he’s emotionally compatible with (assuming he’s looking for emotional compatibility). This is why I said the sexual shift was the hard part: males are not an emotional monolith and out of 100, at least one should be more or less emotionally compatible.
I very frequently find someone attractive, or not, long before seeing their genitals. Indeed, there are dozens of people in the world whose genitals I have never seen, and yet I am still able to find them either attractive or not.
Compatibility of genitalia is surely important for answering the more specific question “am I going to have sex with this person or not?” but that’s not the same thing as attraction. For most of us, there are plenty of people in the world who are very attractive but with whom we will never have sex. Many people choose to have sex with people they find not all that attractive (e.g. because they are in some sort of long-term relationship, and either their tastes or the appearance of the other person have changed over time).
If Kaj_Sotala tells me that emotional compatibility is more of an issue for him than sexual attraction, I’m prepared to accept that… I don’t see the value in challenging his observations about what “the main problem” for him really is.
That said, like you, I don’t consider it likely that this describes very many people. Then again, I also don’t find it likely that “If you’re attracted to one penis, you’re probably attracted to all of them” describes very many people.
Then again again, the world is full of unlikely things.
Well, think about it like this. I also get along better and generally find it easier to get closer to women than to men. But there are some men I can connect with as well, because there is so much variation in men’s personalities. So the problem here is just finding the right ones.
Now compare this to sexual compatibility, which requires the right sex organs. This is a much bigger obstacle. I’m attracted to female genitalia and not male ones. Unlike with personality, this is a binary issue: you either like male genitalia or you don’t, and if you don’t, this rules out half the population.
Really? Why not? I would think it obviously describes everyone. You may not be attracted to the person attached, but you’re either sexually attracted to male genitalia, or you’re not.
Well, the short answer to “Why not?” is “Experience.”
The longer answer is, I suspect, longer than I feel like giving, since it’s clear that you and I have very different models of how attraction works.
Suffice to say that there are various attributes along which individual genitalia vary, to which I expect different people assign more or less value, resulting in different judgments. For many people I expect that this list of attributes includes the contexts established by the attached person.
I may not have spoken clearly. Let me try again, and tell me if this makes sense to you.
A lot of people are strongly monosexual: that is, no matter what a person looks like, what their personality is, or how emotionally compatible they are, if the other person has the “wrong” genitalia, this will preclude any possibility of dating, sex, or a relationship, because they won’t be able to sexually connect.
If you think about dating as going through a series of hurdles, the first and most important hurdle is having the “right” genitals. After that, there are other attributes, like looks and personality, which I think is what you’re talking about. But if someone has the “right” genitals, there is at least the potential for a sexual connection. That doesn’t mean there will definitely be sexual attraction.
Does that seem right? Am I missing something?
I think you’re being clear; I just don’t agree with you. Yes, I think you’re missing things.
For one thing, you treat gender as equivalent to having particular genitalia. It isn’t. Even people exclusively attracted to men sometimes find themselves attracted to people without penises.
For another, you treat all genitals of a particular category as being interchangeable for purposes of attractiveness. They aren’t, any more than all voices or all hands or feet or all eyes are interchangeable. You may not care about individual differences in a particular category, but that doesn’t mean other people don’t.
For a third, your whole structure of “the first hurdle” and “the most important hurdle” strikes me as arbitrary. The idea that someone to whom I am not attracted is someone I have a “potential sexual connection” with simply because they are a particular gender, or have the proper genitals, is a perfectly legitimate perspective… but to privilege that dimension over the myriad other parameters that allow or preclude attraction is not obviously justified.
No, I was thinking of gender as a separate hurdle. For instance, a straight cisgender male is most likely primarily attracted to persons with vulvas, whether they identify as men or women. He might secondarily prefer women, but that’s a lesser “hurdle”. that is, there would be a possibility of sexual attraction to a FtM (gender = man, bio-female) but not a pre-op MtF (gender = woman, bio-male) because of genital incompatibility.
I don’t think the attraction is “exclusive to men” as much as it is “exclusive to people with specific genitals.” Though this is probably very variable, and monosexuals may well be divided on whether genitalia or gender is more important to them. I’d be curious to know the breakdown.
I was thinking like this. Suppose you are a monosexual on a desert island with one other person. You will likely want sexual contact. At least for me, the most important quality of your island-mate (for purposes of sexual contact, that is) is that they have the “right” type of genitals; while other qualities may be unattractive or undesirable, they can be overcome if you want sexual contact enough, but having the “wrong” type of genitals can’t. To put this another way, as a straight male, someone I am not attracted to who has a vulva may be less than ideal, but still sexually satisfying; someone without a vulva couldn’t possibly be.
I had thought this would be universal for monosexuals; your comments lead me to think I was wrong, and it’s more complicated than that. I’m curious how common my view is, and the specifics of other views.
(BTW, I wish I could upvote you several times just for using ‘myriad’ correctly.)
Huh.
So George, a straight cisgender male, walks into a dance club and sees Janey dancing. He can tell she presents as female from the way she dresses, her hair, her body shape, etc. He talks to her for a while, and he can tell she identifies as female—or at least claims to—from the things she says.
But her pants are still on.
If I’m understanding you correctly, you’re saying George does not know at this point whether he’s sexually attracted to Janey, because the “primary hurdle” hasn’t been crossed yet?
If so, you and I have very different understandings of how sexual attraction works. It seems relatively clear to me that George makes that determination within the first few minutes of seeing her, based on a variety of properties, many of which are components of gender.
If not, then I’m not really sure what you’re saying.
Yes, he does. And you’re right: he is attracted to her even though he doesn’t know what her genitalia are like. He’s probably making an assumption that might or might not be correct, and this assumption is based on the gender properties he observes. If he’s not correct, this may change his attraction. Or not.
My mistake was using the word “attracted” in the quoted portion of my comment. What I should have said was “capable of sexual satisfaction with,” “sexually compatible,” or “genitally compatible,” which aren’t the same thing. While he may be initially attracted, he still doesn’t know whether or not he’s sexually compatible with her (though he assumes he is, which inspires the attraction).
I think you are also right that genitalia is not the most important thing for all monosexuals. I would bet it is for most, though. And at some point this is just a matter of how we define ‘monosexual’ (or ‘straight’, or ‘gay’). We could think of a 2-D version of the Kinsey scale, similar to what you discuss in an earlier comment, where gender is one axis and genitalia is another.
I’m not sure that helps. Many people, even entirely monosexual people, are perfectly capable of sexual satisfaction with one another despite injury to or loss of their genitalia. So I would similarly object to defining “capable of sexual satisfaction with” and “sexually compatible” primarily in terms of genitals the way you do.
I’ll agree with defining “genitally compatible” that way, though.
If you’re willing to define people for whom genital compatibility is not primary as not-really-monosexual, then your claim is trivially true. That said, at that point you have also defined a lot of people as not-really-straight who would disagree vehemently with you.
I think that given that not all traits are observable, we make assumptions about common ones. Someone who doesn’t know that a female-appearing person has a penis is attracted to a false image of what that person’s like, said false image not completely matching the real person.
That’s certainly true.
It seems unjustified to claim that in this case, they are attracted to that person because of their (false) belief that this person lacks a penis, or that they are attracted to that person because of their (false) belief that this person has a vulva, without further data.
I think “genetalia” is being used as shorthand for all sexual characteristics, both primary and secondary. Otherwise the idea of slowly going from women to futnari to men would be nonsensical, right?
I don’t know how to make that interpretation compatible with, for example, Blueberry’s claim that a straight cis male would not be attracted to a pre-op MtF, given that many sexual characteristics typical of women are present in a a pre-op MtF. (And, indeed, my understanding of the real world is that straight cis males are not infrequently attracted to pre-op trangender MtF people.)
But I would certainly agree that the claim that the “primary hurdle” for sexual attraction is the set of all sexual characteristics, both primary and secondary, is a much more sensible claim than the one I understood Blueberry to be making.
Did they actually make that claim? I saw you say it followed from their claim...
Well, whatever. As you say, it’s a more sensible claim regardless of whether anyone was actually making it :-P
Quoth Blueberry:
I’m pretty sure “a straight cis male would not be attracted to a pre-op MtF” is reliably implied by that quote, though of course I could be wrong.
This is precisely why I asked them to clarify the claim in the first place.
Ah, right. I probably read that as including hormones and breast implants, but yours is certainly the simpler interpretation.
(Well, you can—just create multiple accounts for the purpose—but I’d rather you didn’t.)
As I understand it, there are many cases of men who identify as heterosexual but who, in all-male environments, nevertheless participate in sexual encounters with other men.
That suggests to me that for many heterosexual men, having the “right” genitals isn’t as singularly definitive a property as it is for you.
Granted, another possibility is that such men aren’t actually heterosexual, they merely think they are, and your description is accurate for genuine heterosexuals. If so, it seems genuine heterosexuals are noticeably rarer than people who identify that way.
One theory is that there is a difference between sexual orientation and relationship orientation, so that there are men who prefer romance and relationships with women, but are sexually bi. Since our language and culture don’t typically make this distinction, such people might just identify as straight.
Another is that sexuality is flexible, so in the desert island example, or in all-male environments, the men adapt over time to become capable of getting sexual satisfaction from other men in a way that they weren’t before. This is similar, in a way, to the gradual-exposure techniques khafra talked about.
But—and this was my main point—before such a shift in sexuality occurs, a straight man would be out of luck even if he had 100 males to choose from. But once such a shift occurs, all he has to do is find one out of the 100 he’s emotionally compatible with (assuming he’s looking for emotional compatibility). This is why I said the sexual shift was the hard part: males are not an emotional monolith and out of 100, at least one should be more or less emotionally compatible.
I very frequently find someone attractive, or not, long before seeing their genitals. Indeed, there are dozens of people in the world whose genitals I have never seen, and yet I am still able to find them either attractive or not.
Compatibility of genitalia is surely important for answering the more specific question “am I going to have sex with this person or not?” but that’s not the same thing as attraction. For most of us, there are plenty of people in the world who are very attractive but with whom we will never have sex. Many people choose to have sex with people they find not all that attractive (e.g. because they are in some sort of long-term relationship, and either their tastes or the appearance of the other person have changed over time).
[EDITED once, to fix a trifling typo.]
As one data-point: I am a straight male, and gender is more important to me than genitalia.