Both men and women judged for sex lives: study. Is this equality? - The Globe and Mail

I posted about that topic before, now there is more evidence:

[A] survey of 19,000 students at 22 American colleges, research being presented at the 107th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association in Denver on Monday.[...]

In the survey, college students aged 19 to 22 were asked to respond to the statement, “If (wo)men hook up or have sex with lots of people, I respect them less.” Based on their answers, the researchers slotted the students into one of four categories: egalitarian conservative, egalitarian libertarian, traditional double standard and reverse double standard.

A breakdown of the findings:

48 per cent: “Egalitarian conservatives” who lost equal respect for men and women they believed were hooking up too much (54 per cent of women surveyed fell into this category, compared with 35 per cent of men).

27 per cent: “Egalitarian libertarians” who do not lose respect for men or women, no matter how much they sleep around.

12 per cent: “Traditional double standard” holders who lost respect for women, but not men, for hooking up too much.

13 per cent: “Reverse double standard” holders who lost respect for men, but not women, for having casual sex with too many partners.

By a slight margin (1 percent) there are more students now that lost respect for men for casual hookups than there are for women. Who would have thought....

Mate poaching...

Pretty interesting:

Noting that single women often complain that “all the good men are taken,” the psychologists (Melissa Burkley and Jessica Parker of Oklahoma State University) wondered if “this perception is really based on the fact that taken men are perceived as good.”

[...E]ach of the experimental subjects was told that he or she had been matched by a computer with a like-minded partner, and each was shown a photo of an attractive person of the opposite sex. (All the women saw the same photo, as did all the men.) Half of the subjects were told that their match was already romantically involved with someone else, while the other half were told that their match was unattached. Then the subjects were all asked how interested they were in their match.

To the men in the experiment, and to the women who were already in relationships, it didn’t make a significant difference whether their match was single or attached. But single women showed a distinct preference for mate poaching. When the man was described as unattached, 59 percent of the single women were interested in pursuing him. When that same man was described as being in a committed relationship, 90 percent were interested.

According to a recent poll, most women who engage in mate poaching do not think the attached status of the target played a role in their poaching decision, but our study shows this belief to be false. Single women in this study were significantly more interested in the target when he was attached. This may be because an attached man has demonstrated his ability to commit and in some ways his qualities have already been ‘‘pre-screened” by another woman.

There was also this study:

Are all the taken men good? An indirect examination of mate-choice copying in humans - Kevin W. Eva, Timothy J. Wood - 2006

Across many species, females are typically the more choosy of the 2 sexes because female-specific investment (e.g., gestation and lactation) constrains the number of offspring a female can produce, whereas the main constraint in this regard for males is simply access to females.2 As a result, poor mate choices harm a female's reproductive value to a greater extent than they do a male's. Evolutionary theory predicts that such pressures will lead females to rely on cues from their environment that can aid them in determining the reproductive value of a potential mate. One cue shown to be used by female Japanese quail and numerous other species is the choice behaviour of other females.3 If a female has deemed a male worthy of mating, that provides information to other females about the value of that male. Whether or not human females are sensitive to such social information (mate-choice copying) is, therefore, an interesting empirical question. [...]

Females were simply asked to rate the attractiveness of males who were presented in head-and-shoulder photographs. Each male was presented to half of the participants as “married” and to half as “single.” Analysis of covariance revealed that males were rated as more attractive when labelled “married,” thereby suggesting that human females are indeed sensitive to information provided by the choices of other females, despite the minimalist nature of the intervention used in this experiment.

Breaking news, boys not sex addicted animals!1!

Who would have thought:

Today, though more than half of unmarried 18- and 19-year-olds have had sexual intercourse, fewer than 30 percent of 15- to 17-year-old boys and girls have, down from 50 percent of boys and 37 percent of girls in 1988. And there are virtually no gender differences in the timing of sexual initiation.

[...T]he 2002 National Survey of Family Growth found that more than one-third of teenage boys, but only one-quarter of teenage girls, cited wanting to avoid pregnancy or disease as the main reason they had not yet had sex. Fear about sex was intensified by the AIDS crisis and by sex education that portrayed sex outside of heterosexual marriage as risky. Combined with growing access to pornography via the Internet, those influences may have made having sex with another person seem less enticing. [...]

In a large-scale survey and interviews, reported in the American Sociological Review in 2006, the sociologist Peggy Giordano and her colleagues found teenage boys to be just as emotionally invested in their romantic relationships as girls.[...]

[T]he most recent research by the family growth survey, conducted between 2006 and 2010, indicates that relationships matter to boys more often than we think. Four of 10 males between 15 and 19 who had not had sex said the main reason was that they hadn’t met the right person or that they were in a relationship but waiting for the right time; an additional 3 of 10 cited religion and morality.

Boys have long been under pressure to shed what the sociologist Laura Carpenter has called the “stigma of virginity.” But maybe more American boys are now waiting because they have gained cultural leeway to choose a first time that feels emotionally right. If so, their liberation from rigid masculinity norms should be seen as a victory for the very feminist movement that Rush Limbaugh recently decried.

Hatttip to reddit.

Voluntary sex causes as many injuries as rape

That finding really surprised me at first:

Nature, frequency and duration of genital lesions after consensual sexual intercourse—Implications for legal proceedings - Birgitte Schmidt Astrup - 2011

The purpose of this study was to make a normative description of the nature and duration of genital lesions sustained during consensual sexual intercourse, using the three most commonly used techniques; visualisation using the naked eye, colposcopy and toluidine blue dye followed by colposcopy.
Methods

Ninety eight women were examined within 48 h of consensual sexual intercourse. Fifty of the women were examined twice again within the following 7 days of sexual abstinence after the first examination.
Results

The participants had a median age of 22.4 years and 88% were nulliparous. Lesions were frequent; 34% seen with the naked eye, 49% seen with colposcopy and 52% seen with toluidine blue dye and subsequent colposcopy. The lesions lasted for several days; the median survival times for lacerations were 24, 40 and 80 h, respectively.
Conclusions

The legal implications of these findings are that genital lesions by themselves do not corroborate a rape complaint. Genital lesions may, however, corroborate specific details of a case and should be documented as carefully as any other lesion in rape complaints.

This was featured in an article here but seems to be a different study:

An in-depth study of 39 rape victims on one side and 110 nursing students on the other reveals that voluntary sex causes vaginal injuries just as frequently as in rapes.

“The findings are extremely interesting,” says Birgitte Schmidt Astrup, a doctor and a PhD student at the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the University of Southern Denmark.

“The nursing students experience just as frequent vaginal injuries as rape victims, and so these injuries cannot be used for much more than to establish that intercourse has taken place,” she says, adding that in cases where convictions have been based on such injuries, one can reasonably discuss whether there has been a miscarriage of justice. [...]

The results showed that vaginal injuries were found in 36 percent of rape victims at the Centre for Rape Victims at Odense University Hospital, and in 34 percent of the nursing students.

However:

The researcher is keen to point out that this is still only a hypothesis, which is also based on hints in other studies.

American researchers, for instance, have shown that there are four to five times as many injuries in white women as in women of other races, and this could be due to a difference in the skin on the mucous membranes.

“It’s too early to come with a definitive answer because the research in this field has so far been very poor,” says Astrup.

Sex differences in mate preferences

Something from the "That doesn't really surprise me department":

Is Traditional Gender Ideology Associated with Sex-Typed Mate Preferences? A Test in Nine Nations - 2006

As expected, these data replicated well-known sex differences in mate preferences: In general, women preferred
a mate older than themselves, men preferred a mate younger than themselves, women placed greater importance
on financial prospects in a mate, and men placed greater importance on good cook and housekeeper qualities in a
mate. Also, even with this small sample of nations, these cross-national data replicated the finding that the sex
difference in the preferred age of one’s mate decreased with increasing gender equality (Eagly & Wood, 1999).

At the participant level of analysis, these data confirmed our predictions about the relationship between traditional
gender ideology and mate preferences. First, for preferred age difference in a mate, all four forms of traditional gender ideology were associated with sex-typed preferences: Women with traditional attitudes preferred an older mate than did women with less traditional attitudes, whereas men with traditional attitudes preferred a younger mate than did men with less traditional attitudes. These men’s and women’s associations were significantly different from one another. Second, although traditional gender ideology was positively associated with the importance of good financial prospects in a mate for both men and women, for three of the four ideology measures it was a stronger predictor of women’s preferences. Third, although traditional gender ideology was positively associated with the importance of good cook and housekeeper qualities in a mate for both men and women, for three of the four ideology measures it was a stronger predictor of men’s preferences. In addition, an ipsative analysis revealed results consistent with the social role logic: To the extent that participants held traditional gender ideologies, women preferred good financial prospects in a mate more than other characteristics and men preferred a good cook and housekeeper more than other characteristics. These findings lend support to the hypothesis that traditional attitudes toward the roles of men and women serve to guide mate choice by fostering sex-typed mate preferences.

Cultural Suppression of Female Sexuality

An interesting find via Reddit. Thanks Sigi1, certainly an interesting paper:Cultural Suppression of Female Sexuality (2002). I cite:

Four theories about cultural suppression of female sexuality are evaluated. Data are reviewed on cross-cultural differences in power and sex ratios, reactions to the sexual revolution, direct restraining influences on adolescent and adult female sexuality, double standard patterns of sexual morality, female genital surgery, legal and religious restrictions on sex, prostitution and pornography, and sexual deception. The view that men suppress female sexuality received hardly any support and is flatly contradicted by some findings. Instead, the evidence favors the view that women have worked to stifle
each other’s sexuality because sex is a limited resource that women use to negotiate with men, and scarcity gives women an advantage.

[...]

The most compelling evidence, in our view, involved the direct influences on adolescent female sexuality, because any culture that wanted to suppress female sexuality would probably direct its strongest efforts toward newly pubescent females. These data uniformly supported the female control theory: Almost all influences on female adolescent sexuality are female, and the sole male influence (the boyfriend) tends to operate to promote rather than suppress female sexuality. Put simply, the influences that restrain female adolescent sexuality are female. Evidence about adult female sexuality converged with the evidence about adolescent influences. Adult women seem more disapproving of female premarital sex and other female sexual activity than adult men. Women have supported the double standard more strongly than men. The more extreme evidence about surgical interventions designed to curb female sexual responses likewise pointed toward female rather than male control.

[...]

Finally, sexual deception seemed most consistent with the female theory. Women conceal their interest in sex from prospective partners, which would be most relevant to negotiating the terms of what the man will exchange for sex. The male control hypothesis that men want to stifle their wives’ sexuality is contradicted by evidence that women pretend to have more rather than less pleasure than they actually have (such as by faking orgasms).

Pretty interesting and also reminds me of a study I have floating around, Study: Displaying cleavage, sexiness can alienate other women:

New University of Ottawa research documented women's aggression against other women wearing revealing outfits; women showing too much leg or cleavage are likely to be ostracized from female social circles as dangerous rivals, the scientists claimed.

[...]

In background information, the researchers noted that competition among males over sexual access to females has been documented extensively for many species, including humans, while relatively few studies have examined intrasexual competition among women over attention from males.
According to Vaillancourt and her team, these results fill a gap by providing evidence that women also see their sexy counterparts as threatening rivals and react against them aggressively.

Not gonna edit....I guess I have to ask thesaurus for a good "interesting" alternative the next time. Ah well, it is all about the data anyway.

Rule 34 explains

It is a novelity account from reddit about rule34 (if it exists, there is porn of it). Pretty interesting:

On the surface, Rule 34 seems like a hilarious idea; if it exists, there is porn of it. The humor lies in the shock and surreality of the moment for the average user stumbling upon the pornographic interpretation of an idea held dear.

And while I agree that it often times can be funny, the truth is that most of these are not being created as a joke. If Rule 34 really was just an anti-authoritarian 'rebel yell' of the internet, it would have passed into obscurity long ago. But we can see that it has been consistently happening since the dawn of the world wide web, and even longer before. Truth be told, the only difference between today and a few centuries ago is the means of distribution.

It's human nature to sexualize. For every conceivable person, concept, object or emotion there has been at least one person who got off thinking about it. There is no shame in that either; for we are merely prisms, refracting the energies of biology and evolutionary drive into a rainbow spectrum of sexuality. Yet despite the rich diversity of what is capable, we may sometimes feel forced to see the world, and even ourselves, through the colored lenses of a chosen few. This is no way to live your life. You will not feel whole without being at peace with your sexual identity, and you will not be able to love your fellow peoples as deeply without being able to truly see them.

Yes, that above is a picture of Donnie Darko kissing Frank the Rabbit, and it exists because someone out there truly enjoys the sentiment of the idea. Someone out there was moved by the characters, and so took it upon themselves to create from nothing, a way to express their desires and ultimately themselves. It is this form of expression that will ultimately reach across the spans of the internet to touch the soul of someone, somewhere who needs it the most. They may be an avid masturbator, comfortable and experienced with their wants and their body, or they may be in the midst of a sexual awakening, alone and terrified of the implications of their desires. Either way, this art form will for one brief moment allow them a shared connection and reminder that they are not alone.

tl;dr You wonder what the people that draw these are like, and I tell you they are no different from anyone else.

Attractive Women May Be Less Likely to Get Hired

Interesting article, do women discriminate against themsevles? Apperently in some cases they do:

The study involved sending 5,312 resumes in pairs to 2,656 advertised job openings in Israel. In each pair, one resume was without a picture while the second, otherwise almost identical resume, contained a picture of either an attractive male or female, or a plain-looking male or female.

[...] The results showed that the resumes of "attractive" males received a 19.9 percent response rate, nearly 50 percent higher than the 13.7 percent response rate for "plain" males and more than twice the 9.2 percent response rate of no-picture males.

[...] "Among female candidates, no-picture females have the highest response rate, 22 percent higher than plain females and 30 percent higher than attractive females. Our findings on penalization of attractive women contradict current psychology and organizational behavior literature on beauty that associate attractiveness, male and female alike, with almost every conceivable positive trait and disposition," explain the authors, Bradley Ruffle, a professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and Ph.D candidate Ze'ev Shtudiner.

[...] However, when the corporation at which the candidate might work recruited directly, attractive females received a response rate of about half that of plain and no-picture women. This is likely due to the high number of women in human resources staffing positions, the researchers conclude.

To verify this stereotype, the researchers conducted a post-experiment survey in which they spoke with the person at the company who screens candidates. That person was female in 24 of the 25 (96 percent) of the companies they interviewed. Moreover, these woman were young (ranging in age from 23 to 34 with an average age of 29) and typically single (67 percent) -- qualities more likely to be associated with a jealous response when confronted with a young, attractive competitor in the workplace.

"Indeed, the evidence points to female jealousy of attractive women in the workplace as a primary reason for their penalization in recruitment," Ruffle said.

Who would have thought...

Men seek beauty, women want wealth - Telegraph

Men seek beauty, women want wealth - Telegraph:

The new research confirms that, while humans may pride themselves on being highly evolved, men really do go for an attractive mate - though will make do with someone who falls somewhat short of this ideal - while women - apparently understanding this - adjust their desire for a "high-quality" mate according to how attractive they perceive themselves to be. In other words, beautiful women want rich men.

That is the conclusion of research published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Peter Todd, of Indiana University, Lars Penke, of Humboldt University, Berlin, Barbara Fasolo, of the London School of Economics, and Alison Lenton, of the University of Edinburgh.

Mr Todd said the problem with earlier work that suggested that likes attract was that the scientists had simply asked people about preferences while today's work showed what they actually did in a real world setting - a commercial speed dating operation with 46 people in Munich.

[...] "We found that what men and women say they want is not the same as what they actually choose and that the actual choices made by men and women accord with a rough evolutionary-predicted trade-off, in this case between men's overall mate value [combining their wealth and status, family commitment and health] and women's self-perceived attractiveness," said Mr Todd.
Women dominate this trade-off, he said, because "men are much less discriminating".

Although people may claim otherwise, beauty is the key for men, since it signifies "good genes", while women, the choosier of the sexes, leverage their looks for security, fitness and commitment.

"Ancestral individuals who made their mate choices in this way - women trading off their attractiveness for higher quality men and men looking for any attractive women who would accept them - would have had an evolutionary advantage in greater numbers of successful offspring."

Smell and social behaviour

Two interesting studies:

Gender differences and similarity in personality and social behaviour Ros Barnett (2004)

Over a wide range of personality and social variables, there is much evidence of gender similarities. For the Big Five personality dimensions, there is no gender difference in openness to experience (d=.03) and small differences in conscientiousness (-.13), extraversion or gregariousness (-.14), and neuroticism (-.25); there is, however, a large difference in one aspect of agreeableness, termed tendermindedness or nurturance (-.97). The gender difference in self-esteem is small (.21). Likewise, there are many gender similarities in the realm of social behavior. The direction of the gender difference in helping behavior depends largely on the situation. In small groups, men and women are similar in their instrumental and expressive behaviors. The gender difference in democratic vs. autocratic leadership style is small (-.22 for democratic style). The research evidence does not support popular media claims about enormous gender differences in language use. The gender difference in self-disclosure is small (-.18). There are several exceptions to this pattern of gender similarities. Gender differences are moderately large for aggression (.50), smiling (-.63), and sensitivity to nonverbal cues (-.52).

And...

Scent of a Woman: Men’s Testosterone Responses to Olfactory Ovulation Cues

Women around the world spend billions of dollars each year on exotic smelling perfumes and lotions in the hopes of attracting a mate. However, according to a new study in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, going "au natural" may be the best way to capture a potential mate's attention.

Smells are known to be critical to animal mating habits: Animal studies have shown that male testosterone levels are influenced by odor signals emitted by females, particularly when they are ovulating (that is, when they are the most fertile). Psychological scientists Saul L. Miller and Jon K. Maner from Florida State University wanted to see if a similar response occurs in humans. In two studies, women wore tee shirts for 3 nights during various phases of their menstrual cycles. Male volunteers smelled one of the tee shirts that had been worn by a female participant. In addition, some of the male volunteers smelled control tee shirts that had not been worn by anyone. Saliva samples for testosterone analysis were collected before and after the men smelled the shirts.

Results revealed that men who smelled tee shirts of ovulating women subsequently had higher levels of testosterone than men who smelled tee shirts worn by non-ovulating women or men who smelled the control shirts. In addition, after smelling the shirts, the men rated the odors on pleasantness and rated the shirts worn by ovulating women as the most pleasant smelling.

The authors note that "the present research is the first to provide direct evidence that olfactory cues to female ovulation influence biological responses in men." In other words, this study suggests that testosterone levels may be responsive to smells indicating when a woman is fertile. The authors conclude that this biological response may promote mating-related behavior by males.

Why are we afraid of male sexuality?

An interesting Guardian article found via Arne's blog:

Since the era of the permissive society and the mainstreaming of modern feminism, western society has gone a long way towards liberating women's sexuality. Younger women have, to an unprecedented extent, been encouraged to believe they can be as sexual as they like and to experience and express their desires as they wish. Even the age-old proscriptions on female promiscuity have been largely broken down, exemplified by the glorious flowering of the SlutWalk movement.

Simultaneously, and perhaps not coincidentally, male sexuality has been increasingly seen as a problem. You can hear it in the gentle, dismissive mockery that says men are simple creatures who "only want one thing" or, at the extreme, outright vilification. The male gaze threatens, male desire is aggressive. Our primal instincts are pathologised with the jargon of gender studies. Righteous and necessary efforts to reduce sexual crimes have had the unwelcome effect of teaching generations of men that our sexuality can be dangerous and frightening.

[...] Again and again the message came out: girls have problems. Boys are problems. And yet does anyone doubt that there should be concerns about how easy access to porn impacts upon boys' sexual development, their self-esteem, their body image or performance anxieties? It's not as if young men bask in perfect mental health and happiness – young men commit suicide at nearly four times the rate of young women, and sex and relationships rank high on their list of concerns.

[...] Perhaps the greatest concern for men and women alike should be the way male sexuality and sexual expressiveness balances on a narrow tightrope of acceptability. One step off the wire and you tumble into the realm of perversion. As feminist blogger Clarisse Thorn noted last year, any man who hits on a woman and gets it wrong risks being branded a "creep" – sometimes deservedly so, of course, but often for no greater sin than being insufficiently attractive or socially skilled, or having misread a perceived signal of invitation. I've never heard of a woman being stigmatised or disparaged for expressing an attraction to big men, rough men, geeky men or whatever. A man who expresses similar desires for women who don't conform to standard norms of beauty is a perv, a fetishist, a weirdo.

[...] Male sexuality is no less diverse, complex and wonderful than women's or, for that matter, no more base, coarse and animalistic. [...] Women have been entirely justified in asking that we blokes respect their rights, autonomy and wishes, that we respect them as sexual beings. It shouldn't be too much to ask for a little of the same in return.

On decriminalisation of sex work

Well, I support it, and have written about the Swedish case before, not sure where though, anyhow, good post:

Amongst anti sex work feminists, the model of sex industry law reform preferred to decriminalisation is known as the Swedish Model. Based on legislation introduced in Sweden in 1999, the Swedish model criminalises the buying of sexual services. Selling of sexual services is technically not a crime, but buying them is punishable by a fine or gaol time. This legislation is based on a redefinition of sex work as ‘male violence against women’. Proponents of the Swedish model claim that it has reduced the amount of sex work occurring in Sweden, although this claim is disputed by Swedish sex workers and some researchers.

Recently, Swedish researchers Susanne Dodillet and Petra Östergren published a paper on the Swedish model, The Swedish Sex Purchase Act: Claimed Success and Documented Effects (be warned about the language: it’s generally supportive, but it uses the p-word). The paper is a must read for anyone with an interest in this topic. Briefly put, it’s conclusions can be summarised as follows: contrary to claims otherwise, the Swedish legislation does not appear to have reduced the size of the Swedish sex industry, has not deterred clients, is unsupported by Swedish sex workers and may make sex work more dangerous and increase risk of STIs. As noted in a survey quoted in the report, support for criminalisation in Sweden is strong, however, the majority of people surveyed support the criminalisation of sex workers as well as clients.

[...W]hile the legislation does not specifically criminalise the sex worker, it criminalises everyone around the sex worker. It becomes illegal to rent a room, house, hotel room or apartment for anyone to do sex work out of, or the land lord risks being charged with pimping. The real world implication of this, of course, is that if a sex worker’s sex work status is revealed, they are most likely going to be evicted even if they are not working from that property, as the land lord will fear being charged under Sweden’s strict pimping laws. ‘Pimping’ is also a charge applied to anyone who assists in finding clients, provides security services, or allows advertising for sex workers. Sex workers cannot work together or they risk being charged with pimping each other, which dramatically decreases our opportunity to look out for each other’s safety, reduce overhead costs, and establish peer support networks, which are known to be our most effective method of reducing the STI rate. Services which provide support to sex workers risk running foul of legislators who oppose anything that looks like ‘promoting’ sex work, which may even include distribution of condoms to sex workers. Sex worker organisations do not receive condoms from the government and are not able to buy them in bulk, so have found themselves forced to obtain them from organisations that provide them to men who have sex with men.

[...]I should note: the legislation, of course, is not inclusive of all women. When it is stated that sex work is ‘male violence against women’, what is meant is ‘cis male violence against cis women’. Women working explicitly as trans women (and cis and trans male sex workers) are completely erased in both legislation and discussion. They don’t fit neatly into the analysis, so they’re just ignored. As I’ve stated before, if your analysis doesn’t fit the affected community, it’s not the community that needs to change.

It’s a pretty simple decision to me: when the choice is between a legislative model that has been demonstrated to have some of the best health and safety outcomes for sex workers, and a legislative model that has the negative impacts on us listed above, I’m going to support the model that promotes our health, safety and well-being, and that sex workers actually want to work under. It’s not only the humane choice, it’s the feminist choice.

There was far more in the original. Good article.

Study on Sexdrive......I steal shamelessly....again

I think I saw that study somewhere before. Jup it is the Baumeister one. Excerpts (copied from a German blog *Hallo!*):

The sex drive refers to the strength of sexual motivation. Across many different studies and measures, men have been shown to have more frequent and more intense sexual desires than women, as reflected in spontaneous thoughts about sex, frequency and variety of sexual fantasies, desired frequency of intercourse, desired number of partners, masturbation, liking for various sexual practices, willingness to forego sex, initiating versus refusing sex, making sacrifices for sex, and other measures. No contrary findings (indicating stronger sexual motivation among women) were found.Hence we conclude that the male sex drive is stronger than the female sex drive. The gender difference in sex drive should not be generalized to other constructs such as sexual or orgasmic capacity, enjoyment of sex, or extrinsically motivated sex

[...] Our review of the literature indicated that role of androgens (e.g., testosterone) was crucial in producing sex drive. We focused on the androgens for several reasons. First, scientists’ interest in the effects of testosterone have yielded a wealth of data on its effects. Second, testosterone is one of the primary organizational and activational hormones that differentiates men and women. Although both women and men have natural supplies of testosterone in their bloodstream, the amount of testosterone varies significantly between the genders. On average, men’s blood testosterone levels are 1,000 nanograms per deciliter, whereas women’s blood testosterone levels are only one seventh or one eighth of this amount (see Dabbs, 2000; Mazur & Booth, 1998). Postmenopausal women have especially low levels of testosterone (regardless of whether menopause occurs naturally or as a result of surgical procedures). Most commonly, surgically induced menopause is the result of an oophorectomy (i.e., removal of the ovaries and adrenals) or hysterectomy (i.e., removal of the uterus). Third and perhaps most germane to this analysis, evidence from the animal and human literatures suggests that androgens are responsible for active initiation of sexual activity (i.e., proceptivity), whereas estrogens are responsible for passive acceptance of sexual activity (i.e., receptivity; Beach, 1976; De Jonge & Van de Poll, 1984; Sherwin, 1988).

There are tons of studies cited over at "Alles Evolution" and it is well worth the read (even for people who don't know German).

Hijacking another feminist argument...

Well it might just be me, but often when it comes to discussion about contraceptives or more specifically the lack of a male version thereof I get the "keep it in your pants" answer (even in feminist spaces. There is no incidence at hand, but figured I could use the following if such a thing happens again. From feministe:

Trying to think of a fresh angle from which to approach the issue of slut-shaming, I remembered the last time I debated an anti-choice, anti-rights activist who wanted to see women stripped of access to family planning services. Naturally the argument he ultimately resorted to after all his others had been debunked was: “If girls don’t want to get pregnant, they shouldn’t be opening their legs to everyone.”

“Wow,” I’d chuckled to myself, “he didn’t even wait 5 minutes before falling back on old-fashioned slut-shaming. Most anti-choicers at least pretend it’s about the fetus for a little while longer.”

It is similar in a way that when you get "keep it in your pants" while discussing male contraceptive options it can be framed as slut shaming. Might be a far fetch....found it interesting. Stop judging me....darn.

Men need more cuddles than women for a happy long-term relationship

A report by the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, asking 1,000 couples who had been together an average 25 years with some interesting findings:

Tenderness in a long-term relationship is more important to middle-aged men than it is to women [...]

Men in a committed relationship are also more likely to report being happy, while women are more likely to say they are satisfied with their sex lives, surprised researchers said.

For men, relationship happiness was more likely if the man reported being in good health and if it was important to him that his partner experienced orgasm.

[...]Men did report more relationship happiness in later years, whereas for women, their sexual satisfaction increased over time.

Women who had been with their partner for less than 15 years were less likely to report sexual satisfaction, but after 15 years, the percentage went up significantly.

Eye Tracking Devices....man, we are a strange species.

Came up via reddit, found it kind of interesting so looked it up some more:

When shown a photo of baseball-player George Brett, womens' eyes focused on his face. By contrast, when men were shown the same photo, they focused also on his crotch. The researchers noted, "Men tend to fixate more on areas of private anatomy on animals as well, as evidenced when users were directed to browse the American Kennel Club site." - from here

However when we look at porn, there is a difference:

The finding, reported in Hormones and Behavior, confirmed the hypothesis of a previous study (Stephen Hamann and Kim Wallen, et al., 2004) that reported men and women showed different patterns of brain activity when viewing sexual stimuli. The present study examined sex differences in attention by employing eye-tracking technology that pinpoints individual attention to different elements of each picture such as the face or body parts.

"Men looked at the female face much more than women, and both looked at the genitals comparably,"

[...]"The eye-tracking data suggested what women paid most attention to was dependent upon their hormonal state. Women using hormonal contraceptives looked more at the genitals, while women who were not using hormonal contraceptives paid more attention to contextual elements of the photographs,"

Fits great in my previous post about biology and different working male and female brains:

The answer may lie within a small section of the brain called the amygdala, which is important in the processing of emotional information. In Dr. Hamann and Wallen's previous fMRI study, men showed more activation in the amygdala in response to sexual vs. neutral stimuli than did women. From the fMRI study alone, the cause of the increased activity was unclear, but Rupp and Wallen's study suggests the possibility that higher amygdala activation in men may be related to their increased attention to faces in sexual photographs.

Another study:

Men and women did not differ in their overall interest in the stimuli, indicated by equal subjective ratings and viewing times, although there were preferences for specific types of pictures. Pictures of the opposite sex receiving oral sex were rated as least sexually attractive by all participants and they looked longer at pictures showing the female actor’s body. Women rated pictures in which the female actor was looking indirectly at the camera as more attractive, while men did not discriminate by female gaze. Participants did not look as long at close-ups of genitals, and men and women on oral contraceptives rated genital images as less sexually attractive. Together, these data demonstrate sex-specific preferences for specific types of stimuli even when, across stimuli, overall interest was comparable

Pretty interesting stuff:

Generally, heterosexual men subjectively rate stimuli depicting nude males or male–male sexual behavior as less sexually arousing or attractive than stimuli including women (Costa, Braun, & Birbaumer, 2003; Schmidt, 1975; Steinman et al., 1981). In contrast, women generally rate photos of both males and females comparably attractive or arousing (Costa et al., 2003; Schmidt, 1975; Steinman et al., 1981). Genital measurement to same and opposite-sex stimuli shows the same pattern for men and women with men showing highest genital responding to their preferred sex while women show comparable genital arousal independent of the sex of the actors (Chivers, Rieger, Latty, & Bailey, 2004).

[...]Generally, eye-tracking studies find more same-sex viewing interest in women than men (Lykins et al., 2006, 2008; Rupp & Wallen, 2007a). However, despite differences in gaze patterns, there were no sex differences in subjective ratings of the stimuli (Lykins et al., 2006; Rupp & Wallen, 2007a). Because men and women did not differ in subjective ratings, but had different patterns of attention, it is possible that men and women have different cognitive processing strategies when viewing sexual stimuli, and the different strategies produce equal levels of arousal though the aspects of the images visualized were different.

[...]In addition to eye-tracking studies demonstrating sex differences in attention to visual sexual stimuli, recent neuroimaging work also suggests that men and women’s brains may respond
differently to visual sexual stimuli (reviewed in Rupp & Wallen, 2008) even in the absence of sex differences in subjective ratings (Hamann, Herman, Nolan, & Wallen, 2004). This further suggests that subjective ratings may not capture possible sex difference in initial interest in and cognitive processing of visual sexualstimuli. We do notyet know the exact relationship
between neural activation, reflecting changes in cognitive processing, and subjective and conscious evaluations of sexualstimuli.

Fathers and mothers....some demographics

Not sure why, but this comes up in discussions every once in a while:

Percent distribution of women 40-44 years of age in 2002 by number of children ever born: No children: 15.0%

Percent distribution of men 40-44 years of age in 2002 by number of children ever fathered: No children: 22.4% -from CDC

From a slightly different source (which is also the CDC):

At every educational level, higher percentages of women than men have had a child and the gender difference is more pronounced for those with less than a high school diploma (73 percent of men,  versus 91 percent of women).

'Dear Woman': Will Ferrell Spoofs The Manifesto For Conscious Men

Something funny for once. Includes some critic about negative view on male sexuality. A little transcript by me:

I apologize that my masturbation fantasies are not entirely respectful to your feminine being. Sometimes when caught up in the throes of self-pleasure I let my imagination drift at thoughts of your nude body. I apologize for the pain that my fantasies must have cost you.

Brilliant...

Women's role in enforcing "patriarchial" norms...

Two recent studies, one found via Arne Hoffmann's blog:

Happy smiling men are consistently rated least attractive by women when compared to proud or brooding men, according to a new study from the University of British Columbia.

[...] Men who thought they might attract a mate with a happy friendly picture might want to consider updating their online profiles.

[...] Tracy and her research partner graduate student Alec Beall had 1,000 adults rate the attractiveness of people in photographs displaying either pride, happiness, shame or a neutral expression.

In men, happiness was consistently rated as the least attractive expression. Shame and pride were the most sexually attractive to women. In women, happiness is the most attractive expression to men.

from here

And another one via ForbesWomen and YourTango (not sure how serious one could take that source):

Seventy-five percent of women wouldn't hitch themselves to someone who was unemployed, and 65% wouldn't tie the knot if they were jobless

[...]

"It is ironic that women place more weight on love than money, yet won't marry if they or their potential suitor is unemployed," said Meghan Casserly, Reporter, ForbesWoman. "A job can make or break the longevity of a relationship and the results of the survey demonstrate just what an important role careers play in romance."

[...]

32 percent of women in a relationship make more money than their partner. 50 percent of women would marry someone who earned significantly less than them, while 41 percent wouldn't marry someone who earned significantly less than them.

55 percent would give up their career to take care of kids if their partner asked them to do so; only 28 percent would ask the same of their partner.

77 percent of women believe women can simultaneously have a fulfilling relationship and family life, as well as a successful career.

Slutty studs....

Just when I thought there isn't much that could really surprise me, here comes this:

The Sexual Double Standard: Fact or Fiction? - Michael Marks; R. Fraley - 2005

In contemporary society it is widely believed that men are socially rewarded for sexual activity, whereas women are derogated for sexual activity. To determine whether a sexual double standard exists, both undergraduate (n = 144) and Internet (n = 8,080) participants evaluated experimental targets who were described as either male or female and as having a variable number of sexual partners. Targets were more likely to be derogated as the number of sexual partners increased, and this effect held for both male and female targets. These results suggest that, although people do evaluate others as a function of sexual activity, people do not necessarily hold men and women to different sexual standards.

Who would have though (certainly not me). Other research with a similar conclusion:

In contemporary Western society it is widely believed that sexual behavior is evaluated differently depending on whether a man or a woman engages in it (Milhausen & Herold, 2001). This view, known as the sexual double standard, suggests that for men, sexual behavior brings praise and respect, whereas for women, identical sexual behavior brings derogation and disrepute. Although the general public’s belief in the sexual double standard is pervasive, (Marks, 2002; Milhausen & Herold, 1999), the research literature paints a different picture. Person perception studies, which feature men and women engaged in identical levels of sexual activity, are widely used to assess how sexual behavior is evaluated depending on the sex of the person engaging in it. To date, these studies show limited empirical support for the double standard (e.g., Gentry, 1998; Jacoby & Williams, 1985; Mark & Miller, 1986; Marks & Fraley, 2005a; Oliver & Sedikides, 1992; O’Sullivan, 1995; Sprecher, 1989; Sprecher, McKinney, Walsh, & Anderson, 1988). These findings are surprising considering the preponderance of anecdotal evidence for the existence of a double standard. [...] 

Although the sexual double standard seems selfevident, person perception studies generally fail to show that people actually evaluate sexually active men and women differently. For example, Gentry (1998) conducted a person perception task in which participants evaluated male and female targets with varied levels of sexual experience. Evaluations were based on level of sexual experience and relationship type (casual or committed), but not on target gender. O’Sullivan (1995) followed a similar protocol and found that targets were rated based on the amount of sexual experience they reported, but ratings did not vary as a function of target gender. We (Marks & Fraley, 2005a) conducted a person perception study designed to rectify some methodological concerns of previous double standard studies, yet we found little evidence of a double standard.

Although some researchers have reported evidence of a double standard, comparable findings frequently fail to emerge in later studies. For instance, Sprecher, McKinney, and Orbuch (1987) conducted a person perception study and found evidence of a double standard that was conditional on age and the context (committed or casual) in which the loss of virginity occurred. However, data from other studies have failed to corroborate either the age effect (Sprecher, 1989; Sprecher et al., 1988) or the context effect (O’Sullivan, 1995). In summary, although it appears that people do evaluate others according to the amount of sexual activity they report, person perception research rarely shows that people evaluate men and women differently as a function of their sexual activity. Even when an interaction between target gender and sexual activity has been found, it is often found only in highly circumscribed situations (see Crawford & Popp, 2003, for a review). If the sexual double standard is as pervasive and powerful as many people believe, empirical evidence for its role in person evaluation should be less elusive. - from here 

There is more to that. Apparently, part of the reason many people believe in that double standard is confirmation bias.

In contemporary Western societies it is widely believed that there is a sexual double standard such that men are rewarded for sexual activity, whereas women are derogated for sexual activity. This pervasive belief may result in a confirmation bias such that people tend to notice information that confirms the double standard and fail to notice information that refutes it. Two studies were conducted to test this hypothesis. In both studies, participants read vignettes about a target man or a woman that contained an equal number of positive and negative comments regarding the target’s sexuality. Participants recalled more information consistent with the double standard than inconsistent with it. - from here

And there goes another well believed factoid. (found via reddit btw)