aspro said:but am I on Mars here?
Hard to tell. Your country icon is showing a '?'
I'll give my first (on-topic) kneejerk reaction.
Discrimination based on gender or belief is based on our instinct to mistrust those who are different from us, that aren't part of 'our' group. With globalization there are now more opportunities than ever to see that most people are more like us than we would have considered at first glance. So this kind of discrimination is, generally speaking, on the out.
Discrimination on the basis of appearance however is completely different as it appeals to our drive to reproduce. Beautifull people are considered to have strong genes and be succesfull. Therefor we will react more positive to them, as we find them to be desirable potential mating partners.
What gets me there though is that this must be a very old system, baked into our lizard brain, yet the definition of beauty can rapidly change. in the early industrial age it was considered a mark of beauty for women to be pale and plump, as it meant they didn't have to work the field and were well fed. Today it's the opposite. Bronzed skinny women are what pop culture shows us to be the most desirable, as it indicates these women have time to loiter about in the sun. I'm not even sure how skinny fits in there really...
The best demonstration of good genes is competency. Hence, beauty standards in any given era are based on some arbitrary means of demonstrating the ability to be competent at something.
Foolz said:The best demonstration of good genes is competency. Hence, beauty standards in any given era are based on some arbitrary means of demonstrating the ability to be competent at something.
So you are saying I am beautiful?
aspro said:So you are saying I am beautiful?
This sentence implies you accredit some kind of value to perceived beauty. From the creator or this thread, I find this to be very hypocritical to say the least.
Foolz said:The best demonstration of good genes is competency. Hence, beauty standards in any given era are based on some arbitrary means of demonstrating the ability to be competent at something.
Well now, that is very broad. And I'm not sure this is entirely true, especially for men. Most very succesfull men aren't good looking. If perceived beauty was influenced by succes, we'd all be wanting to look like Bill Gates.
Being competent for men results in power, which marks someone as being an interesting potential mating partner for women, but has very little to do with beauty. Since we are living in a historically paternalist world, the reverse is true, where a woman's perceived quality as a mating partner is derived mainly from her beauty.
Anyhow, back to appearance: a man that looks good will benefit from his perceived beauty, regardless if he is competent or not.
SupremeAC said:Well now, that is very broad. And I'm not sure this is entirely true, especially for men. Most very succesfull men aren't good looking. If perceived beauty was influenced by succes, we'd all be wanting to look like Bill Gates.
Being competent for men results in power, which marks someone as being an interesting potential mating partner for women, but has very little to do with beauty. Since we are living in a historically paternalist world, the reverse is true, where a woman's perceived quality as a mating partner is derived mainly from her beauty.
Anyhow, back to appearance: a man that looks good will benefit from his perceived beauty, regardless if he is competent or not.
How many children does Bill Gates have? 3? He's not a particularly impressive reproducer of his genes. Additionally, success results in status, not power; this is an important distinction to make when discussing this topic, as power and status have vastly different values depending on the species. In humans, power is essentially meaningless, although there are historical anamolies. Such as Genghis Khan. Though, it wasn't that he was a powerful individual, but the highest status person in a powerful group. I think you might be an evolutionary equal with Bill Gates or close to it , based on your reproduction stats. Congrats! I'd rather have his money. Sadly, I have neither billions nor children! 
I don't think it's so easy to argue that the distinction you make exists, especially when it comes to how much an individual actually reproduces. The highest status women, are really not always the prettiest, and in groups where physical beauty (which is still based entirely on competency, there's a reason the paparazzi love to take garish photos of celebreties when they're not properly made-up, dressed and prepared for public appearances) has some effect on status (actors and politicians, for example) then both sexes are judged on this basis, as the origin of this thread would suggest.
Additionally, Elon Musk is kinda hot! We can pick out a billionaire, and they may be considered hot, or they may not. But nerds are attractive now, Bill Gates was just ahead of his time. How much hipster fashion of today comes from previously gross nerdy clothing choices? A lot!
Foolz said:I don't think it's so easy to argue that the distinction you make exists,
Help me here, what point do you think I'm trying to make? 
Foolz said:The highest status women, are really not always the prettiest,
Exactly. Thus, the general understanding of what is beauty is not based on competence.
Foolz said:But nerds are attractive now, Bill Gates was just ahead of his time. How much hipster fashion of today comes from previously gross nerdy clothing choices? A lot!
Yes, because nerds have proven to be desirable partners. They generally make good money, have less muscles to beat their spouses with, and are less prone to overplay as they're so overjoyed of even getting one shot at reproduction. Thus, their visual stylings are finding their way in to beauty ideals.
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I think there's a clear distinction between what men and women find attractive, respectively natural beauty and power/status. Yet, during fleeting contacts -in which I think most discrimination based on appearance would take place- we can not easily determine someone's status and have to judge the book by the cover. In that situation we will fall back on an instinctive judgement based purely on looks if said person would make a good mate for reproduction or not . If our mind thinks so, we will be more kind to them, regardless of their level of succes or competence.
I also did not argue that one's success at reproducing is a meassure of one's beauty. It's a subconscious process in which we decide if it would be desirable to do so with any individual. That doesn't mean beautifull people get ravaged all the time by people they hardly know.
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As per usual I think we're more or less agreeing, but that we'll just need to argue back and forth a couple of more times to come to said understanding.
I guess success, call it competence if you must, works erotisizing. In a way, this will shape our concept of what beauty is and influence our bias. But it's only one half of the equation, the other half being physical features that indicate good genes. But success means something different for man and women. A man is succesfull when he can provide for his kin. Thus a man's worth as potential mate is based on two parameters, one physical, one success. For a woman, she doesn't get judged on her level of success when being considered as a potential mate. She just gets judged on her looks.
I think you're erronously swapping out 'beauty' and 'desirable potential mating partners' while they're not interchangable. They're two seperate things, with two seperate biases. I feel that in fleeting contacts, beauty will prevail over the more difficult to discern success.
I'm going in circles by lack of better way to express my thoughts on the matter, so I'll leave it at this for now.
I think i disagree on a few points.
The first is that I believe judging a woman based on her looks, is judging her based on her success; as what society deems attractive, is rarely determined purely by genetics, but is usually something people have control over to some degree. And even when an attractive feature is determined by genetics, the person who successfully pretends to have been born with it may prove to be even more successful than the person born with it.
Secondly, I do not agree that female mates are generally chosen on looks. Lovers, maybe. People who reproduce, not necessarilly; and while you're not making that distinction, I am as that is an important thing to consider, given what we're discussing is how people find genes they want to reproduce--you don't reproduce any genes without offspring, so I believe that does have to be taken into consideration!
The third thing is, I think we're being a bit patriarchal by excluding women's labour from the mating consideration! A woman may not be chosen based on the wealth she has accumulated, or her job status, but there are plenty of other skills that having nothing to do with beauty that may be considered by potential mates, such as her willingness to sacrifice job-related status so she can devote more time to family-related activities, not to mention all the unpaid labour women have done over the years, from all the communication and bureaucratic skills required in child-rearing, to housekeeping, to companionship, to managing the family's finances, to actually doing the husband's literal paid work for him while he gets the credit. This is particularly desirable for writers, artists, scientists, academics and anyone who engages in a sort of labour where you can easily take credit for someone else's work!
Indeed, a middle-aged female friend of mine recently gave me some motherly advice: don't marry a beautiful woman, all those other sorts of things are more important!
Also I have quite the fever at the moment, so while you're going in circles, I couldn't go in circles if I tried, so any difficulties in articulation are probably on my end.
In any case, if you think we're struggling to express ourselves, I recommend you read some evolutionary psychology. We're coming across like geniuses, my friend.
Yeah, I think the misconception there is that I'm not talking about actually looking for someone to reproduce with. I have done all the reproducing I ever intend to do, yet when I come in to contact with a woman I don't know, I'll be more forthcoming if she's beautifull looking. Does that mean I want to bed her? Nope. It's just how we're engineered and why good looking people get a free pass more often.
And yes, much patriarchal.
Also, yes, natural beauty is something that can be enhanced. God knows how good I could look if I'd put in some effort.
SupremeAC said:Yeah, I think the misconception there is that I'm not talking about actually looking for someone to reproduce with. I have done all the reproducing I ever intend to do, yet when I come in to contact with a woman I don't know, I'll be more forthcoming if she's beautifull looking. Does that mean I want to bed her? Nope. It's just how we're engineered and why good looking people get a free pass more often.
And yes, much patriarchal.
Also, yes, natural beauty is something that can be enhanced. God knows how good I could look if I'd put in some effort.
We're just a few deadlifts from this handshake, am I right, comrade?
His greatest skill is setting up interesting topics, then contributing very little to them.
I did not want to get in the way. And generally, I agree with people I disagree with anyway, so my responses are predictably bland.
And also I could see that you guys were mis-reading each other innocently.
Foolz said:His greatest skill is setting up interesting topics, then contributing very little to them.
finally something I can agree with.
aspro said:I did not want to get in the way. And generally, I agree with people I disagree with anyway, so my responses are predictably bland.
And also I could see that you guys were mis-reading each other innocently.
It's not a matter of getting in the way. Just imagine the cataclysmic levels of misunderstanding that could ensue when a third person gets involved!
SupremeAC said:aspro said:I did not want to get in the way. And generally, I agree with people I disagree with anyway, so my responses are predictably bland.
And also I could see that you guys were mis-reading each other innocently.
It's not a matter of getting in the way. Just imagine the cataclysmic levels of misunderstanding that could ensue when a third person gets involved!
Exactly. This is not my first rodeo.
I've been writing about discrimination on the basis of appearance for 31 years.
I notice nothing has changed in Hollywood or gaming. I would not expect as so, since so many other marginalized classes have finally, and righteously, had their day in the sun.
The whole concept of "leads" and "character actors" in Hollywood continues to mean that people who don't look like airbrushed adonis' or fashion models are vanquished to playing the friend, the villian, the nerd, or the token "ethnic".
Games and animation are just charactures of their entertainment big brother. How can you tell if a character is bad?; probably overweight, maybe balding, definitely conventionally unattractive.
I know this is more essay worthy than forum topic, but am I on Mars here?