A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the World's Largest Experiment Reveals about Human Desire (42 page)

BOOK: A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the World's Largest Experiment Reveals about Human Desire
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69
“all this conflicting stuff flying around my brain and body”
http://letters.mobile.salon.com/mwtbroadsheet/2006/11/27/porn/view/index13.html
, retrieved on August 30, 2010.
69
“being aroused by something that
disgusts
you”
http://letters.mobile.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2006/11/27/porn/view/index11.html
, retrieved on August 30, 2010.
69
Chivers reviewed 132 different laboratory studies
Chivers et al. (2010).
69–70
vaginal lubrication is a poor predictor of what she is actually feeling
Meana (2010): “The best predictors of sexual distress were general emotional well-being and emotional well-being with partner during sex. Arousal, lubrication, and orgasm were poor predictors of sexual distress.”
70
women report lubrication and even orgasm during unwanted and coercive sex
Meana (2010).
70
if a man is erect
There are exceptions; men can have spontaneous erections (
morning wood
) after sleep.
70
rare sex survey in the 1920s
http://sexademic.wordpress.com/2010/03/19/before-there-was-kinsey-mosher-davis-and-dickinson-surveyed-victorian-sex/
. “In his survey of one thousand married women he found that they most frequently complained about failure to reach orgasm and that obstacles to sexual pleasure were primarily inorganic, i.e., not physiological in nature.”
70
likely involve conscious mechanisms
Brown et al. (2007). “The failure of the peripherally acting PDE5 inhibitors, coupled with the clinical findings that subjective and objective arousal in women may be different, suggested that centrally acting agents may be more appropriate for the treatment of FSD. Indeed many animal studies have shown the importance of the brain, especially a number of hypothalamic nuclei, in mediating female sexual response in rodents. Thus, attention has turned to centrally acting agents in the search for an effective treatment of FSD.”
71
why are they separated in women?
Meana (2010). “The model of sexual response propagated by Masters and Johnson (1966), by Kaplan (1974), and by the third and fourth editions of the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(
DSM
; American Psychiatric Association [APA], (1987; 2000) has problematized women’s sexual experience through the damaging application of a male analog.” “The accumulation of data [supports] the existence of quantitative and qualitative gender differences in desire.”
“Although there have been suggestions that this gender difference may be a function of measurement artifacts or socially desirable responding on the part of women, the bulk of the data generally does not support these possibilities. More pointedly, they suggested that, in contrast to men, women’s genital arousal had a weaker relation to their sexual preferences.”
71
dramatic differences in how these
Meana (2010). “The accumulation of data supporting the existence of quantitative and qualitative gender differences in desire.” “It appears that physical sexual arousal is the same in men and women—what differs is the way the conscious mind processes and reacts to it.”
Walter, Bermpohl, et al. (2008). “men recorded approximately 7.2 sexual fantasies per day as compared with 4.5 for women” and “men estimated they had approximately one sexual fantasy per day, whereas the women estimated they had only one sexual fantasy per week.” Leitenberg & Henning (1995). “Male university students were found to masturbate to ejaculation about every 72 hours, and “on the majority of occasions, their last masturbation is within 48 hours of their next in-pair copulation.”
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=one-reason-why-humans-are-special-a-2010-06-22
, retrieved on August 20, 2010. “If they’re not having intercourse every day, men tend to pleasure themselves to completion no more than two days prior to having actual sex.”
71
low sexual desire much more often than men
“The most common presenting sexual complaint in women attending clinics is low desire. In contrast, men most often present with erectile difficulties. Bachman surveyed 1,946 health professionals attending four major specialty conferences (the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Endocrine Society, the North American Menopause Society, and the American Society for Reproductive Medicine) and found that 67% of respondents reported that low sexual desire was the most common type of sexual dysfunction among their female patients. Of note is the fact that 85% of these health professionals believed HSDD to be a medical disorder.”
71
“theory of women’s desire as being substantially different”
Meana (2010).
71
separation of the physical from the psychological
Becker (2009). “Sex differences in motivation are apparent for the motivation to engage in sexual behavior, the motivation to take drugs of abuse, and the motivation to engage in parental behavior. In both males and females there is an increase in NAcc DA associated with motivated behaviors. Here it proposed that sex differences in the regulation of DA activity in the ascending mesolimbic projections may underlie sex differences in motivation. In particular, sex differences in the neuroendocrine regulation of this brain system play a role in the expression of sex differences in motivated behaviors. Here it is proposed that sexual differentiation of motivation is mediated, at least in part, by a novel mechanism in which ovarian hormones secreted at puberty in the female actively feminize the DA system.” Also see Lippa (2009).
73
a section called Missed Connections
Craigslist is the largest free online classifieds Web site in the United States. See
http://www.craigslist.org/about/sites
. We scraped posts/classifieds from listings in the following 52 American cities and regions: Akron, Anchorage, Albany, Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Boise, Boston, Buffalo, Charlotte, Chicago, Cincinnati, Columbia, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Fresno, Hartford, Honolulu, Houston, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Memphis, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Nashville, New Orleans, New York City, Norfolk, Oklahoma City, Omaha, Orange County, Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, Providence, Raleigh, Richmond, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Diego, Seattle, St. Louis, Tampa, Tucson, and Washington, D.C.
Classifieds on Craigslist are categorized into several specific subcategories. Our scraping included six subcategories in the personals section: m4m (Men Seeking Men), m4w (Men Seeking Women), w4m (Women Seeking Men), w4w (Women Seeking Women), mis (Missed Connections), msr (Miscellaneous Romance). Missed Connections is a section where men and women post messages for people they desire to reconnect with. These messages can be for long lost friends and acquaintances, or strangers encountered in everyday life. We scraped 565,597 listings in this category. Listings by men for women and vice versa are denoted by using m4w and w4m respectively. Men post roughly twice as often as women. Analysis of the most frequent two-word phrases in post titles by men (for women) and women (for women) reveals that “looking for” and “miss you” are among the ten most common phrases used by both sexes. Relative frequency of usage shows that women are more likely to use the phrase “miss you” and men use “looking for.” Expanding the relative frequency of phrase usage analysis to top fifty phrases reveals that men are looking for women they met “at Walmart” or at the “gas station.” Women on the other hand confess they “love you” and are thinking “about you.”
74
A physical detective
Ellison & Gray (2009), Jasienska & Ellison (2004).
74
He’s Just Not That Into You
Behrendt & Tuccillo (2004).
75
women ruminate over emotional situations more than men
Bjorklund & Kipp (1996), Arrais et al. (2010), Thornhill & Gangestad (2008).
76
women’s sexual fantasies have higher romantic and emotional content
Meana (2010). “The research on sexual fantasy has repeatedly shown that women’s fantasies have higher romantic–emotional content than those of men.”
76
“sex differences in the human brain may be the norm”
Gillies & McArthur (2010).
76
men are more likely to suffer from Parkinson’s
Gillies & McArthur (2010), Blakemore (2008), Burnett et al. (2009).
76
twice as likely to suffer from mood disorders
Becker (2008).
76
susceptibility to mood disorders is one of the costs
Paus et al. (2008), Perrin et al. (2008).
76
The insular cortex and the hippocampus are both involved
During the luteal phase, women show more activation in the emotionrelated areas. Superior activation for luteal women in anterior cingulate, left insula, left orbitofrontal cortex. Gizewski et al. (2006), Bartels & Zeki (2004), Bush et al. (2000), Van Overwalle (2009), Arnow et al. (2009), Bianchi-Demicheli & Ortigue (2007), Arrais et al. (2010), Rupp et al. (2009).
78
women performed better than men on verbal tasks
Kansaku et al. (2000), Burman et al. (2008).
78
More women than men use social networking sites
http://www.briansolis.com/2010/08/influence-is-bliss-the-gender-divide-of-influence-on-twitter
, retrieved on August 30, 2010.
78
greater connectivity between the two cortical hemispheres
Van Overwalle (2009), Insel and Fernald (2004).
79
or a celebrity’s views on mental health
http://newsinfo.iu.edu/tips/page/normal/10912.html
, Baumeister (2000), Baumeister et al. (2000).
79
likely to attribute sexual anxiety to social pressures
Meana (2010).
80
behaviors are appropriate and inappropriate in a given situation
Rupp et al. (2009), Harenski et al. (2008), Fumagalli et al. (2010), Baron-Cohen et al. (2005), Kaasinen et al. (2001).
80
“Most men who ever lived did not have descendants who are alive today”
Georgiadis et al. (2006), Arnow et al. (2009),
http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm
.
82
“The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough”
Gottlieb (2010).
CHAPTER 5
 
86
“romance for men”
Here’s one guy that likes romance: “Hi! I’m that odd guy out who reads romance novels, and lots of them :) The reason that I read romance novels is that my Mother read, amongst many other things, romance novels, and therefore a lot of the books in the house when I went through my ‘read everything I can lay my hands on’ stage were of that genre. And quite a few of them I enjoyed. So I picked up the habit at an impressionable age and never stopped.”
http://pandagon.netindex.php/site/comments/why_dont_men_read_more_romance_novels/,retrievedonAugust30,2010
.
86
Catherine Salmon and Donald Symons in their book,
Warrior Lovers
Salmon & Symons (2003).
86
Pamela
was one of the earliest bestsellers
Doody (1995).
86
1972 novel
The Flame and the Flower
Woodiwiss (1972).
87
90 percent of these readers are women
http://www.laweekly.com/2009-12-17/art-books/man-on-man-the-new-gay-romance/
, retrieved on October 15, 2010.
http://www.rwanational.org/cs/the_romance_genre/romance_literature_statistics
, retrieved on August 30, 2010.
87
about 100 million men in the United States and Canada
Albright (2008). Also see Edelman (2009).
89
erotic story “Princess and the Pirates” by Hamilton_g
Abridged from
http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=100201
, retrieved on August 30, 2010.
89
what romance author Nora Roberts called “nursing mother covers”
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/22/090622fa_fact_collins
, retrieved on August 30, 2010.
90
offer their existing titles in digital formats
http://eromancewriters.com/publishers.cfm
.
90
actress Felicia Day blogs about her reading tastes
http://feliciaday.com/blog/kindle-oh-kindle
, retrieved on August 30, 2010.
90
Other e-EroRom publishers
Loose Id, LLC—Loose Id (
www.loose-id.com
), Total-E-Bound Publishing—Total-E-Bound (
www.total-e-bound.com
), Jasmine Jade Enterprises, LLC—Ellora’s Cave (
www.jasminejade.com/default.aspx
).
91
“Girlies like porn too”
http://letters.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2006/11/27/porn/view/index9.html
, retrieved on August 30, 2010.

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