I am beginning to suspect that it is surprisingly common for intelligent, competent adults to somehow make it through the world for a few decades while missing some ordinary skill, like mailing a physical letter, folding a fitted sheet, depositing a check, or reading a bus schedule. Since these tasks are often presented atomically - or, worse, embedded implicitly into other instructions - and it is often possible to get around the need for them, this ignorance is not self-correcting. One can Google "how to deposit a check" and similar phrases, but the sorts of instructions that crop up are often misleading, rely on entangled and potentially similarly-deficient knowledge to be understandable, or are not so much instructions as they are tips and tricks and warnings for people who already know the basic procedure. Asking other people is more effective because they can respond to requests for clarification (and physically pointing at stuff is useful too), but embarrassing, since lacking these skills as an adult is stigmatized. (They are rarely even considered skills by people who have had them for a while.)
This seems like a bad situation. And - if I am correct and gaps like these are common - then it is something of a collective action problem to handle gap-filling without undue social drama. Supposedly, we're good at collective action problems, us rationalists, right? So I propose a thread for the purpose here, with the stipulation that all replies to gap announcements are to be constructive attempts at conveying the relevant procedural knowledge. No asking "how did you manage to be X years old without knowing that?" - if the gap-haver wishes to volunteer the information, that is fine, but asking is to be considered poor form.
(And yes, I have one. It's this: how in the world do people go about the supposedly atomic action of investing in the stock market? Here I am, sitting at my computer, and suppose I want a share of Apple - there isn't a button that says "Buy Our Stock" on their website. There goes my one idea. Where do I go and what do I do there?)
No, I was thinking of gender as a separate hurdle. For instance, a straight cisgender male is most likely primarily attracted to persons with vulvas, whether they identify as men or women. He might secondarily prefer women, but that's a lesser "hurdle". that is, there would be a possibility of sexual attraction to a FtM (gender = man, bio-female) but not a pre-op MtF (gender = woman, bio-male) because of genital incompatibility.
I don't think the attraction is "exclusive to men" as much as it is "exclusive to people with specific genitals." Though this is probably very variable, and monosexuals may well be divided on whether genitalia or gender is more important to them. I'd be curious to know the breakdown.
I was thinking like this. Suppose you are a monosexual on a desert island with one other person. You will likely want sexual contact. At least for me, the most important quality of your island-mate (for purposes of sexual contact, that is) is that they have the "right" type of genitals; while other qualities may be unattractive or undesirable, they can be overcome if you want sexual contact enough, but having the "wrong" type of genitals can't. To put this another way, as a straight male, someone I am not attracted to who has a vulva may be less than ideal, but still sexually satisfying; someone without a vulva couldn't possibly be.
I had thought this would be universal for monosexuals; your comments lead me to think I was wrong, and it's more complicated than that. I'm curious how common my view is, and the specifics of other views.
(BTW, I wish I could upvote you several times just for using 'myriad' correctly.)
I very frequently find someone attractive, or not, long before seeing their genitals. Indeed, there are dozens of people in the world whose genitals I have never seen, and yet I am still able to find them either attractive or not.
Compatibility of genitalia is surely important for answering the more specific question "am I going to have sex with this person or not?" but that's not the same thing as attraction. For most of us, there are plenty of people in the world who are very attractive but with whom we will never have sex. Many people choose to... (read more)