Better Living Through Psychology

Yes Virginia, women really do have different sexual arousal characteristics to men.
I found this article which explains what the differences are. Chivers and Bailey found that when women viewed films of animals having sex they reported no subjective feelings of sexual arousal. Nothing surprising there you say.

But the researchers had them hooked up to recording equipment that measures standard physiological components of sexual arousal. And the women, but not the men in the study who saw the same films, became sexually aroused. …or at least, their bodies did.

What does it mean?
No definitive answer to that yet. It’s easy to draw from this study some dangerous assumptions either way. Like, “Women really want it, even when they say no.” or “Gee, men really are single-minded when it comes to sex”.

Chivers and Bailey speculate that this may have evolved as a protective mechanism – preventing injury in case of sexual intercourse that women didn’t want (i.e. weren’t subjectively feeling aroused for).

My interpretation is that women’s slower sexual arousal might have required a broader set of arousal stimuli. That would provide more frequent opportunities for intercourse, even when they weren’t completely, you know, in the mood. That gives her the opportunity to get pregnant to somebody who maybe isn’t her ideal, but with whom it’s a good idea at the time. On the other hand, with the narrower set of stimuli to which men respond, they are – you guessed it – simpler.

How can I use it?
Let me first speak over your heads, dear readers, to all the rapists and wannabebuthaventgotthecharmstylemoneyorbrains sexual bullies out there. “She was physically aroused” definitely won’t cut it as an excuse for ‘misunderstandings’ if it ever did. Women apparently get physiologically ‘ready’ for sex sometimes when it’s the last thing on their minds. Like in this study when they were watching monkeys have sex.

The good news for the rest of you guys is that you can stop worrying about the early phase of physical arousal – women’s bodies do that quite okay thank you – and concentrate on the two phases that women have been asking for more attention on anyway: romance (foreplay by other means) and mind-blowing orgasms!