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I sat down to read this article by Daniel Berger in the NY Times Magazine full well expecting that I’d have to write a long debunking under the category “Science For Choads”. But it wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be, because at least the researchers interviewed admit there might be this thing called social conditioning. The researchers Berger interviews can’t quite break out of the paradigm of looking at female sexuality in terms of male sexuality, in that it needs to be explained away or fixed where it differs from what men feel (or what men want female sexuality to be), but they’re trying to get there.
But this article is shot through with major problems all the same. The main thing is that Berger shies away from cultural explanations, as do his researchers, even though the research could easily point to cultural reasons more than biological ones for women’s differences. No one asks the most relevant question, which is, “If women were raised in a less oppressive environment, and given the same sexual cues and permissions as men, would it change their sexual responses significantly?” Part of the reason that the question isn’t being asked is that Berger and his subjects know that being a feminist is somehow anti-sex, and therefore they go out of their way to denounce it. The word is only brought up in order to falsely imply that feminists are anti-sex, even if we’re still tediously morally superior.
She pronounced, as well, “I consider myself a feminist.” Then she added, “But political correctness isn’t sexy at all.” For women, “being desired is the orgasm,” Meana said somewhat metaphorically — it is, in her vision, at once the thing craved and the spark of craving.
Unfortunately, if she didn’t strain herself to avoid feminist explanations for women’s so-called narcissism, she would have a better chance of stumbling on the truth. She has all these theories about why women like to look at the female form, tend to see “sex” in women’s bodies more than men’s (just like straight men do), and respond so strongly to being desired. Many of them have the strong whiff of bullshit, like this:
“The female body,” she said, “looks the same whether aroused or not. The male, without an erection, is announcing a lack of arousal. The female body always holds the promise, the suggestion of sex” — a suggestion that sends a charge through both men and women.
Men’s bodies can be sexual without an erection---look at the statue of David for a classic example. There is nothing inevitable about the sexualizing of the female body and not the male one. I suppose it’s “politically correct” to say so, but I think women’s bodies represent sex, and therefore cause arousal responses, in both sexes because we live in a male-dominated society where men who control our media-saturated culture put forward women’s bodies as sex objects while often avidly downplaying the sexual representation of male bodies, because they think it’s demeaning to be looked at as a sex object. (And it is. The solution to the problem is to create a culture where someone can be considered sexy without being objectified. FWIW, I think a lot of men get there and can, say, look at a woman’s ass without thinking less of her for it, especially after years of practice in being in intimate relationships. But there’s no doubt that our culture still puts “women you fuck” and “women you talk to/marry” into different categories, though we’re slowly getting away from that. I tend to think that the more that Tina Fey becomes a sex symbol over the wordless bimbo imagery of Playboy, the more space women will have to look at men with lust.) Women live in this culture, too. I can testify that it took me years to get past my cultural training that put all of men’s allowable physical appeal above the neck. “He has nice eyes/hair,” was the extent of girl talk about men’s physical characteristics. Now I’m happy to talk about men’s legs or ass or what have you, but I think that puts me on the far side of the “slutty” scale in our culture, still.
Honestly, with “being aroused by men’s bodies” taken off the table, and with much of your life being dedicated to living up to the image of a sexually attractive woman, is it any wonder that women eroticize being desired so strongly? Most women spend much of their time looking at themselves and trying to imagine what a straight man would see, because it’s our social duty to be sexually attractive. (Of course, there’s the inherent desire to be attractive that’s shared by men, but women have so much more social baggage added to that.) Women become masterminds at eroticizing their own bodies to make sure that everything’s working as it should. Most women I know well---fat, thin, old, young, intellectual or not---can stand in front of a mirror and take it all in with military precision. The curve of your calves, the length of your collarbone, the shape of your rack, the perch of your ass in jeans. You spend a lot of time thinking about it, and of course that’s what’s going to press your buttons. The only people who think about women’s bodies more than straight men are women, for which you can thank/blame the patriarchy.
Which leads me to the insulting suggestion that women’s cultural indoctrination about who is and isn’t a sex object somehow makes us narcissists. Front-loading your theories with a stereotype about women to get press is classic evo psych nonsense.
The generally accepted therapeutic notion that, for women, incubating intimacy leads to better sex is, Meana told me, often misguided. “Really,” she said, “women’s desire is not relational, it’s narcissistic” — it is dominated by the yearnings of “self-love,” by the wish to be the object of erotic admiration and sexual need.
The vast majority of male-oriented porn I’ve seen falls into two categories: “trick the bitch” and “she’s driven wild with desire for cock”, with the latter being the only kind that I can sit through without getting angry. I fail to see how one fantasy after another of a woman who wants a man so badly she throws all social stigmas about being a slut out the window and goes to town---usually with lots of oral sex---indicates that men are somehow less narcissistic than women. It seems being desired strongly is a giant turn-on for men, too. It’s just coupled with the socially acceptable lust for the female form.
It’s too bad that the loaded sexist term is being used here, because Meana’s research shows that women lose interest in sex in relationships more than men, and she suggests it’s because women aren’t getting that stimulus of being strongly desired. And that therefore men who want their wives to be into more often should be mindful of how important it is to treat your partner like she personally is so erotic to you, and not that you’re just horny and she’s the only socially allowable outlet besides masturbation.
Meredith Chivers is the prominent researcher in the article, and she’s a really interesting character. She’s the researcher who has demonstrated in very small studies that women have this mind/body disconnect that men don’t seem to have, i.e. women will become physically aroused at all sorts of stimuli (including films of bonobos doing it), even if they don’t report feeling aroused, and men’s arousal patterns are pretty close to what they claim to feel. Physically, women are more hair trigger than men, but mentally, a lot of women don’t feel desire as often as men or much at all, which is a problem for women and (this is where the funding comes in) a bigger problem for men. (It seems to me that researchers like Meana keep tripping over the obvious---that lack of male sexual desire is keenly felt by women---but there’s probably no money in going down that path.) Apparently, this mind/body disconnect is felt in all sorts of areas---women have more trouble telling if their hearts are racing, for instance. So much for women being more in touch with their emotions. It’s clear to me that Chivers and Berger desperately want this mind/body issue to be rooted in biology instead of culture.
Women might more likely have grown up, for reasons of both bodily architecture and culture — and here was culture again, undercutting clarity — with a dimmer awareness of the erotic messages of their genitals. Chivers said she has considered, too, research suggesting that men are better able than women to perceive increases in heart rate at moments of heightened stress and that men may rely more on such physiological signals to define their emotional states, while women depend more on situational cues. So there are hints, she told me, that the disparity between the objective and the subjective might exist, for women, in areas other than sex. And this disconnection, according to yet another study she mentioned, is accentuated in women with acutely negative feelings about their own bodies.
I suspect Berger’s disappointment that it’s likely cultural is the result of his sexism, which manifests in other disturbing ways throughout the article. (Including his puppy-like hope that his researchers will validate his obsession with rape fantasies, which they won’t do.) It’s satisfying to think that women have a problem reading their own bodies because they’re broken, biologically speaking. Chivers, I think, wants it to be biological so they can make a pill to fix it. But the fact that it tailors to body image, and that this disconnect manifests in other ways makes me think it’s a cultural phenomenon, probably going straight up to the cultural requirements to be a Good Girl that start in infancy. Much of a female life is spent squashing emotions and desires that men are permitted to indulge---for food, for anger, for lust, even for shout-from-the-top-of-your-lungs joy. It’s no wonder to me that the habit becomes so ingrained you can’t turn it off even if it’s suddenly socially necessary that you do. The problem with the virgin/whore dichotomy has always been that you can’t make someone be the perfect virgin her whole life and then expect her to be a lusty whore the second she’s in a bedroom with a man. And if I’m right, a pill won’t fix the problem. The only thing that will fix the problem is extending the privileges we give men from their babyhood on to women.
Chivers suspects that women lubricate even when they aren’t aroused because it’s a survival technique that is perhaps evolved. Maybe---it’s probably considered radical feminism to point out that coercion and rape have been considered as much a part of sex as erections throughout much of history, and for a lot of women still, sexual intercourse happens for them not because they want it, but because someone is badgering them into it, because they need to do it in order to keep peace in the house, because they want to be pleasing to guys, because they need a partner in order to be socially accepted, or hold their marriages together even though they don’t have feelings for their partners. But I’m not sure that shows that it was a trait evolved in the past, and something we’re stuck with now that we can’t get rid of. It seems to me that it might be a habit inculcated by women in the here and now. Many of us start having sex with men under these circumstances before we have a chance to develop our own desires, and our physical responses are trained to the demands of having sex for other reasons. But men usually get an opportunity to grow up in a society where their sexual response is tied to desire through constant reinforcement before they ever even touch a woman. And that seems the most likely explanation for me, considering what else we know about sexual desire and response and how much it’s about social conditioning---foot fetishes, being turned off by armpit hair, hair color preferences, etc. are obvious examples of early imprinting that’s hard to shake (if you’d even want to), so it seems to me that there’s an enormous amount of evidence pointing to a human sexuality that’s very adaptable, especially early in life.
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Posted by
Amanda Marcotte on 11:46 AM •
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Good for you for actually reading it. I saw the words “postfeminist” and “sexologist” in close proximity and backed away from the magazine.
Now I haven’t looked that closely into it, but what I don’t understand is the study of female sexuality at such a primitive place (and given how its historically been treated it easily could be) that all this evo pysch bullshit is allowed out there? Or are there actual studies that shoot down all this crap but since the press finds lexis-nexis hard and feeding their preconceived notions good so we get the full Easterbrook “Science!” treatment.
I can testify that it took me years to get past my cultural training that put all of men’s allowable physical appeal above the neck. “He has nice eyes/hair,” was the extent of girl talk about men’s physical characteristics. Now I’m happy to talk about men’s legs or ass or what have you, but I think that puts me on the far side of the “slutty” scale in our culture, still.
It’s also wrong for researchers to assume that women being turned on by women is evidence of narcissism or wanting to be desired . . . gee, maybe we’re just turned on by women’s bodies as well as (or instead of, depending where you fall) men’s bodies?
And speaking as someone who’s physically attracted to both women and men, I think it’s not easy for women to express physical attractions to other people regardless of gender. Particularly as a feminist, it’s been hard for me to find ways to articulate physical attraction that encompass the whole person, rather than feeling like I’m contributing to a culture of objectification (for men as well as for women).
Mmm...Daniel Craig.
(And what does it say about female sexual desire that I finally got around to registering just so I could comment on the pic?)
Oh goodness. And it KILLED me that when they were scratching their heads about why women’s physiological response might differ from their self-reporting of arousal, they DIDN’T EVEN MENTION that maybe it’s because (self-described) heterosexual women are not SUPPOSED to feel aroused by seeing gay sex or bonobo sex. How many people are going to honestly report being turned on by watching animals copulate??? And that’s just at the extreme. I imagine many women don’t acknowledge even to themselves when they are turned on by other women or by gay sex. We’re often not even suppose to be sexually desiring creatures at all; never mind when it’s a socially-proscribed object of desire.
Did anyone else notice that glaring absence in the listed reasons for the discrepancy between physiological response and self-reporting?
Well, anna, I think they were talking about women who are firmly identified as straight and feel straight, but nonetheless have eroticized women’s bodies. But often not so much other women’s bodies, but definitely their own.
Interesting mention of the bonobo thing, since it was mentioned the other day in this Sadly, No! thread (apparently Ace of Spades is picking up the “women need to put out” banner from Dennis Prager).
Thanks for posting this Amanda. I had a general WTF? reaction to it when I read the article and haven’t been able to sort it out yet. Probably my biggest WTF moment came when I read the stuff around page 7, which sounds disturbingly close to rape apologetics.
That is to say, Ace’s comment (most of what Lesley quotes is actually Ace, not Lesley paraphrasing) perfectly illustrates Betsy’s point about how we’re discouraged from honest reporting.
The interesting thing about the Bonobo aspect was that women had a physiological response and men didn’t. Men only had a physiological response to what they said they were attracted to. Straight men had a physiological response to women, gay men had a physiological response to men. Women had a physiological response to just about everything.
That’s a fascinating bit of data, but I’m not sure what it means, and the researchers are pretty up front about acknowledging they don’t know what it means either.
But I don’t think it can be explained through media and culture. Culture isn’t telling women to be ashamed of being titillated by hot monkey lovin’. And they aren’t even titillated. It sounds like they become physically receptive to sex without being aroused emotionally or psychologically when exposed to any sexual imagery. But it was clearly physiological rather than libidinal.
Again, no idea what it means, and Meana struck me as being way too certain in her positions. Everybody loves to be desired. That doesn’t explain anything about female sexuality.
I think a lot of men get there and can, say, look at a woman’s ass without thinking less of her for it, especially after years of practice in being in intimate relationships.
I wonder what the usual trajectory is. In my earlier days, especially when I was a virgin, I kind of had a stammering worshipful awe of sexually prolific women. Most of that is still there, but experience is beginning to move me in the direction of ordinary healthy appreciation.
“The female body,” she said, “looks the same whether aroused or not. The male, without an erection, is announcing a lack of arousal. The female body always holds the promise, the suggestion of sex” — a suggestion that sends a charge through both men and women.
So completely bogus. Perhaps true if you’re comparing diagrams, or still photographs (along the paradigm of straight male porn, which goes back to the idea of mouthing male stereotypes in order to get press). But in actual life, completely bogus.
ummeli, I have no doubt the author was trying to get a delicious rape apology from one of the researchers, so he could do the “Women say RAPE IS NATURAL” thing, but he didn’t get it. Their point is one worth really stewing on, for people who have issues with consent---a so-called “rape fantasy” is not actually rooted in a desire to be raped. By definition, no one wants to be raped. Rape fantasies make perfect sense, if you believe that women live in an patriarchy that shames them for having sexual desires, which is easy enough to demonstrate. A rape fantasy allows you to fantasize about sex while sparing yourself the shame of desire.
Doesn’t mean that women want to be raped. Real rape and fantasy rape are not even close to the same thing, which is what the researchers were trying to get at when they said rape fantasies are more just submission fantasies.
The level of stupid in that article is just too much.
I don’t buy into the “women want to be desired” as being any more integral to female sexuality than it is to male sexuality. As Amanda already pointed out, that’s a huge porn market for men, and anecdotally, I can say that every man I have ever slept with has found the sex way more satisfying because I was into it and into them, as opposed to the last time they had sex, which is usually with a partner who was either bored with them or actively angry with them. I wasn’t doing anything sexually that they hadn’t done before, I was just more excited about them (being that they were new to me) than their last partner had been at the time of break-up and that excitement alone was enough to make the sex fantastic for them. So, ‘nuff said about that.
As for the arousal, I’m tired of beating this dead horse of female-on-female arousal. We’ve dealt with this before. First, we’re all programmed to see women as sex objects because of advertising, so there’s a huge level of sub-conscious programming. Second, even ‘straight’ people are more accurately termed to be ‘bi’. Although, I think men are less so nowadays, again because of culture. Done.
Re: Men’s bodies...ha! I love me some mens bodies. However, if we are confining ourselves to the “nice hair / eyes” domain, I venture to suggest it is because it’s hard enough these days (at least in my area) to find a man with a decent PERSONALITY, so we must be less picky about the personal grooming. That said, TMI, my current partner has amazing legs and I tell him so regularly. Now, I’m going to go daydream about 300 again...mmm. Heh.
As a child in the 1960’s, the only “sexy” photographs were of women, naked women, a la Playboy. I grew up thinking that sex, sexiness, and sexuality are ALL coded as female. It doesn’t surprise me a bit that heterosexual women respond to photos of naked women, and I think it is almost ENTIRELY conditioning, considering the culture we grew up in. There are more kinds of pornography around today, but still, “sexy” is still a word that brings (advertising) images of women to mind.
“"Person X” was dressed in a provacative manner.”
Okay, did ANYONE think Person X was MALE?
“"Person X” was dressed in a provacative manner.”
I’m not even sure what “provocative” clothes would be for a male, exempting “provocative” clothes meant to provoke older people into irritable rants about baggy pants.
The men on the Abercrombie and Fitch signs are usually in a state of undress. Or they look a little preppy and neatly groomed, with the intentionally messy hair that denotes “I spent time on my appearance”.
And that’s the problem. We’re in a culture where a clean man is a sexy man, because the bar is so freaking low.
The interesting thing about the Bonobo aspect was that women had a physiological response and men didn’t. Men only had a physiological response to what they said they were attracted to. Straight men had a physiological response to women, gay men had a physiological response to men. Women had a physiological response to just about everything.
That’s a fascinating bit of data, but I’m not sure what it means, and the researchers are pretty up front about acknowledging they don’t know what it means either.
I have no idea either.
It might well be that straight guys are better integrated by cultural upbringing. I’m very much aware of physiological desire in myself - when I realise the possibility of sexual interest from someone I find desirable, there’s some response I can only describe as an *awareness* of my, um, bits. But I’m comfortable with my desire - if I was gay and trying to hide from that attraction or, as I believe Amanda is pointing out, I was trying to live up to being a Good Girl Who Didn’t, that awareness might be something I denied to myself.
I read this article yesterday. I was prepared to be disgusted, because I largely have chingona’s reaction whenever I see something about sexual psychology in mass media. Very few places are any better than Maxim outside of lefty porno stuff (like XXXenophile, not Penthouse). I was pleasantly surprised when it was all about Chivers. She’s legit (and ooooooooooh, boy, I’ve been where she’s been! Working with central pattern generators rather than sexual responses, but lab set ups, data analysis, all that? The same.) and there was plenty of interesting talk about sex in the first few pages. I understood where the fustration and avoidance of cultural issues come from. Culture is not a reductionist factor without extremely unethical practices. It’s a basic scrambler for psychology (and a bit less so for neurology) and makes psychology devilishly hard to do well.
Meany and the circus stuff is there because NYTimes’s primary audience are the petty bouggie folks who mistakes facts for wisdom, and who are extraordinarily pleased to have their biases “scientifically confirmed”. At the end, the article makes me feel that nasty feeling epitomized by Neal Stephenson’s take on suburbia in Snow Crash, bimbo boxes and all. Self-satisfied idiocy is something I really can’t take so well.
If women want to be desired and men don’t, my question would be what the hell is the matter with men, and not why are women narcissists?
Wanting to be desired is one reason why I’ve always been turned off by casual sex and why the hook-up culture is in no way appealing to me. Much of those hook-ups really seem to be along the lines of “whatever, you’ll do.” I’ve had sex like that and it was always bad. Always.
Hawes et al, I can think of two obvious possibilities.
1. Repression breeds desire.
2. Women naturally have more sexual desire, for reasons we can only speculate on. This was a traditional anti-feminist position until the Victorians (group motto: We Couldn’t Find Sanity With A Telescope on a Clear Day) decided y’all had no sexual desire unless a man corrupted you. Modern anti-feminism often favors the Victorian position because (outside of the dumber porn) we can’t really pretend women lack the ability to add and subtract anymore. This means that recognizing female desire leads to different conclusions.
“I’m not even sure what “provocative” clothes would be for a male”
Colin Firth in a wet shirt 
The first time I saw that scene I realized what it must feel like to be a man (constantly bombarded with gratuitous sexiness for no apparent reason)
hf, that’s a wonderful motto for the Victorians. I’m stealing it.
And thanks for pointing out the “women have more sexual desire” meme pre-Victorian era. I don’t know who keeps changing the rules, but my copy of the Malleus Malificarum DEFINITELY states that women are the sexualized gender and men are the virtuous, higher-minded ones.
Colin Firth in a wet shirt
Derail, but ugh, no. I could never understand the Bridget Jones Diary obsession with that scene.
Give me those Spartans with the tight thighs and rippling chest and scars in 300 any day. But that’s just me.
Which is another point that these evo psych articles miss - Women’s attraction varies from woman to woman, as do men. Why is this so hard to grasp? It’s like bad psychologists took the idea of averages and decided that “average” meant “everyone”.
For men, it’s pretty much a cultural given that physical arousal is attraction, which is why people always cite those studies about homophobes and gay porn. We have no idea, for the most part, about how to talk about a man being aroused other than by whether he has an erection or not. Which is just plain stupid. (And even stupider in a scientific sense because any man who’s been a teenager has plenty of experience in toning down “inappropriate” erections.) So with such a screwed-up understanding of what male arousal is, why should it be any surprise that people finally getting around to studying women should be all floundering around?
So, about these bonobos and awareness of your bits.
We’re entering serious TMI territory, but here goes. I know that feeling that PIATOR is talking about. I’m assuming that was the sensation the experiments were designed to record. I get it from all kinds of things. I get it from looking at someone I’m attracted to. I get it when I’m bored at work and start thinking about what we did last night or might do tonight. I get it if I’ve had one beer (seriously, I do, but if I have more than one beer, it passes). And I get it from kind of disturbing things that make me think there must be something wrong with me - like if I read about a rape in the newspaper. I can be reading something that makes my stomach twist into a knot, but still have that feeling. But it is DEFINITELY NOT the same as arousal at these things. How do I know? Because if I read about something particularly horrific, the kind of thing that keeps intruding on your thoughts despite your best efforts to push it away, and it pops into my head while I’m messing around, it totally kills my desire. Like a wet blanket. I’m done for.
Now, I’ve seen those bonobos doing it on PBS, and I don’t remember getting that feeling, but I get it so often, it’s not the kind of thing that would stand out in my memory. And if I had sensors on my genitals and was participating in an experiment designed to test response, I’d probably respond in a sort of Pavlovian way. As in, this is “supposed to” be about sex so it must be about sex.
But here’s the thing: I don’t think this is because I’m repressed. I have less guilt around sex that most people I know in real life, including many of my male friends. I was raised with only two conditions placed on my sexuality - to be safe and to only do things that I wanted to do. And it was put in just that sort of positive framing - not just to not do things that I didn’t want to do but to only do what I wanted to do and that there would come a time when I would want to do things and that was good and natural and healthy. I have orgasms very easily. I feel like I have a very integrated sexuality, which is not to say that I somehow exist outside any cultural conditioning, but that I think I wear it more lightly than many women. It’s always possible I’m in some sort of deep denial, but I don’t think so. (Then again, of course I wouldn’t.)
So I have no idea what this is. The cultural explanation is appealing to me as a feminist, but my own experience makes me wonder. I know my own anecdote doesn’t make for data, but at the same time, it’s hard to just ignore something that I know about myself when considering all this.
I don’t feel like TMI-ing right now, but word to Chingona for making me feel like less of a freak. Because, yeah, I get what you’re saying.
I assumed that, for me, it was because I was raised to be super-repressed by my church group, but you sound pretty liberated, so maybe it’s not that at all. Like you, I do orgasm extremely easily and I get aroused quickly and easily, so maybe that’s it? If we collect enough anecdotes, can we plz haz data?
Ah, and I see know I DID TMI after all. I fail.
Hrumpf. The “Hawthorne Effect” run rampant. Subjects alter their behavior when they are being studied. The may do so to meet expected norms or because of embarassment or because they wish to conceal something or because they wish to alter the outcome, etc., etc.
As to a physical response, especially female lubrication, there may be physical reasons other than arousal. It might be related to the “fight or fly” syndrome.
Well, Essie, if I can make one person feel better about themselves, I rest easy, knowing it was worth squicking out everyone else reading.
Lubrication and erections aren’t the same thing. I think they were measuring different things in men and women. Now if they were measuring the swelling of the clitoris I bet the results would have been different.
As chingona and Essie said, that low level awareness, almost anything can do it, music, anything beautiful, massage that’s painful/good, alcohol, I don’t remember particularly but I bet animals too. But that doesn’t get you to the swelling. And as an opposite of all the women are repressed theories I think men are repressed from identifying anything except direct sexual stimulation as arousing, they close out that awareness and don’t pay attention.
hf: Women naturally have more sexual desire, for reasons we can only speculate on. This was a traditional anti-feminist position until the Victorians (group motto: We Couldn’t Find Sanity With A Telescope on a Clear Day) decided y’all had no sexual desire unless a man corrupted you.
OK, perhaps that was the hegemonic view, but Elizabeth Barrett Browning says, Robert, I’d like you to play me like a stringed instrument, and Christina Rossetti says, “Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices.”
I think men are repressed from identifying anything except direct sexual stimulation as arousing
Ooh, I like that idea, that there’s a whole plenitude of arousals of which tumescent sexual arousal is just a subset, not the totality.
BTW, how did Daniel Craig become the feminist woman’s sexy fantasy so fast? Is it most of all the body, or something else? Does he have feminist cred?
FlipYrWhig:
Not even necessarily a proper subset. tumescent arousal need not all be sexual in nature, or even arousal as usuall thought of.
Yikes, read the Salon Broadsheet piece about Silvio Berlusconi’s latest comment: the title gives you a horrifying glimpse of the even more horrifying actuality—“Italian P.M. thinks rape is a compliment.”
“I’m not even sure what “provocative” clothes would be for a male”
It’s been pointed out that one of the major plot points of recent episodes of Lost involving time travel seems specifically designed to have forced Sawyer to run around without a short on for forty minutes. I’m sure this is just a coincidence…
We’re entering serious TMI territory, but here goes. I know that feeling that PIATOR is talking about.
No, chingona, I suspect we’re talking about different things. Speaking purely from my own experience, I’m aware of different components to male lust. Here we’re talking about a specific response to “attractive female with a sexual interest in me”, which subjectively feels like something waking up, like a pulse, um, downstairs. I can look at pretty women all I like without it, but there’s something different with the possibility of sex with a compatible someone. It’s not an erection, more like an awareness of the possibility of an erection, like a green light from a systems check.
So far I have been mentally drawing analogies with female genital arousal, but on reading these comments, I now think it’s different. Whether or not it is due to culture or hardwiring, I believe males are better integrated in their somatic awareness and their desires, more direct. This is not necessarily a good thing, mind you, but I’m increasingly aware of my ignorance and wary of making comparisons to the subjective female experience.
And as an opposite of all the women are repressed theories I think men are repressed from identifying anything except direct sexual stimulation as arousing, they close out that awareness and don’t pay attention.
I’ve actually heard that before, though there’s some debate about whether it’s biological, social, or a combination of the two (and what the combination is). Polymorphous perversity is one of those Freudian concepts they’ve never quite been able to account for, except to know that Freud’s take was, like so many things having to do with female sexuality, disastrously wrong.
I am having a very, very interesting experience with my teenage girls, which seems relevant to this discussion. I have consciously tried to be only positive about their appearance, food, relationships, guys, and etc. I let them make their own choices about their appearance, and support it. Both are about avg. in attractiveness, both a tad “overweight” by society’s standards, and they don’t care. They seem very happy, from my biased perspective.
What is so fascinating, in the context of this discussion, is that they are both avid “yaoi” fangirls. Yaoi are Japanese comics and animation, made by women for women, that feature guys having relationships and/or sex with guys. The point is that my girls, and many, many young girls I come in contact with, find the notion of looking at sexy guys, well, sexy. The “gal” part of Yaoi is, IMHO, all the fluffy romance in many of the stories, and frankly, the unreality involved in the sexuality, which from my perspective looks almost *exactly* like heterosexual sex most of the time, without the necessity of having to look at a female body. I have pointed this out to my girls, because I don’t want them to be uninformed. I also think that perhaps the male-male pairing for female consumption, especially originating in Japan, lessens the gender inequality aspect of sex in a highly patriarchal culture, where pairings are automatically seen and spoken of as containing a dominant and a submissive partner (guess who gets to be which?).
There are many yaoi stories where there isn’t a single female character at all. Just acres and acres of gorgeous young men. Some stories are innocent and suitable for young teens. Some are steamy, and for older women. But the audience for this sort of stuff seems quite clear about what they like. So other cultures, obviously see things differently. And don’t look now, but things are changing here, too! Just some info from the front lines of teenagerdom--and why research data may come up different in the future.
means are the ends, yaoi is an interesting topic when it comes to modern culture and female sexuality and its accepted expressions. So is slash fic in general. I don’t have much interest in yaoi—I don’t like the seme-uke stereotypical roles that so much yaoi seems to be about—but I do find slash fascinating from a cultural standpoint. I wish there were more meta-cultural discussion out there about it. For example, something that really fascinates me is how many professed lesbians write graphic m/m slash fiction.
I’m sure that, even as slash is becoming more of a known “Internet thing,” some creators and assumed fanbases of quite a few shows out there would be shocked to think that a large portion of fellow fans are female, let alone that they’re females writing and reading graphic slash fiction.
<bloockquote>For women, “being desired is the orgasm,”</blockquote>
Sorry. Just couldn’t get pass this quote.
The ORGASM is the orgasm. Being desired is nice, and might help to lead to an orgasm, but if you don’t orgasm? YOU DON’T ORGASM.
Honestly.
No, chingona, I suspect we’re talking about different things.
I’m not so sure. I’m talking about a pulsing, kind of flush, kind of warm sensation. It actually is the same physical sensation I have when I think very specifically about sex, including the physical sensation I get when I’m thinking about jumping my husband, where the liklihood of it actually happening is pretty decent, but not the same as or intense as the response to actual physical contact. It’s pre-arousal. Except it happens for tons of other stuff, too, including stuff that isn’t arousing at all.
Of course, there is no way for either of us to know whether what we’re talking about is the same thing. Even if we were of the same sex, we couldn’t really know. But I’m not convinced it’s that different.
What is so fascinating, in the context of this discussion, is that they are both avid “yaoi” fangirls. Yaoi are Japanese comics and animation, made by women for women, that feature guys having relationships and/or sex with guys.
Count me among those young women, Means!
This might be TMI but I’ll share anyway. The first time I ever realized how arousing a guy on guy scene could be was when I watched an old movie called The Velocity of Gary. It starred Thomas Jane and Vincent D’Onofrio (sp?) and there was a scene about halfway through the film where Vincent’s character seduces Thomas’s character and they just start kissing and tearing at each other.
I got aroused. Really, really aroused. Even though there wasn’t any sex in the scene, just kissing and touching, it had a profound effect on me and I’ve been hooked on guy on guy stuff ever since, including being a huge fan of Showtime’s Queer as Folk series. I got into yaoi in college and it does the same thing.
For the longest time I had no idea why I reacted like that and then a few years ago I was reading Dan Savage who was talking about the increase in women (straight and lesbian) who are now turning to gay porn to get aroused and get off. One of the biggest reasons for this is that the men in gay porn are, for the most part, attractive. You don’t really find “hot” guys in straight porn because that’s not the point. The other thing that Dan pointed out was that these women were looking for people who were, or at least seemed to be, genuinely attracted to each other. And I think that’s what it was for me. I’ve seen straight porn where the actress doesn’t seem 1) the least bit aroused and 2) as if she’s thinking about how many bills this scene is going to pay for her and that totally takes me out of it.
Well, Essie, if I can make one person feel better about themselves, I rest easy, knowing it was worth squicking out everyone else reading.
add at least one more to that count…
When I was reading this yesterday I wondered if someone here would comment on it. My reaction was that there seemed to be a lot of effort in the research with very meager results of any meaning. And even then this truth seems to swallow the subject of difference between sexes on arousal patterns:
Meana made clear, during our conversations in a casino bar and on the U.N.L.V. campus, that she was speaking in general terms, that, when it comes to desire, “the variability within genders may be greater than the differences between genders,” that lust is infinitely complex and idiosyncratic.
the variability within genders may be greater than the differences between genders
Hasn’t that been the conclusion of almost every rigorous study designed to look at differences between men and women?
I loved (in the most sarcastic way possible) that the majority of the 1st few comments in the reader’s comments section were just going for the old, jokey-but-ain’t-it-true crap-
“Women want shoes!”
“Women want chocolate!”
It just makes me wonder if it’s impossible for even researchers to get through all the many layers of social conditioning and etc. and really be honest.
“I don’t like the seme-uke stereotypical roles that so much yaoi seems to be about—”
I agree completely. May I recommend Youka Nitta, if you haven’t seen her work already? Mature men, in mature relationships, with complex motivations and feelings.. MHO.
It just makes me wonder if it’s impossible for even researchers to get through all the many layers of social conditioning and etc. and really be honest.
I think it’s improved greatly since Victorian “science”, which inspired my earlier remarks.
I seem to recall Bitch magazine running an article about erotic fan fiction within the past couple of years—might be worth looking up.
Apparently, this mind/body disconnect is felt in all sorts of areas---women have more trouble telling if their hearts are racing, for instance. So much for women being more in touch with their emotions.
I’ve noticed this in my own personal sample size of one and always wondered what’s up with it. I’ll have the physical markers for fear—racing heart, dry mouth, shaky voice—but not actually feel any fear. It is weird, weird, weird.
However, I will freely admit to feeling arousal at bonobos. How could you not, they’re so enthusiastic!
Culture isn’t telling women to be ashamed of being titillated by hot monkey lovin’.
Clearly you didn’t grow up female in America.
I remember, at 16 or so, being the only girl out of all my peers who would admit, even in extremely private and trustworthy company (i.e. a sleepover), that I masturbated. All the other girls thought it was revolting and insisted that not only did they never do that, but they never thought about it or wanted to try it.
There is a very heavy emphasis, in American culture at least, on women learning at a very young age to deny their sexual feelings. Especially any sexual feelings that don’t translate directly to socially sanctioned heteronormative male-centered sexuality. You could admit to going down on your boyfriend. You could not admit that you masturbated or were turned on by porn.
This is stuff that I *still* deal with, even as a feminist. I’m often afraid to ask for what I want in bed, afraid to enjoy certain kinds of sex, and yeah, sure, probably would be afraid to admit to what really turned me on if I were involved in some sort of study.
I’m not even sure what “provocative” clothes would be for a male,
And the interesting thing there is that when I start trying to come up with an idea of “provocative” male dress, all my examples are actually perfectly ordinary things to wear (or at least within the realm of normality, for instance a tuxedo), which I as an individual happen to find erotic. Women’s “provocative” dress is usually clothing which is thoroughly impractical and intended for no other purpose but provoking the viewer into arousal.
Opoponax! I was just thinking it had been a while since I’d seen you around. (Or am I just not on the right threads?)
No, I took a major break from the political blogs between the election and the inauguration. But now it’s a new year, and a new POTUS, and I’m baaaack!
UltraMagnus, I was thinking the same exact thing about the same exact scene in the Velocity of Gary as you did. OMFG, that was intensely erotic, had me panting and about crawling outa my skin - surprised the heck outa me. It’s definitely a seduction, both aggressive and tender. (Here it is, BTW - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2lwoMN708M)
Also like you, it motivated me to check out more gay “stuff” to try to figure out what it was that got me so worked up. I think it’s because I feel like I’m watching two PEOPLE, two actual whole people with faces (one rarely sees a male face in het porn, only cocks), who are looking at each other (unlike at the camera which is where women in het porn are looking most of the time), entirely involved with *each other*, with real desire for each other.
I’d also suggest that the appeal of gay porn for women might be all the hot bodies and situations without the turn-off of unfavourably comparing yourself to the women involved in regular porn.
I think Amanda’s onto something with her observation about porn. Of course lots of men want to be desired and worshipped and catered to! Doesn’t everyone? It’s just that the fantasy gets expressed in porn, whereas the equivalent female fantasy gets expressed in Queen Latifah’s “Last Holiday”.
I suspect when you drill underneath all of the cultural BS, that the real, uncomfortable (for some) truth isn’t that women and men are that different but that we are not. It’s just that our culture has catered to male sexual desires for millenia and has just started trying to cater to female sexuality.
The article’s mention of narcissism made me want to reread The Second Sex. There is a lot in there about how society pushes women to think of themselves as objects and pin their esteem on their ability to be desired by others. It was the first thing I thought about when I read that part of the article.
I think it would have been a more informative article if it had been more about the research and less of Daniel Berger. I had trouble telling what the researchers were theorizing from the ideas he wanted to push.
without the turn-off of unfavourably comparing yourself to the women involved in regular porn.
Or without the turn-off of actually having to think about what those women have done to themselves in order to look like that, and without having to hop down the bunny trail of the reality of the porn industry for women. Not that no man is ever taken advantage of in the porn world, but gay male porn stars are more ordinary looking than most TV actresses. They look like people, not like aliens or horrifically disfigured freakshow inmates.
Chipping in on the slash fiction. As a teenagers, it simply felt safer. I couldn’t read about het without identifying with the women, and I didn’t want to identify with the woman. It was too embarrassing and scary to read about yourself. But this has been metad in the slash community and I think the obvious conclusion is that different women come to slash and yaoi for different reasons. Not least the sheer hotness.
“Culture isn’t telling women to be ashamed of being titillated by hot monkey lovin’.”
I’m pretty sure culture is telling everyone to be ashamed of being titillated by hot monkey lovin’. The taboos against being turned on by animals are pretty strong.
AMEN!!!!! Why the hell should we care what some stupid White, privileged, misanthropic little researcher BITCH has to say about our sexuality. I’m a beautiful Black woman from Brasil and not ONE thing that article said about “women’s sexuality” related to me in any way. Hey New York Times, here is an idea. Report some actual NEWS and not these lame academics with their heads up their asses like Meredith Chivers and her entourage. If this bitch is a feminist then I am the Queen of England. She should try cleaning toilets at the local Motel 6 and find out what women REALLY want - to be left alone by rich White bitches like you. Give me a f-cking break. I paid $5.00 for that shit?
Mantis, that was sort of my point. It’s not like there’s cultural pressure to have women repress their interest in monkey loving, but culture is telling men, Hey, monkey loving. Cool.
Culture tells everyone to leave the livestock alone. But women have a physiological response and men don’t.
Others have mentioned “that special feeling” when they are beginning to be turned on. I think that’s fairly typical. Anticipation, flushing, heightened senses.
But the women who were having a physiological reaction to, well, most everything, weren’t being turned on.
Men have involuntary erections - or physiological response - too. But aside from morning tumescence in my experience most involuntary physiological responses are a result of something tactile, for instance having something heavy in my lap. It makes me wonder if a spontaneous female physiological reaction as measured in those experiences could be triggered by other things besides the whole panoply of sexual imagery. That would seem to be the next step for Chivers.
It’s not like there’s cultural pressure to have women repress their interest in monkey loving, but culture is telling men, Hey, monkey loving.
Except that there are a lot of reasons to be vaguely kinda-sorta turned on while watching monkey sex aside from wanting to fuck monkeys. I find, for instance, that almost anything that gets me thinking about sex will get me a little bit hot. Even if it’s something clinical, or forbidden, or even something that one wouldn’t normally think had anything to do with sex at all. If it inspires thoughts of sex, however tangentially, I will probably get a little bit turned on, to a level that isn’t always even perceptible.
What is repressed in women, but not in men, is the willingness to admit that something made them think about sex, and thus turned them on. Because we’re not supposed to EVER think about sex, aside from maybe wanting to read Cosmo articles about The 115 Oral Sex Tricks That Will Rock His World.
As for why the men weren’t turned on by monkey sex, who knows? Maybe they’re just so inured to constantly thinking about sex that at a certain point it doesn’t even register? That’s what the cultural stereotypes about men would imply, anyway.
Hawes:
I think preying mantis was specifically referring to hot lovin’ as performed by monkeys - bestiality, and so forth. Unless I’m missing something.
Maybe the men were turned on but just not enough to get an erection. I mean, I’m not a man but I’m pretty sure not everything shows up in a swelling of the penis.
I participated in one of those plethysmograph studies, where they were measuring arousal and trying to mark alcohol’s effect on inhibition. they showed a scene of terns flying from the arctic to the southern tip of globe, and that caused lubrication and “congestion.” They showed porn, and that cuased more lubrication which I would recognize as arousal in the traditional sense.
Anyways, the point is, it was definitely true for me that I responded to many things (hence the terns), but another missed point is--hey, you’re hooked up to some machine, with wires coming out of your vagina, being measured while other people look at your readouts in real time in another room. The novelty of the situation and the tabooness sort of primed me to be in a state of arousal. It seems like the number of people who would get aroused by the idea of the study would confound the data. Maybe the women were getting aroused by bonobos precisely because they thought it was sort of taboo, and that they might get “caught” being turned on by something ostensibly gross to be aroused by.
Also, from a basic neuroscience point of view, you always have the basic response to sensory stimulation, and only after it’s been sent to your brain does your interpretation of it kick in. Your mom or Daniel Craig touching your arm may send the same initial responses to your brain, but then it uses further interpretation to sort it into “mom, not hot” and “Daniel Craig, smoking hot.” Which means there’s ALOT of room between first sensory response and perception of arousal for inhibition to play a role. So I think it’s damn nigh impossible to understand this as a “culture vs. biology” question. The one way you could test this is if you compare cultures in which female sexuality is viewed very differently (for instance, one in which women are considered the much more lusty ones, or one which is less patriarchal or monogamous or heternormative), and and our culture.
um...also, is there a way to retrieve your password if you registered (yesterday) and then forgot it? I am t-ster2 now, but only because I somehow forgot my t-ster password. It feels lame to be t-ster2 when there isn’t an original one?
Chingona: Hah! The beer feeling! I know that feeling! I don’t think I experience it in response to violence (or it could be masked by the fact that my running muscles tense when I see something violence and that’s actively uncomfortable enough to distract me) but it was pretty much constant between the age of, oh, say, 13 and 17. And in response to the general theme of this thread: I was, in fact, ashamed by it at that age, which makes no sense given my background.
Not to be all :(, but I do wonder if part of the female confusion over arousal happens because it starts happening around the same age that a lot of young women first learn to feel threatened by men. That sure complicated my narrative right up. Also, many adolescent women have trouble achieving orgasm at all, which might lead to a lot more learning to ignore arousal.
violent, ignore the typos please, I am flat with the flu.
Wow, you bothered to register to express the sexist opinion that men are basically stupider than dogs? I humbly disagree. I think men are human, and have complex emotions like humans.
Amen to many of the above comments, but especially the black Brazilian woman. It’s a good bet that the researchers’ subjects were just about as White and privileged as the researchers themselves.
I’m a scientist by training and cognitive inclination, but also a feminist, and it speaks volumes that this is the kind of scientific “mystery” that the NYT Magazine’s editors decided deserved a cover-story slot.
Reading the article itself also made me suspect that meeting the author in real life would set off either my creep alarm or my asshole alarm (or both). I agree with what others have said about the rape fantasy stuff; I also found especially off-putting the completely superfluous physical descriptions of the researchers:
“Chivers, who favors high boots and fashionable rectangular glasses,...”
“with short, dark hair that seems to explode anarchically around her head, Diamond...”
“A compact 51-year-old woman in a shirtdress, Meana...”
Seriously, these read like the early action in some truly insipid erotica…
I find it interesting that all the men in the study were so secure in their sexuality… that is, that all the men who identified themselves as straight *were* straight according to the results, and same for the men identifying themselves as gay.
What would happen if they tested a man who was in closet? Would his results be confused by social programming like many of the women’s results probably were?
Hmm… but how to know for certain whether or not someone is in the closet? I vote we try it out on that one guy who keeps “investigating” leather cons and then ranting about how immoral it all is.
The question isn’t “Why are women aroused from everything from blue shoes to the NASA space program”, it’s “Why do men need such a specific and limited range of images?”
Porn appeals to men because, unlinke dating it’s sex on his terms.
And here we have a beautiful example of the “If I win, you lose” attitude. No such thing as reciprocation or co-operation for this man. Clue: notice the word “relate” in “relationship” and you might get somewhere.
UltraMagnus, I was thinking the same exact thing about the same exact scene in the Velocity of Gary as you did. OMFG, that was intensely erotic, had me panting and about crawling outa my skin - surprised the heck outa me. It’s definitely a seduction, both aggressive and tender.
The internets, bringing people together:).
“Porn appeals to men because, unlinke dating it’s sex on his terms. No “Ifs”, o expensive meals, no conversation, the foreplay is done to him for once and of course all the girls swallow.
“
This confirms something I’ve always thought about guys who are a little to into porn - they are terrible lays. Everything “wrong” says here screams one thing: A selfish, self-centered lay is a terrible one, so thank goodness he focuses on porn instead of subjecting another person to total boredom in the bedroom.
I was surprised at the selectivity of the male response in the profiled study. While I’m decidely a straight male with a fairly boring and unimpressive sexual history, I’m turned on a very wide range of suggestive imagery (incl. bonobos going at it), and I don’t think I’m biologically aberrant in any way. Culture matters, and I don’t get why US culture is so at pains to avoid considering it.
Well, if we consider culture as a determining factor, we might have to consider also that brown people and womenfolk really aren’t inherently suckier than white men and that it’s the people in the privileged categories that have to change their behavior for things to improve for the not so privileged.
‘cause that’d be just crazy.
Men only had a physiological response to what they said they were attracted to. Straight men had a physiological response to women, gay men had a physiological response to men. Women had a physiological response to just about everything.
But… but.... men are MORE VISUAL!1! How can this be?
/sarcasm
Unshockingly, the misanthropic sexist who thinks men are pigs (as if that’s good for men!) is bossy to boot.
“As I communicated before, porn appeals to men because its the depiction of sex without hoops! “
or, in other words, without a real, willing partner. Interesting that you present the inability to be intimate with another human being as a positive. Personally, i think that’s tragic and sad, but hey, if no contact with actual humans is your thing - go for it.
BTW, wrong---the common denominator in all your terrible relationships is YOU. I’m fucking repulsed by your three whole comments. Imagine women who actually have to look at you. Of course your dating life sucks, because you do. Of course you can’t get a woman to engage with you enough even to split a bill. If I had to put up with you for the length of a dinner date, I’d want to be compensated for wasting my time, as well. Merely paying for my dinner couldn’t possibly be enough money to make up for tolerating you for an entire hour. You got a bargain.
“the common denominator in all your terrible relationships is YOU. “
Surely not! Clearly, its ALL THE WOMEN IN THE WORLD* that are the problem, not him. Clearly, he can’t be expected to care at all about women or be even vaguely interested in them for anything but sex, so it’s their fault when they don’t respond.
Or something. It’s hard to mock misogynists because its hard to be more absurd then they already are.
*(outside of porn, of course, because this dude clearly doesn’t think they are actual women),
“I remember, at 16 or so, being the only girl out of all my peers who would admit, even in extremely private and trustworthy company (i.e. a sleepover), that I masturbated. All the other girls thought it was revolting and insisted that not only did they never do that, but they never thought about it or wanted to try it.”
Opoponax I saw the shaming of female masturbation in my teenage years when I was a nanny. When little boys, between infancy to 6, were seen playing with their penis the response from the father was often to laugh and make an “that’s my boy” joke. The mothers might have been a little embarrassed but just responded with a generic “not in public” lecture.
However, when a little girl was seen playing with her genitalia the response was ALWAYS horror and then a shaming lecture. Even from parents that considered themselves to be “progressive.”
If we want to change the shame around female masturbation we have to start in early childhood.
of course all the girls swallow
You must have seen different porn than I have. The last time I checked, the classic “money shot” that most porn sex ends with doesn’t go straight into her mouth.
“A selfish, self centered lay can be a great fuck. “
*lol* keep telling yourself that, honey. I’m sure you’ll never know how many times she’s faked it.
“s for women like yourself who are little too anti-porn,”
Where did I say i was anti-porn?
“they have a lot of hang ups, are sexually insecure, and have a latent hatred of what arouses men. A woman who isn’t afraid of porn isn’t threatened by men having different turn ons than her. Open minded interest is the first requirement of being a good lover. “
Obviously, I’ve hit upon some of the poor boy’s soft spots. He’s offended. This much desperate strawman flinging makes it pretty clear that he can’t conceive a woman that actually enjoys sex. Though Mr. Lee is going to love the statement that I must not be sexually open minded because I don’t watch boring ol porn (at least, according to Mr. Wrong, who knows me so well *lol*). That’s going to be good for a laugh. One would think that actually doing it, as opposed to watching people paid to pretend they enjoy on screen, would be a signifier that someone actually likes having sex. Interesting that being a passive viewer is being a good lover to Mr. Wrong here. I can hear the poor women he’s gotten into his bed snoring with complete boredom now.
“Sorry to rain on your parade, but I’m happy, successful, and engaged! “
Magical, isn’t it that a boy who’s spend his entire time here whining about women, is suddenly engaged when it suits him to claim such. Amazing the speed at which completely unverifiable details become so important when a troll needs to lie.
“I know women love dating. I even know the kind they like.”
Well sure you do, because all women are all exactly the same and think exactly alike, after all.
“Men do not have to love what women love.”
because all men are all exactly the same and think exactly like you.
“Respect that! Respect the Porn!”
*lol* I call Poe. Though, at this moment, I’m glad Mr. Lee is bored by porn and prefers actually having sex. Thank goodness he’s nothing like whiny Mr. Wrong.
“Men do not have to love what women love.”
And yet, if women don’t love and “respect” porn, they’re “uptight” and have a “latent hatred of what arouses men.”
I personally enjoy a lot of mainstream porn (I’m female), but I would never go around telling other women that they HAVE to enjoy porn or else they’re uptight frigid bitches. Since the mainstream of porn caters mostly to male preferences, it doesn’t surprise me at all that a lot of women aren’t into it. Also, you can enjoy porn and still be critical of it. It would be great if the world of pornography was 100% awesome for all the performers and no one ever got exploited, but that’s not the case. Knowing that sometimes people are coerced into performing can definitely kill arousal. Oh, but gee, I guess I’m just “uptight!”
“but I would never go around telling other women that they HAVE to enjoy porn or else they’re uptight frigid bitches. “
Well, that’s the problem with misogynists. Whiny, coward misogynists, like Mr. Wrong, are easy and predictable. Notice he went for every single sexist trope his little brain could muster up in hopes of insulting me (and Amanda) because we pegged him correctly. I always get a giggle out of how they always try to be insulting in a way that makes it absolutely clear we were right about them.
It would be great if the world of pornography was 100% awesome for all the performers and no one ever got exploited, but that’s not the case. Knowing that sometimes people are coerced into performing can definitely kill arousal.
I see porn and prostitution as being very similar in this respect. In theory, all participants would be willing and then there would be nothing wrong with it. But in reality most of the time that isn’t the case.
“wild for cock” porn is no more about men’s desire to be wanted, than the “trick the bitch” variety is. Both are simply about access. In the 1st example she’s a nympho, in the 2nd she’s a dumb ass. Either way she’s easy.
For you. So, if women are interchangeable holes, why not just go fuck a tree? What’s the difference?
“For his sake I hope you’re better at deep throat than you are at deep thought.”
Hahaha, wow. Classy.
Anyway, I’m curious as to what “respecting” porn entails. I suspect that it means never saying a single negative thing about it, ever. God forbid that we should be critical of stuff like, say, Girls Gone Wild, where a few women who have taken part were actually plied with drugs and alcohol. And even if it’s true that the porn industry is less exploitative than other businesses, if you ask me I’d rather that every single person in porn had actually consented and not been coerced. That’s the one thing that bothers me about some porn, not that it’s “dirty” or “wrong” or that men enjoy it, as wrongside seems to believe.
That’s why two strangers, who have nothing in common, but who like the same things can have an awesome time in bed.
Wow. You have no idea what an awesome time in bed would actually involve, do you?
Seriously, while casual one night stands with people you barely know and have fuck-all in common with might be fun sometimes, nothing beats sex with someone who really knows you. I’d pick relationship sex over a one night stand any day of the week.
i’m so glad you took the time to write about this, amanda and i wholeheartedly agree. this article was better than i expected, but a lot of the results of the research here was just “duh” to me--women report being aroused by fewer things than they may actually be physiologically aroused by? women grow up conditioned to be sexual objects for men and then it magically turns out that being desired by a man plays a significant part in a heterosexual woman’s turn-on process? HOLY FINGER SANDWICHES, BATMAN!
i’d also point out something that struck me about the article that the author (unsurprisingly) didn’t seem to press--i think it’s chivers, but not sure, who admits very early on in the piece that the studies these days that get most of the funding are ones that concern differences between men and women. i’d like someone to write another article examining why the hell THAT is and publish it in the new york times.
and middleagedliberal--that bolded sentence to me just sort of leaves me with a “well, that was fun, but what’s the point again?” feeling. some of the science here is quite interesting, but ultimately if the variance within each gender is greater than between them, i have to wonder why the fuck we’re even asking “what do women want?” in the first place. it’s like going to a baseball game, studying what ind of ice cream the team in red uniforms likes what kind the opposing team in blue uniforms likes, concluding that red and blue don’t really influence what kind of ice cream a player prefers at all, and then trying to write an article about trends of each team’s preferences. like, if at some point the scientists acknowledge that researching desire in terms of men vs. women isn’t very helpful, why don’t we frame the research in terms of classifications and comparisons that are?
“Can’t we watch something where the girls look classier?” … “Ewww! That position is so vulgar.”
You have no idea what feminists/sane people have against porn, do you?
“Nope it aint classy, but she’s been talking so much smack. She ought to be able to take it! “
awww our new pet troll is a domestic abuser. i’ll bet you say the exact same thing to your poor ‘fiancee,’ should she actually exist, before you give her the beating she deserves. grow up, little boy. you have a lot of hate for all women, and guess what, none of us are your momma. seek therapy for your rage issues.
“And Respect along with her coat, checks her politics, class, gender, race, and religion at the door. “
meaning the bitch isn’t allowed to speak, ever. wow. you are a full-on misogynist, wrong side of the tracks, and your poor supposed fiancee would do well to get away from you ASAP, since you are not stable.
The reason men like porn is simply because it’s made for them. As was mentioned by other posters, ‘straight’ porn focuses more on the woman the man. Usually the woman is an over-the-top sex kitten, and some mediocre or even ugly guy essentially acts as a place holder. And the camera focuses on the woman in the scene much more than the man. I’m not a lesbian, so naturally this doesn’t do much for me. I’ve talked to several men about this who just do not understand this concept at all. The good thing about gay male porn is that the men are actually attractive.
One night, after some drinking, I found myself in a situation where a naked guy was scrubbing my bathroom. At first I thought it was hilarious, but later I thought I should have taped it, because I think a lot of women would like to watch that. And, I would’ve almost had a monopoly on porn for straight women.
catgirl, i have to say, it still sounds pretty hilarious for the absurdity. 
Hate straight porn, for most of the reasons mentioned before in this thread. I can’t help wondering how happy the women are. Too many women in the sex industry are sexual abuse survivors, more than the general population of women, so it makes me wonder how free and rewarding and empowering their ‘chosen’ careers are. But I’m sure there’s some self-described sex-poz feminists who would accuse me of taking away their agency or infantilizing them by thinking them victims. I can’t help it - I’m overly empathetic - I also think about how shitty retail work is when I go into a store, and feel glad I’m not doing it anymore. And I’d rather go back to retail than get gang-banged or get my face jizzed on by a bunch of strange men, even for really good money.
And I’m turned off by degradation towards women that’s so common in straight porn. In actual, real life, personal sex play, I can understand playing with power dynamics and the thrill of the idea of doing something supposedly illicit or perverted. As a common theme in porn, I find it really disturbing that it’s so popular.
But also I prefer gay porn for the reason Catgirl and others have mentioned. The men are mostly hot. It’s all focused on the male body. Being heterosexual and shit, I tend to respond more to images of good looking nude men than women. Go figure.
I had a friend recently refer to me as a “body person”, meaning I’ll comment on a man’s body more than his eyes or face. My being attracted to the male form was seen as almost a weird personal fetish to her. An extreme example, but I think it points to a common cultural idea about women and sexuality. I’ve heard, countless times, women say something like “He’s got a nice butt. I’m so bad for saying that!” in a giggling, guilty pleasure sort of way. Like it’s naughty to find a man’s body attractive on a purely objectified level.
I had a conversation with some co-workers about how bored I was at a bachelorette party in a male strip joint. I’d have found it much more titillating if, instead of dancing around like idiots, the men had just stretched, or exercised, or chopped wood on stage and got sweaty. A display of exaggerated masculinity would have been more erotic for me. Apparently I have a straight male fetish, kind of like gay men who like watching porn that has butch “straight” men seduced by other men, except being hot for straight men shouldn’t be forbidden fruit to me, since I’m female. But I’m not supposed to objectify or eroticize the male form, ‘cause it’s gross and slutty and kind of pathetic for a girl to do that. Yeah - this culture is fucked up when it comes to female sexuality all right.
“Wow. You have no idea what an awesome time in bed would actually involve, do you? “
He’s made that abundantly clear. It’s “written all over his keyboard”. So far, the only thing he’s shown us is that porn made him useless in bed. The focus on bjs tells us everything we need to know. He’s incompetent between the sheets. And it really upsets him when people figure that out.
+++
“I don’t watch boring ol porn” You mean 15 billion dollars worth of product and you can’t find anything that’s not “boring and ol”
Actually, i was mocking your assumptions about me. If you had even basic reading comprehension skills, that would have been clear to you. But, I understand. All that wanking doesn’t leave much time for mundane things like reading comprehension.
“Speaking of bored…with that great sex life of yours how do you find time to respond to me line by line.”
See, adults have jobs. I know it will hurt your tiny brain to conceive of it, but women even have jobs. They work during the day. Since I was posting during the day, one might assume that there are other things to do in a day, aside sleeping with Mr. Lee. I realize you don’t have the problem of gainful employment, but these things should be clear to even you.
“Nope it aint classy, but she’s been talking so much smack. She ought to be able to take it! “
Do you seriously think anything you’ve said is hurting me? *lol* that’s adorably clueless. Stick with that imaginary fiancee of yours. Spare the real women of the world from you company.
“If you are not its target market, don’t go making loud proclamations and not know what you are talking about. Remember it’s not your house.”
Silly, silly Mr. Wrong. We all realize you’re in over your head here and have absolutely no idea who you’re talking to or what you’re talking about, so there’s no need to keep reminding us. We get it. You’re a lonely wanker who has some serious issues with women. Get therapy, and stay far, far away from women.
I know women love dating.
That’s the funniest thing I’ve read all week. And it’s so wrong.
My husband and I started off as pen pals way back in high school, so we got together without dating. If I found myself single again, I’d stay that way rather than start dating.
Wait, isn’t ‘date’ a streetwalker euphemism for ‘blowjob’?
Essie Elephant writes: “First, we’re all programmed to see women as sex objects because of advertising, so there’s a huge level of sub-conscious programming. “
Programming may be true, however were this the explanation for the nonspecific genital response of the women in the laboratory then one would have to conclude that gay males are somehow immune to cultural programming, because unlike Het males they don’t respond genitally to women.
A problem with this discussion is that the critics are railing against a political position, but ignoring the actual data. Amanda’s view, that this reflects cultural conditioning might make sense were it the case that the women always reported arousal to any stimulus, but their genitals say that they are responding only to what they truly prefer. In other words they give the socially conditioned answer, but their bodies show their real response. However the data are exactly the opposite and are hard to reconcile with a social conditioning explanation, unless it is the case, which I suspect no one here would like to argue, that women are more easily socially conditioned than are men.
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Good for you for actually reading it. I saw the words “postfeminist” and “sexologist” in close proximity and backed away from the magazine.