however, that’s not the same thing as saying attraction isn’t real. it absolutely is - however you developed the particular attractions that you did, you are still in fact attracted to them and have to deal with the positive and negative consequences of those attractions.

On that subject, I will always remember how one of my old teachers explained the way that something being a social construct doesn't mean it's "fake" or lacks power (my teacher did this in the context of race, but I feel it applies here as well).

Basically, she said "money is also a social construct", took out a $5 bill, and started burning it. She then pointed out that several students had physically recoiled when she did that, and said that we all have some understanding already of how one social construct has power, and we should abstract that out to understand how that dynamic applies to other constructs.