Priceguy, my answer to your question is this: I have friends with whom I share a great relationship… we have great fun, talk all night, never tire of each other… etc. However, at no point do I feel the urge to engage them sexually. Especially if they are the same sex as me, because I am heterosexual. As a hetero female, I just don’t see my female friends in a sexual way. While I harbor no ill will towards the lesbians of the world, I am not sexually excited by breasts and vaginas. I also have great friendships with men that I would never ever in a million years see in a sexual way. When you are sexually attracted to someone it is a gut feeling, not an intellectual process. I am not sexually attracted to everyone I meet, no matter how great the conversations are.
In theory, people should be able to look past superficial things, like body shape, eye color, preferred underwear style, but in reality, if you are hetero, you feel sexual feelings for certain people of the opposite sex. And if you are homosexual, you have sexual feelings for certain people of your own sex. Maybe you are bi-sexual. But the majority of people pick a team and go with it, ruling out a minimum of one entire set of humans.
What godzillatemple said. Basically, people claimed that the reason straights don’t go romantically for men is some undefined, non-physical characteristic of men. I asked what that characteristic is, since I strongly believe that no such characteristic exists.
Of course there was an agenda: proving my point. If people claim there are externally detectable non-physical differences between genders (although not in those words) I can disprove that claim by challenging them to name such a difference. If they can’t, then they cannot reasonably claim that such a difference exists.
An analogy: Let’s say someone on this board claims that a scientific study exists that proves the existence of an afterlife (crazy thought, but stay with me). You believe no such study exists, so you challenge him to produce it. He can’t, and you’ve made your point.
But as godzillatemple says, the point is now, if not moot, pretty damn close.
I can tell you right now that this is NOT true for me. I may have the largest collection of ex-boyfriend friends in the free world. When I was in a romantic relationship with these men, it was LOVE + LUST = ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP. Now it’s LOVE - LUST = FRIENDSHIP. I still love all of them very much, as friends. My love for them is real enough that it can weather the dissolution of the romance-- why throw the baby out with the bathwater? The only difference post-breakup is that I have absolutely no desire whatsoever to have sex with them anymore. In fact, I’d the few that I’ve still felt lust towards after a breakup have not become friends later. It gets in the way.
I love my friends. I am platonically attracted to their personalities. The only people that become my lovers are ones that I love AND feel lust for. Without lust, you are just friends. When I marry, I want it to be to a man to whom I am attracted both intellectually and physically. So do most people, and most people cannot control what “gives them wood.” Some of that is socialization, some of it is hormonal, some of it is the way our brains are wired. Bottom line, it’s not shallow to like what you like as long as you aren’t mean about it.
That said, I am definitely straight but I can imagine there being a woman I’d fall in love with. It hasn’t happened yet and it probably never will, but I wouldn’t say never. I’m open to that possibility, remote though it seems.
Guinastasia, I’m starting to think that anyone who shows a preference for or aversion towards any physical characteristic whatsoever stands a good chance of being called shallow by somebody.
As Davy Jones once said, “Deep down, I’m pretty shallow.” Aren’t we all?
Well, for most of us. The OP has said again and again that it’s all bullshit. He doesn’t accept the concept, and we can’t hand him facts and figures and bulleted lists of what, exactly, constitutes maleness or femaleness beyond the genitalia, so we’ll never convince him otherwise.
This whole thing is like trying to play a game of checkers with a deck of cards. We’re not defining the important terms the same way, so meaningful discussion is pretty much impossible.
The OP has opined that just explaining the issue in terms of gayness or straightness is begging the question. I have to disagree. Only having sexual and romantic feelings for the opposite sex is the definition of being straight. No one can fully explain why they’re sexually or emotionally attracted to some people and not others. God knows I’ve had guy friends I’ve wanted to be able to feel those things for. They were smart, sweet, caring, a lot of fun, and damn nice to look at, but the spark just wasn’t there for me.
Exactly. You can’t hand me any facts or evidence proving your belief. If I were someone claiming John Edward isn’t a fraud or that scientology works, you’d demand proof and if I couldn’t provide (as I would be unable to), you’d consider me wrong. Why is this different? Because “everyone knows” that gender is something profound and deep and earth-shattering?
You keep saying this. What terms are you talking about? If you mean the love/romantic love/sex thing, I’ve explained that when I said love, I meant romantic love, and for me romantic love and sex aren’t automatically nor inextricably connected, but I accept that they are for most people.
Exactly why it isn’t a good argument. Saying “I like women because I’m a straight male” is like saying “I’m straight because I’m straight” or “that cheese is a cheese because it’s a cheese” or “the wall is red because it’s red”.
First off, you know perfectly well that I’m talking about how we define maleness and femaleness, or masculinity and femininity. After all, we’ve been debating those terms for pages now. When you talk about being a man, you mean having a penis, and most of us mean something somewhat different. We’re clearly not talking about the same thing when we use the same words, and that makes it almost impossible to have a meaningful discussion because we’re pretty much guaranteed to not understand one another.
And basically, we’re not saying “I like women because I’m a straight male” so much as “I’m defined as a straight male because I’m male and only attracted to women.” It’s not an argument, it’s just a fact. “I’m not attaracted to you because I’m not attracted to you” if you want to put it in those terms.
OK, so you’re talking about a very personal, unexplainable experience of maleness and femaleness? Fair enough, but then you can’t expect me to just accept it, any more than you would expect people to be of a particular religious faith, even if it does seem that I (well, I and Pricegal) are the only ones who don’t have it.
Exactly. Which is why the question “Why are you only attracted to women?” cannot be answered with “Because I’m a straight male”.
Also note that, thanks to godzillatemple’s thread about shallow assholes, I’ve acknowledged that the original point of this thread is moot.
