From: coren@osf.org (Robert Coren)
Subject: Sexual attraction
Organization: Open Software Foundation
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 22:24:14 GMT

One of Arnold Zwicky's fascinating digressions -- in this case on the
subject of someone being "his type" -- got me thinking about "types" and
sexual attraction generally. Some ideas along these lines had been
kicking around at the back of my brain for the last couple of weeks
anyway, I can't imagine why.

If a lot of what follows is couched in terms of attraction to men on
the part of other men, it's because that's where my personal
experience lies. It's not intended to devalue or discount other types
of attraction.

I don't think anybody understands what it is about person X that turns
person Y on. I certainly don't know what does it for me (but I know it
when I see it :-)).

But we sure talk a lot about whether so-and-so is "my type". "How
about that cute guy over there?" -- [Dismissively] "Not my type."

As far as I can tell, I don't have a "type". It seems to me that the
men I find casually attractive ("gee, he's cute" or even "Mmm, I'd
like to take *that* home with me") are very various as far as physical
characteristics go. I know people who have more-or-less strict
criteria as to what they find "attractive" -- has to have a beard;
mustn't have a beard; tall; thin; muscular; etc. To me, this just
shuts off possibilities.

So here's a "thought-experiment": I consider a room containing a
random sample of, say, 200 men. I identify, purely on sight (but they
have to be there for real -- pictures don't work for this), the 50
most "attractive" (or "sexiest" if you like) men in the room. I'm
betting, as I said before, that there'll be a lot of different
heights, weights, proportions, hirsutenesses, colorings, etc. in that
sample of 50.

But my puzzlement about the whole subject of sexual attraction goes
deeper. I've been thinking about a further "thought-experiment". Try
this yourself sometime (it may not be possible for everyone).

I consider a room containing all the men I've ever known. (Never
mind the practicalities of this -- let's pretend that I can actually
see all of them at once.) *But* -- apply a "memory filter" so that I
don't actually remember anything about any of them, so I'm not going
to be influenced by known personality traits or history; this is based
entirely on what they look like. Once again, I identify the 50 most
attractive men in the room; call this Set A.

Now remove the memory filter, so I can identify all the men I either
have had, or have seriously wanted to have, sex with. (The "seriously"
is meant to eliminate the simple "gee, he's cute" experiences, and
restrict the set to those for whom I've felt a more demanding desire.)
[This is the part that doesn't work for everyone -- like, if there are
thousands of such men. For me, it's probably less than the 50 selected
above.] Call this Set B.

It's my belief that, in my case at least, the intersection of Set A
and Set B is very small. It might even be null.

What, if anything, does this mean? It suggests to me that my real
desires are triggered by something other than abstract "beauty" or
"sexiness", the perception of which is of course strongly influenced
by the images promoted by the society I live in as "beautiful" or
"sexy" (even where my own superficial choices -- Set A above -- don't
always match the "official" images). The way someone looks at me, or
smiles; how friendly he is; whether he's interesting to talk to;
whether he seems to be interested in me (a strong component, I
suspect); what his hand feels like on my shoulder; what his shoulder
feels like under my hand. And, of course, once the attraction has been
triggered, the object of it is very sexy indeed.

Maybe this is all too obvious to be worth mentioning, but if anyone
feels like adding anything, go right ahead. (I could stop you, right?)

Another whole aspect of sexual attraction, which I was going to talk
about before this got so long, is the curious phenomenon I
occasionally observe of "electronic attraction"; people feeling
attracted to other people they've never met or seen, on the basis of
reading their writings and/or exchanging mail. But I'll save that for
another time.

Robert [who feels like he's doing a very bad imitation of Arnold]