Sexual Relationships
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Theory on Why Women Aren’t Visually Attracted to Men, a Sociological and Neuroscience Perspective

It’s well known that men are very visual when it comes to attraction. While women are known for not being as visual when it comes to attraction. Obviously, we all know how often questions like “Are women even attracted to men?” get asked on here and of course the answers vary, some women say that they are in no way visually attracted to men but are only “attracted” to his personality, while other women say that of course they are visually attracted to men. Which makes me wonder, what if there is both a biological and socialogical explanation for this?

“Oh my! his abs make me so wet!”-said no woman ever
“Oh my! his abs make me so wet!”-said no woman ever

Sociology nowadays is a rather “iffy” field of study due to how politically partisan it is nowadays. Sociology college courses are used to promote social justice and other liberal ideas rather than teach actual sociology. However, authentic sociology may have something right and that is how society may have a major influence on what many people are attracted to.

People are constantly bombarded with erotic ads depicting scantly clad women
People are constantly bombarded with erotic ads depicting scantly clad women

Now of course everyone is different, I get that. Which means that each person likes different things but this take isn’t about specific kinks and fetishes but rather about visual attraction to one another and how people express it. What if women are actually much more visual than we know but don’t normally express it because they are not socially programmed to. Many women admit that they ogle men in public but are more subtle about subtle about it because they are afraid of being labeled as promiscuous. While the same stigma doesn’t apply to men, so men are more open about their visual nature.

“Mmm. Look at her booty.”
“Mmm. Look at her booty.”

The biggest proof of a sociological influence are cultural differences. Here in Western cultures, boobs are highly coveted by men while certain tribes in Africa and in South America don’t share the same attitude towards breasts. In fact women in these cultures walk around braless and in some cases without any underwear, yet the men in these cultures don’t seem to show any sort of sexual attraction to said body parts. The female navel is highly sexualized in India, possibly to the same extent that breasts are sexualized in the US.

Traditional Indian Saree designed to expose the navel
Traditional Indian Saree designed to expose the navel

What about brain scans? From a neuroscience perspective, we have similar results. However, the neuroscience results are slightly more detailed. For example, it was discovered that the sight of a pretty woman’s face has similar effects on a man’s brain that certain types of drugs have on people’s brains

Theory on Why Women Aren’t Visually Attracted to Men, a Sociological and Neuroscience Perspective

Another brain scan found that when viewing erotic imagery, the entire brains of men react while only a few parts of the female brain react. Hence people saying that women aren’t “as” visual as men. Not that women aren’t visual at all.

Theory on Why Women Aren’t Visually Attracted to Men, a Sociological and Neuroscience Perspective

How does sociology tie into neuroscience? Although it’s hard to prove, a possible explanation as to why women’s brains don’t react as much to erotic imagery as men’s brains is that many women have been socially conditioned in a way that deactivates the means for women’s brains to react in the same way men’s brains react. As for the few women who are visual, they could be the ones that managed to resist the social conditioning and thus are actually able to visually appreciate the male body in both a sexual and artistic manner. But that doesn’t mean they are as visual men, they are just slightly more visual than the average woman.

Imagine the outrage if the roles were reversed.
Imagine the outrage if the roles were reversed.

There are thousands of genetic differences between males and females. And new differences continue to be discovered each day(what? Don’t get mad, it’s the truth. Sorry not sorry for being politically incorrect). The human brain is no exception, from how it functions, to it’s physical properties, gender dimorphism applies to the human brain as well. Yet even with these differences there are still women who are almost as visual as men albeit these women are very rare.

Theory on Why Women Aren’t Visually Attracted to Men, a Sociological and Neuroscience Perspective

What about the female sexuality? We all know how often questions like “are all women secretly lesbians?” get asked. And it’s not as simple as that. First of all, homosexuality isn’t as common as some people want you to believe. However, you may wonder why there are so many women nowadays who identify as either lesbian or bisexual. The reason for that is that it’s socially acceptable for gay women to come out, while it’s still not socially acceptable for gay men to come out. But that still doesn’t mean most women are lesbians or bisexuals. Considering that polls still show straight women as the majority.

Theory on Why Women Aren’t Visually Attracted to Men, a Sociological and Neuroscience Perspective

So what about the “straight” women that show romantic and sexual interest towards other women? With how many woman are coming out of the closet nowadays and with how much woman on woman sexual interactions are highly sexualized, and with how much the female body gets a lot of publicity, it’s not surprising that many women subconsciously get socially programmed to find other women sexually appealing. Long story short, it’s a form of adaptation. Considering how men hardly get the same attention women get, the sexuality of many women tends to turn more “fluid” to compensate for the lack of admiration of males in society and media.

Turn on the tv, go on social media, watch a movie, go the mall and you’ll see stuff like this.
Turn on the tv, go on social media, watch a movie, go the mall and you’ll see stuff like this.

So what can be done to reawaken the visual nature of females? You can start with social programming, instead of the “one size fits all” norm in which sexualized women are supposed to cater towards both males and females. Why not equally distribute the sexualization? Why not have ads, movies and tv shows that cater towards straight women that are filled with scantly clad men. While still keeping the sexualization of women for men? Another thing that can be done is encourage women to be more open about their sexual feelings. Encourage women to make the first move more often. This repression of sexuality women subconsciously have is another thing that may be keeping women’s visual nature deactivated in their brains. There’s a good chance that if these changes take place, straight women will actually start to feel visual attraction towards men.

Theory on Why Women Aren’t Visually Attracted to Men, a Sociological and Neuroscience Perspective

Here is a brief summary for the TLDR folks: both Sociology and Neurology can explain why women aren’t visually attracted to men. Sociology found that women are highly sexualized in the media and society which causes women’s brains to adapt to this by making women feel attraction to other women at the expense of their visual attraction towards men. Neurology found that women’s brains don’t react as strongly to visual stimuli as men’s brains do but women’s brains react to any kind of erotic stimuli. There’s a possibility social programming may impact the female brain by deactivating the visual nature of women when it comes to their attraction towards men. Straight women may be able to reactivate or “relearn” their default visual attraction towards men if social programming gets a makeover. And lastly, this take is not meant to offend anyone, it’s just to give people something to think about.

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Most Helpful Girls

  • I don’t know if your evidence of brain scans shows that women are less visual exactly or that women’s sexual instincts don’t trigger as suddenly and overwhelmingly.

    It sounds the same, but it’s not. It’s also why foreplay matters.

    But the cues that get women into position (pun intended) for foreplay generally include visual stimulus. Both hetero, bisexual and homosexual women tend to prefer more stimulation before being penetrated or reaching a stage of high arousal.

    So what one person could call women being less visual can also be considered an overall more drawn out process of sexual arousal.

    • I think there are just more steps between a woman’s very first glimmer of sexual interest and full on raging desire, imho. It’s a safety valve-mating is dangerous for us. Sexual desire leads to reckless abandon, so more assessment steps are built in for us - who are both smaller and more vulnerable, plus bear the dangers of pregnancy.

    • That wouldn’t explain why there are some women who are very visual though.

    • Or in other words, visuals definitely trigger an “I want to have sex with him/her” feeling in women. But it doesn’t override other factors, like if it’s safe to do so.

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  • Great take!

    • Thanks!

    • You’re welcome.

Most Helpful Guys

  • The sad reality that most women are really bisexual, and they don't care to much about the male body, as such they care about their body, they are obssed with their body and nearly most of them watch lesbian porn and most of them experiment with each other. i guarantee you if men don't make the first move, the population would extinct because most women don't care at all about men, it's the reality look around you the only think that women want from men is the f****n money money money money money, nothing else.

  • Awesome Take!

    • Especially the part about social programming. I've been arguing that all along.

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What Girls & Guys Said

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  • It's a nice Mytake. I don't know why there's a lot of hate in the comments. I like some of the guys opinion on this cause it's true. But, women are somehow visual. I see other male but I rarely get attracted to them solely on the appearance. I have a friend who lost the sexual attraction from her husband when he started to have the "dad bod".

    • Thanks, glad you like it. I had to go anonymous because I knew there would be some people who would get “offended”(even though I didn’t intend to offend) since this take isn’t “politically correct”.

    • My guess is that you’ve been socially programmed by society to not find men’s bodies as attractive as you were originally able to.

    • Well, I guess I have to agree on some of the guys' comments here. Like yeah, I see good looking men but I only get sexually attracted to them if they havd more to offer than their looks per se. But I can be strongly attracted solely on a guy's appearance IF he is stunningly handsome like a Greek god or something.

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  • I think a lot of it has to do with standards of beauty as well. Women hold themselves to very high standards, and have started holding men to the same standards, and men have yet to catch up.

    • Since girls are at first not attracted to any gender. Women does not experience sexual attraction until they form a emotional connection with someone. In general, Women are not sexually attracted to anyone of any gender, but if an emotional connection is formed with someone else, they may experience sexual attraction towards the specific partner (s). Then muscular body is just nice looking as like nice painting or it is something that attract you? Because before forming emotional connection you can't feel attracted to muscular body even muscular body would not attract you?

  • This is almost purely biological, in my opinion. Women have an evolutionary and biological basis to prefer men who can provide support, comfort, and defense, for them, in order to survive. Our instincts are 20,000 years old, and back then, if a woman got pregnant, well, say goodbye if a saber tooth tiger comes along. So, women seek men that provide security and comfort over visual appeal. i. e. behaviors and underlying meanings are attractive, not appearance. That way, when they get pregnant, they don't insta-die to this harsh world.

    I. e. the "dad bod" craze. That sick, disgusting mass of jellyrolls and beer guts that women were going crazy over, calling sexy. Why? Because it wasn't the body they were thinking about. It was what the body represented: fatherhood.

    The reason men are overwhelmingly more visual is because sex is not a risk to us, so we can easily be attracted to more women, because we have nothing to lose and everything to gain by having a wide spectrum of attraction.

    There is an exception to the rule, and that is exceptionally attractive men. Top 10%-20%.

    This is how women's sexuality works. A male has to approach a certain level of overall value in order to interest them. An ultra hot guy meets the requirement simply based on one trait: physical appearance. Hence, here, women are very visual. However, other men have to prove they have other valuable traits, social intelligence, special skills, dominance, masculinity, intelligence, etc.

    So, I wouldn't say that it's that women *aren't* as visual as men, but that they have higher requirements for visual satisfaction and do not view as many men as innately attractive as men do women.

    I quote this a lot, but on OkCupid, women rated 80% of men as below average attractiveness. i. e. Only 20% of males succeeded in obtaining that overall value level based namely on appearance.

    Now, when a woman is "in love", her visual rating of the male will increase exponentially.

    Women are simply biologically less visual, in my opinion. Social influence can *cover up* instincts, but it can't completely override them. As neuroscience also states, we are primarily instinct.

    Death is a good motivator to be more selective in mate selection. Women are very visual when it comes to ultra hot guys, but not average or even above average men. Trust, bond, security, these are women's "visual" equivalent, by nature.

    • And yet in other species like the peacock it’s the females who are supposed to make the first move.

    • Humans aren't peacocks. Or pheasants. Sorry bro. I know you want chicks to just walk up to you and give it to ya, but we were born human, so it's your job to make the first move. Just gotta grab your balls and man up. Err, don't actually grab your balls in front of her, though. >_> That could be bad.

    • Then why do many women get offended when we point out these biological differences to them? It’s almost blasphemy to them. They’ll say “what? Who ever said we aren’t visual.” Just look at some of the female opinions here.

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  • Or wait... Can't we just find a way to get rid of all the sexualizations? I know, scandalous.

    But seriously, yeah it would be nice to see some equal representation. However, I disagree that attractions can be made socially. Maybe influence a particular feature's attraction, but not change your inner sexuality completely.

    • I’m not saying it changes a person’s sexual orientation, most people are still straight but the Social programming especially the current PC social programming causes many women to develop unusual sexual behaviors, that’s why it’s very common to see straight women doing things with other women that they would normally only do with their boyfriends.

    • I still think that if someone is truly straight from the beginning, they will remain straight. Just like if they are truly bi they will be bi, even if they didn't realize until later. But what do I know, I'm asexual.

    • Since girls are at first not attracted to any gender. Women does not experience sexual attraction until they form a emotional connection with someone. In general, Women are not sexually attracted to anyone of any gender, but if an emotional connection is formed with someone else, they may experience sexual attraction towards the specific partner (s). Then muscular body is just nice looking as like nice painting or it is something that attract you? Because before forming emotional connection you can't feel attracted to muscular body even muscular body would not attract you?

  • But we are visually attracted. As a three year old, before it was socially accepted, before conditioning could get to me, I had crushes on boys based entirely on their appearance. Effectively all my crushes have been based on guys that I’ve never had a conversation with but was purely attracted to their appreance. I think most other girls can relate with me. If women weren’t attracted to men, I doubt heterosexual relationships or sex would occur.

    • he isn't saying women aren't visual, but why women are less visual than men. And explained biology but how social constructs can play a role too. He makes some good points though.

    • @brennanhuff Exactly, thanks for clarifying what I meant.

  • Most people think about these things in terms of modern civilisation, but for most of our existence here on Earth humans lived in small hunter-gatherer tribes. Our societies have evolved but we still have the same programming we did back then for the most part. To figure out the truth about our nature we have to think like they did.

    The reason for this difference between men and women is simple: everything we find attractive in the opposite sex has to do with survival and reproduction. Your sexual market value is based on both of these things. We're wired to seek out the best mate to produce the strongest children, so we look for signs of those two things.

    What men find attractive in women mostly has to do with reproductive ability: youth, healthy weight, nice skin, nice hair, facial symmetry, decent sized breasts, wide hips to birth children. Women are designed to carry, give birth and nurture children. Some of that probably could also be said to be about survival value since it means a higher likelihood of her surviving childbirth and the children with strong genes surviving childhood.

    What women find attractive in a man is more complex because the requirements for us have always been a lot more than simply reproducing - we've always been required to provide for and protect the women and children. This protective ability is what makes the difference here. Men don't look for a woman who can protect us, that would make no sense when that's out job and women are generally less physically strong than we are.

    So the things women find attractive, both lookswise and personalitywise, have to do with this. Studies show that in terms of looks they look for signs of strength and high testosterone. This is not only a sign of good genes for reproduction - strong, high quality sperm - but also signs of good genes for protection. If a guy is good looking but timid, weak, cowardly etc. though, then he's of no use. A less good looking guy with a high level of confidence, strength, protective instinct - will be more appealing than the weak but good looking guy.

  • You know what really turns me on? Cake.

    • Is it because of how it tastes, looks or smells?

    • It's everything. I am planning on visiting the bets bakery on my Island some time soon. Forgot the name but I know where two branches are located. It smells good in there, the pastry is not only attractive, but tastes so good you could literally just start crying right there, it's witchcraft. very damn expensive too but I deserve to treat myself.

    • LOL thats what fat kids say hey just quoting 50 cent

  • You could have posted this MyTake on 95 percent of websites, and most people would at least admit men are more visual than women.

    This website is full of nonsensical people, and it has been since I had my first account in 2015. Never, have I ever, seen so many illogical people on here. I could survey a class of ten year olds, and I'm willing to be they would say "the boys look at girls more than the girls look at boys-duh!"

    • *bet

  • I remember watching a few programs or documentaries on this sort of thing. There is still no correct or proven answer. I remember when there was a study where men and women had to communicate via voice only. And turned out that men were able to identify how attractive the woman was visually just by listening to her voice. And caused certain parts of the brain to light up or become more activated during that process. It'like men have some kind of power to connect the dots. Pretty cool.

  • I've gotten flamed for saying this so be alert. It's not a put down or a less than thing, it's simply men respond yo visual stimuli- and ergo watch more porn than women. I prefer a woman's "fully sensual" meme than the male primarily visual arousal but you'll still get shit for stating what's been proven true.

  • Thanks for the laugh.

    • It’s not meant to be humorous but if you can’t agree to disagree in a mature manner then don’t bother posting snyde remarks. Why don’t you explain what you disagree with?

    • But it did make me laugh.

    • @estrellaceleste Post your delusional shit elsewhere, incel.

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  • A fit guy with a bare slightly hairy chest and tight abs will catch my eye every time.

    He'll probably also catch my number.

    • Maybe it does catch your eye but as for how visual you actually are, I don’t know. Of course women can visually admire a man’s body from a artistic point of view but not from a sexual point of view. Women who visually admire men’s bodies and faces from both a artistic and sexual point of view are very rare.

    • But for most women, that fat rich man will catch their eye after she sees his bank account. Maybe women are visual after all?

    • @EnglishArtsteacher can't day that wealth turns me on, but being able to provide for a family is a traditional role for a man.

  • I'd have to say I'm and physically attracted to my SO as well as being attracted to his personality, sense of humor and his morals and ethics

    • Where you instantly attracted to his physical appearance upon first seeing him?

    • Yes he's gorgeous

    • Interesting, most women say that it takes a while for them to start to find a guy physically attractive.

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  • Hey at least it's a new concept and new idea! Food for thought: don't you think men being more visual is exactly why women are so sexualized in the media? Is it like a cycle?

    Regarding sari, that thing about exposing midriff and making it seem sensual makes me cry as a Bengali. 😂

    • I’m not sure, it could be that men are more visual due to how women are sexualized in the media. While men are sadly often considered ugly by the media, which is why women are probably not as visual and why many men don’t teally take care of their appearance. I’m straight myself, so I do consider women to be beautiful but I think it’s unfair how the media puts female beauty on the pedestal. Also, is the Sari worn a lot in that part of India?

    • That part of India?

    • Isn’t Bengali a language spoken in West Bengal?

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  • What lol my dude.. I'm very visually attracted to some men.
    But jokes aside, as a person who actually studies sociology, I definitely agree that most if not all gender biases out there are a product of social conditioning.

    • Sociology seems to be super liberal nowadays but yes, authentic unbiased sociology is probably right when it comes to social programming.

    • what do you mean “nowadays”? Sociology practically introduced liberalism & the liberation of traditionally socially oppressed social groups has benefited A LOT from the research done in social conditioning. (Think Weber). In the end all empirical research has supported the fact that there is no true superiority of any social group over the others, be it gender, skin color or sexuality.

    • It’s become more biased in recent years and in some cases discriminates against certain groups (East Asians, Christians, conservatives etc).

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  • Oh. I thought it was because I'm attracted to personality
    and spirtual connection, and also don't think nor act with my crotch.

    • That’s because you are not as visual as men are. So that’s why you think men are “pigs” because you don’t really understand how the male brain works. You are a woman, you are not biologically programmed to get instantly aroused by visual stimuli.

  • Gobbledy-gook.
    Women are visually attracted, but their primary driver is their emotions. Women connect emotionally, guys connect physically. That isn't to say men don't have emotions, they do, but it's not like the ladies.

    Women are looking for comfort and security. So they're as interested in your wallet even more than your dick.

  • Bateman's Principle at work , a man has to tick a lot more boxes than just mere looks. The female has the much greater reproductive risk and burden , hence a woman is typically much pickier than a man.

  • Okay.

  • I am sorry, but I consider sociology to be a pseudoscience, and this is a classic example of using the evidence to fit whatever conclusions you have already made.

    • If social conditioning was real no fad would ever end, no successful company would ever go out of business. It is the consumer which drives demand. People in different cultures may have different tastes, but they are not that different really. Indian statues have depicted large breasted women for decades. The female navel is an erotic object in America. Both are mentioned in the Song of Solomon from thousands of years ago in the Middle East. African women showed their breasts because they did not have enough cloth to cover them. They lost their sexual appeal because of that, but nowadays women are covering their breasts more and they are becoming erotic in people's minds.

    • I agree that sociology is a rather controversial science and I don’t agree with everything it proposes considering how it usually has a liberal bias.

    • But how do you explain women not being visually attracted to men?

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