I would think that society’s role would be hindering people from revealing that they are attracted to certain physical characteristics.
That too, for sure. Plenty of people in a bigoted world know that they like something “forbidden” but are just intimidated from acting on it. But sometimes people in a bigoted world are socially conditioned to not even be aware of what they could like if they gave it a chance.
Haven’t you encountered, either in your own experience or in hearing about somebody else’s, the phenomenon of breaking through a “bias barrier” about some physical characteristic? "I always thought I would never want to date [a short guy] [a girl with a shaved head] [an Asian woman] [a fat man] [someone of the same gender] [someone of the other gender] [etc. etc. etc.], but when I met [Sweetie], suddenly it didn’t matter!"
ISTM that that sort of experience is very common, and I kind of doubt that in every single case it was merely a completely spontaneous individual personal preference that one day spontaneously disappeared. Or a conscious desire for the “forbidden” characteristic that they felt they had to keep hidden.
I suspect that in at least some such cases, the people were at least partly conditioned by societal prejudice to remain oblivious to their capacity for attraction to a characteristic that they weren’t “supposed” to like.
I don’t see why that couldn’t happen for genitalia preferences too, for at least some people to at least some extent.
You are correct that the numbers in that study are higher than I had realized. But firstly and primarily, the study does not support your proposition.
What you said was there were “quite a few people who choose their partner based on gender”. The survey is not about how people choose their partner. Let alone whether they do so based on gender.
It was a study of who the participants would “consider dating” which is a low bar. It’s a mere survey which means that people don’t take their answers nearly as seriously as they do their life choices. It’s only asking about “dating” which is a term that has a few meanings but often means simply “have casual sex with”.
Not only that but am I missing something or are the numbers given in the article hinkey? As you say 12% of 958 is about 115. Per the article 1.8% and 3.3% of straight men and women respectively and 11.5%, 29% and 52% of gay, lesbian and other people respectively would consider dating trans people. Even if I try to bump up the figures and assume very approximately only 80% of people are straight and 10% are lesbian and 5% other (leaving 5% gay) I still only get to 78 people. And as I understand it in reality the figures for straight people are far higher and the figures for non-straight are far lower. So how does one get to 115?
I’m probably missing something obvious here. I can’t access the actual paper to check.
I don’t doubt this basic proposition. However…
The perception you have just stated has obvious and somewhat extreme potential to be biased by the prominence of exceptions over norms. Every time a person who isn’t attracted to a [fat person or whatever] isn’t, you don’t notice even if it is happening all around you thousands of times a day. But when, one time, a person says
“I always thought I would never want to date [a fat person] but when I met [Sweetie], suddenly it didn’t matter!”
You remember that for years. I don’t think this as common as you think.
To be honest, no. I’m a guy, and I’ve never known a guy to turn down sex regardless of what they said previously. The only disqualifying factor was anatomy. Gender never came up at all. Because you don’t have sex with gender.
I think you’re making an artificial distinction here between “dating” and “choosing a partner”. The discussion I was responding to in posts #126-127 was talking about how people “choose who they date”, which is all I meant by my phrase “choose a partner” in post #132.
And although I can’t access the full text of the original study itself, ISTM that even if we conservatively reduced the numbers to only a fraction of what the survey reported, it would still support my estimate of “quite a few people” in absolute terms who have a stronger preference for gender than for anatomical sex in a dating partner.
But I’m not trying to present it as a norm. Nowhere am I claiming that all or even most personal “dealbreakers” in the dating world are merely temporary effects of societal conditioning. I’m just pointing out that it’s not at all rare, in absolute terms, for some perceived “dealbreaker” to turn out that way.
And, as I said, it seems reasonable that at least some “dealbreakers” concerning genitalia are similarly influenced, to at least some extent. You seem to be trying to argue against some kind of categorical generalization about all or most anatomical preferences that I’ve never even tried to make.
It sounds like you may know some fairly insecure guys who pretend to be turned off by conventionally unattractive physical characteristics that they actually don’t mind, because they think it makes them seem more choosy?
There really are guys who are genuinely turned off by certain physical characteristics and will turn down sex because of that.
I’m not drawing an artificial distinction; it is a distinction that is very real and really quite substantial. I was simply responding to what you actually said. Perhaps rather than say I’m drawing an artificial distinction, you should acknowledge that you misspoke.
As to “norms” either I’m not being clear or you are confused. I understand you are not suggesting that the type of realisation you describe is a “norm”. The point I’m making is quantitative. I don’t believe that the type of realisation you are describing is “fairly common”. I think it just stands out in your mind when it happens. It is actually rare.
I am simply pointing out the probability of perception bias - exceptions tend to be more prominent than norms. In other words, you can see 20 white cars in a day and barely notice them, but if you see one bright pink car, you’ll probably remember it six months later. This is IMHO why you see the sort of realisation you describe as “very common” even though it isn’t.
Perhaps, but i’ve never met any of them. I’m willing to bet that those types of guys are few and far between.
Haha, no. People have preferences and would rather have sex with someone they find more attractive if they can but will take sex with someone less attractive because as the meme goes “don’t care, had sex”.
Your comment makes as much sense as saying “Jim says he prefer to get a gift of $100. But he got offered a gift of $50 and he took it, so that means he actually didn’t want the $100. He was just pretending to make himself seem more choosy”. It’s nonsense.
There is really interesting data coming out of (of all places) Tinder which shows amongst other things that very physically attractive men (top 20% but even more so top 5%) have a different life to the rest of us.
No, I don’t think it’s misspeaking to use the phrase “choose a partner” in the sense of “choose a dating partner” rather than “choose a life partner”, in the context of a conversation about dating. I regret that it apparently confused you, but I don’t think it was an error on my part.
Good. Apparently you don’t like the fact that I used the phrase “very common” to describe a phenomenon that many people have encountered, on the grounds that they don’t encounter it often. Again, I regret that you were confused by what I said, but I don’t think that I misspoke.
Then those people don’t fit into the category I specified, namely having an actual dealbreaker where they sincerely thought they would “never want to date” somebody with that characteristic until they met one particular individual who changed their perception.
If what they were thinking instead was merely “well, I’d rather date a different kind of person but this one will do for lack of a better”, then that’s not the phenomenon I’m talking about. If they actually said that they’d “never want to date” such a person when all they meant was that they’d prefer to date a different person, then as I said, they were lying.
For somebody who is constantly picking at my carefully qualified statements, you sure seem willing to make very sweeping generalizations of your own about what “people” will do and won’t do.
I would suspect that that top 10 percent of anything have a different life than then bottom 90%
The Tinder data is really interesting. It’s a topic for a whole other thread really. But while I agree that the top 10% of anything presumably have a different life, the data is way more interesting than that. Both because it’s massively gender-different, and because (for each gender) the relevant curves are extremely non-linear. I have seen a few studies the best one of which I can’t now find but this one gives some idea - take a look at the pink/blue graph about halfway down. Yowza.
I am no expert on these matters, that much I readily admit. And as I wrote before, I haven’t had much opportunity to really think about the causes of human sexual preferences, so forgive me for somewhat post-hoc analysis.
I suppose first, there are the observations and theories of sexuality from Freudian psychoanalysis - relayed to me in secondary school. I am partial to the theories of Oedipus complex, and of sexual imprinting, and reverse-imprinting (or at least my understanding of them). Although I am aware these are dated and controversial theories of psychology, they make sense superficially and as I remember had some statistical support.
Turning to my limited understanding of biology, the question is this: “what is the pathology of sexual arousal?” Sexual arousal can be well defined for the purposes of scientific inquiry, whether a sexual flush, heart rate, vaginal lubrication, swelling of sex organs, &etc.
To an extent I recognize the possibility that a genetic disorder can screw up the normal pathway. Compare with that quintessential genetic disorder, sickle cell anemia. No matter what lifestyle choices one makes, the cells will not be conditioned out of their disorder.
But I don’t think, for the most part, that sexual arousal is so simple. I think it ties into the nervous system and is sensitive. How else could mere thoughts provoke sexual arousal, except if the pathology runs back to the nervous system? How else could a person become sexually desensitized, if the system underlying sexual arousal was not sensitive? Or how else could a sexual preference, a fetish or kink, develop late in life?
Reinforcement of neural pathways is one explanation for sensitivity, and another is simple saturation of the relevant chemical receptors. Or at least in my understanding…
So if the pathology of sexual arousal is sensitive, even genetic factors could theoretically be overcome, to an extent. Just like muscle tone, or muscle memory, which was my first analogy on this subject.
~Max
I don’t think that’s true. Venus figurines, for example, have a waist-hip ratio approaching and even exceeding 1:1. I suspect there is a sizeable contingency of people who find the form of a pregnant woman beautiful (or sexy).
If Freud’s Oedipus complex has any merit - probably shows what I know about psychology - I would suspect men with younger siblings of close age are significantly more likely to think the pregnant form is sexy. (The mother would be pregnant during part of the subject’s formative years.)
~Max
Dark_Sponge’s comment accords with actual studies and I would preference that over speculation about Venus figurines any day. We have no idea what Venus figurines were really. It’s all speculation. And not only that but if you look at a variety of them, many have a sizeable waist-hip ratio.
A person 10,000 years into the future studying broken off gargoyles from cathedrals in Europe, with no context, might conclude we were all really into ugly people. You just don’t know.
Freud’s ideas are almost thoroughly discredited in psychology. He is important historically because he got the field of psychology as we know it up and running, but his ideas were closer to thinking like the Greek thinkers, with their four elements and four humors, than like modern scientists. His ideas were all things that “make sense” to him, rather than based on scientific study.
Is there a correlation with people choosing someone who resembles their mother? Sure. But Freud proposed a cause, and we see no sign of that cause. The Oedipus complex does not seem to exist. There is no sign that young boys are attracted to their mothers but subvert it based on the existence of their father. (Heck, not all boys have a father.) There is no sign that this early sexuality is actually a thing at all. Freud was obsessed with sex, and so saw it in everything.
What I have seen is a claim that we have an innate attraction to those who are similar to us in some ways. And since we share half our genetic information with our mother and were often raised by her, it makes sense that this would result in attraction to someone who is like a boy’s mother. Though I must also note that there is also an opposite force that pushes for adding genetic diversity and against incest. In fact, there seem to be two: one based on chemistry and smell, and one based on who you lived with in the first 7 years or so of your life. Like most of biology, there is this sense of balance, in this case between liking people who are like you and seeking out diversity.
Sexuality, as in sexual attraction by gender presentation (thanks @Delayed_Reflex for the clearer terminology) may have some relation to these, but it definitely isn’t the only force. There is evidence of a fully genetic component, as well as an epigenetic one. We also already heavily suspect that the neo-natal and natal environment plays a huge factor, as younger sons are more likely to be gay, even when controlled for whether they were raised with their siblings. In fact, how someone is raised seems to not matter at all–no attempts to raise a non-LGBT child seem to work, and no attempts seem to be able to change it or its trajectory.
And I continue to contrast this with race, where it seems people do very often wind up finding themselves changing their opinions over time. It also remains much rarer to find someone who would categorically say they weren’t attracted to a particular race. And, when you do, it really does seem to correlate heavily with bigotry. They aren’t just unattracted to people of a certain race, but uncomfortable around them in general.
Race is an artificial construct, created entirely by society. The race you identify as is based almost entirely on how you were treated and what you were told you were. Gender doesn’t work that way. You can be raised a girl, told you are female, but realize you are male internally. It stands to reason then that there is something more innate about gender. And sex is based on actual biological characteristics. Thus it stands to reason that there might be something more innate about attraction to gender presentation and/or dimorphic sexual characteristics.
Yes, that is a more exact term. However, I would point out that people whose gender identity is X almost always attempt to present as X. The number who identify as one gender but present as another are quite rare, and some even question if they really have the same experience as everyone else.
I will also note that there seem to be a whole lot of straight men who are not turned off by someone having a penis. I base this in part on how I seem to be a minority among straight men in not wanting to see penis in my porn. It seems I am the exception in finding seeing another penis to be something that kills attraction.
I even encountered an article by a psychologist who discusses straight male preferences in the penises in their porn, saying they want them to be big–which makes sense, since that seems to be what a lot of porn targeted at straight guys seems to feature.
Is there a typo or mis-autocorrect in this?