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From: cel@cs.duke.edu (Chris Lane)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Diversity
Message-ID: <657312685@romeo.cs.duke.edu>
Date: 30 Oct 90 18:51:26 GMT
References: <1990Oct26.170150.9341@nntp-server.caltech.edu> <1990Oct26.204736.17577@iti.org>
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In article <1990Oct26.204736.17577@iti.org> uunet!mailrus!sharkey!hela!iti.org!dhw@ncar.ucar.EDU ("David H. West") writes:
>In article <1990Oct26.170150.9341@nntp-server.caltech.edu> morphy@truebalt.cco.caltech.EDU (Jones Maxime Murphy) writes:
>>[...] In my native Caribbean and in Latin America, I
>>find men much more open-minded about what's "attractive" in female
>>bodies. [...]

>This idea (that perceived attractiveness should respond to voluntary
>effort of the perceiver, who should find this straightforward to do)
>seems very tenacious amongst women who particpate in gender-issues
>discussion.

This support Jones' statement that American men *are* not open minded (note
that he did not say *choose* open mindedness).  It is possible that 
women who discuss gender have been socialized/whatever so that they 
*are* open minded.  

>I (and I expect many if not most men) find it baffling because the
>perceived attractiveness of a MOTAS seems an immediate, almost "given"
>reaction, opaque to rational thought in the short or medium term as
>does, for example the perceived "pleasant-tastingness" of a food.  I
>can decide that I don't really want the consequences of eating
>something that may taste good, or that I do want the consequences of
>eating something that may taste bad, but that doesn't change the
>perceived taste itself.

Well, in my experience this is simply untrue.  There are scores of
foods that I have "gotten the taste" for.  Everything from coffee to
Cognac to Shepherd's Pie to steak.  (I understand that for smokers,
smoking a cigarette is a pleasurable sensation.)  For that matter, I
find that my hearing of new styles of music changes dramatically
between the first time I hear a composition in that style and having
heard it a dozen times.  After the first dozen times, my reaction will
be pretty stable, but I find it takes a while to get things.

>Of course, both these kinds of perception are known to change in the
>long term, but scarcely voluntarily.

Hence, it is not true to say that the American men you refer to above
are stupid, simply that they have been brought up in confining ways.

Chris
-- 
cel@cs.duke.edu
Confusion can be both pleasant and helpful.