20 March, 2009

What Women Really Want

So why do people do the sexual things they do?

And more to the point: If you have a theory about why people do the sexual things they do, how would you prove it?

There’s an article in the New York Times that’s been making the rounds, a piece about current sexology research and what it says about female desire. The bit that’s getting the most attention is the research by psychology professor Meredith Chivers on different types of visual erotic stimulation (images of men and women doing it, images of two men doing it, images of two women doing it, images of solo men, solo women, monkeys, etc.), and which types aroused men compared to women. And what this says about male versus female sexuality. And what that says about how our sexualities evolved.

The data everyone’s talking about, though, isn’t so much about what kinds of dirty pictures women and men like to look at. (Although that is interesting and pertinent: if the research is correct, men tend to be aroused by a fairly narrow band of imagery that clearly correlates with their sexual orientation, while women tend to be aroused by imagery that’s all over the map.) What’s getting the attention is the stuff about how hard it is determine which images women are aroused by . . . because women’s self- reported mental responses, and their involuntary genital responses, don’t match up.

At all.

Hm.

Now. Chivers’ conclusion is that women are physically aroused by a broader range of visual stimuli because, due to evolutionary pressure, it behooves women to be physically ready for sex they don’t want. To put it more bluntly: Women get raped. If women are physically aroused by a broad range of visual stimuli, we will be physically ready for sex even if we don’t want it, and are thus less likely to be injured during rape. Thus increasing our chances of survival. Read on >>

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