This is a follow-up to the post from last week about recent research comparing men's and women's sexual behaviour. It's a brief review of a new book, What Do Women Want, by Daniel Bergner. The book has received piles of press attention. From The Atlantic:
How Strong Is the Female Sex Drive After All?
Women may be more sexually omnivorous than men, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're as hungry.
Daniel Bergner, a journalist and contributing editor to the New York Times Magazine, knows what women want--and it's not monogamy. His new book, which chronicles his "adventures in the science of female desire," has made quite a splash for apparently exploding the myth that female sexual desire is any less ravenous than male sexual desire. The book, What Do Women Want, is based on a 2009 article, which received a lot of buzz for detailing, among other things, that women get turned on when they watch monkeys having sex and gay men having sex, a pattern of arousal not seen in otherwise lusty heterosexual men.
That women can be turned on by such a variety of sexual scenes indicates, Bergner argues, how truly libidinous they are. This apparently puts the lie to our socially manufactured assumption that women are inherently more sexually restrained than men--and therefore better suited to monogamy.
But does it really?
Detailing the results of a study about sexual arousal, Bergner says: "No matter what their self-proclaimed sexual orientation, [women] 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."
Read the rest here.