Discussion – What Do Women Want? Corsetting Female Sexuality

The NYT recently ran an article regarding some recent research in women’s sexuality, covering the work of some of the most well-known and prominent female researchers currently in the field.

What saddens me is that the whole article revolves around the used-up cliche: “Men are simple, women complex.”

It’s an intriguing and in-depth article and certainly one to look over if you have five to ten minutes and the patience to wade through descriptions of monkey sex, but I found certain sections to be very telling:

On the stage of the casino’s theater, a pair of dark-haired, bare-breasted women in G-strings dove backward into a giant glass bowl and swam underwater, arching their spines as they slid up the walls. Soon a lithe blonde took over the stage wearing a pleated and extremely short schoolgirl’s skirt. She spun numerous Hula-Hoops around her minimal waist and was hoisted by a cable high above the audience, where she spread her legs wider than seemed humanly possible. The crowd consisted of men and women about equally, yet women far outnumbered men onstage, and when at last the show’s platinum-wigged M.C. cried out, “Where’s the beef?” the six-packed, long-haired man who climbed up through a trapdoor and started to strip was surrounded by 8 or 10 already almost-bare women.

A compact 51-year-old woman in a shirtdress, Meana explained the gender imbalance onstage in a way that complemented Chivers’s thinking. “The female body,” she said, “looks the same whether aroused or not. The male, without an erection, is announcing a lack of arousal. The female body always holds the promise, the suggestion of sex” — a suggestion that sends a charge through both men and women. And there was another way, Meana argued, by which the Cirque du Soleil’s offering of more female than male acrobats helped to rivet both genders in the crowd. She, even more than Chivers, emphasized the role of being desired — and of narcissism — in women’s desiring.

Article + my personal beliefs = head + desk

I can understand the underlying principle here, but I can’t necessarily agree with it.

Read the article and shout out. What do you think?

Tags: debate, discussion, sex