The Lies We Tell About Women’s Libidos
And the bombshell that explains at least one misconception
“The man the hunter theory, which seems to have been invented by men looking for an excuse to sleep around, has been largely debunked.”
This article has been through a couple of incarnations. I published it on Medium first, then eleswhere, then it was picked up by an independent, but the changes they needed were extensive and I simply ran out of time. I think it’s a worthwhile read, so it’s easier to simply offer it here - and once again the edited, streamlined version is up on Medium.
Sex is a Dangerous Business for Women
Women may be even more sexual than men. This may come as a shock to you if you’ve been exposed to generations of media mythology and contradictory urban legends, often powered by male insecurities.
Society tends to make lazy assumptions about women’s sexuality based on how women have historically been allowed to behave, or felt safe behaving. History and every culture is littered with cautionary tales of what happens to women who dare to be sexual, or even just trust a man sexually — and that’s before we even touch on the dangers of reproduction.
Sex can be a dangerous business for women.
So let’s rationally examine the assumptions clouding the truth about female sexuality, and reframe the narrative to fit the facts.
The Truth about Women’s Libidos
In our systemically sexist world, women are conditioned to try to suppress our sexuality except when male approved, and coerced by societal pressure into mistaking performances for the male gaze for our own sexuality.
At the age of 55, I have a healthy sex drive — and always have had. So why am I always being told that women aren’t sexual?
My own experiences started me questioning this trope.
Was I a throwback, an exception — or was something else going on?
Projection and Propaganda
I was careful to affirm in my profile that I was looking for a full relationship, and was tactile. Women walk a knife edge on dating apps. We can’t just say “I want to pursue a sexual relationship”, unless we want to actually encourage every sleazer to crawl into our messages.
Despite making it crystal clear I had zero interest in hookups I was still the lucky recipient of messages from several booty call beggers.
I went on a few dates with one man a decade older than me, who’d apparently dismissed my bio, because he asked me in a hopeful tone if I was dating him because I assumed that an older man might not want sex.
This appeared to be projection, possibly based on societal propaganda.
It turns out there’s clear evidence that many men have low sex drives, and many women aren’t particularly happy about that.
According to Experts, the Male Libido Might Be Lower Than You Believe
Psychology Today tells us: “A common distortion in our society views men as wanting sex more than women. In my personal experience as a therapist, I have found this to be untrue. Many couples I’ve seen have complained of the opposite dynamic, with the woman feeling frustrated over her partner’s lack of interest in sex… When people wrote in about the discrepancy of frequency and desire [for sex], about 40% of the time it was men wanting less.” I
rwin Goldstein, M.D., director of sexual medicine at San Diego’s Alvarado Hospital and editor in chief of The Journal of Sexual Medicine further stated to WebMD that one in five men have a low libido, and almost 30% of women say they have more interest in sex than their partner has.
Let’s Be Rational
But even if we accepted the trope of frustrated highly sexed men and disinterested partners, surely that argues for males being wired naturally for monogamy? If a man can still be physically interested in his partner years into the relationship — and there’s no hiding a lack of desire if you’re a man — clearly monogamy works well for him.
Encouraging men in bloke culture notions about sex isn’t doing either sex any good.
Society should allow individual men to admit it if they desire sex infrequently; many men would be relieved by this.
Removing the disinformation and acceptance that men and women are individuals with individual sex drives rather than making generalised judgements based on their sex class would allow both men and women to have differing individual sexual appetites without shame, and encourage honest discussion about this in relationships.
Acceptance of these realities would give women the freedom to seek what works for them too.
Both sexes benefit from the truth.
Women’s Choices Are Not Equal to Men’s Choices
Societies are engineered in such a way that many women feel — or sometimes actually are — compelled to accept sexual partners they’re not physically interested in. In many countries, this practice has degenerated into outright bride purchasing.
In fact, marital coercion is rampant throughout the world. And even Australia, Canada and other Western countries are still filled with tales of women driven into marriages against their will. Where they’re not being actually compelled into marriage, it’s still often prohibitively difficult for women in many societies to earn a living, remain safe or receive societal acceptance without a husband.
The reality for millions of women is a choice between accepting the man they’re told to accept or setting themselves up for calamity.
It’s hardly surprising that this impacts upon the female libido.
The Caring Conundrum
“Having children and caring for others is also still relentlessly marketed at women. It’s made clear to women in every aspect of life, from birth till at least middle age, that their function is to be attractive, gain a mate, have children and look after the family.”
It cannot be denied that having children is an exhausting physical task. In today’s society we still expect the majority of the elabour of childrearing and caring to be done by women. Day in and out drudgery, resentment and exhaustion would deplete anyone’s interest in their partner as a sexual being.
So if you’re not physically interested in your mate at the outset, the odds of finding him attractive later are negligible.
And even if you were physically attracted to him to begin with, carrying the caregiver and mental load can swiftly lower even the raciest woman’s sex drive.
And that can’t be fixed by a backrub or “helping” in the kitchen, it’s a core issue at the heart of many relationships.
The Madonna/Whore Complex
There’s also a double standard between female and male sexual desire. It can be dangerous for women to admit they even like sex, let alone pursue what they want sexually.
Speaking honestly about sexual desires, or following those desires can result in death, shaming, penury, reputational harm and societal shunning.
It’s no surprise that few of us feel we can be honest and clear about sexual desire, considering the impact of systemic abuse and misogyny.
Hardwiring Disinformation
Fruits from the poisoned tree of sexism bloom widely, and one of those is the notion that men simply can’t help ogling women, can’t help their natural urges.
But the majority of men do not behave in such an entitled fashion, and certainly not where it might cause them harm. When it suits them, or when they have to, men control their impulses all the time. If men really couldn’t avoid ogling women they’d endanger themselves regularly, and face severe sanctions in some situations.
Just as with sexual assault, the men who indulge in gawking, catcalling etc. ensure it’s reasonably safe and consequence-free before they do so.
It turns out that the main difference between the sexes when it comes to being obvious about finding someone physically appealing is entitlement.
Science Seals The Deal
As we now know, thanks to eye-tracking studies, women rate men’s attractiveness unconsciously and instantaneously, checking out the shoulder to hips ratio and his upper body musculature.
Studies also confirm that women do indeed have a preference for a larger penis (to a point), although women don’t tend to eye track to the penis — possibly because in modern clothing we don’t see much of the penis.
So, what I already understood to be true through my own experiences was again proven through science. Women are well aware of men’s physical appearances.
But because we’re not so overt about appraising men, while some men insist on being obvious, society again mistakes horses’ hoofbeats for the thunder of zebras.
The main difference between how men and women appraise one another lies in the way women are conditioned to hide their sexuality: to stay safe from men physically, to appear non-threatening, and to be polite.
If you’re making it obvious you’re looking, it’s because you want to be obvious.
With all these similarities piling up, it’s starting to look like men and women might be the same species.
Lust, Lies and Libidos
Since at least Darwinian times, we’ve been force-fed the notion that men are natural cheaters and women are naturally monogamous, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
As the Guardian noted in an article on prehistoric societies “When it comes to women’s “low libido”, Ryan and Jethá simply disagree, arguing in fact that women have evolved for sex with multiple partners. They look, for example, at women’s ability to have multiple orgasms in a sexual session, to have sex at any time during their menstrual cycle and their propensity to make a lot of noise during sex — which they argue is a prehistoric mating call to encourage more men to come and join in. These evolutionary traits have occurred, they argue, to ensure breeding is successful.”
And let’s think how that might work, practically. If women are naturally monogamous, then all the cheating men must be carnally enjoying one another. Or maybe there’s just one really busy, exhausted woman running around.
Another unsupported and largely irrelevant claim is that women cheat because “reasons”. Women, like men, undoubtedly have many reasons for cheating. We don’t know why anybody sleeps around, male or female.
And then there’s pesky nature again, revealing her true intentions.
Why do women have a clitoris with thousands more nerve endings than a penis, and why are we capable of multiple orgasms, if we aren’t naturally designed to be sexual?
And did you know that sperm is designed to fight foreign sperm?
When You Can’t Beat Them, Bury Them
In 2013 one book was hailed as a breakthrough in the way we examine female desire. In his groundbreaking treatise “What Do Women Want”, Daniel Bergner used scientific studies and research to prove that not only are women as sexual as men, they may even be more so.
The book was then swiftly lost at sea, swept away by oceans of fact-free sexist narratives.
It was a similar tale with Nancy Friday’s Secret Garden. Back in 1973, her book detailing in women’s own words their sexual fantasies struggled to even find a willing publisher, so entrenched was the notion that women couldn’t possibly feel this way. Every now and then it resurfaces, only to vanish again in a sea of unsubstantiated urban legends.
But despite being largely ignored by the world, the book What Do Women Want has some fascinating insights about women’s sexual desires.It seems that female sexual desire is just as ravenous as male sexual desire.
Not only are women just as easily aroused sexually as men, often they’re more easily aroused and have a broader sexual appetite than men.
The Bombshell
However, one key difference is that women begin to lose sexual interest in their partner around the three year mark.
This bombshell explains so much about sex issues in relationships.
“Demonstrating an “omnivorous’ libido, women were aroused by a much wider range of images than men: straight sex, gay sex, masturbation, even Bonobo monkeys mating.”
“According to Bergner, this view, based on what he calls “flimsy, circular science”, just does not hold up. Because scientists expect to find evidence for this common perception of female sexuality, they tend to ignore evidence suggesting that women and female animals are far from passive when it comes to sexual desire. Essentially, researchers have been blindsided by a culture that is so hostile to female sexuality that it has sought to control it for centuries…”
Perhaps She Doesn’t Want Sex With YOU
My own experience includes women who appear to have gone off sex, yet feel a resurgence of desire once a man they’re really attracted to is offered as a partner.
There’s a reason some women use an active fantasy life to boost their libido with their actual partner.
Research, science, common sense and our own experiences have already proven that women do seem to lose sexual interest in their long-term mates, but this doesn’t advance the argument that women are naturally monogamous.
Quite the opposite.
The Man-Made Myth of Man The Hunter
The latest theories indicate humans are probably closer to bonobos than anything else. Bonobos make up just as much of our DNA lineage as chimps, and we have a lot in common with them. Bonobo females are bi-sexual and move from one partner to another.
The man the hunter theory, which seems to have been invented by men looking for an excuse to sleep around, has been largely debunked.
Current theories conclude that prior to agriculture, early humans lived in much more equal societies, and moved in small groups from place to place, with females copulating with several different males in each group.
From a biological standpoint, this makes perfect sense. This arrangement provides the best chance of strong, healthy sperm, given that sperm is competitive with other sperm. Sleeping with multiple partners also offered the pregnant female and her subsequent offspring protection. If a male is unsure if it’s his baby or not, he’s less likely to kill or harm it. And being pregnant, of course, brings all sorts of risks, including death, so having several willing males around who have a vested interest in keeping you and your growing belly fed and protected makes sense.
Look to women who are child-free by choice and in consensual relationships with men they’re attracted to if you want a more reality-based discussion of the female libido.
But good luck finding many of those.
But What About Ethics?
Although choosing to be monogamous might be difficult for some women and some men — it is always a choice to cheat.
Many humans seem wired for polygamy, physiologically speaking, although anecdotally men are more naturally monogamous, since men regularly report being easily physically aroused by long term partners, and report the opposite in their female counterparts.
Emotionally however, most of us, male and female, prefer — and are wired for — monogamy.
“In this study, young men and women reported how important they thought fidelity was to a successful marriage or committed relationship. The average of the responses was 9.8 out of 10 (SD = .86) for women and 9.7 (SD=1.15) for men. So, both young men and women still believe monogamy is extremely important — not just as a wistful ideal, but as a key part of a successful marriage. …This study also seems to be in line with recent national polling data that shows that more than 90 percent of American adults say that a marital affair is morally wrong. Another recent poll found that 64 percent of American adults say that monogamy is “fundamental” in romantic relationships”
Humans seem to simply prefer the pair bond partnership, despite our natural interest in other sexual partners.
Although this sometimes makes life difficult, monogamy is definitely always within the realms of choice.
For both sexes.
The Jury Is In
With all this in mind, it’s simply sensible to discard debunked assumptions, and consider matters more rationally.
It’s unsurprising that women are forced to hide or suppress their sexual appetites when you consider societal dogma, promotion of our objectification, and the physical and emotional dangers women face in their desire to exert their own sexuality; the fact that women’s sexual desires are often hidden, truncated, mutated or impaired is understandable.
What’s truly astonishing is that so many of us still admit “Yes, I like sex” and can override the conditioning, shaming and dangers in our desire for desire.
Society, however hard it tries, just can’t keep women’s sexual appetites down.
How Brave Are You?
Can you appraise the evidence and re-frame the misconceptions you’ve been regurgitating your whole life and allow the facts to speak for themselves? Can you face the reality that many of the men who’ve researched women’s sexuality were biased and blindsided by a sexist culture? Can you cope with the shocking truth?
Logic, research, common sense and personal experience all indicate the same thing. Women are just as sexual as men, when all else is equal.
The reality is that if she says she doesn’t want sex, what that probably means is not that she doesn’t want sex with anyone.
It probably means that she just doesn’t want sex with YOU.
But how we approach that disconcerting truth, and what that means for human relationships: well, that’s a whole different story.
For clarity, throughout this article I’m referring to heterosexual attraction, as that’s the only sort of attraction I can personally comment on.
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"Removing the disinformation and acceptance that men and women are individuals with individual sex drives rather than making generalised judgements based on their sex class would allow both men and women to have differing individual sexual appetites without shame, and encourage honest discussion about this in relationships."
This! 👏