Hey, I know, I know, this "need" of mine for a certain level of physical attractiveness is my own worst handicap. You do right to point out my own statements. They aren't hypocritical, I hasten to add -- nowhere in there have I really contradicted my own first principle, that there's a certain "bare minimum" of physical attraction I require in my partner. (The quotes are taken out of context, as well, as I'm sure you'll admit. So, they don't fairly represent my attitude toward my "fat ... ugly" friends, about whom I am generally much less crass or dismissive than the citations seem to represent.)
Here's the thing.
1. I can't do it. I've TRIED dating women whom I "ought" to have been able to find "attractive enough" but that always led to me discovering that DESIRE CANNOT BE PREDICATED. No matter how much I thought they were wonderful people, or really liked their jokes, or saw them being kind to small hurt animals, their asses and tits didn't get a rise out of my dick. In the long run, it seemed a really cruel and patronizing thing to do, to deliberately 'force' myself into these politically correct liasons in which I tried to blind myself. It was just not going to work, and wasn't a respectful way to treat the woman either. She deserves a man who is stunned and delighted by her presence, as much as I deserve a woman who stuns and delights me.
2. Your suggestions taken even a slight distance further would inevitably lead to the conclusion that you don't need to hobby either. If women are so danged wonderful regardless of what they look like, then ... ya see where I'm going with it ... why not just get us someone friendly and not be attracted to people who look great on their providering websites?
I'll remind you of the time that a stunningly visually attractive woman posted here about her wonderful sexual experience in a threesome, and how she was unhappy that such wonderful experiences couldn't be shared among the thousands of horny and isolated men and women the world over. Thousands of horny men promptly responded, "I'll volunteer!" Of course, she wasn't about to lower her rates to help us "see the goddess," and she only had that wonderful experience in the context of being able to MAKE demands on the level of desirability of her partners. She wasn't out there happily volunteering to fuck fat slobs with no social skills for free. Your suggestion is tantamount to hers: patronizing, for it presumes reality need not impinge on your fantasies of how open-minded you are.
I realize the "solution" seems pretty straightforward. It may be, in YOUR life and YOUR mind. But my dick and head don't cooperate so fully.
Further, my initial commentary was as much about my own lack of "social skills" back when, in the day, and throughout my life, as it was about the current state of things. I was bemoaning what I perceive, now in the light of the new survey results, to be even more of a pariah status than I had originally thought I occupied. I wasn't so much stating I couldn't get laid, I was stating I haven't had many satisfying experiences sexually. For me, providering is (and I don't see the problem with this statement, in or out of context) the only way to access women whose level of beauty is a necessity for erection, orgasm, basal metabolic fulfillment. It depresses me, and I don't mean to defend this attitude of mine; but it's the only one I came with, hard-wired. Short of gouging out my eyes, or a strange Manchurian brainwashing procedure, what would you suggest? A namby-pamby "open your mind" is insufficiently anti-intellectual, and totally un-thought-out. Try harder. :P
Now, I don't mean to be flip, so I should rephrase that last statement of mine. Is it indeed the case that you're capable of heeding your own advice, and (like so few people who laud the beauty of "every woman" no matter what she looks like) have married a stunningly butt-ugly but very friendly person? Or are you still interested in the variety of beauty represented among women appearing on web pages posted at $300 an hour?
I saw "Shallow Hal" and didn't get it. First, when he saw the "real beauty" when he was brainwashed, what he saw was physically beautiful women; this contradicts the premise that physical beauty should be unnecessary. Second, I didn't find the fat woman attractive regardless of whether Hal thinks he did; this contradicts the premise that we can learn to change our preferences.
How did this become a discussion of whether or not I like people in the "right" kind of way? I really thought it was a discussion about when people managed (probably as much by dumb luck as by social skills) to get their first bang, back in High School when the "right" way was up for grabs, confusing, totally rearranging every evening as new information bombarded our adolescent psyches. I'm not really up for being told I'm a shallow jerk for wanting a hot fuck; especially not on a board devoted to providers. If my preferences have to be politically correct even here, then where can I just be a normal adult human heterosexual male acting the way he was born to act, the way he will always want to act, the way he HAS TO? If not here, then where? geez ...
-- Modified on 2/28/2004 3:23:58 PM