Attraction and Repulsion

"She is an attractive woman" is a commonly used phrase which means a woman is sexually attractive. Is there any other kind of attraction? I suppose if she was rich, she might be monetarily attractive, or if she was covered with syrup she might be bee attractive, but that's not what we usually mean.

Humans are hard wired to detect beauty. From a male, heterosexual point of view, the gross anatomy of an attractive woman can be related to some basic survival-of-the-species traits. Long legs means she can outrun the varmints, small waist means she is not pregnant, wide hips means she can bear children, large breasts means she can nurse those children. The only things I have not figured out are the face and hair. All I can figure about the face is that prominent cheekbones give better protection to the eye, and the only thing I can think of for long hair is that it is useful for either sewing or for making bows and arrows, but animal sinews seem to be preferred for those uses, so I really don't know. Maybe it is just plain decorative.

I find it just a little odd that when I see an attractive woman my gaze will lock onto her automatically. For most of my life it was the face that I focused on. Recently I have been noticing bodies more. It's really weird. I can be going about my business, but if an attractive woman crosses my field of view my eyes will automatically latch on to her. It is not a conscious decision. Matter of fact it takes a conscious effort not to stare.

It is well known that men enjoy looking at attractive women. What I could not figure out for a long time is why women do not seem to have as much interest in attractive men. Look at some women's magazines and you might think you are looking at Playboy. They are full of pictures of attractive women with hardly any pictures of men. But now I think I have it: men are shooters and women are targets. I have always looked at things from my point of view. I was a shooter and I was looking for a target. Women are different. Women are not shooters, they want to attract shooters. They do so by making themselves attractive targets. The competition is fierce, though alien to most men. It is a contest to see who can be the most attractive target, not who is the most accurate shot. Who can garner the most attention? The most attractive targets will attract the most shooters. Given the rules of modern Western civilization, the woman can then choose which shooter she would like to be shot by.



You cannot have attraction without repulsion. If there were no repulsion, everything would be equally attractive, no one any more attractive than anyone else. Repulsion comes in various degrees. When you consider men and women there is some level of attraction and some level of repulsion. There are any number of factors can influence these forces: appearance, manners, education, intelligence, and any number of facets of the personality. Appearance may be the initiating factor, but after the introduction, the person's behavior starts taking on increasing larger role.

That is when we are talking about normal, heterosexual men and women: they are attracted to people of the opposite sex. But what about homosexuals? Now everything is turned around.

The main problem with "gay marriage" is the term. If it was called something more neutral, say something like "civil partner contract" there would not be so much resistance to the idea. Marriage is an ancient institution. It is not just an agreement between two people to share their lives together, the whole point of a marriage is to produce and raise children. While homosexuals may be perfectly capable of raising children, no pair of homosexuals is going to produce any.

Producing children requires sexual relations and marriage permits people to have sexual relations. For heterosexuals, this is normal and right. The term "gay marriage" combines homosexuality with sex. Ewww, that's disgusting, that's just repulsive. Yuck, yuck, double yuck, I don't even want to think about it, and you made me think about it just by uttering that phrase.

This is why the issue of gay marriage provokes such an uproar. Just the idea is repulsive to most heterosexuals.