Decoding Female Desire: What Makes Us Tick?
Female sexuality isn't well understood, even by scientists: examining the biology of arousal.
The cover story of this week's New York Times Magazine is about female desire—why do women get aroused, the article asks. The answer? No one really knows.
The piece describes the research of three leading female sexologists whose three different theories are at once at odds and overlapping. To illustrate how confusing female sexual response is the piece describes a study performed by Meredith Chivers, in which she showed various sexual images to men and women and measured their response by recording the blood flow to the penis and vagina, and at the same time asking them to report how aroused they were.
No matter what [the women's] self-proclaimed sexual orientation, they showed, on the whole, strong and swift genital arousal when the screen offered men with men, women with women and women with men. They responded objectively much more to the exercising woman than to the strolling man, and their blood flow rose quickly — and markedly, though to a lesser degree than during all the human scenes except the footage of the ambling, strapping man — as they watched the apes. And with the women, especially the straight women, mind and genitals seemed scarcely to belong to the same person. The readings from the plethysmograph and the keypad weren’t in much accord. During shots of lesbian coupling, heterosexual women reported less excitement than their vaginas indicated; watching gay men, they reported a great deal less; and viewing heterosexual intercourse, they reported much more. Among the lesbian volunteers, the two readings converged when women appeared on the screen. But when the films featured only men, the lesbians reported less engagement than the plethysmograph recorded. Whether straight or gay, the women claimed almost no arousal whatsoever while staring at the bonobos.
So women's brains and bodies are not aroused by the same things. But what does that mean? And do these differences arise from innate or cultural causes? In an upcoming paper quoted in the Times, Chivers gives an evolutionary explanation:
To reduce discomfort, and the possibility of injury, during vaginal penetration. . . . Ancestral women who did not show an automatic vaginal response to sexual cues may have been more likely to experience injuries during unwanted vaginal penetration that resulted in illness, infertility or even death, and thus would be less likely to have passed on this trait to their offspring.
Discussion
We women are so TOTALLY flexible. I find my vagina responding when I read about violence - and that's very disturbing and, I believe - totally common. I don't understand it, but I can feel the blood flow. I think there's something primal about all this. It doesn't FEEL like arousal, but something happens in the vagina.
On the other hand - I think ALL women are turned on in every way by other women - just bodies standing there, and photographed during sex - we just don't all want to acknowledge it. To me - it's about eroticism. I understand the "male" labeled thing about feeling intense eroticism and wanting to have sex, and then feeling nothing right afterward - I think most women can relate to that. And I don't think it's sexuality without any connection to emotionality, either. I think something we perceive in the image or the person on the street hits us on a lot of levels. It's very mysterious, it defies categorization - and what ENERGY there is there! Thanks for the post, Rori Raye
This article was interesting and I was most fascinated by the disconnect between the what women felt and what they reported. Like the article states, its hard to separate sociology from this research. What we feel and what we think we are supposed to feel are often two different things and how we bridge that gap is where I think the real interesting issue lies.
The article states that the men had a pretty close 1:1 ratio of thoughts and feelings. But the article also submits a theory that this is because social norms about what straight men are supposed to feel are so strong. But I disagree. I think that straight male sexuality has been so normalized by our culture that there is no disconnect because none is needed. On the other hand, the sexuality of women is not normalized. We have conflicting messages about what is appropriate and what isn't that what we actually feel (which is a lot) is not always socially acceptable and one of the things that friction reveals that our desires are more complicated than society has allowed them to be.
Sorry- I had to stop at the title- What Makes Females Tick?
Decoding that could be like de-fusing a BomB- plus I don't have sufficient time or even a glass of wne to contemplate that question at present- maybe I will re-visit later - like on a long week-end! LOL
