That’s surely playing a role, but another thing is that gender dynamics is often a mind-killer, in pretty much all contexts it shows up in. I don’t have a full explanation for that, but I think that has to do with the sexual frustration of unattractive¹ people being repeatedly turned down by attractive people and the resentment of attractive people being repeatedly harassed by unattractive people. I tend to be overly cautious about this and hence to avoid mentioning gender even when it’s relevant (e.g., if in the previous sentence “unattractive people” was replaced with “lots of men” and “attractive people” with “lots of women”, it would be just as accurate and perhaps even more precise).
When I use attractive as a one-place word, I mean ‘attractive to most members of the same species of their preferred sex’.
That’s surely playing a role, but another thing is that gender dynamics is often a mind-killer, in pretty much all contexts it shows up in. I don’t have a full explanation for that, but I think that has to do with the sexual frustration of unattractive¹ people being repeatedly turned down by attractive people and the resentment of attractive people being repeatedly harassed by unattractive people. I tend to be overly cautious about this and hence to avoid mentioning gender even when it’s relevant (e.g., if in the previous sentence “unattractive people” was replaced with “lots of men” and “attractive people” with “lots of women”, it would be just as accurate and perhaps even more precise).
When I use attractive as a one-place word, I mean ‘attractive to most members of the same species of their preferred sex’.