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How does gender affect who you are romantically attracted to?


garlic cake

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How does gender affect who you are romantically attracted to?

I never understood how what gender someone identified as changed if you loved them or not. because a woman can still dress masculine and men can dress femininely and and same for non binary people. I don't understand what makes someone attracted to people so  I don't understand this much. is it looks? personality? or something else? because none of them seem to have gender affecting them. i posted this on arocalypse.com but nobody seemed to know an answer.

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Why are you specifically asking this for romantic attraction? Why would it be different for sexual attraction? Do you think it's more justified for people to have a scope of sexual attraction limited to a specific gender even though, as you say, women can still dress masculine and men can dress feminine and nonbinary people can look however they want?

 

Gender is deeper than how people dress. Gender can also go beyond individual identity and into relationships and roles between multiple people. This is not to say that "to be a woman is to want to do womanly things in relation to a male partner" or whatever other configuration. Sometimes, though, the way that the gender identities and convictions on gender are positioned between two people impacts their compatibility on a romantic level.

 

So (to keep it binary) a hetero woman can say "I know in my soul that I am a woman, and my heart wants to find a compatible person to connect to that complements that by being a man." This isn't specific to sexuality. An asexual heteroromantic woman can say this.

 

A lesbian woman can say "I know in my soul that I am a woman, and my heart wants to find a compatible person to connect to that matches that part of me by also being a woman."

 

People with binary genders might be more invested in the whole paradigm of gender dichotomy (whether they know it or not), so that might have shaped how they interpret their inner feelings and motivations in developing their intimate life. Even still, that inner sense of a specific longing can occur elsewhere in genderland. A nonbinary person can say "I know in my soul that I'm neither a man nor a woman, and my heart wants to find a compatible person to connect to who has [feminine/masculine/both/other] traits."

 

I think that gender as a factor in attraction or what kind of relationship a person desires is generally overblown in Western cultures because of a history of patriarchy and the deeply rooted notion of the binary that this patriarchy relies on. But, the emotional needs people feel to find a partner of a certain gender are still valid. We can rationally pick apart all sorts of bases people use to select their mates; it would just be rude to do so.

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6 minutes ago, Snao Cone said:

Why are you specifically asking this for romantic attraction? Why would it be different for sexual attraction? Do you think it's more justified for people to have a scope of sexual attraction limited to a specific gender even though, as you say, women can still dress masculine and men can dress feminine and nonbinary people can look however they want?

 

Gender is deeper than how people dress. Gender can also go beyond individual identity and into relationships and roles between multiple people. This is not to say that "to be a woman is to want to do womanly things in relation to a male partner" or whatever other configuration. Sometimes, though, the way that the gender identities and convictions on gender are positioned between two people impacts their compatibility on a romantic level.

 

So (to keep it binary) a hetero woman can say "I know in my soul that I am a woman, and my heart wants to find a compatible person to connect to that complements that by being a man." This isn't specific to sexuality. An asexual heteroromantic woman can say this.

 

A lesbian woman can say "I know in my soul that I am a woman, and my heart wants to find a compatible person to connect to that matches that part of me by also being a woman."

 

People with binary genders might be more invested in the whole paradigm of gender dichotomy (whether they know it or not), so that might have shaped how they interpret their inner feelings and motivations in developing their intimate life. Even still, that inner sense of a specific longing can occur elsewhere in genderland. A nonbinary person can say "I know in my soul that I'm neither a man nor a woman, and my heart wants to find a compatible person to connect to who has [feminine/masculine/both/other] traits."

 

I think that gender as a factor in attraction or what kind of relationship a person desires is generally overblown in Western cultures because of a history of patriarchy and the deeply rooted notion of the binary that this patriarchy relies on. But, the emotional needs people feel to find a partner of a certain gender are still valid. We can rationally pick apart all sorts of bases people use to select their mates; it would just be rude to do so.

tbh I'm agender and don't understand gender in a whole much so thanks for explaining

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I have no idea why I’m romantically attracted to men, that’s just how it is for me and it always has been. I don’t think there’s anything rational about it. 

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15 minutes ago, garlic cake said:

tbh I'm agender and don't understand gender in a whole much so thanks for explaining

Understandable. I'm not directly familiar with this concept either, but I've learned a lot through observation, analysis, and quite frankly merely osmosis.

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(First off, I'm sexual and romantic so this will apply to both sexual and romantic feelings.)

 

I have no solid answer to this that I can articulate clearly, but I know I'm a bisexual woman who's attracted to men who present as men and women who present as women. (Edit: although I don't find myself attracted to hypermasculine dudebros or really girly girls, either, and am actually put off by people like that in terms of romantic/sexual potential.) I don't necessarily mean cis men and women, I have no reason to believe I couldn't experience attraction to someone who's trans (just hasn't happened that I have), but I suspect I would have to get to know them after some degree of physical transition and perceive them as the binary sex they wanted to appear. When it comes to my personal relationships, I just feel... god, I don't know how to describe it. When I was with my ex-girlfriend, at one point she started talking about using a strap-on and she was sending me these links to comments by cishet men about how they felt, er, penetrating their cis female partners, and she got really into that idea, said that was how she felt about it with me (I gather it wasn't something she'd explored before) and I became really upset. Like not angry at her or anything, but really uncomfortable and kind of repulsed and didn't want to talk about it. It wasn't just about the obvious sexual component either, it was like... I couldn't wrap my head round the idea of her taking that masculine of a role or wanting me to think of her being masculine. I was a woman relating to her as another woman in that relationship and I didn't want that dynamic to change, I didn't want anything to alter how I perceived either or both of our genders. My partner now is a guy and I can relate those types of sexual sentiments she was mentioning to my dynamic with him (and not only not be upset by it, but find it appealing) because that's how I know him. If he did or said something that indicated wanting to be perceived in a very stereotypically feminine way, I would be equally uncomfortable.

 

I don't think that answers anything you asked whatsoever lol, but it reminded me of that. I'm just... attracted to who I'm attracted to. Romantically and sexually. I don't think I'm going to get much out of questioning why or how because to me 'that's the way I'm wired' is sufficient enough and I doubt there even is an identifiable why.

 

@Snao Cone's answer was good, I think.

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It's primarily the personality traits, which people of the female sex have just tended to adopt (and make visible) more so than the male sex, from my experience.  There's always exceptions on both sides, but it's still resulted in me primarily gravitating toward the opposite sex for friendships, and I have no desire to pursue a relationship with people I don't already consider friends, so that's led to me being effectively heteroromantic.

 

Even though my spouse turned out to be trans male, I feel like I was only able to connect with him romantically because I initially perceived him as female.  The trans epiphany didn't do anything to dramatically change my perception/feelings for my spouse.  He was still the same person I fell in love with, so I saw no reason to reevaluate the relationship.  In short, I feel like the gender of the other person only ever really mattered to me before the relationship was actually established, if at all.

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2 minutes ago, Philip027 said:

It's primarily the personality traits, which people of the female sex have just tended to adopt (and make visible) more so than the male sex, from my experience.  There's always exceptions on both sides, but it's still resulted in me primarily gravitating toward the opposite sex for friendships, and I have no desire to pursue a relationship with people I don't already consider friends, so that's led to me being effectively heteroromantic.

its a good point but i was wondering about gender where its not about biology

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Sorry, I edited more into my post after you responded.

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Well. Gender is somewhat a complicated thing to me. Or simple, depending on the point of view. 

 

I personally call myself non-binary and have no real tells much anymore as to whom of what gender I am or am not attracted. Be it sexually (though rare that is) or romantically. People are people and if someone catches my eye or heart, gender doesn't really factor much. 

 

Personality is much more important, though some aesthetic aspects do factor into the whole thing, but that is a thing regardless of gender and mostly more dependent on personal hygiene and such. The other factors mostly involve being a decent person, which is somewhat normal, I should think or rather take as a given. 

 

So yeah, calling myself panromantic for a reason. 

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4 hours ago, Artemis42 said:

I have no idea why I’m romantically attracted to men, that’s just how it is for me and it always has been. I don’t think there’s anything rational about it. 

Yup.  That sums up my experience!

 

To garlic cake, I understand why that sort of thing is not a satisfying answer to you.  But it's just true.  I have many female friends, many of whom I love dearly and who are an incredibly important part of my life, but I have never been attracted to any of them.  Any time I've felt romantically inclined toward anyone, it's always been a man.  

To your point, this isn't about their sexual physiology. I don't want to have sex with anyone. 

Other aspects of their physicality do factor in, though; at least part of what makes me attracted to someone is about their appearance, and the fact that they appear male.  

 

So, anyhow, I'm not always sure whether I know what to make of my own gender, but I am sure that I'm only ever attracted to people who present as male.

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I think this is one of those topics that can potentially be analysed to death without achieving many real insights as to why anyone experiences attraction to other people's gender and/or sex in the way they do.

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5 minutes ago, Ceebs said:

I think this is one of those topics that can potentially be analysed to death without achieving many real insights as to why anyone experiences attraction to other people's gender and/or sex in the way they do.

then i will analyse it to my death

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Fair enough. You may never get fully satisfying answers, though.

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Just now, Ceebs said:

Fair enough. You may never get fully satisfying answers, though.

but i can try to

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Yes, you can indeed.

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I had an AMAB partner who transitioned while we were together. It changed things because their dysphoria eventually meant that we couldn't have any sexual intimacy. Also, they felt too much of a gay male with me rather than the woman they are. 

 

Those things meant that our romantic relationship became impossible to continue. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm nonbinary and I don't have a gender-based attraction label I use for my grey-aromanticism. I don't find "alterous" or "queerplatonic" attraction helpful distinctions either, just more confusing. My romanticism is grey in all aspects. I have never wanted to date anyone since before puberty, but find myself more likely to date a man and find them attractive due to socialization, and perhaps if I was socialized to like women instead, I would feel the opposite way. There was a person I wasn't romantically interested in at all because I thought they considered themselves a woman, but when we discussed both being nonbinary, my feelings changed. Butches, gay/feminine men, and nonbinary people in general all seem more attractive to me because they seem to view gender boundaries more fluidly, and I therefore feel less pressure to perform gender a specific way with them, which leads me to feel more comfortable around them, which therefore leads me to consider myself more capable of being attracted to them than other people. In this way there is a logical basis to my attraction like @garlic cakewas wondering.

 

But I really don't see myself dating a woman or woman-aligned person, and that is something I cannot fully explain. Internalized lesbophobia? Inherent internal preference? Either way it doesn't matter to me, since I am satisfied by my understanding of my sexuality. It's grey, and I don't have to pursue anyone or think about anyone romantically if I don't want to, and if one day a woman comes along who I want to date, I'll be open to her, even though my preferences have shown me I would be much more likely to date a person with a non-female affiliation.

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One of the reasons I like WTFromantic is because most descriptions of "romance" involve some form of highly gendered ritual performance, and I find those expectations to be extremely dysphoric. I feel quite lucky to be transitioning in a t4t relationship where either of us can say, "oh, this feels wrong for me right now." I think that if my partner really started pulling the masc behavior and expected me to mirror that, we might have a problem, but I have faith that they won't.

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