Posted: Mar 19, 2011 2:59 pm
Mr.Samsa wrote: My explanations still hold; the awkwardness of the situation and the habituation (the level of exposure males have to pornographic images) could result in a sex difference that is independent of any biological difference.
But neither men nor women had been exposed to bonobo sex before and the straight women will have been exposed to lesbian sex more than straight men to gay sex so habituation is not the issue here. And the awkardness of the situation is the same for both sexes.
Mr.Samsa wrote:sprite wrote:
There was that novel Clarissa from 1767 where the main character Lovelace drugs and rapes her. I saw something about this the other week and can't remember where just now, but it was basically that female readers of the book 'fell in love' with and wanted Lovelace themselves.
That would be interesting.
I've worked my memory to find that it was in Sebastian Faulks' recent series on fiction on the BBC. No longer available to view but foundthis
Faulks begins in the eighteenth century with Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa and the rakish Lovelace. His sole purpose in life is to seduce as many women as possible and endlessly pursues the novels heroine Clarissa. He is determined to have Clarissa at any cost and his unerring self-belief makes him the terrifying epitome of male aristocratic sexuality. Despite raping Clarissa, Lovelace remains resolute in his self-belief and remarkably female readers of the time were obsessed and seduced by his character.
Mr.Samsa wrote:I'm not sure what point the "secrecy" of them is? Cultural fads are caused by common environmental factors, whether everyone engaging in them are aware of the popularity of the thing is irrelevant.
I would agree that what goes on in the head re. specific sexual fantasies have got there from images from the environment.
I did say earlier that women's 'rape' fantasies may be due to the environmental portrayal of sex being mainly created by men so women take their images from the expression of male sexual 'wants'.
This is a problem we have re 'what do women want' when women have, and have had, such a minor public presence. Women are reactive to expressions by men rather than being initiators of what occurs in public.
And that's why some of us look to wider nature for some clues of what women might themselves be - Hrdy's'The Woman That Never Evolved' for example.
No doubt you would argue that this is irrelevant to the here and now but personally I'm sick of hearing about the great mystery that is the human female. I absolutely believe that as well as looking at the male-created world we live in and and in which women react, that the evolutionary biology of sex and the sexes provides some essential basics. If we do not understand those basics then we simply continue to flounder around and women continue to be susceptible to sexual manipulation.
Mr.Samsa wrote:I'm not sure what you mean by "male bias in the representation of female nature"?
Perhaps my previous point gives you a clue?
Or to take Darwin as an example - the coy (rather than discriminating) female etc. But then Darwin also came up with 'female choice' as one side of sexual selection. It took one hundred years for this to actually even start to be accepted.
And then suddenly with feminism and 'sexual liberation' and 'sexual freedom' female animals are 'discovered' to be mating with far more males than they 'ought' according to the science.
Then we get thrown over to the polar opposite - women are actually at least as promiscuous as men. It all fits with the current thinking about the sexes being the same and that monogamy is unnatural and enforced by religion etc etc. Men can get loads more sex with loads more women, sexual rejection by females of males isn't 'natural', rape isn't real, women love to be in sex work, men don't 'naturally' want to stay around with one woman and raise kids together. Women don't want this either.
But hold on. Evolutionary biology and what happens in other species never showed evidence for this.
One version gives us the 'madonna' and the other version the 'whore' ie the two unreal female natures that men want depending on whether they want a wife or casual sex.
I believe there are some basics about sex which need to be understood.
And I believe that knowing as much as possible about the evolution of sex and the sexes is the best protection against manipulative use of cherry-picked or even false evidence.