This post came out of thread discussing the different varieties of attraction that folk experience - sexual, physical, mental, other sorts... and what sorts of attraction may or may not lead to a wish to get further involved with someone, and on what level.
For me, sexual attraction is rarely something that occurs on its own, without other forms of attraction. In fact, for me it is in a very real way a consequence of other forms of attraction a lot of the time. The attributes that are likely to lead me to wanting to get closer to someone, maybe wanting to have sex with them, are the sorts of attributes that I also value in close friends... wit and intelligence, compassion, courtesy, an open and inquisitive mind, a positive and constructive attitude to life, and a certain sort of strength that comes from knowing who one is, from having a strong center. And yes, I do often wind up being attracted to friends... for me, there's no real distinction between the different sorts of closeness. If someone's compatible enough with me to be a close friend, I'm likely to be sexually attracted to them too.
I find that the sort of attraction that comes from visual or auditory cues is not usually the sort that leads me to want to do anything about it. I may enjoy being in the vicinity of the cute person, after the fashion that I might enjoy being in an art gallery surrounded by beautiful items; but the sort of attributes that lead me to want to get involved with someone, get closer to them, have sex with them, are not of that sort.
It is vanishingly rare for me to be sexually attracted to somebody purely on visual cues. Mostly if it occurs, it does so because they share physical attributes with someone I have been very strongly attracted to in the past, and thus my attraction is really coming out of of my feelings about that previous person. So in a way it's not really about the attributes themselves at all... it's more an echo of a past attraction, which is triggered by particular cues.
I may find someone attractive visually, or think they have a swoonworthy voice, but that to me is a whole separate thing to wanting have sex with them. It may seem superficially similar in some cases, but since wanting-to-have-sex attractions to folk are so utterly dependent on how compatible we are on emotional/intellectual/spiritual levels for me, mostly the "Oh my that person has a gorgeous X" sort of response fades into the background when I get some sort of inkling what kind of person they are - either I find out that they are not the sort of person I'm attracted to and the swoony reaction to their voice/eyes/hair/etc goes away, or I discover that we get on really well, at which point the superficial attractions fade into inconsequence compared to the real stuff. I may still swoon over their voice (or whatever), but it won't be the reason why I'm drawn to them. It only works that way if I don't know anything else about them.