Why is it that in humans, we generally consider women to be more attractive and have words like cute, pretty, beautiful, gorgeous, ravishing, stunning, elegant etc. only used for them whereas attractive men are just 'handsome'?
I am not sure you understand what's going on that well.
Men don't have the same filters in their head to keep the sex hormones from affecting it immediately and turning focus towards mating.
When a man see's an attractive women, it automatically makes him feel happy, good, pleased, and horny even if he doesn't go crazy about it.
In order to keep feeling that way, in order to fulfill what those pleasant feelings mean, he pursues the woman that makes him feel that way.
Human beings have a thing called civilization.
We've socially trained ourselves to equate saying "you aesthetically pleasing, me want humpy hump, and to then go humpy hump some other aesthetically pleasing person" to being an "a-hole."
"A-holes" tend to fail at attracting long term mates.
Calling someone "attractive" and "cute, pretty, beautiful, gorgeous, ravishing, stunning, elegant, etc." is the equivalent of word boners.
They are just socially acceptable and denote a larger vocabulary, and more intelligence.
All compliments like "handsome, cute, ravishing, stunning, gorgeous," are just shortcuts to "let's mate immediately and see what happens."
They're just more successful than whipping out a boner and chasing a woman around.
In all species you will find one gender is the aggressor towards making its intentions known.
Human beings just go about it in a "civilized" manner that maintains group cohesion. Because we are a herd/group species.
Are we special as a species or is it just our perception?
Both?
attractive men are just 'handsome'?
Hmmm...if only human males also peacocked in some other way.
Like if they bought cars, or flashed wealth in resources, or cologne, or power suits, or had pec implants, or went to the gym to develop muscles, or sought more powerful positions in society and bragged about it, or bought shoes with lifts, or erected phallic monuments, or came up with definitions to differentiate themselves like "alpha," or, "a-type," or "dominant," or, "pack leader."
Attractive men are "real" and strong, and hot, and handsome, and ripped, and rich, and powerful, cute, and striking, and masculine, and hunky, and alpha males, and McDreamy, and all sorts of terms.
Women are going to have a different vocabulary towards men, than men have for women. They react to each other differently, because their brains are affected differently by what drives them to mate.
If we follow the same trend, a big man with full grown beard and moustache should be considered the most attractive male
Throughout history, sometimes they have been.
Same with robust or fat people.
Same with most athletic form.
As the a-holes adapt to adopt the most popular features as a means of tricking women, or the masses start being able to mimic those with the most resources and power, people change to exclude them, to come up with different things to represent what's "highest" and most "desirable," to differentiate themselves from their competition.
What makes human beings so "special" is our ability to adapt.
Our mating habits aren't going to be all that static.