That’s the issue. Some people have an ideology that some women’s tastes are distasteful.
It’s a clever line but doesn’t really interact with what I said (which may perhaps have been because I was unclear: I don’t intend to suggest this fact is your fault).
We can think of it another way: what do we think constitutes the welfare of a woman? Presumably we don’t think that it is just that she is attracted to the person she is currently conversing with.
However, if this is the case and if we care about how our interaction with people effect their welfare then the fact that a person’s interaction with a woman makes the woman attracted to them doesn’t entail that the interaction was desirable (because we care about their welfare which is more than just their extent of current attraction).
Note that this need not be a condescending attempt to institute an objective conception of welfare on an unwilling recipient. For example, we might think that a person’s welfare is determined by their own subjective, personally decided upon preferences. Now perhaps a woman has preferences to be attracted to the person they’re talking to (or perhaps not) but presumably they also have preferences to feel good about themselves and a number of other things. Again, then, even taking their self-identified welfare, we can’t presume that an interaction is benefiting a woman’s welfare just because they are attracted to their current conversation partner.
To put it another other way: just because a woman finds herself attracted to a person following an interaction, it doesn’t mean she doesn’t wish that the interaction had been different. So the conversation may fulfill the man’s interests in being attractive but it doesn’t follow from the fact that the woman is attracted to him that it fulfulls the woman’s interests.
Of course, if you think a woman’s welfare is her own problem and an interested man’s only responsibility is to be attractive to the woman then you won’t find this compelling but that attitude is precisely what the problem is (many people think that one should be concerned about the effects of one’s interactions on others’ welfare).
ETA: So to clarify: the claim was not that some women’s tastes are distasteful but rather that a woman’s tastes don’t entirely determine her welfare so we can’t move from a claim that something is in accordance with her tastes to a claim that something is in accordance with her welfare (or, for that matter, her desires, because her tastes in men don’t fully define her desires either)
It’s a clever line but doesn’t really interact with what I said (which may perhaps have been because I was unclear: I don’t intend to suggest this fact is your fault).
We can think of it another way: what do we think constitutes the welfare of a woman? Presumably we don’t think that it is just that she is attracted to the person she is currently conversing with.
However, if this is the case and if we care about how our interaction with people effect their welfare then the fact that a person’s interaction with a woman makes the woman attracted to them doesn’t entail that the interaction was desirable (because we care about their welfare which is more than just their extent of current attraction).
Note that this need not be a condescending attempt to institute an objective conception of welfare on an unwilling recipient. For example, we might think that a person’s welfare is determined by their own subjective, personally decided upon preferences. Now perhaps a woman has preferences to be attracted to the person they’re talking to (or perhaps not) but presumably they also have preferences to feel good about themselves and a number of other things. Again, then, even taking their self-identified welfare, we can’t presume that an interaction is benefiting a woman’s welfare just because they are attracted to their current conversation partner.
To put it another other way: just because a woman finds herself attracted to a person following an interaction, it doesn’t mean she doesn’t wish that the interaction had been different. So the conversation may fulfill the man’s interests in being attractive but it doesn’t follow from the fact that the woman is attracted to him that it fulfulls the woman’s interests.
Of course, if you think a woman’s welfare is her own problem and an interested man’s only responsibility is to be attractive to the woman then you won’t find this compelling but that attitude is precisely what the problem is (many people think that one should be concerned about the effects of one’s interactions on others’ welfare).
ETA: So to clarify: the claim was not that some women’s tastes are distasteful but rather that a woman’s tastes don’t entirely determine her welfare so we can’t move from a claim that something is in accordance with her tastes to a claim that something is in accordance with her welfare (or, for that matter, her desires, because her tastes in men don’t fully define her desires either)