What is Female Desire?

[ellenkushner]

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.

* * *

Also, thanks to all who responded to the previous post on LitMags - I'm really enjoying the comments, and learning a lot!

Comments

[kortirion.livejournal.com]

Thanks for that link - I found it very interesting... even if only because it brings to a wider [reading] audience the fact that women in general DO have many sexual fantasies and points of arousal that have nothing to do with the proximity of a partner, male or otherwise. A still prevalent cultural assumption [in both West and East] seems to be that 'boys have sexual fantasies', while girls have 'romantic crushes' ...involving white dresses and happy ever after!

We are all sexual beings - 'get over it'... as they say.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Thanks! That's what I hoped. I'm amazed that people are commenting so fiercely on my stupid little out-of-context headlines, meant just to whet people's appetite to read the whole thing if my link wasn't enough . . . . Live and learn.