[michaelochurch]

Kind of negates the whole "I'm not a sexist" take on the situation. If you're going to write about how much of a chivalrous guy you are, you should probably also be more careful with the way you describe the thin skirts that you like so much.

I agree with you. If someone (male or female) were writing about an interaction with the genders reversed, you probably wouldn't hear anything about how good-looking the guy was or what he was wearing.

The (unconscious) sexism is not in finding her attractive (obviously) but in the fact that her attractiveness is treated as a relevant detail. How would it be different if she were unattractive? It wouldn't.

[foobarbazqux]

But the attractiveness is the lynchpin of the entire story. Dude wouldn't be hitting on her if she were unattractive. And who wants to rescue an ugly chick? Is the author Shrek or something? There's no fantasy for the reader if she's not attractive.

I think it's passive sexism, in that to play his role he needs a aggressively sexist beast in the triangle.

[fosap]

The outer appearance of the two people interacting are descried. There is even a picture illustrating how the man looked like.

How this is sexism against the woman is beyond me. How this is sexism at all.

This seems to be a feminist keen-jerk reaction. Outer appearance of a somebody? That somebody happens to be a woman? What a misogynist!

[michaelochurch]

I didn't claim he was a misogynist. There's no evidence of that. Now that is an overused word.

Our culture is sexist, and all of us are (in daily practice) to some degree. With women, there's a strong focus on their attractiveness that doesn't exist for men. For just one example relative to this society (not OP) people don't infer radically different personalities for men based on attractiveness (except, perhaps, for the top and bottom couple of percent) but they do for women.

Yes, I think that, based on the totality of the OP, there's a latent sexism in the way the encounter was presented.

[fosap]

Yes, it is overused, that's why i used it. The last sentence was not serious, but a caricature.

> With women, there's a strong focus on their attractiveness that doesn't exist for men.

Except there is not in this text. As i said, it is very balanced, if there was not the picture.

Your posts illustrates exactly what i said. Any mention of attractiveness leads to accusation of misogynist (or sexism towards woman, I have to say I don't really know the difference), no matter in witch context. No matter how the author does this for all genders, at some point somebody points out that "all genders" in include woman, and that this is not ok. And clearly discrimination to include women into "all genders".

[foobarbazqux]

On the surface I agree about the statement - I love women's dresses as much as any heterosexual man - but consider what the attractiveness means in the context of the story. She has to be attractive to be the princess. It's not sexism to make that remark, but it was a sexist situation - two men fighting over an attractive woman's affections like a prize.