From: sheryl@seas.gwu.edu (Sheryl Coppenger)
Subject: Re: CHOOSING to be attracted to someone
Organization: George Washington University
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 15:46:56 GMT

In article <66hn4a=.avery@netcom.com> avery@netcom.com (Avery Ray Colter) writes:
>
>Sure, attitudes don't happen in a vacuum, but to try to make a deterministic
>interpretation of it all seems to me like trying to write the equation of
>motion for more than two bodies affecting each other by the inverse-square law.

I don't think I made a "deterministic interpretation".  I just said that
there are many factors that go into attraction.  I didn't propose that
there was some kind of equation for it.  Some people are more affected than
others.  But I think that anyone who pretends that it is all some internal
cosmic chemistry without outside influences is kidding himself.

>>I'm not so cynical as Avery.  I don't think we have to replace one fascism 
>>with another.  
>
>Whoa, I'd better go back and see if I fell asleep while writing.
>I thought I had written that others' attractions don't upset me,
>so long as they don't try to enforce them on me. If I gave the
>impression of wanting to make society glorify fatness and denigrate
>thinness, that is definitely not what I was thinking. 

You read too much into my brief reference and paid too little attention
to what preceeded it.  I didn't save the article, but as I recall you 
said something on the lines that it wasn't worth trying to change society's
attitudes on appearance because SOCIETY just replaces one fascism with 
another.  You may be right, I just  think that's a little bleak, that's all.

>Unfortunately, I'm beginning to wonder who is worse, those who used to
>try to convert me to being attracted to thin women, or those who are now
>trying to convert me to being attracted to every woman in existence. The
>latter strikes me at times as the former with one step removed, namely
>the exclusion of the attractions I presently harbor.

I hope you're not including me in "those".  I don't care who you're
attracted to, Avery.  All I said is that if the culture got more
relaxed about what and who was beautiful then ON AVERAGE people would 
tend to be attracted to more different types.  I was musing on a 
hypothetical.

And I don't know what you're so upset about.  If this change in attitudes
came about and I'm right in my prediction then you would be a little
less alone in your attraction to BBWs.  And gay people wouldn't feel
like they had to force themselves into straight relationships or risk
losing friends, jobs, etc.

You may have confused my posting with that of Liddie, who was saying
that people ought to wait and get to know people rather than rejecting
them out of hand because of appearance.  I didn't say that, but I don't
think it's a bad idea in moderation.  Sometimes people grow on a person.
But I don't think Liddie ever said you had to grit your teeth and go
out with thin women.

>Please tell me what replacement of fascismi you feel I'm proposing.
>I am unaware of proposing one fascism with another.

Gad, Avery, lighten up.  

-- 

Sheryl Coppenger    SEAS Computing Facility Staff	sheryl@seas.gwu.edu
		    The George Washington University	(202) 994-6853