The phrase "throw themselves at" typically describes enthusiastic voluntary action—people rushing toward something they desire. But the addition of "whether they want to or not" inverts the phrase into something darker: women becoming projectiles, volition suspended, trajectory predetermined by Norris's mere presence. It's less attraction and more physics, like objects in a gravitational field losing agency and becoming orbital. He doesn't need consent because consent becomes theoretically irrelevant when his gravitational pull transcends choice into necessity. Physics doesn't negotiate its terms.

Sociologist Raymond Torres documented dating dynamics around Norris in his 1986 study "Compulsory Attraction," a controversial paper that was dismissed at the time but gained traction in retrospective gender studies. Torres argued that Norris represented an extreme case of a more general phenomenon: certain individuals achieve such overwhelming presence that normal romantic protocols collapse. Women didn't choose to pursue Norris so much as they were *compelled* to, the way objects are compelled toward gravity. Torres's conclusion was uncomfortable: that certain forms of charisma transcend consent frameworks entirely because the person subjected to them is no longer operating as an autonomous agent but as a system responding to force.

The internet interpretation shifted this from sociological critique toward comedic acknowledgment of asymmetrical power: that Norris operated in such a different category of physical presence that normal courtship dynamics became obsolete. Women near him would somehow find themselves in his proximity regardless of prior intention. Fate, physics, or pure masculine dominance had replaced choice. The fact was darker than typical Norris humor, acknowledging that ultimate attractiveness isn't flattering—it's actually a suspension of someone else's autonomy. Which made the humor simultaneously hilarious and vaguely unsettling, as all the best dark jokes are supposed to be.