What women (and men) want

Just read this article in NY Times magazine that was published January 22, 2009. The article is written by Daniel Bergner and summarizes his interviews with three leading female scientists on the nature of female sexuality.

The three scientists that Bergner interviewed approach the question from different points of view, using different experimental tools. The first interviewee, Meredith Chivers, takes a quantitative approach, in which techniques that measure both the objective physiological response and the subjective self-reported psychological response of both males and females to sexual situations are used. The second interviewee, Lisa Diamond, uses a qualitative approach that relies largely on in-depth interviews with women. The third interviewee, Marta Means, uses both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Her quantitative approaches have recently examined visual attention to sexual images, while her qualitative work comes from treating women with dyspareunia, a term used to describe difficult or painful intercourse.

What did I learn from this article? First, the data obtained by Chivers that there is a profound disconnect between the physiological and psychological responses of women to sexually explicit images. Second, that there may also be a disconnect between emotional intimacy and sexual desire - or, more bluntly as put by Means, the drive of sheer lust and the impetus of value (closeness and longevity). I was not surprised by the major conclusion of Diamond, in that, in contrast to male sexuality, female sexuality has a high degree of fluidity in terms of attraction to the same or opposite sex. Her results suggest that sexual attraction in women is driven by emotional closeness and points to oxytocin as a prominent physiological mediator. Her conclusion is that there is a strong link between emotional intimacy and desire.

What do I think? First, I find Chivers’ research quite compelling, particularly the use of quantitative measurements of physiology. I tend to believe her conclusion that there is a fundamental difference in the way men and women experience sexual desire. I also agree with Diamond’s model, in which oxytocin provides a physiological connection between the emotional and physical aspects of sexual desire. However, I disagree with the notion that oxytocin is a female-specific mediator. Rather, I think that this physiological system functions in men as well. However, unlike praire voles, in which the oxytocin system provides a strong bonding mechanism that is, in genetic parlance, highly penetrant, the physiological connection between the emotional and physical aspects of sexual desire in humans incorporates a multitude of inputs, of which oxytocin is just one. The research of Means’, which indicates that while bad relationships can kill sexual desire, a good relationship in other areas is not sufficient to stimulate sexual desire, is consistent with both my experience and anecdotal evidence from others. The oxytocin system may be necessary but not sufficient to link the emotional and sexual aspects of a relationship.

There is much that we do not know.