The NYTimes magazine had a fascinating article this weekend about female sexuality. Turns out, most sex researchers have historically been male so most of them have been focusing on men (shocking). Also, since men’s sex is hanging right there for all to see and seems to be uncomplicatedly and directly connected to his reptilian brain, it’s also fair to call such research “low-hanging fruit” (not to be confused with Jeff Stryker, of course). But now, there’s a new crop of female sex researchers and they’re doing a whole bunch of new stuff in the field of whatgetsherhotology.
To wit: A researcher named Meredith Chivers showed women images of men having sex with men, men having sex with women, women doing other women, a single female working out, a hot guy ambling naked down the beach, and some monkey’s getting it on (just to fuck with their heads, I guess). Then, she had them indicate on a keypad how hot each image made them while at the same time sticking a little thingamajig up their vaginae to measure what was going on down south. Turns out, the women almost always indicated they were not turned on by images that made their pussies flush with blood.
[W]ith the women, especially the straight women, mind and genitals seemed scarcely to belong to the same person.
Tell me about it. Jesus, that explains so much. They could have stopped right there and over 20 years of vainly trying to understand women would have ended with vindication. But wait, it gets better.
Much later in the article, another researcher named Marta Meana used a Cirque du Soleil performance of “Zumanity” (which is apparently nothing more than athletically impressive live-action soft-core porn) to make this assessment:
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. About the dynamic at “Zumanity” between the audience and the acrobats, Meana said the women in the crowd gazed at the women onstage, excitedly imagining that their bodies were as desperately wanted as those of the performers.
And then a little later on:
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. Still on the subject of narcissism, she talked about research indicating that, in comparison with men, women’s erotic fantasies center less on giving pleasure and more on getting it. “When it comes to desire,” she added, “women may be far less relational than men.”
Excuse me while I do a little happy dance.
OK, back. Didja happen to notice the parts I bolded, underlined, and italicized? (What, too subtle?)
Obviously, that kind of thinking plays right into my plan for world domination. I am all about Belle Fille’s pleasure. She is the epicenter of my “erotic admiration and sexual need”. In fucking spades.
I’m not saying my Belle is the same as “women” in these studies. Each person is like a snowflake, etc. But it’s awfully encouraging to see a possible physiological connection between the way I am and wish to relate to her and the way she may be wired-up internally.
Oh, and as for the part about why the womens’ responses disagreed with their snatches? Read the article. It’s full of *ahem* juicy tidbits like that one.
They could have stopped right there and over 20 years of vainly trying to understand women would have ended with vindication.
:snerk: