Personalitism
From Love-shy.com wiki: A wiki for the dating-challenged
Personalitism theory posits that the attitude and behavior of a person is what primarily determines his or her attractiveness. It tends to downplay the importance of facial and physical appearance in determining whether one is love-shy or involuntarily celibate. Personalitism opposes looksism.
Basis
Personalitists cite many examples of physically unattractive men dating attractive women. Though in many cases this is celebrity evidence, in a general sense the theory cannot easily be refuted, as examples of relatively unattractive men in relationships with reasonably attractive women are fairly common.
The personalitists argue that the behavior of these men draws women to them, and not their looks. Similarly, they argue that physically attractive men attract women mostly due to their personality, and only minimally due to their looks, a claim looksists strongly dispute.
A subgroup of personalitists have noted with great unease some of the behaviors in men that women are attracted to. Indeed, women rated themselves as highly attracted to arrogance and aggressiveness in a recent study.
The general realization that women are attracted to less savory personality attributes has raised many questions about the traditional image in society of the female being noble and virtuous. Personalitists have aimed a fusillade of criticism toward women, claiming that women are shallow as they only pursue male behavior that love-shys cannot easily replicate.
Controversy
Main article: looks/personality controversy
Several tenets of personalitism are controversial, both within the school of thought and from its main opposing school, looksism. Feminist-friendly personalitists (FFPs) dispute the claims that women mainly pursue aggressive, arrogant personality traits, and counter that this only applies to a small subset of women. More extreme FFPs argue that feminist-opposed personalitists (FOPs) suffer a repulsive personality that must be repaired with therapy, a charge they extent to looksists. FOPs accuse FFPs of being naive, or bootlicking women in an attempt to curry favor with them.
The different factions within personalitist thought tend to be more united in their opposition to looksists. Looksists charge FOPs with being obsessed with a bad-boy persona that does not match many men in relationships, a view they ironically share with FFPs, despite the fact that most looksists are feminist-opposed. Looksists also cite examples of reasonably good-looking men with very dull personalities who do not suffer problems with women.
