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Mate, in the last Culture War thread we had someone on here commenting about that immigrant case saying that sure, it's totes normal for an adult man to want to bang a 15 year old girl (because men are wired to be attracted to youth and fertility). Women do learn early that simply having boobs and a pulse gets you male attention in the "I'd hit that" sense. Not that they're interested in you as a person, that's where the fantasy wish-fulfilment comes in.
I'm not saying it isn't true, or at least very common. I'm saying that as a man who is usually invisible, it's not something I can easily relate to.
Yeah, it's tough for men. But for women, it's not attention as "here you are as a person", it's "here's boobs on legs". Visibility, sure, but might as well be invisibility. Some women work that angle, but when you're fourteen and growing into womanly features this kind of "every male from fourteen to forty is looking at my tits" is not the boon it might appear.
I wasn't thinking about it in a sort of "grass is greener" sense (I really am quite happy being invisible!) It strikes me more as a people vs things dichotomy. Like, the detailed flourishes of the attention are the draw of the work, for women readers, where as it's just not for male readers. And that isn't to say that women don't appreciate some plot, or men some interpersonal character moments. But I observe a sort of fascination from one or the other that serves as a fairly reliable tell.
And I would bet that for women authors, delivering satisfying amounts of good attentions, and satisfying comeuppances for bad attention is possibly the most important skill in their craft.
I'm the worst potential audience in the world for "romantasy" (and believe me, Tonstant Weader Fwowed up when I learned this neologism) so I can't speak for the mass audience of women readers of such stuff.
But I think it's more about soft porn (as per the devolution of the Anita Blake series) than romantic attention, as having two or more supernatural beings lusting after your PI/Wiccan/half-Fae heroine means you can stuff in the adult scenes that publishers crave for page-turning appeal; you can describe the ravaging by the werewolf tech executive founder of the billion-dollar startup on pages sixteen to twenty, then go for the seduction by the vampire biker gang leader on pages thirty to thirty four, and maybe throw in some will they-won't they UST between your hard-boiled heroine and her on-again/off-again boyfriend who's a half-demon sorceror running his own rival paranormal detective agency sprinkled all through the novel (volume six of the fifteen - and growing! - volume Susie Superb, Witch Attorney series, on sale in every good bookstore now!)
See Laurell Hamilton's Merry Gentry series, where she completely lost the plot, as the main focus is "I gotta get pregnant so I need to bang every single hot guy I encounter". All this is for ostensibly magical purposes, so that's why she has to have sex with fairies, humans, every other supernatural being, etc., but that's only the figleaf for "and now here's sexual encounter number fifty-six".
EDIT: I think the main difference between men and women readers of erotica (shall we say) is that the guys will go straight for the Hawt Action without much need for justifying it, but women need a lead in (hence the establishing of the love-hate relationship between Hot Guy Numbers One Through Four and the heroine before they bang, or the Merry Gentry "The Goddess said we have to bang so we can get our old magic powers back. Yeah, it's a divine command, so strip now").
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