A young woman complained about the male attention she got every time she left the hostel on 42nd Street in Manhattan, dressed in her high heels and low cleavage. Yes, well... It is relatively easy for a woman to attract a man's attention by enhancing her looks.
It is more difficult for her to cash in on the advantage by enjoying orgasm with a partner. Women do not experience the spontaneous arousal that men do and so women do not have the same need for orgasm. A woman is rarely seeking sex in the sense that a man does.
All this is very confusing for men. They see a woman who has apparently gone to great deal of effort to attract their attention. Naturally a man assumes that she must be interested in sex. Looking at this issue from the other side, since men never put on make-up or dress provocatively we might conclude they are not interested in sex.
Of course this does not follow. The sexes have different but complementary roles. The woman's role is to attract a man's attention. The man's role is to take the initiative in making an advance towards a woman he finds attractive. So women's bodies are a sexual commodity in a way that men's rarely are.
Men want control in sexual situations because ultimately it is their sexual performance that is key to any sexual relationship and, of course, to reproduction. So men have the initial choice of selecting a woman they find attractive but women have the choice to accept or decline their offer. These behaviours are fundamental to our dating and mating rituals.
Rich men tend to marry women who are attractive rather those who succeed alongside men in the academic or commercial world. So, in our heterosexual society, even women tend to judge other women by their looks rather than their achievements.
Women have lower sexual desire
One year at college I lived with six other female students. Two of them were always entertaining young men in their rooms. The rest of us assumed that they must have been having sex with at least some of the stream of men who came through our flat. My conclusion was not that they achieved sexual satisfaction with these men but that they enjoyed being so popular.
Most women need a stable relationship in which there is a high degree of trust and good communication in order to experience good sex. One-night stands can only be fuelling a woman's ego and satisfying her vanity. Ironically, young women often lack confidence and being promiscuous is an easy way to be popular, with men at least.
Women's difficulties with sexual arousal and orgasm are often blamed on low libido but women naturally have a lower sex drive than men as evidenced by:
So, for example, when I have offered my partners oral sex (fellatio) they almost swoon with pleasure and yet I rarely find oral sex (cunnilingus) arousing enough for orgasm. Even women who orgasm from cunnilingus need the circumstances to be just right and I suspect that few women would be willing to pay for the pleasure as men do.
The oldest profession (prostitution) says it all: a relatively few women provide sex for many more men. Of course the women are shamed for making money out of men's need. Yet men often compensate women financially for sex - not an indication of equal pleasure. Even in our supposedly liberated times over 90% of the Internet provides some form of sex for men.
Inevitably there must be some women who are sexually insatiable and some men who are unmoved by sex but these individuals do not represent the 'norm'. Most women never talk about lost sexual opportunities. They talk about commitment and trust. This enormous gap between the sexes means that most women remain terribly naïve about men's sex drive.
Jane Thomas: Author http://www.WaysWomenOrgasm.org and http://www.Nosper.com
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I must shake my head in wonder as to what women you have spent time with. (or possibley they are VERY, very, young women who have not yet discovered their own sexuallity.) An older woman, say from 30 to 55 are actually easily arroused. A well built man on a beach can absolutely stimulate a woman without knowing him. a womans sexual peak is thirty and beyond. They are quite willing to "act like a whore" in the bedroom and enjoy it, and as well they should, to the fullest. Isn't it a little egotistical of you to think a beautiful woman is dressing and making up to look beautiful for men? Isn't it possible it makes HER FEEL beautiful and confident in herself. From a womans view, your artical is quite naive.
I am always happy to hear that some women experience spontaneous arousal during sex with a partner. Unfortunately, this is not true for all women. Remember that if we are to encourage women to be more open about sex it is important that we respect other people’s experiences.
In over 10 years of talking to women about sex I have found very few who are willing to be explicit. I am specifically offering reassurance to women who are familiar with orgasm from masturbation and who would like to experience something similar with a partner. If you are able to help by providing specific details that you think might help other women, then please e-mail me: jane@WaysWomenOrgasm.org.
I hope that you will appreciate that it is vital that you can do so without insinuating that any woman who does not orgasm automatically during sex with a partner must be sexually inadequate. Please see www.WaysWomenOrgasm.org for further details about how to do this.
In case you doubt how common it is for women to have difficulty with orgasm during sex then just take a look at the thousands of articles on the web offering advice on this very topic! Of course, these articles always promise ‘easy orgasm’ just so couples don't give up trying! There are very few similar articles promising men easy orgasm so I guess they just have to try harder...
Kind regards, Jane