I have a question for the partnered gay and lesbian couples out there. I know you get the question, Which one of you is the “man”, and which is the “woman”
from ignoramuses who are unable to think beyond their narrow sexual biases, but I’m wondering about a subtler, messier question.
Do you ever get asked, Which one is the mysterious one with incomprehensible desires?
I’m curious because the BBC aired one of those science of sex shows titled, The MYSTERY of the Female Orgasm, which seems to be the standard question. Woman is mysterious…must seek out a pick-up artist to explain the cheat code (it’s up-up-left-down-down-right).
I also wonder if there are any women of any sexual orientation who think their arousal is “mysterious”. They have no idea what turns them on, what they find sexy, what feels good, they just submit to the random fumblings of their partner in the hopes that they’ll hit on the magic combination of moves.
So I read the BBC article, and for some reason I pictured all these male British boffins, all wild-haired and spectacled, staring at a line of pudenda and pondering which machine they should wheel in to probe this baffling mystery. “Good heavens, Miss Sakamoto!” says Magnus Pyke.
Here’s a suggestion: ask a woman. Ask a lot of women. You’ll find that most of them aren’t at all baffled by their own sexuality. Unfortunately, you do run the risk of experiencing sad, condescending head-shaking from the woman who tries to answer your clueless question.
Maybe you could all just read this dissection of the BBC story quietly and alone, instead. That way no one else needs to know about your confusion.
I swear, I think the whole problem lies with people who don’t have any interest in having a conversation with their partners.
Wrong; everybody knows the cheat code is “up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A-select-start.”
Does it involve a clockwise swirl?
Or, you could try this one weird trick that baffles doctors and bankers hate her for making thirty thousand dollars a month from her home in her spare time.
Get out of here with your new-school heresies!
Also, they may troll you, because honestly few people could resist the opportunity. Therefore you may want to double-check any answers involving solstices, phases of the moon, ancient prophecies, plants with mysterious-sounding names, secret societies, or animal sacrifice. This is not an exhaustive list. To further complicate matters, the phases of the moon can in fact have an obvious and dramatic impact on the arousal and, indeed, overall physiology of so-called “wolfgirls.”
The reason so many men are confused by the question “what do women want” is because they insist on believing it has an answer. Then when they encounter women who want different things, they think they’re getting ~mixed signals~ and not just… Talking about subjective desires with different people.
Sam Kinison revealed the answer years ago: “Lick the alphabet”.
I’m picturing the birth scene from Monthy Python’s The Meaning of Life (The machine that goes ‘ping!’):
– “Leave it all to us, you’ll never know what hit you!”
– “What do I do?”
– “Nothing, dear–you’re not qualified!”
That is why I am saving up for a Sybian Machine, if I don’t fabricate one myself. I have had a lot of sex with different people and my ideal type of partner is one that actually likes to experience their partner experience pleasure. That has been the needle in haystack for me. I also would like to add cunnilingus is one of many tools in the tool box and can be a damn nuisance if a person assumes that is what all persons with vagina want. I also don’t understand the mystery when their is a lot of information on human sexuality these days, some even have pictures and such.
I have to say, based on my experiences, that women do tend to exhibit more complex and nuanced approaches to life situations, I understand that some men might find this “mysterious”. I don’t think that the cause of this alleged “difference” in strategies that men and women employ is necessarily “mysterious” either, nor is there any need to rely on dime-store evo-psych explanations.
Traditionally women do the most amount of work and take on an inordinate amount responsibility in the care and feeding of those that rely on them. In addition to this they must do so in an environment in which they are physically, politically and economically at a disadvantage to men. There are many that do this while running businesses, holding down a full-time jobs, and seeking their interests as well.
The only mystery is how so many of them manage to do it so well.
Lots of shame and social conditioning means that a lot of women don’t explore what turns them on. Check out some Savage Love archives for some examples.
This is another way feminism benefits men: in a world where a woman has the freedom to figure out what she wants, she can tell help her partner make her happy.
Nentuaby, that’s basically what I’ve been saying for years. The question “what do women want?” is about as misguided as “what do white people want?”. It’s a stupid question, because there’s this thing called personality, and it varies from person to person! That’s all you need to know!
“Pick up artists”… are they still around? I mean, they’ve been thoroughly mocked “into oblivion”, but then I remember that that’s just in the corners of the internet I frequent. Just like with people who still don’t believe in evolution, a complete lack of exposure in other sections probably allows it to thrive. Some people don’t know that they don’t know, and all that.
I’m not surprised that it’s a mystery to a lot of men.
From what I can see, men[*] go to a lot of trouble to not understand women. They make up the most elaborate rationalizations as to why a simple statement by a woman means something totally different from what it says. They sit around in all-male spaces and brainstorm disparaging shit to say and think about women, and recite stuff like “women. who can understand them?” over and over again, like they’re trying to brainwash themselves into believing it. I sometimes get the idea that they’re afraid that if they ever understood a woman’s point of view, their penis (and/or pecs) would fall off. I’ve never understood why they then want to marry those baffling alien creatures. Wouldn’t it make a heck of a lot more sense to marry somebody you understood and understood you? That is, one of your fellow dudebros?
I’m AMAB, but I have never been able to figure out why they go to all that trouble. (Actually, there’s very little “male” stuff that makes any sense to me.) I used to try to understand other men — I mean, I’m AMAB, they’re AMAB, doesn’t that mean we should have something in common?
I used to go to men’s groups (but could never make myself go to one of those “men’s weekends”) in the hopes of finding some common ground (is that what they call “male bonding”?), but there was always this weird stuff about men and women that everyone was supposed to think was obvious. It was almost like some cult religion; not Scientology, but equally weird.
tl;dr: Men: who can understand them?
[*] Insert #NotAllMen as appropriate.
Although it doesn’t appear to be what this article is about, the evolution of the female orgasm does seem to be somewhat mysterious to some scientist. There’s been some 21 theories on the subject. There’s a book, that I’ve seen recommended before, that critically examines all these theories:
http://www.amazon.com/Case-Female-Orgasm-Science-Evolution/dp/0674022467/ref=sr_1_16?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1438969281&sr=1-16&keywords=Female+orgasm
I love being mysterious, at least twice a day
Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk-@14,
Me too! Oh noes, does that mean I’m not a manly man anymore?
And now all of you know why I’ve ordered a sextant…
As a (cis)man who has been married to a woman, and currently married to a man I can only say that “woman” is certainly not more of a mystery than “man”. I don’t want to imply I’m some kind of an expert, but simply that finding out what pleases my partner and what pleases myself is just as much of a challenge whether that partner is a woman or a man.
as much of a challenge, or as easy – depending on the mood, I guess
“I also wonder if there are any women of any sexual orientation who think their arousal is “mysterious”. They have no idea what turns them on, what they find sexy, what feels good, they just submit to the random fumblings of their partner in the hopes that they’ll hit on the magic combination of moves.”
Yes, quite a lot, and men, too, might I add. It’s surprising how stunted people can turn out if they’re told that thinking about sex–let alone masturbating!–can get them thrown into hell.
“ask a woman”
That’s not how science is done. Why on earth would you ask a woman, when there are loads of males around to tell her what she really feels? I mean, we have already determined that they are mysterious, so asking them is obviously pointless as they are untrustworthy and unable to know their own minds.
I don’t know that that’s true. Male behaviors are typically treated as the “right” or “standard” behavior, and you’re a weird deviant if you don’t follow the man pattern.
Look at porn, for instance (no, not literally, it’s all the same so if you’ve already seen one you’ve seen ’em all). This is how men are trained to get off. If we had more porn catering to women’s interests, it would probably be just as repetitive as what we get now, but it would be different…and if men then tried to do things that we see in porn now, everyone with an expectation of a different kind of performance would be all, “Eww. Weird. I don’t understand why you would want to do that.”
PZ
The majority of porn is targeted to cis-het men , is sex negative, and the women are generally depicted as orifices. I am dismayed that there are people who think it depicts anything resembling awesome consensual sex, much less finding it instructional. There is sex-positive, feminist porn in which both partners are active agents, and both partners pleasure is important. It is very different in that healthy sex is so rarely depicted in western culture, Even women friends who immediately turned up their noses at the mere thought of watching porn with their partner enjoyed it, judging by the non-return and loss rate of any that I let them borrow. I think a sex positive porn series that actually taught various sexual skills could be a great sex educational tool. Orgasms 101.
On second thought, orgasms might not be a 101 level subject. There is a sizable contingent of people who need some basic anatomy lessons before they can learn what that anatomy can do.
This reminded me of one of the last FaceBook posts of a homosexual pal of mine who died much too early. He had his answer to this: “We’re both the man. That’s the whole point of being gay.”
I have a ‘collection’ of quotes, usually scribbled on scraps of paper…
this one I attributed to Ellen DeGeneres:
The Internets agrees with me.
the thing that really annoys me and at the same time dumbfounds is how modern western man thinks this is new and no one else ever thought of this.
The Chinese practices the Tao of Sex to prolong life and in India they practices a kind of Yoga utilizing sex to achieve “god consciousness”
so maybe they understood sex a little.
I am pretty sure the romans and the greeks understood how sex works in “all sexes”
come on get a grip think just a little there is more to the world the repressed christian west.
uncle frogy
“Do you ever get asked …..”
I have lived for 8 years with my gay father and his partner. The answer is no.
The fact that there are men out there who reached 20* without figuring out this particular “mystery” is saddening.
*This may be UKcentric; age of consent is 16 over here. Substitute in whichever time frame you think appropriate for a reasonable human being to overcome their ignorance and nervous adolescent fumbling.