Heightened senses or why I've been quiet lately
So aside from the usual distractions of day to day life that... usually don't distract me from posting... I've been wrestling with a notion about gender roles, patriarchy, and the trope of the lower-libido-in-women-relative-to-men. I've had this idea for about a week now. It first started emerging after my conversation with Joan Sewell. And it's one of those cases where feeling like I'm trying to bite off more than I can chew is premature because my mouth might be too small to bite it in the first place.
So here's the deal. There's this great huge notion in the world out there that on the whole men are hornier than women, at least in the sense that a) tradition says women are more likely to have "a headache" -- which we could pass off to domestic sexist workloads if not for b) self-help books seeking to boost the libido are purchased mainly by women. Oh yeah, and if you're unconvinced it's a huge notion: Dr. Phil says it's epidemic. So it *must* be true!
I don't happen to believe it's true -- not when, for instance, you take the fairly similar rates at which women and men tend to masturbate as a baseline.
But there are the books. There's Dr. Phil. There are all the clich&eacu;s about headaches. They just sit out there like unpopped kernels in a bowl. (Which doesn't really suit my more-than-I-can-chew metaphor but there you go.)
Anyway, I got a little glimmer and rather than keep foundering around trying to write something big I'll put out one little piece and ask what you think:
Ok. So if you scroll down in this Wikipedia page on average height between men and women you'll notice that around the world women, on average, tend to be between four and five inches shorter than men, again on average.
But here's the thing. By definition 50% men are shorter than average height. 50% of all women are taller than average height. And if you go hand out at a concert, in a train or subway station, or just watch crowds of people walking up and down the street you'll notice there's quite a bit of overlap in heights between men and women. In fact, especially in smaller groups, it's not that unusual for the tallest person to be a woman or the shortest to be a man.
But here's another thing! If you look at pairs of partners the woman is *almost always* shorter than the man. Going back to looking at crowds again, say, coming out of a church, a dance, or somewhere else where people tend to be paired up, you'll see the overall effect I mentioned before -- some men are shorter than some women, some women are taller than some men... but not the people standing or walking next to each other.
Know what I mean? There's some sort of self-selection process going on. It's two-way selection too. It's not just that shorter men are often less interested in taller women -- tall women are often also less interested in shorter men. Weird huh?
You'll see the same things with age too -- clich&eacu; says men are interested in women who are younger than they when they fill out on-line dating forms, but women are just as likely to request older men. Odd, isn't it?
Income and social status? Same strong tendencies even in the face of narrowing economic and social gaps between men and women. (See Maureen Dowd, for instance.) What's with that?
Is it true of all couples? Of course not. Could there be all kinds of qualifying factors in such gross characterizations? Oh yeah. Are the exceptions and qualifications enough to hand-wave away all the observable biases in couple selection. I don't see it happening.
Question about libido differences then: Even if you bought the argument that, for whatever reason, the average man's libido was higher than the average woman's, the fact that libido *within* genders tends to vary way more widely than height. Which means that if one were to pair up randomly selected heterosexuals you'd expect to see a way higher incidence of men with low libidos relative to their partners, and women with high libidos relative to theirs.
Off the top of my head I can think of maybe four possible explanations for Dr. Phil's "epidemic" which, if we really were to randomly pair couples up shouldn't be nearly so divided between men/high and women/low.
- Distribution starts out more random but patriarchy-induced stress about domestic maintenance tends to wear women down faster than men.
- One of the other, more over factors people seem to select for -- say status, height, or age -- is somehow linked to libido.
- We have a tendency to prejudicially select partners for libido the same way we select for height, age, or socioeconomic criteria.
Yes of course there are other possibilities but it's that last one's what's got me in a bit of a dither. Am I barking up an entirely wrong tree here? Before I delve deeper I'd like a second, third, even a 22nd opinion.
Here's another thought. These high-libido women get so tired of their partners NOT being in the mood that they cut them off sexually, and "always have a headache" ... perhaps always isn't as often as we think.
Guys being guys (well, really, people) talk up a big game and complain about it because their buddies are complaining about it, when it's really not a problem.
I'm sure I could come up with a few other theories ...:)
[You've touched on what I think is the big contributing factor, Watergirl. We go around telling each other "this is so," with all the authority that we used to tell each other that witches would float, and, looking at the world with those filters we see instances that fit the stories and don't remember instances that don't. Thanks! --fl]
There's also the theory of 'the squeakiest wheel gets the oil'.
Meaning.. the complaints about women's low libidos gets talked about a lot, so it's all we hear about.
Meanwhile all the quiet happy couples just don't get noticed 'cause they're not shoving their sex frequency in everyone's face.
[I agree we're only hearing from the squeaky wheels but... I'm just curious whether we're only hearing the squeaks on one side, or if we're only listening for them on that side. It's like... what are the *expectations* and how does that affect choices going *into* relationships? Thanks, Quilzas. --fl]
Here's the thing; in the long run, most things follow a bell curve. Yes, there's a lot of overlap, but at the median and mean, men are taller, stronger, more sexual (and more violent) than women are. Yes, my mother was 4 inches taller than my father, which is one reason why she never wore high heels, but this doesn't affect the fact that ON AVERAGE, men are taller than women.
Yes, many women such as AAG have high libidos, which doesn't affect the fact that we're more likely to hear men complain about frigid wives than women complaining about frigid men. And more likely to hear abut the women who are pressured for too much sex than men similarly afflicted.
Quote all the anecdotal evidence you want. But bet the averages.
[I agree that, for instance, until Blogger.com made anonymous blogging easier it was evidently harder for women to express their frustration with low-libido partners *within the public's ear.* But what I'm saying is if we were to rely on laws of averages (meaning if people were coupled at random rather than by mutual agreement) I would expect to hear more balanced complaints, just as -- if we were coupled at random -- I would expect to see more taller women with shorter men than we do. Not 50/50 splits because *on average* men are taller than women, but not the one to five percent we see. Which just leads back to my question of whether there's another selection mechanism in place to account for the variation from what laws of averages would predict. Thanks, TR. --fl]
Figs,
I know this shows my naivete, and likely I'm missing something that's immediately obvious to everyone else, but how does one select for libido, prejudicially or otherwise, before getting into a relationship? The average person would have to have sex with a lot of partners a lot of times to eventually make this determination, because there are so many variables involved. So if you don't want to do that, how do you decide? And what about men and women with low libido? How are they supposed to select? Based on their partner's lack of interest in sexual activity?
I guess I'm confused about what you're asking opinions on.
[I see two ways to select for it. First, if people have sex while dating and before proposing long-term relationships. And if you're not having sex then perhap by how passionately one party pursues the other. I mean, I'm guessing it could be a pretty superficial thing, maybe even something like the relatively recent traditional expectation that women are "supposed" to wait for men to call. I mean, it's not like we date all of the hundreds or thousands of people in our vicinity before picking one, we do a lot of winnowing and may or may not be conscious of our criteria. (And, consequently, our criteria might be highly irrational. Most people certainly spend a lot of time thinking "no way he/she would be interested in me," for instance, without really knowing anything at all about the person in question.) Thanks, Captain. --fl]
I don't happen to believe it's true -- not when, for instance, you take the fairly similar rates at which women and men tend to masturbate as a baseline.
Do men and women masturbate at fairly similar rates? I had heard that men tended to masturbate much more frequently than women.
a) tradition says women are more likely to have "a headache" -- which we could pass off to domestic sexist workloads if not for b) self-help books seeking to boost the libido are purchased mainly by women.
It is, of course, just possible that women have, not a lower libido than men, but a more variable libido than men, in which case you'd both see more women getting headaches and more women that no man can keep up with.
Which means that if one were to pair up randomly selected heterosexuals you'd expect to see a way higher incidence of men with low libidos relative to their partners, and women with high libidos relative to theirs.
My personal opinion is that there are probably a lot of low libido/high libido pairings in both directions, but when it's the man who has low libido, the couple is less likely to admit the difference to the rest of the world.
Even if men are on average possessed of higher libido than women (which I could well believe), there's a whole lot of pressure never to suggest that any particular man is lacking in the libido department.
[I'm comfortable with all your points, Lynn. In particular the "let's not talk about 'our little problem' since no one else is" one. I also agree that there seems to be more high/low variance in women, and actually quite a bit of variance over time for individual women. And I'd be perfectly happy to consider instead that our high-men/low-women narrative creates a ratchet effect so that, even in a single relationship, parties notice more the times when he's being declined and they don't register the times she's initiating, with an end result that both parties imagine she's always "running behind." I'd be happy with that, in part, because it too would explain why women are disproportionate consumers of self-help-ery, and disproportionately the targets of Dr. Phil's driven-by-the-market concerns. Oh yeah, and finally, my goal here isn't to up women's average libidos or reduce men's, it's to seek a story we can tell ourselves that a) hews closer to reality and b) reduces the evident sense of disquiet that keeps pushing up Dr. Phil's ratings every time he brings it up. Thanks, Lynn. --fl]
I'd agree with all the earlier commenters. To add my contribution: I can see an evolutionary advantage in men choosing younger partners (increased fertility) and even smaller ones (protective) so it could be that somewhere in the primitive centres there is a feeling that if they can more than satisfy the women, she is less likely to go off seeking satisfaction elsewhere. Pure speculation of course, almost as good as the blue eyed men preferring blue eyed women.
[I agree the influence could be superficial enough for even evolutionary theory to have traction. (Remember, though, that blue-eyed partners are just as sought-after by brown-eyed suitors so it's not necessarily the case that blue-eyed suitors are exceptional that way -- they might just benefit from the synergy of dual preferences.) Thanks, A. --fl]
A site I came across last night that could be of interest, especially if the references (great because they give original sources) given are followed in a daisy chain effect :)
The Wellcome Trust
Also look for University Medical Center Groningen who do a lot of research in the field.
[I'm inclined to agree with Elizabeth Lloyd (cited in the link) that women's orgasms may not have any direct reproductive advantage. For one thing you'd have to demonstrate that children of women who have orgasms *during intercourse with their male partners* pass on successful genes at a rate higher than women who don't. And I don't think we're going to find enough variation in rates to make a difference against the background of other factors. Thanks for the link, A. You're right that there are some good links to follow from there too. --fl]
I don't know about your theory, but it's certainly interesting ;)
Tech Reader: height, muscle mass %, and crime statistics are all verifiable. On what basis do you state that men are on average more sexual?
We live in a patriachy. Porn is directed at men. It is such an accepted fact that men masturbate a lot that I could imagine some men feeling funny if they don't masturbate enough. People still react weirdly at the idea of female masturbation.
Jokes fly across the internet every day about women being frigid and men being ruled by their cocks. Any new study that says anything about the sexes is printed with a spin - "women who stay at home are healthier", "women are not in positions of power because they choke more easily". Even innocuous articles about sports talk about "every boys dream". Well this girl who happens to like adventure sports is feeling left out and pissed off
There are SO MANY gender stereotypes shoved down people's throats, starting in utero, of course mens and womens sexuality are presented differently. But I find it difficulty to believe that womens libidos are lesser, so much as stifled and different
[Yup. The pressure of stereotype goes both ways too. We assume, for instance, that men take Viagra for their own benefit -- perhaps even against the wishes of their partners -- rather than in hopes of keeping up with them. Do we know? No. Is anyone asking? Not that I know of (though the amazing Kochanie or A might come up with something.) Thanks, Dana. --fl]
A further complication is that libido in both sexes is not a constant throughout life. So the relative strength of libido between a couple is going to change so that at one period the man's is stronger while at another time it is the woman who has the stronger libido. I think it is only the very fortunate few whose libido stays in relative balance over the period of the relationship. Fortunately for the rest of us, love is a more powerful drive than libido and can often overcome any problems the libido disparity might cause.
[Agreed on all counts, LR. Sexual compatibility is not the only criteria in relationships, and libido varies quite a bit over time. I think we all carry these mental issues of rowdy young men whistling at unhappy-for-the-attention passing women and extrapolate from that insufficient data. Thanks! --fl]
When I was in my late twenties to early thirties - I had no libido at all, my husband's never waned.
5 years later, mine is peaking and his has waned - Please explain this?!
We are taught by society that it is "normal" for women to NOT be interested and for men to ALWAYS be interested and if the opposite happens - there is something wrong with those people.
[Perfect example of that assumption we have that what's true from 15 to 25 is true for all of life, Musns. Time changes all of us, and only some for the better. :-) Thanks. --fl]
Another possibility (suggested by Dana): what counts as 'sex' in mainstream discourse is geared toward activities that appeal to more men than women, and if this representation were revised, women would be more interested in sex. I think people have started revising, but not everybody has got the message yet.
P.S. I see you found my blog a while ago when I linked to you. I apologize for not responding to your comment or introducing myself sooner. My computer went on the fritz, so I've had to keep my online activities fairly minimal lately.
[Yeah, I was thinking about that a lot tonight. You hear that men are supposed to get bored of their partners, seek greener pastures, and such... but there's more than one kind of boredom... So excellent point, P. Thanks. (p.s. Consider writing more posts yourself. Your blog was off to a good start.) --fl]
this has nothing to do with your actual point, but --
the past three men that i've dated/fuckbuddied/whatever have all been shorter than me. two by more than four inches, even in bare feet.
of course, i'm a very tall woman, but... curiously, i've grown to like shorter men. i can't stand being "spooned" or feeling small in comparison to a guy. i want to be on the level or taller.
but! and there is kind of a point in this: i can select shorter guys. shorter guys who like taller women can select me (and i'm sometimes surprised at how many do: one guy i dated, i kid you not, liked to wear a double-breasted suit like an old fashioned mob boss and have me in silly 50's clothing, so we looked like a bad cartoon). but we can't pick for libidos that way. once you're in bed, you're in bed, whether your libidos match or not, you know?
[I agree you can't pick partners for libido the first time. I'm wondering more about long-term relationships. Which I think is fine because both men and women seem to operate out of a different baseline during the infatuation phase of relationships. Thanks, a. --fl]