Re: not quite
David Argall said:
"So maybe the question should be divided: a) "Would a woman mind having sex with a sexually attractive man that she rescued?" "
No, the question here is "Would she deem the man she rescued as sexually attractive as a result? [or would she deem him less attractive because she had rescued him?]"
And the answer is the conventional one. The woman rescued is distinctly willing to find her rescuer as attractive. The woman rescuer feels no such urge [on average of course].
Maybe a poll should be done. So far, every female responding directly to this post has said that it would not affect her, and two females that are not enworlders said that it would. Both groups are too small to be more than anecdotal evidence. Saying that women and men are "wired dif'rent, like" only explains divergent behaviour data if there is divergent behaviour data to explain. All the talk about "women are nurturers/men are hunters" is beside the point, unless there is widespread empirical data that women would, in fact, find having to rescue someone itself a sexual turn-off. And I see no evidence, in widespread, non-anecdotal, empirical studies, that women would find men less attractive by virtue of having to rescue them. The fact that men and women have some differences does not mean that they have this particular behavioural difference. There is a belief held by some on this board that women would react so, and some women have said they would react so, but neither is good enough evidence, since there are also people who believe the opposite and women who say the opposite.
Therefore, so far I am unconvinced. And saying that "most women would respond this way" is unconvincing, since there have been no objective, non-biased, etc., scientific polls or studies, to my knowledge, of the specific question how most women would react to rescuing a man from physical danger. And studies of other gender difference issues are irrelevant, since without the former study to link it to, it is impossible to say that the latter "explains" the former, since there is no evidence that the difference to be studied by the former even exists.
Now lets get back to sexual attraction as such. All the romance tales of men rescuing women have men rescuing women that are thought to be sexually attractive. If a woman rescues a "stud-muffin" with her laser from the superhumanly strong alien robots I see no evidence (on average) that women would find said "stud-muffin" unattractive, sexually speaking. Turning it around, a man rescuing a woman he finds hideously non-sexually attractive is not going to want to have sex with her just because he rescued her.
I think that some men might feel "inadequate" at having to be rescued, and thus might project onto those fictional women rescuers that "she wouldn't want weaklings that need rescuing, she would want a REAL MAN" but that doesn't make it true.
(sarcasm alert) One hopes that the men on the boards with military training never have to be rescued physically from muggers, etc. by their wives/girlfriends. It would be sad if those women suddenly said "well, now that I have rescued you, I realize what a small weakling you are. I am leaving you for a REAL MAN"
But don't worry, men! If the worst should happen, there are other women that could love you anyway!
I just realized, this space romance goes back to "rescuing the beautiful princess from the dragon". Again, the point is that the woman in question is a) beautiful and b) a princess. A plain peasant is not going to be more attractive to a knight that kills the dragon. But there have been tales of female knights rescuing studly princes from dragons, and sometimes (gasp!) they have sex (or even marriage) with the men they rescue. So the tales are told both ways. From a gaming POV it holds up unless one is already stuck in the belief that it won't. One might profit from reading the series of collections of short stories, starting with "Chicks in Chainmail".
Now, about the person "being rescued"...I personally would have no problems being sexually attracted to a beautiful (to me) woman rescuing me, and I would be grateful, but unattracted, to a non-beautiful (to me) woman rescuing me. So, for me, Xena or Callisto "YES YES YES", a Roseanne Barr double who can kick it like Xena "Grateful but no thank you". Looking at it from the woman being rescued POV, the question would be whether the mere act of rescuing makes a man more attractive. It might give evidence that the man is brave, smart, lucky, has a working laser pistol, etc., which might indicate attractive qualities. But the fact that a man has to be rescued does not mean that he is not brave. Stuff happens, after all. Thus that by itself wouldn't make the man less attractive. If the man were "somewhat ineffectual" then it would depend, again, on the particular manner in which the rescuee were ineffectual (is he non-violent? Bound by an oath not to interfere? Unlucky? Doesn't happen to have a working laser with which to shoot the super strong alien robots?) and the particular things that the rescuer is looking for, sexually speaking. If the man were "totally ineffectual" then it might look bad for the man, but it could look bad for a "totally ineffectual" woman too, unless it is a really shallow man and the woman is "totally ineffectual but with a hot body so I will have sex with her as long as I don't have to stay with her or talk to her much". But most men beyond the teenage years want a bit more than that in a woman, in the long term. (Hence the expression "high-maintainance" being seen as a BAD thing in women). In fact, I would argue that the "hot body" part is working in spite of the "totally ineffectual" part, and not because of it. And perhaps for some shallow women the "rich as a king" or "studly man" part (depending on which version of shallowness we are talking about) could work in spite of the "totally ineffectual" part of the totally ineffectual man.
I think that part of the confusion might lie in the fact that for a long time, women were reliant on men as wage-earners. And this included the time that most of the old tales were written. So women might have had dreams of getting a good marriage from a noble (and RICH and HANDSOME) knight, as opposed to a bad marriage, or no marriage at all. But now women can work, so their dreams would be different. It would be convenient for some men to think that women are conditioned to want men to financially support them (thus keeping women out of the work force) and this could translate to these men wanting to believe that women are genetically programmed to find rescuers more sexy than rescuees. But the mere possibility of a link between this and some genetic differences does not convince me, in the absence of women on the whole, in the modern age, actually holding this belief. Even if they did, we would then have to ask whether this was due to genetics or to sexist social programming. And by the way, BOTH can be overcome (if men are genetically programmed to be sexually promiscuous, men can overcome that urge and be sexually faithful). And in the modern age, some women can have their boytoys too!
So what remains is the question of whether the mere act of rescuing would somehow make the rescuer/ee more attractive or less attractive to the other, and whether this would have different answers when one changed the genders of each. I don't see it. I can see why some men would want to think so, and I can believe that a few women would buy into the whole "men rescuing women = men more sexy, women rescuing men = men less sexy"
deal, but there is no evidence that it is widespread in our modern society where women work and so don't have to be "rescued" in real life, financially. It's a different world now, after all. The old "conventional" answer only works in a society in which women really believe they need rescuing, and that is no longer the case, for the most part, in modern society. The fifties are over, thank goodness.
Demi Moore and Ashton, Cher and her Bagel Boy, Madonna and, well, anybody, show that these women don't need men to rescue them from anything. They are on top!
Thus the stories told in the modern age will reflect the new realities.
So I am still unconvinced. And my explanation of why some women might find rescued men less sexy (socially conditioned remnants of a sexist society) seems at least as good as any given genetic explanation of the as-yet-unproven idea that most women, on the whole, would find rescued men less sexy. And one also wonders what the original poster would accept as a reply that would convince him that in fact women don't on the whole find rescued men less sexy. Even if all women enworlders posted, I don't think he would be convinced. And since no objective and scientific polls have been done either way, there is nothing there to convince him either way either. I am quite certain my replies won't convince him. So assuming that this is not a troll (and I have been fooled by trolls before) one wonders what response the original poster wants, aside from a widespread would-be confirmation from this board that did not come, which would have said (according to the script in his own head) "yes yes women just want to be rescued by a man really, and all that women being independant and going to work stuff is just a bad dream".
Since it didn't happen, the original poster seems to be left where he started. To everything that has been said so far, he can still reply "yes, but everyone knows that women really want to be rescued, and wouldn't want to rescue their sex-partners, right?", ignoring all the anecdotal evidence to the contrary, and taking all the anecdotal evidence in support of his views as "proof". And he can even try to tack on any data on any differences between men and women (if you want another one, men tend to be taller than women, on average) and use that as more "proof" that most women would naturally find men less sexy if they had to rescue them, despite there being no scientific studies done on whether or not this specific latter idea is even true.
And we haven't even talked about men rescuing and having sex with men, or women rescuing and having sex with women.
But read Swordspoint for some of the former. By Ellen Kushner, I think (or am I thinking Chicks in Chainmail? Or maybe both). I would also be interested in hearing of stories of women rescuing and having sex with women. Strictly for research purposes, mind you.
And now that I have probably offended absolutely everybody, I will end this ridiculously long post.
