What is Female Desire?
Jan. 28th, 2009 06:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Trust me, you don't want to miss this article from the NYTimes Magazine on scientific research on women's desire. Headline quotes: No matter what their self-proclaimed sexual orientation, women in the study, unlike men, showed strong and swift genital arousal when the screen offered men with men, women with women and women with men. . . .[ADD:] for women on average, desire often emerges so compellingly from emotional closeness that innate orientations can be overridden. " 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. . . . . In comparison with men, women’s erotic fantasies center less on giving pleasure and more on getting it.
I'm not saying they're accurate, but it gives you an idea of the range of the piece. Read it for details.
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Also, thanks to all who responded to the previous post on LitMags - I'm really enjoying the comments, and learning a lot!
I'm not saying they're accurate, but it gives you an idea of the range of the piece. Read it for details.
* * *
Also, thanks to all who responded to the previous post on LitMags - I'm really enjoying the comments, and learning a lot!
no subject
Date: 2009-01-28 11:17 pm (UTC)Guess they've never met a stone butch.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-28 11:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-29 12:40 pm (UTC)The stories and categories we make for gender, sexuality, desire are very powerful. People edit their life experience to fit into one of the axiomatic stories, even if the story is "alternative." If you are not one of the standard "types" you and your experience do not exist. Do you remember when the gay community did not believe bisexuality really existed? those suckers were "confused" about their "true" identity. Remember the age of political correctness when a lesbian could not REALLY be butch or femme? it was a sign of internalized hetero oppression that needed correction. You must have men friends who fondly remember the older gay man that mentored them in the scene when they were young but would not talk about it openly because our modern frames are all about "abuse" and "recruiting" and those NAMBLA weirdos. We tend to have a fixed set of lenses to look through, and they color the picture and define the universe of the possible -- what is not "possible" is thrust into the shadows. Not possible but yet... it exists.
What if we wrote: Bottoms' 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.
hmm.... is there some... conflation going on here? Desire is made of so many axes. Woman/man/gay/straight/top/bottom are really such crude approximations of what is an infinite number of compass points, some as fine as a nano-hair... Life is more complex than "Nomads of Gor."
No need to get into the assumptions behind mapping between women's lubrication and desire -- others have mentioned this. Sometimes rape victims experience lubrication, but it does not mean that they "wanted it" or enjoyed it, or worse, that all women really want it.(You can see the competing frames here -- we are only comfortable with absolutes, pick only one).
And we won't even touch the third rail about power, sexuality, and desire and how they intertwine...
Have you noticed that I hate essentialism?
also, clearly, my thoughts not improved in clarity for having sat overnight... :)
no subject
Date: 2009-01-29 03:41 pm (UTC)Maybe the lines I picked to illustrate what the article's about were lousy choices. But it's sure produced interesting comments!
no subject
Date: 2009-01-28 11:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-28 11:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-29 12:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-29 03:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-28 11:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-28 11:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-29 02:34 am (UTC)EDIT: I should also note that in the study described, the machinery said one thing and the women said another thing. Why are we assuming the machinery is right and the women are wrong?
no subject
Date: 2009-01-29 03:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-29 04:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-29 03:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-28 11:25 pm (UTC)At best, I'd buy that their fantasies center on receiving admiration for the supposed giving of pleasure ("Oh, you're so big!"), a far cry (ahem) from actually giving pleasure.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-28 11:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-28 11:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-29 12:06 am (UTC)And having found the quotation in context in the article, I now see that it's not claiming that men's fantasies center on giving pleasure, but rather that women's fantasies are more about getting than giving pleasure, the identification with the receiver of pleasure. I can buy that.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-29 03:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-29 04:52 am (UTC)Most guys I know (and run from) really care about getting pleasure and having the biggest genitals. They could give a hang about pleasuring someone else.
rojo
no subject
Date: 2009-01-28 11:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-29 12:40 am (UTC)Yes
Date: 2009-01-29 01:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-28 11:35 pm (UTC)What Do These Enigmatic Women Want? (http://neuroanthropology.net/2009/01/24/what-do-these-enigmati-women-want/)
I wonder about the genital arousal part of the study. Couldn't something that measures genital arousal in women, by its very nature, cause arousal in women?
no subject
Date: 2009-01-28 11:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-28 11:47 pm (UTC)Great discussion in the link, thanks
Date: 2009-01-28 11:52 pm (UTC)(I wince at my prose, but I'm fairly sure about the rhododendrons.)
no subject
Date: 2009-01-28 11:39 pm (UTC)However, the main takeaway point for me was that the author of the piece had the hots for the lead researcher he spent so much time on, to the exclusion of the others.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-28 11:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-28 11:54 pm (UTC)I don't mean it in a cruel way, and he was trying to hide it, but... Well. He ends the article by watching over her shoulder as she cleans up genital data.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-28 11:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-28 11:47 pm (UTC)I also have a problem with what someone up-thread mentioned - male erections and female lubrication don't correspond all that well.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-29 12:14 am (UTC)Do still have problems with the second point, though.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-29 03:51 am (UTC)Bonobos don't make for sexy audio apparently.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-29 04:26 am (UTC)I wonder what quality and style of (human) porn she got. It certainly varies quite a bit.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-29 01:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-29 03:09 pm (UTC)We are all sexual beings - 'get over it'... as they say.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-29 03:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-05 12:56 am (UTC)This explains so much about Bryn Mawr.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-05 04:14 am (UTC)That's a good quote. I shoulda put it up top. I think I will.