All right, I think an interesting question is developing out of this, why are all the women asked by men saying that they wouldn't be attracted to someone they rescued on an adventure?
This seems innately counterintuitive to me.
I mean at the very least I would think that there isn't enough information in this question. Though that in itself poses some issues, perhaps men answer yes when given too little information and women no? There are other variables here too, we have yet to here from a women who has asked another women what she would prefer, and we have yet to hear a woman construct a desirable rescue scenario.
Which there must be, since fiction written for women, ei romance novels, frequently features situations in which women must rescue men. And there have certainly been a number of situations in which women have rescued men they have then developed relationships with. The most cliched of which is the nurse to patient scenario.
Though it is also possible of course, that what is really at stake in this is not the idea of nurturer or protector, both of which roles are and must be shared in our and every other society save the most pathologically gender limiting, but more shallow issues involving courtship. Since the essential end of a romance story of the type being discussed is some sort of consummation.
I also have to say that ineffectual is an unfair bias in the story. Very very very rarely are there ineffectual characters in such stories from either the perspective of the rescuer or the rescued. At the very least the rescued will have access to some sort of resource that the rescuer can use, land, connections, physical beauty, or emotional investment are the most common.
Plus, there is something innately weird about the idea that you should be attracted to someone you are rescuing. Shouldn't you just be rescuing someone because they need the help and you can deliver it? And given that why should you take into account the fact that you rescued them in a seperate question of attraction?
I suppose what really worries me about this is that within the question of attraction with regard to rescuing I sense the more disturbing question of would you be motivated to rescue someone at all.
'Cause I have to say that any woman who becomes unattracted to a love interest she rescues from the clutches of an evil tyrant who violated that interest's home with overwhelming force and took the interest isn't much of a human being much less a woman.
Oh and Kudos to the twist on my already twisted reference to Richard. Though for a man with a queered reputation he certainly had a lot of success at picking up wives and fiancees.
Slightly off topic, in prison populations, at least, men with less testosterone are far more violent than those with higher levels, and we all know about Hitler's singular predicament.
If you are so threatened by the idea of someone leaving the possibility open for a plot where a woman rescues a man say it... but you can stop pretending it has anything to do with how women think - its all about how SOME men apparently think.
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