I’m kinda lazy today, so I’ve decided to throw up an Open Thread and make you all do all the work.
One of the ideas we talk about here at NSWATM a lot is the Myth of Men Not Being Hot: that is, the cultural notion that women are interested in men’s wallets or their sense of humor or their jerkishness, but certainly not their cute smile and nice ass. At the same time, for women, there’s the Beauty Myth: the idea that only a certain kind of woman (feminine, white, straight, cis, thin, young, body-hair-free, long-haired, large-breasted, wearing makeup…) is actually attractive, and everyone else is ugly as shit.
Now, of course, I can say that People Are Fucking Different and that everyone is attractive to someone as much as I like, but it seems to me the real thing we need here is evidence that a lot of different people find different things attractive.
So! In the comments, describe what you find hot– physical, personality, whatever. Pictures or videos are encouraged. Even if your tastes are totally normal, mention them: the point is diversity, not a different beauty standard. Don’t insult other people’s tastes, that’s a shitty thing to do; this is supposed to be a happy thread and give me a break.
The prettiest man I have ever met is the one I’ve been with for 4 years now. He’s very short (5’4″) incredibly thin, has a very long face with sharp cheekbones, a huge nose, the longest, biggest blonde hair you have ever seen, and incredibly blue eyes. When I took him to meet my friends for the first time one of them told him that I’d found my perfect guy.
When it comes to ladies I like ’em short, curvy and big-boobed, there’s nothing more comforting that bosom cuddles. Also I like brunettes with dark eyes.
For me the most important things aren’t physical attributes: Intelligence, particularly in terms of intellectual curiosity. A certain quirky sense of humor that I’m not really sure how to describe beyond it including wordplay and an appreciation for the absurd. (And, particularly in guys, a tendency towards bad puns.) Dancing ability. Geekiness. And, above all, being a good friend. A good singing voice (especially in guys). (The first time my boy and I got back together after breaking up, I’m pretty sure it was prompted by him singing and me being unable to refrain from mentioning how much I wanted… Read more »
Clever repartee excites me. A playful wit gets my juices going like nothing else. When someone brilliant engages in wordplay with me, that really sets my pulse racing.
@Hugh Tipping Ristik: Is he making claims about the majority of the female population? My impression is that he is pointing out patterns he has seen, and wants to talk about them. [snip] Ah, that would explain your reactions to him: it looks to you like he is generalizing from a minority of women you regard as terrible. But what if the women dungone is dealing with aren’t exceptionally terrible, and their attitudes towards gender are simply average? Is that the case? I don’t know. But it’s worth considering. I think the issue is that dungone is doing a lot… Read more »
@Rae,
OK, I think I know what you mean. Both leading and following in that sense are great. And thanks for the examples, I enjoyed reading them, though I’m not sure I completely get the second one. Good luck with your poetry performances.
@Thurisaz Most of the guys I’ve known, not spectacular either. Most of them were nice on the surface, but nearly all have some circumstance in which it’s perfectly OK to beat the shit out of women. But when you think about it, that still doesn’t exclude everyone who has a reason to smack his girlfriend in a non-sexy consensual manner. That stat is about 1 in 3- that is, 1 in 3 to 1 in 4 people will be victims with domestic violence. If 1 in 3 people will be victims of domestic violence, 2 in 3 people will not.… Read more »
@kilo: I still kind of wonder what exactly you mean by ‘following’, and am fascinated by your framing it as an attractive quality for men because it goes so much against the usual script. Would you be interested in expanding your thoughts a bit? I’ll try. I like the idea of being listened to and trusted, and being able to guide someone else through a new experience. Maybe some examples will help. Example 1: I’ve been starting to perform in my local poetry scene. My husband is not really into poetry, but he came to my first reading. Afterward, he… Read more »
Yet wouldn’t you agree that in some cases, it would be a good idea to encourage people to change their speech patterns? Yes, I agree, but as you said there is a right way and a wrong way of going about it. You’ve heard the term, “shoot first, ask questions later,” right? Well the majority of the time, when this comes up it’s because people take offense at something they misread and not only refused to allow their misreading to be corrected, they seized upon it and expounded on it as if they were already in their opponents head reading… Read more »
@dungone, @Hugh Tipping Ristik, thanks for trying to stick up for me. You’re welcome. I’m also trying to stick up for people who want to see you sometimes add more qualifiers to statements about groups of people; I just think that they are just going about that goal in the wrong way. Trying to force people to adopt to a different set of speech patterns is a way of showing everyone else who’s boss and who needs to learn from whom. It’s true that there can be authoritarianism involved in this sort of behavior. The enforcer of this behavior doesn’t… Read more »
@BlackHumor, Whether those statements are true depends on what they mean. What they mean depends on both the literal content, and on implicature. Men are not taller than women; most men are taller than most women. Between the vast majority of speakers, the first statement is understood to mean the second. But there’s still a not-at-all insignificant group of men who are shorter than even the average woman, and a not-at-all insignificant group of women who are taller than even the average man, and of course it gets even worse for the generalization if you count any man or any… Read more »
@Hugh Tipping Ristik, thanks for trying to stick up for me. I want to say some things, though, because I have have some opinions on this that go a little beyond yours. It’s actually a power thing. Trying to force people to adopt to a different set of speech patterns is a way of showing everyone else who’s boss and who needs to learn from whom. The people who are in the in-group on this website make up their own words and acronyms on top of the general terms used by feminists and ask that everyone familiarize themselves with their… Read more »
@Ozy, So the only useful advice I can provide is to stop fucking encouraging them by dating them, unless you are married to them/in love with them/otherwise stuck, in which case my deepest sympathies. I appreciate that you acknowledging that some men are stuck with women who have gender inegalitarian attitudes. Another way that men can be stuck is if women with egalitarian attitudes are difficult to find where they live. I don’t doubt that Dungone’s people exists, just that they are the majority of the female population; Is he making claims about the majority of the female population? My… Read more »
@Hugh Tipping: The only one of those statements I would say is true in the form you gave it is the dolphin one. (Except in very contrived situations, dolphins are faster than humans. If it was “all dolphins” those very contrived situations would indeed prove the statement false, but a bare noun doesn’t quite imply “all” so the statement is still true.) Men are not taller than women; most men are taller than most women. But there’s still a not-at-all insignificant group of men who are shorter than even the average woman, and a not-at-all insignificant group of women who… Read more »
kaija said: And dungone knows English, he can qualify his statements with “some”, “certain groups of”, “sometimes”, etc. but his general pattern of describing women and their behavior does not seem like an accident of insensitive language. My perception is different. Believing that all women go for married or taken men seems much more extreme that anything dungone would actually believe. So, he must have meant something else. I’m happy to encourage you asking for dungone to be more precise. Personally, I’m a fan of linguistic rigor in discussions of gender politics, because I am sick of feminists who say… Read more »
@EE, I’m not talking about Thurisaz at all, just to be clear, but just in general, based on thoughts about another friend of mine… some people stifle their natural instincts as a sort of defense mechanism and retreat into a self-styled comfort zone. I can easily see how someone who exhibits “demisexual” traits could behave like a heat seeking missile programmed to do the unthinkable. I understand “normal” sexuals to approach mating by looking for attractive people, which gives them a random sample of personalities, and then choosing someone who is just “nice.” But someone who looks for the very… Read more »
@Thursaz: That stat is about 1 in 3- that is, 1 in 3 to 1 in 4 people will be victims with domestic violence. Think of it this way: if you got in a car, and the stat was that every third car was going to crash, would you want to drive? Sure, of course! It SUCKS to walk everywhere, and it’s a long fucking way to most places you want to be! But when it’s every third car… how much risk become acceptable? Not that I distinctly disagree with your sentiment, but you realize that the statistics you should… Read more »
@Rae “If X listens to Y, then Y is taking the conversation somewhere and X is going there with them, helping them to get there. So I would think X is following Y. Though on second thought, I guess a person could ask questions in a way that sets the agenda–this is what happens in interviews.” Interesting. Here’s another way to see this. Asking questions involves conversational force, as questions implicitly demand answers. It’s not necessarily a large amount of force and people can deflect it, but it’s there and shapes the interaction. Setting the agenda interview-style is a particularly… Read more »
Technically, my stepdad. ::shrugs:: Is what it is. I think sexuality and personal experiences (ie, environment) intertwine in too many places to truly be able to separate nature vs. nurture when discussing sexuality. So, I think it would be more accurate to say that someone IS/could be truly demisexual (however that may be defined), but that person could further clarify the reason behind demisexuality for that person, on a case-by-case basis if they chose to. At which point, does our conversation become part of the “black box” post above this one? Not sure how it works for men. I’d have… Read more »
@Thuriaz, thanks for sharing your experience. I think that, based on what you said to Andrew, it would make extremely reasonable sense that you have developed some very distinct biases towards men, and it’s not your fault, it has been all about survival in your environment (fractured skull sounds pretty bad… I have had several concussions from my mother). I think that someone who experiences a severe amount of abuse by members of the opposite sex is extremely likely to feel sexually inhibited and unsure until they develop feelings of safety and trust to let their walls down. That doesn’t… Read more »
Hi everyone! I’m back! @Andrew: Very few, for just that reason. My Fundie step-dad, the cause of my skull fractures… the cops, who showed up every week for YEARS and told him that was perfectly FINE because GOD is the highest authority and the Bible says you can kill your kids… Clearly, I was misbehaving. Every guy my mom’s ever dated, highly unstable and aggressive. Most of the guys I’ve known, not spectacular either. Most of them were nice on the surface, but nearly all have some circumstance in which it’s perfectly OK to beat the shit out of women.… Read more »
@kilo Just out of interest, why do you classify true listening as following?
If X listens to Y, then Y is taking the conversation somewhere and X is going there with them, helping them to get there. So I would think X is following Y. Though on second thought, I guess a person could ask questions in a way that sets the agenda–this is what happens in interviews. Maybe I should’ve listed listening and following as two separate, attractive skills.
Re: English Language (Part 3) @Hugh Tipping Ristik, in case I needed to further make my point, here is something that Hugh said from another thread (I’m going to quote it here because this is an open thread, so I think site mods should be okay with that): When bloggers here talk about “men” and don’t specifically mention that they are not referring to trans-men, it’s generally best to assume that trans-men are included. Because, you know, English. So, using an unqualified statement is okay when a feminist does it, because saying that “men can get pregnant through rape” needs… Read more »
But all of that is besides the point because you’re trying to avoid admitting guilt. My point still stands: you shouldn’t be using a word when you don’t know what it means Guilt? What guilt? You’ve accusing me of not knowing what it means when you don’t even know what I think it means, so in effect you are accusing me of something that you don’t know what it means. Touche! Look, I read the entire AVEN wiki on it, and from the best I can tell not only is there no empirical evidence for it, but as best as… Read more »
@kaija24, Hugh Ristik, ballgame (if you’re reading! 🙂 ), et all, Re: English Language (Part 2)
In general, if you want to know how this entire line of argumentation about qualifiers sounds like from the other end of it, I offer you a scene from Goodfellas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d2LAs-WL_4
please provide a ballpark figure for what percentage of women, on average, you believe to be demisexual. Please note that this is an open thread but the focus is on men’s sexuality and sexual experience, which means that by necessity we are talking about the average woman, which needs not even be said. Talking about demisexuality in response to my comments is what Noah would call “Ahabing.” Unless of course you believe that the average woman is demisexual, which changes everything. If I am not mistaken, Noah’s “Ahabing” is in reference to repeated derailments in multiple discussions, regardless of what… Read more »