Seed: Girls Gone Wild … for Monkeys
The researchers found that while straight men are only aroused by females of the human variety, straight women are equally aroused by all human sexual activity, including lesbian, heterosexual and homosexual male sex, and at least somewhat aroused by nonhuman sex.
[via kottke]
This build on research done earlier (by some of the same people) which showed that a man’s sexual arousal correlates very well with his sexual orientation, but women (both gay and straight) get aroused by pretty much any old thing (One presumes that it isn’t an artifact of their testing equipment…)
I found the commentary by the female psychologist at the end of the article entertaining: she’s clearly trying to explain why women’s reactions are normal, and wondering why men react differently:
Barbara Bartlik, a psychiatry professor at Cornell, said she was not alarmed by the women’s response to the nonhuman stimuli.
“I don’t know why this has surprised everybody that women get aroused watching humans and animals,” she says. “Animals, because of the way they function in an uninhibited manner…can be very arousing to look at when they copulate.”
However, Bartlik was surprised that the men did not have the same response as the women.
“I would wonder if the men weren’t concerned about being labeled as homosexual or perverse by being interested in these things, and therefore their erections were inhibited,” she said.
Uh, right. Men restrain their erections because of their stronger inhibitions. Clearly, a statement made by someone who was never on the other end of the penis.
I wonder if male arousal is focused on the actual act of sex, while females arousal is tied to the concept of sex. Men think about having sex, women think about sex in the abstract.
Women. Abstract Thinking.
Now that’s bizzare.