> Our society simply does not refer to men as being "beautiful", in ordinary conversation.

... this is largely particular to English, I think.

I would venture to say that the unifying factor when refering to women is not that we find them all beautiful or desire them all, but that we lament and pity them and their treatment by our dominator culture. They encompass all our sighs and aches. When we're young we mourn just one, later women in general.