An interesting NYT article on female desire and sexuality. It seems that women are a lot more complicated and narcissistic than men when it comes to desire.
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What Do Women Want?
-A new generation of postfeminist sexologists is trying to discover what ignites female desire.
By DANIEL BERGNER
Published: January 22, 2009
Meredith Chivers is a creator of bonobo pornography. She is a 36-year-old psychology professor at Queen’s University in the small city of Kingston, Ontario, a highly regarded scientist and a member of the editorial board of the world’s leading journal of sexual research, Archives of Sexual Behavior. The bonobo film was part of a series of related experiments she has carried out over the past several years. She found footage of bonobos, a species of ape, as they mated, and then, because the accompanying sounds were dull — “bonobos don’t seem to make much noise in sex,” she told me, “though the females give a kind of pleasure grin and make chirpy sounds” — she dubbed in some animated chimpanzee hooting and screeching. She showed the short movie to men and women, straight and gay. To the same subjects, she also showed clips of heterosexual sex, male and female homosexual sex, a man masturbating, a woman masturbating, a chiseled man walking naked on a beach and a well-toned woman doing calisthenics in the nude.
While the subjects watched on a computer screen, Chivers, who favors high boots and fashionable rectangular glasses, measured their arousal in two ways, objectively and subjectively. The participants sat in a brown leatherette La-Z-Boy chair in her small lab at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health, a prestigious psychiatric teaching hospital affiliated with the University of Toronto, where Chivers was a postdoctoral fellow and where I first talked with her about her research a few years ago. The genitals of the volunteers were connected to plethysmographs — for the men, an apparatus that fits over the penis and gauges its swelling; for the women, a little plastic probe that sits in the vagina and, by bouncing light off the vaginal walls, measures genital blood flow. An engorgement of blood spurs a lubricating process called vaginal transudation: the seeping of moisture through the walls. The participants were also given a keypad so that they could rate how aroused they felt.
The men, on average, responded genitally in what Chivers terms “category specific” ways. Males who identified themselves as straight swelled while gazing at heterosexual or lesbian sex and while watching the masturbating and exercising women. They were mostly unmoved when the screen displayed only men. Gay males were aroused in the opposite categorical pattern. Any expectation that the animal sex would speak to something primitive within the men seemed to be mistaken; neither straights nor gays were stirred by the bonobos. And for the male participants, the subjective ratings on the keypad matched the readings of the plethysmograph. The men’s minds and genitals were in agreement.
All was different with the women. No matter what their 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.
“I feel like a pioneer at the edge of a giant forest,” Chivers said, describing her ambition to understand the workings of women’s arousal and desire. “There’s a path leading in, but it isn’t much.” She sees herself, she explained, as part of an emerging “critical mass” of female sexologists starting to make their way into those woods. These researchers and clinicians are consumed by the sexual problem Sigmund Freud posed to one of his female disciples almost a century ago: “The great question that has never been answered and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my 30 years of research into the feminine soul, is, What does a woman want?”
Read more at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/magazine/25desire-t.html?_r=1&em&emc=eta1
- Re: ZT: What Do Women Want?posted on 01/26/2009
to me, very simple, make my nose happy, please please my nose! 我的鼻子能闻到一切不对味儿的东西:)鼻子与性,是个突破性领域。 - Re: ZT: What Do Women Want?posted on 01/26/2009
浮生, 文章好长, 能否总结一下? 我还没看完呢。
是否说的是女性心身不一? 还是女性是非常fluid的, whatever connect with us, we desire them?
哈, 这不回答了上次你和玛雅的问题嘛。
- Re: ZT: What Do Women Want?posted on 01/26/2009
What do women want 那个电影相当好看。Mel Gibson演戏很厉害啊。 - posted on 01/27/2009
嘿嘿,玛雅的感觉一点儿没错,以前看到过嗅觉和性选择的文章,一时找不到,找到NYT两篇短的:
Studies Explore Love and the Sweaty T-Shirt Scent of a Man Is Linked To a Woman's Selection
草叶,我和玛雅的什么问题呀?
这文章我能记得的除了细节外主要就这么几样,不能算总结,也不是文章里的结论而是sexologists的观察:
* Women's mental and physical desires are not in accord, while men's mental and physical arousal are categorically consistent. 文章里给了一些进化方面的解释,还有一个解释是男人的性器官在体外所以更容易“意识”到,都不是结论哈。
* Women's sexual orientations are more fluid and malleable. What a woman likes is the person more than the person's gender.
* Both men and women like women's bodies more than men's. 呵呵,这个我们都知道哈,一个解释是since women's arousal states are more ambiguous, they present more potential.
* Women’s desire is not relational, it’s narcissistic, more so than men. In other words, women are turned on if they know their bodies are being desired. 用这个观察,她们解释在婚姻里,女人认为男人对她们的选择不再是want,而是trapped,所以慢慢就less turned on,呵呵,dilemma。
* 最后还有一部分是关于rape fantasy的。Women like to be overpowered but they want safety as well, in other words, willing surrenders.
都没什么结论,反正就是女人想要的都是矛盾的,其实这咱都知道哈,解释就更加只是hypothesis了。所以你要只看我说的几条就不一定有什么特别,但我觉着文章里提到的一些试验、观察都蛮有意思的,revealing at least.
- Re: ZT: What Do Women Want?posted on 01/27/2009
你倆問的問題在這線上:
http://www.mayacafe.com/forum/topic1sp.php3?tkey=1223964865 不是有答案了嘛。
女性的特點是如何進化而成的呢?在natural selection 有何益處?
浮生 wrote:
草叶,我和玛雅的什么问题呀?
- posted on 01/27/2009
哈,女人这部分回答了,男人的还是没有呢。
女性的特點是如何進化而成的呢?在natural selection 有何益處?
我记的文章里是在rape的context下说的: rape victims are sometimes aroused (文章里female physical arousal = lubrication)。解释是在进化过程中即使是在mentally unwilling的情况下如果没有这种physical的反应,可能就造成伤害、死亡、或者不育,结果就慢慢被淘汰啦。延伸下去就是female body prepares itself as long as it perceives a potential. 这也可以解释为什么对unaroused naked male body没什么反应。但是为什么对female body也有反应呢,可以从female body的ambiguity来解释;还有一个,Bonobos的lesbian behavior是她们建立social bonding的一个方式,不知从这个角度是否可以说什么,但这个文章里好像没有提。用进化来解释听上去都挺容易的,make sense,但又很cyclical。 - Re: ZT: What Do Women Want?posted on 01/28/2009
我觉的对这些现象是否有代表性还有待于其他的重复试验来验证, sands一定能够看出设计实验, 选择试验对象对结果的影响, 没看具体文章不知是否有大漏洞。
撇开结果的准确性, 她们为什么不敢下一结论, 甚至一些猜想或假说?
是不是女性的社会性是很fluid的, 而且是over drive 她们的身体反应。女性in tune more to their brain than their physical body?史前的女性如何? 我想如果在摩梭人做这实验会有不同结果吗?
- posted on 02/02/2009
今天看见一个人的blog上有篇文字挺逗:
Anti-Capitalism: Sex Smells!
by max blunt
don't like that because they are impotent and opposed to
all manifestations of sensuality and sexuality
Sexually awakened people are potentially dangerous
to capitalists and their rigid, asexual system
Washing & Brainwashing
The Smell of Sex
Hair is not essential for life but its presence is important to many people’s happiness and self esteem.
In addition it serves as a secondary sexual characteristic in humans, so its presence and distribution helps distinguish the sexes. It has another important property in sex.
It retains moisture and smells, thus acting as a powerful aphrodisiac by increasing and maintaining sexual desire.
Women have chosen to remove this vital sexually distinguishing characteristic and with it remove the scent for which it is designed to accent and preserve.
Cultural changes and concerns about hygiene have led us to remove this powerful natural occurring aphrodisiac, one of the most powerful forces in nature.
Using my own experience, I asked a select group of men, if the they purposely avoided washing their hand following an evening of intense foreplay.
ALL admitted they had purposely refrained from washing their hand, and enjoyed the aroma for hours.
Eight Reasons Why Capitalists Want to Sell You Deodorant
1. Body smells are erotic and sexual. Capitalists don't like that because they are impotent and opposed to all manifestations of sensuality and sexuality. Sexually awakened people are potentially dangerous to capitalists and their rigid, asexual system.
2. Body smells remind us that we are animals. Capitalists don't want us to be reminded of that. Animals are dirty. They eat things off the ground, not out of plastic wrappers. They are openly sexual. They don't wear suits or ties, and they don't get their hair done. They don't show up to work on time.
3. Body smells are unique. Everyone has her own body smell. Capitalists don't like individuality. There are millions of body smells but only a few deodorant smells. Capitalists like that.
4. Some deodorants are harmful. Capitalists like that because they are always looking for new illnesses to cure. Capitalists love to invent new medicines. Medicines make money for them and win them prizes; they also cause new illnesses so capitalists can invent even more new medicines.
5. Deodorants cost you money. Capitalists are especially pleased about that.
6. Deodorants hide the damage that capitalist products cause your body. Eating meat and other chemical-filled foods sold by capitalists makes you smell bad. Wearing pantyhose makes you smell bad. Capitalists don't want you to stop wearing pantyhose or eating meat.
7. Deodorant-users are insecure. Capitalists like insecure people. Insecure people don't start trouble. Insecure people also buy room fresheners, hair conditioners, makeup, and magazines with articles about dieting.
8. Deodorants are unnecessary. Capitalists are very proud of that and they win marketing awards for it.
Cleanliness & Capitalism
Where do our ideas and values about so-called "cleanliness" come from, anyway? Western civilization has a long history of associating cleanliness with goodness and merit, best summed up by the old expression "cleanliness is next to Godliness."
In ancient Greek plays, evil people and spirits"”the Furies, for example"”were often described as filthy. The Furies were dirty, aged, and female, exactly the opposite of how the playwright who described them saw himself; their filthiness, among other things, identified them as an outgroup"”as alien, animal, inhuman.
Over time, cleanliness became a measure with which the "haves" separated themselves from the "have-nots."
Those who possessed the wealth and power required to have the leisure to remain indoors, inactive, scorned the peasants and travelers whose lifestyles involved getting their hands and bodies dirty.
Throughout our history, we can see that cleanliness has been used as a standard of worth by those with power to ascribe social status.
Thus, the "Godly," the self-proclaimed holy ones who stood above the rest of us in hierarchical society, proclaimed that their cleanliness, bought with the labor of the others who were forced to work for them, was a measure of their "Godliness" and superiority.
To this day, we accept this traditional belief: that being "clean" according to social norms is desirable in itself.
It should be clear from the history of our ideas about "cleanliness" that anyone who is critical of mainstream values, any radical or punk rocker, should be extremely suspicious of the great value placed on being "clean" according to traditional standards. Besides, what exactly does "clean" mean?
These days, cleanliness is defined more by corporations selling "sanitation products" than by anyone else. This is important to keep in mind.
Certainly, most of these products have an uncanny ability to cut through natural dirt and grime but does removing natural dirt and grime with synthetic chemicals necessarily constitute the only acceptable form of sanitation?
I'm at least as frightened by these manufactured, artificial products as I am of a little dust, mud, or sweat, or (god forbid!) a stain from food or blood on my shirt. At least I know where the dirt/"filth" came from and what it's made of!
The idea that it is worthwhile to use chemicals (whether they be deodorant, detergent, or shampoo) to eradicate organic dirt has some frightening implications, too.
First, it supports the old Christian superstition that the biological body is shameful and should be hidden"”that our bodies and our existence in the physical world as animals are intrinsically disgusting and sinful.
This groundless idea has been used to keep us insecure and ashamed, and thus at the mercy of the priests and other authorities who tell us how to become "pure": once, by submitting to their holy denial of the self, and now, by spending plenty of our money on the various "sanitation" products they want to sell us.
Capitalism has transformed the world from the organic (forests, swamps, deserts, rivers) to the inorganic:
Cities of concrete and steel, suburbs of asphalt and astroturf, wastelands that have been stripped of all natural resources and turned into garbage dumps.
The idea that there is something more worthwhile about synthetic chemicals than natural dirt implies that this transformation might actually be a good thing... and thus implicitly justifies their profit-motivated destruction of our planet,
In reality, these corporations are far less concerned with our actual health and cleanliness than they are with selling us their products.
They use the high value we traditionally have placed on sanitation to sell us all sorts of products in the name of cleanliness... and who knows what the real, long-term health effects of these products are?
They certainly don't care. If we were to become ill in the long run from using their special cleansers and hi-tech shampoos, they could just sell us another product"”medicine"”and keep the wheels of the capitalist economy turning.
They capitalize on and encourage the shame we feel about our bodies, as producers of sweat and other natural fluids which we deem "dirty."
This aids them in selling us other products which depend upon our insecurity:
Diet products, exercise products, fashionable clothes, etc. When we accept their definition of "cleanliness" we are accepting their economic domination of our lives.
Once, before we covered up our natural scents with chemicals, we each had a unique smell. These scents attracted us to each other and bound us emotionally to each other through memory and association.
Now, if you have positive associations with the scent of the man you love, it is probably his cologne (identical to the cologne of thousands of other men) that you enjoy, not his own personal scent.
And the natural pheromones with which we once communicated with each other, which played an important role in our sexuality, are now completely smothered by standardized chemical products.
We no longer know what it is like to be pure, natural human beings, to smell like real human beings. Who knows how much we may have lost because of this?
The uptight, repressed bourgeoisie find me disgusting for enjoying the scent and taste of my lover when she hasn't showered or rubbed synthetics all over herself, when she smells like a real human being.
These frigid people are probably the same ones who shudder at the idea of digging a vegetable out of the ground and eating it.
They prefer eating the plastic-wrapped, man-made fast food that we have all been brought up on.
We have become so accustomed to our domesticated, engineered existence that we no longer know what we might even be missing.
Rebel. Resist the repression. Get Dirty!
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