Interesting stuff!
More links to other reviews can be found at the source. There is also an interview with the author of the book at the Salon review; that can be found here.
A couple of the more interesting (to me) questions and answers:
Women want sex far more than we've been allowed to believe. So suggests a new book that shatters many of our most cherished myths about desire, including the widespread assumption that women's lust is inextricably bound up with emotional connection. Are men ready to cope with the reality of heterosexual women's horniness? The evidence suggests we aren't, at least not yet.
In his just-released What Do Women Want? Adventures in the Science of Female Desire journalist Daniel Bergner suggests that when it comes to acknowledging just how much women lust, we've passed the point of no return. Bergner profiles the work of a series of sexologists, all of whom have, after a series of fascinating studies with animal and human subjects, come to what is essentially the same conclusion. Women want sex just as much as men do, and this drive is "not, for the most part, sparked or sustained by emotional intimacy and safety." When it comes to the craving for sexual variety, the research Bergner assembles suggests that women may be "even less well-suited for monogamy than men."
Bergner's work puts what may be the last nail in the coffin of the old consensus that women use sex as a means to get something else they really want, such as enduring monogamous emotional intimacy and the goods and safety that come in marriage with a protector and provider. In her review, Salon's normally hyperbole-averse Tracy Clark-Flory was beside herself: "This book should be read by ever woman on earth," she writes; "the implications are huge."
It's not, of course, as if feminism, or Internet porn, or any other feature of modernity has suddenly created desires that never previously existed. Rather, as Bergner and his researchers show, science is finally asking the right questions about what women want, perhaps because enough of us are ready to hear the answer. The broad and enthusiastic coverage of What Do Women Want—Amanda Hess at Slate and Ann Friedman at The Cut are nearly as swept away as Clark-Flory—suggests a collective cry of relief: At last, irrefutable evidence that women are so much more like men, and so much more full of erotic potential, than we had ever admitted.
Yet acknowledging that women are as horny as men (if not hornier) isn't enough to guarantee equality, just as the recognition that women are increasingly adept at breadwinning doesn't ensure pay equity. Even as we see more and more evidence that women want what men want, antiquated sexual scripts mean that women are caught, as Friedman puts it, in a "catch-22" with "few options." But is that dilemma one for which both sexes are equally responsible?
Some say yes. Friedman quotes dating expert Chiara Atik:
Everyone's being kind of wishy-washy... Women want sex, but they don't want to be seen as forward (or worse, desperate). Men want sex but are intimidated, unconfident, or don't want to be seen as domineering. We're not sure who should be the sexual instigators, and then no one really steps up to the plate.
That explanation appeals, but it also rests on a false assumption that the risks of playing "instigator" are equal for both sexes. To continue Atik's baseball imagery, it's only very recently that women have even begun to be allowed to compete as equals on the sexual playing field; the rules of the game are still written largely for the benefit of men. To say that women want sex and are afraid of being slut-shamed while men want sex but are afraid of being rejected falsely posits that these are equally consequential experiences. "Slut-shaming" serves as both a precursor and an excuse for sexual violence. "She was asking for it," the classic defense of the rapist, is based on the assumption that a woman who instigates a sexual encounter, "deserves" whatever ill treatment she gets. As real as men's anxiety about being "shot down" might be, it's hardly comparable to women's equally justifiable fear of rape. Margaret Atwood's famous remark that "men are afraid that women will laugh at them; women are afraid that men will kill them" clarifies that distinction nicely.
If Bergner is right, men's and women's libidos are far more similar than previously imagined. If he's right, and the formidable data he marshals suggests he is, then our sexual scripts need to shift to accommodate this new reality for everyone's sake. Both men and women need to overcome what Atik calls their "wishy-washiness," and be willing to deal with the discomfort that comes from stepping outside of prescribed gender roles. That's easier said than done; as Friedman notes in her article, the data suggests that even among the young, a significant majority of both men and women think it's the job of men to make the proverbial "first move."
When it comes to rethinking instigation, young heterosexuals could do well to learn from gays and lesbians. As Liza Mundy pointed out last month, same-sex couples have much to teach straights about how to have a happier marriage. "From sex to fighting, from child-rearing to chores, they must hammer out every last detail of domestic life without falling back on assumptions about who will do what." Bergner's considerable data suggests that when it comes to initiating sex, straight men and women will be a lot happier if they follow the lead of their gay and lesbian friends.
The research suggests that though both men and women struggle to extricate themselves from traditional gender roles, women are generally doing a much better job of it than are men. From the workplace to the university, women are far more willing to move into traditionally male spaces and adopt traditionally male behaviors than men are to do the reverse. Too many men are still stuck in the "provide, protect, and perform" model that requires women to be passive, focused more on pleasing than on their own pleasure. The "catch-22" in which women find themselves is largely a result of men's fear of being unable to perform up to women's expectations—and to satisfy desires that men have only just begun to realize are as intense and earthy as their own.
Freud's famous question, "What do women want?" has always invited another query in return: "Can you handle the answer if we tell you?" The widespread coverage of Bergner's book raises at least the possibility that some men are. And what is at the heart of that answer? Though some women surely still want to play at passivity while men protect, provide, and perform, plenty more women want another "p" word: partners. Flexible, unintimidated, and (as Bergner shows) playful partners in the bedroom, in the kitchen, and in public life.
"The sexual landscape (remains) ruled by male desires and insecurities," Amanda Hess writes in her Slate review of What Do Women Want. It is those insecurities (and the specter of the violence into which those insecurities sometimes erupt) that keep men from having their sexual desires fulfilled. As this new book shows, women's desires are fully equal to men's—and equally confined by men's maddening unwillingness to abandon the useless sexual scripts they themselves have written.
More links to other reviews can be found at the source. There is also an interview with the author of the book at the Salon review; that can be found here.
A couple of the more interesting (to me) questions and answers:
You point out some remarkable ways that scientists have ignored evidence suggesting that women — and female animals — are far from passive when it comes to sex and are in fact often initiators. Do you have a favorite example of this?
I really do. Deidrah, a rhesus monkey, a member of the species that we sent into space in the ’60s as our doubles, to see how well we would survive, is one of my favorite characters in the book. I went down and spent a while at a primatology center with a scientist who was trying to take the blinders off the way we see the sexuality of our closest ancestors. And what I learned was that for decades, despite evidence to the contrary, scientists had painted primate sex as male dominated. Males are the initiators; females the sort of almost indifferent receivers.
But standing next to this scientist Kim Wallen, it was clear that that was not at all true — almost comically so. We spent a day following Deidrah, a relatively tranquil, low-key female monkey, who was nevertheless relentlessly stalking — sexually stalking — her object of desire. If there’s any objectification going on in the monkey kingdom, it’s the females objectifying the males, chasing them, and sort of all but forcing them. It wasn’t just Deidrah, of course — it was all the female monkeys that we were following, and it was just alarming how we could be so sure of this other reality, and blind to the truth that was just staring us right in the face. So that was one example of our blindness to female sexuality and, ultimately I think, our fear of it.
Quickly, back to women for a second, a quick example, if we can get a little graphic for a sec, about understanding the size and reach of the clitoris. We’ve been doing dissections of bodies for centuries, pretty effectively, but it wasn’t until very recently that there was any acknowledgment of extensions right underneath the surface of the skin — very rich in nerves, very primed for pleasure, reachable there through the vaginal walls — that rival the size of the penis; probably are greater than the size of the penis. One of the scientists, who was really influential in calling attention to the size, put it this way: the reason we’ve ignored this is because we’ve managed to convince ourselves that one gender is all about reproduction and the other is all about sex. That is, women are all about reproduction and men are all about sex. Again, a complete distortion.
Some of the evidence suggesting that female sexuality is stronger than is typically suggested is based on plethysmograph (a tool used to measure vaginal blood-flow and lubrication) studies showing that women become physically aroused to a much wider array of visual stimuli than men (even as they subjectively report a much smaller range of arousal). But what of the hypothesis presented by researcher Meredith Chivers, that vaginal lubrication might not be a reliable measure of female desire, that it is a separate system, an evolutionary adaptation, meant to protect females from sexual violence and bodily harm? If this proved to be true, what would it mean for all these plethysmograph studies?
Now you’re at the most complicated part of this whole field, I think. So, let me pause and try to be coherent. OK, so, if that were true — underline if –that were true, that is, if there really are two separate sexual systems, one represented by these physical responses and the other represented by the very subjective sense of desiring, then [these plethysmograph discoveries] would be less relevant to understanding desire. But, I think that both Meredith and I have started to wrestle with a simpler interpretation: that the physical responses, registered in the plethysmography, really might well be a measure of being turned on, being in a state of desire. So, with the range of things that she’s exposed women to in the lab — that would be straight women watching two women together, two men together, men and women, and of course, famously, two monkeys having sex — both straight and gay women have consistently responded very powerfully and immediately, physically, to all these kinds of images. And I think, in Meredith’s mind, that really does represent something about desire.
On the subject of rape and sexual assault, and the fact that, also in the lab, women are responding generally to scenarios of sexual assault. Here’s where we get into a really tricky space, so I hope you have space for this when we’re talking about desire. No one, no one, no one — not Meredith, not Marta Meana, and not me — is in any way retracting “no means no.” That’s number one. Number two is, there are different levels of desire and of fantasy, and you know, fantasy and sexual assault in one form or another are pretty common, but does that mean that any of us want to go out and be sexually assaulted? No, it doesn’t. The realm of arousal and the realm of fantasy can tell us something about ourselves psychologically without indicating that we really want to experience that thing, far from it.
Since we’re on the topic of rape fantasies, can we talk about why they are so common among women?
I mean here, again, I want to be careful because, number one, I’m a man. You know I’ve listened a lot at this point and asked a lot of relentless questions, but my answer is going to be inherently a fallible one.
The force of culture puts some level of shame on women’s sexuality and a fantasy of sexual assault is a fantasy that allows for sex that is completely free of blame. So that’s one reason. Another, which Meana brings up, and which I think is very compelling, is this idea that the feeling of being desired is a very powerful one, a very electrical one. And I think at least at the fantasy level, that sense of being wanted, and being wanted beyond the man’s self-control is also really powerful.
