A hard man is good to find.

Perhaps your understanding of the word 'narcissism' is more like solipsism, generally considered bad.

Narcissism isn't a bad thing. Isn't it OK to love yourself?

I don't quite know where to begin. Perhaps it may be as simple as the fact that women - not as conditioned as men to respond in disgust to certain sexual situations - feel freer to be aroused by a wider variety. I think it's highly possible that some of the women lied in an effort not to be construed as a freak, but I completely understand being turned on by all those images.

I am especially surprised, however, at the female researcher that said she might have to conclude women want to sleep with bonobos... I can't believe she didn't even consider the idea of imagination. I may walk past a horse with an enormous package, and I may feel a flush. Why? Because I want to sleep with a horse? No, because my imagination goes to a the idea of a man with ample endowment. I may be watching Queer as Folk and tingle a bit when one insanely hot guy flashes another in a sauna. Why? Because I want a threesome with two gay men? No. Because the idea of such a surreptitious sexual invitation seems wickedly inviting.

But here’s the weird one, and I’d love to see some more commentary on it. If I see a playboy centerfold, I might feel something. Is it because I want to get it on with a woman? No (well maybe…). But this is where my feminism gets all kloogey… I think that’s because we are all trained by our culture to objectify women and find them sexually arousing. Women can’t escape the imagery any more than men can. We are not so different from men that the constant bombardment of “sex = scantily clad woman” narrative escapes our subconscious. So with this one, the origins confuse me more. But I could also be over-thinking it.

Have I said too much? :) Um, probably...

is always a difficult and thorny issue--a lot goes on between the sheer statistical results and 'explanations', simply because (unlike the physical objects that 'hard' science studies) the cause-and-effect chains are way too long and poorly understood. Hell, there is still so much to be understood in the chain between genes and their actual expressions--between genotype and phenotype, or the actual expression of genes during embryological development (how is it that a gene that ultimately simply codes a certain kind of proteine can ultimately lead to Down's syndrome, or to a certain hair color). Imagining that we can draw immediate conclusions between such research results and 'the nature of male or female desire' makes me remember good old phrenology, which thought we could make deductions about a person's propensity to become a criminal from the aspect and distributino of their cranial lumps.

Sure, bring in the research, and please do make speculations. But, for the time being, and while so much in the causal chain between 'the nature of desire' and the research results remains in the dark--let's not forget that speculations are, well, speculative.

Bearing in mind the caveat from my preceding post (yes, I'm engaging in speculation...)--don't men also get aroused by being able to generate arousal in their female partners? Personally speaking, one of the most arousing sights I can think of are the lustful eyes of a woman looking at me.

I enjoyed this article. Much to think about. I agree with the previous poster--narcissism isn't all bad. If you don't at some level feel desire for yourself, who else is going to? I am personally convinced NPD is a serious problem for some, but I don't see how it does any good to deny we're all touched.

When you say "Neither the action of looking for gay porn nor the fantasy of two men having sex seem receptive" are you using "receptive" as a synonym for "passive?" I wonder (theoretically!) if women aren't freer, due to less explicitly repressive social structures, etc., to imagine being the receiver in those situations (mentally substituting ourselves for one of the men in the gay porn/fantasy--either the one who is penetrating or who is being penetrated). Receptive need not be considered passive, I'm thinking.

Anyway...I smile thinking how fun to try...and how wonderfully impossible it still is to scientfically categorize female sexuality.

Freud? What about Chaucer??

Signed,

English Teacher about to teach The Wife of Bath's Tale next week.

Instead of this half-assed interpretation. And the quarter-assed responses which are posters reacting to the original article through a half-assed interpretation.

Why isn't it simply that she's delighting in female sexual power?

....unless you are talking about S&M, I think that that's political, not sexual.

Guys know what I'm talking about. You GOT to make her feel unique and special. Of course I think that kinda would work on anyone.

Of course this also explains why jumping up and down on the bed screaming and throwing feces gets my girl hot too.

From the actual article we learn that women's desire is more relational than men's — unless it's less. We hear that women either desire more fluidly, or they don't; that sex for women is either more about making themselves a visible object of desire, or more about making the other person a visible object of desire.

At least we know one or the other must be true!

Seriously, it's hard to get too worked up about an article like this. There are some interesting biomechanical discoveries, as Tracy Clark-Flory summarizes, but as for the conclusions, none of the scientists have a handle on what they're looking at and they know it (and seem to quite cheerfully admit it).

I usually see Broadsheet as a place where all the lies of feminism are repeated over and over.

Not this time. This article is accurate, full of information, intelligent and with a bit of irony. Who could have thought that feminist women could deal with a sensitive topic with humor and objectivity? Kudos Tracy for a good job.

I agree with the conclusion. More research is needed. The data raises more questions than answers. The supposed "narcissism" is only one of many interpretations. We need more studies.