. . . Can't it be both/and?
(community member Bethany L. has also posted on this story)
Meghan O'Rourke, over at Slate's xx factor blog has a post up, The Sexual Fluidity of Women about this weekend's article on sexuality research and women's desire in the New York Times Magazine . In the post, O'Rourke argues that the implicit question of the article is this: "Are contemporary women doomed to experience a schism between what their bodies lust for and their minds tell them they want?"
Don't you just love it when questions and answers are framed in terms of what "women" (as a single corporate entity) experience or desire? The article itself, which appears to be an interesting round-up of contemporary research of women's sexuality (I'll have to sit down and read it more carefully when I have the time -- alas, assigned reading takes priority this morning), poses the tiresome "what do women want?" question . . . as if we, as a some inexplicable half of the human species, are a problem to be solved. Women (unlike men, the question implicitly suggests): they're so complicated and confusing!! They confuse us with their sexuality! Isn't the answer to the question "what do women want?" self-evidently "each one of us wants something slightly different"? While I'm glad people now recognize that generalizations about human sexuality made from studying primarily male subjects is inadequate, redressing the problem by making generalizations about "women" doesn't seem like a very useful response.
I also do not understand why it's useful to recycle the body/mind dichotomy when talking about sexual desire and experience. Regardless of gender, sexual orientation, or any other factor you can think of. Our bodies and our minds desire different things in different contexts, at different points in our lives. In my experience (in sex as well as elsewhere in life) it's also quite possible to desire two seemingly contradictory things at the same time -- without losing your mind or your integrity. Framing a so-called dissonance between physical arousal and self-reported desire (an example O'Rourke highlights from the article) as a "schism" imagines that, just because our bodies and minds operate on different levels simultaneously, they are in opposition to one another -- why should this be the case? Sexuality is beautifully complicated. Human beings are beautifully complex. In sex, as in everything else, our Selves -- both body and mind -- act and react in an ever-shifting composition of ways that scientific studies will likely never be able to fully document and explain.
cross-posted at the Future Feminist Librarian-Activist
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StreetScholar also posted about this before I did, but I didn't see it until after I submitted my own comments. Be sure to check it out!
Ultimately, I thought the NYT article was pretty interesting (if, at times, overly simplistic or mildly offensive), and a good jumping off point for discussion -- but I too had to laugh about the "What do women want?" line. Behold, the mysterious female!
I was also a little skeptical of this almost Cartesian dichotomy they have going on between women's "minds" and "bodies," and what conclusions they're implying by it. I mean, first of all, I'm not sure how informative or accurate it is to portray a set of self-reported data as "mind," here. I'm also skeptical of the implications -- I appreciate that they went out of their way to drive home that physical arousal is not the same thing as actual desire (let alone consent), but it was still portrayed in a little bit of a salacious light, or as if the physical reaction displayed something about what people "really" want.
It seems like in her study she was trying to expose the person to different kinds of sexuality equally by including both male and female masturbation, lesbian, gay, and heterosexual sex. But, then she shows the person a woman doing calisthenics in the nude and a man walking in the nude, which doesn't seem to be equivalent. There's a lot more bending and moving in calisthenics than walking and seems like it would be a lot more sexually arousing than walking.
awesome post! =D