Women Learn the Breast Fetish, Too
Meredith Chivers, a highly regarded psychologist at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, showed men and women, both straight and gay, short film clips of heterosexual sex, gay and lesbian sex, a man masturbating, a woman masturbating, a nude well-toned man walking, a fit woman doing nude calisthenics, and bonobos (an ape species) having sex.
Chivers then asked the men and women to rate how aroused they felt. But she also used probes to gauge penile swelling and vaginal blood flow.
Men’s responses were as expected.
But women’s genitals and minds seemed to belong to entirely different people. For instance, hetero women’s bodies were more aroused by the exercising woman than by the strolling man – though they claimed otherwise.
In other research, she asked men and women to wear goggles that track eye movement, and had them look at pictures of heterosexual couples in foreplay. The men gazed mostly at the women – their faces and bodies. But the women spent equal time looking at both sexes, with their eyes focused on the men’s faces and the women’s bodies.
In these two pieces of research we find hetero women more aroused by nude pictures of women than men, and spending more time looking at nude women’s bodies than men’s.
Odd huh?
Chivers isn’t entirely sure what to make of it all. Since women’s blood flow rose in every sexual situation they viewed, including the bonobos – and because lubrication (and blood flow) also increase among rape victims when sex is unwanted – she speculates that women’s bodies may lubricate whenever a sexual signal arises in order to reduce discomfort, and the possibility of injury, during penetration. With this need, women’s bodies may simply be much more sensitive to any sexual signal than men’s, whether or not they feel sexually aroused.
Okay, but why were women more aroused by looking at the nude woman than the nude man? “Possibly,” she said, “the exposure and tilt of the woman’s vulva during her calisthenics was processed as a sexual signal while the man’s unerect penis registered in the opposite way.”
The notion that the women were less turned on because they couldn’t see an erection seems odd given that Playgirl, until recently, has had a long history of hiding the penis. Many women are ambivalent, at best, about the penis as a visual turn-on.
Perhaps Chivers is referring to some primal response that women aren’t consciously aware of, responding to a sexual stimulus requiring need for lubrication. Yet a nude exercising woman is no more likely to penetrate than a flaccid man.
Also, straight women spent more time looking at the bodies of nude women than nude men during sexual foreplay. Why did women’s bodies draw greater interest?
Many will seek out biological explanations, but as a sociologist, I think culture may explain the oddity.
Society teaches us how to see the world: How to think about it, feel about it, and react to it.
The male body is pretty much ignored in our culture. Billboards aren’t splashed with sexy men. No men in Speedos. Nothing much but an occasional underwear ad.
Women’s bodies are focused upon, with breasts selectively hidden and revealed, creating a captivation, leaving us wondering about that which is hidden. The camera gazes, zeroes in on women’s bodies. We talk about women’s breasts as alluring. So they become a sexual signal to both men and women. We don’t treat any part of the male body in the same way.
Men learn the breast fetish, too. In cultures that don’t selectively hide and reveal the breast, they are no big deal. So tribal men, who see them all the time, aren’t especially interested. European men’s attraction waned when topless women suddenly appeared all over local beaches and billboards. And men can become numbed to titillation with overexposure to porn.
Hetero women likely experience all this a bit differently from men. For one thing, the fetish isn’t attached to their natural sexual interest, which may weaken the allure. Homophobia may also lead to repression. Women might also see other women’s breasts as competition, distracting from the erotic. Or, they may become angered by female objectification — another distraction. But research suggests that women often do experience the fetish, none-the-less.
I’m hetero, but ask me which image I find more erotic, a nude female or a nude male, and I’ll choose the girl. Many of my hetero female students nod in agreement.
I used to think that was odd, until I realized that the breast fetish is learned, and not based in biology.
To anyone who plans to inform me that I am bi, please see this post first (I’m tired of answering repetitive comments): Men Know My Sexuality Better Than Me
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Posted on November 29, 2010, in feminism, gender, men, objectification, pornography, sex and sexuality, sexism, women and tagged breast fetish, breasts, feminism, gender, men, objectification, pornography, sex and sexuality, sexism, women. Bookmark the permalink. 261 Comments.
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Neurobiologically, the breasts are cross wired with the vagina and clitoris. Using an MRI it is proven that nipple self-stimulation activated the genital sensory cortex. Now come on now, get serious. How can the sexual association of a part of the body that is hard wired to the clitoris NOT be a biological phenomenon rather than a cultural one? I don’t believe your theory that hunter gather societies don’t have the breast fetish, I think you totally made that up, but even if it was true that some particular tribe didn’t have the fetish, THEY would be the odd ones out, not us. Look, this is proven… game, set and match scientifically.
I’m not sure what your point is. Yes, nipples are sexually aroused. That encourages breast-feeding. But there is no reason why there should be a visual stimulus regarding breasts. Just like there isn’t a visual stimulus for the clitoris. How many guys try and Google clitoris to get all excited. According to “1 billion wicked thoughts,” which looked at quite people search for to get aroused, not very much.
And again, it doesn’t make sense that neither man nor women have a breast fetish in tribal societies but both women and men have one in the western world. Social construction, clearly.
The study mentioned in this article brings to light several important things that I wasn’t previously aware of. The sexualizing of women’s bodies not only leads to men being aroused or attracted to specific features, but it has the same effects on women as well. In women, it even affects how we perceive our bodies and other women’s bodies. We observe other women out of jealousy or to compare ourselves to them.
I think this highlights the importance of stopping women’s bodies from being over-sexualized. Women’s bodies are beautiful, and they should be respected, but in our society, we mostly see violence associated with the sexualizing of the body. There needs to be a larger strive for respecting women’s bodies. By doing so, there is less jealousy among women and more unity. If women begin to compare themselves because of expectations created mostly by men, there won’t be any advancement in the fight for equal rights.
Thank for your blog post. I came across your blog, during a very difficult time of mine. I had some mental health issues and lately I experienced some kind of OCD related to sexual orientation. One of the main themes that my brain used to focus on was my sexual orientation and the fact that I was turned on by the female body, especially hot female pictures. My HOCD (Homosexual Obsessive Compulsion Disorder) would tell me that because I was aroused by some pictures of hot or naked women, then I certainly was gay. It was even more difficult when I used to compare the fact that I never was aroused by the male body, not pictures and not in person. Also, the fact that I couldn’t orgasm in bed with a man, then certainly I should be gay because it was obvious that I preferred women. Even though what my brain wasn’t focusing on was the fact that as you have mentioned before in you posts, it was kind of a fetish for breasts and booty, not the female as a whole. The thing would be even more difficult with the fact that my HOCD didn’t understand why I got some kind of arousal (it’s called groinal respone In OCD) when I looked at these pictures. When I read your posts I kind of understood that I was not weird and a lot of straight females experienced this thing and that it had nothing to do with my sexual orientation. Thing is with man I always had a natural approach, like even though I was probably not aroused by the body or the figure, I would linger for him. Like the whole person, I would dream about it and I only wanted sex and intimacy with the man. Sorry if I was long, I just think that it is an eye opening that sometimes body arousal and eroticism is not linked with our sexual desire. But is mainly something learned by the society, as to some features which are sexy and an indication of sex( like breasts and booties). Thanks for the blog posts!
I’m glad I could help!
Have you ever thought that women may struggle with this sort of feelings they get, because they can’t understand where do they come from?
Yes. A number of women have written on this blog to tell me that this blog post was helpful to them to understand what was going on. It’s confusing when you find breasts arousing but you aren’t interested in sex with women.
Yeah,I found it disturbing to. First it was mainly a breast fetish, but recently I have experienced another one. It has to do more with bottoms/bums and I guess what you describe about social impact in fetishes is right. And that’s because in my teenage years big bums where not considered sexy, whereas now you see pictures of big bums and sexy bums everywhere. That’s why when I experience the fetish I feel like I get aroused with the female body, but later on I realize it has more to do with the fact that these pictures are a clue to sex and eroticism, more than actually me liking the idea of sleeping with the girl. So I think it’s a good thing to help women who find it difficult to understand these sort of feelings. Because we are taught ti believe that if we feel some kind of arousal for the same sex, we must be gay. To me as well happened the same as you,in real life I kind of found it disgusting and boring to look at the female.
Yeah, this post might give more insight into all this:
This was such an interesting read! Im so curious as to what the scientific explanation may be. I myself have noticed that my friends and I are more comfortable talking about the female body, and our experiences. where as we don’t even like to say the word “penis” because we find it weird. We are all heterosexual; at atleast 3/7 of us are. I wonder if your study may include that female body’s are more comforting to women because we know and talk about them and have shared similar experiences, and that is why we find it more easy to look at the women than it is to look at the men. I personally agree with the women who would rather look at a women body over a mans because I know more about the parts of a women and I can relate to certain parts of her body. I would look at a mans body for curiosity because every man is different, maybe its just me.
The research behind this is a mix of biology and sociology.
Children are born before their brains are fully developed so society has affects on how we see the world. And women seem to be more sexually flexible. One reason, or one theory as to why,Is that well men’s sex drive is constantly high and strong, women’s fluctuates over the course of each month, being particularly high around ovulation. So the theory is that men are constantly getting reinforcement for their natural heterosexuality or homosexuality Whereas when women sex drive is lower social messages may be implanted in the brain, and most of the sexualized images in the world are female. So that women learn to think of women as the sexier sex.
“In these two pieces of research we find hetero women more aroused by nude pictures of women than men, and spending more time looking at nude women’s bodies than men’s”
I can very much relate to this statement. Not to say that I do not like the physique of a man, but for me there is something arouse about about a woman’s curves and soft skin that is a turn on for me. I have been in relationships with women before and I always enjoyed caressing their bodies, it was sometimes more arousing than sensual kissing. As a young girl I remember always being intrigued by the way women looked. Maybe it is possible that seeing a naked mans body whose penis is not erected has a negative affect on us women because, well it is just hanging there (I do not mean to offend any males whatsoever) but, seeing a woman naked even though her nipples are not aroused is still a turn on to me because of their soft roundness.I genuinely find women to be beautiful beings. Even seeing a muscular men does nothing to me, but seeing a women work out will definitely catch my eye. I am also the type of women that will tell another woman she is beautiful. Similar to the blogger, I too will be quick to say that I find a nude female accessibly more erotic than a nude male.
This post has made me feel a lot more comfortable with my attraction to the woman body – thank you. Society tends to always place us in a box with a label on it that identifies us as straight, gay, bi etc. Perhaps because of this, I have never really admitted that I find the woman body attractive. You mention that the male body is irrelevant in our culture and ads of any kind of product typically involve a beautiful woman. Certainly this has influence over our likes and what we find attractive. With that said, I think that we can find someone attractive without desiring to be sexually involved with them. Further, I’d like to add that sexuality is so fluent and although, society tends to want to liable things, the spectrum of sexuality is too broad to place in just one box/category.
Thanks again for your post! I will no longer shy away from my appreciation for the woman body!
You are welcome. 🙂
I can completely agree with this post. We always look at women and compare ourselves to someone on television or social media. Compare our bodies and the way we are suppose to dress based on what society tells us. I found it very interesting to read about how “breasts” in other cultures are not given much importance, so it becomes normal to see women with no top on. There is so much pressure that society places on women as to what they should look like so i do think that women look at other women more than they would look at a man. I can say that i have looked at other women and looking at their body and it was not in a sexual desire kind of way. It was more of comparing myself to them. social media advertises all these products that will give you the results of you looking like these women, because thats what society has taught us to do.
I have gone to strip shows for women and to be honest it is so awkward to see these guys dance in a sexual way. I was not comfortable being there and i think we as women go to these shows because we want to experience what men feel going to a place like that.
I agree. Women have always been sexualized. Starting from the clothes we wear to how we act. You can’t wear things too revealing because it will be asking for “it.” Now that feminism has been growing more it seems that women mare taking over on tis department. Yet, still I can see how the breast fetishes are internalized into us fro a young age. Women are all together more exciting to see than men in reality. Of course this is my opinion. Even when watching a UFC fight I feel like it is more interesting when it is a female instead of the male fights. There is more to a women ( breast, curves, bums) than just a six pack o muscles. I feel like women will always be more provocative. Women are definitely more interesting.
One woman wrote “Penis are the hideous thing but vanginas not”. This comment made me cry the whole day. I an going cut my penis today. I don’t want to offend any women since I love them with my whole heart.
Someone really said that? That’s crazy.
I with no doubt completely agree with this post. My life as a young teenager was a time where I experienced a lot of sexual confusion because of fetishes. As a kid, I remember coming across porn for the first time. Since there was a lack of bias that came along with being so young, I immediately was infatuated by women’s bodies. What I came to notice after a long while was that women turned me on just as much as men did. I used to be really insecure about it, since I was so young, and at the time was worried about the idea of being attracted to girls. However, as I grew up I realized how much todays society influenced those desires. Women have and are still presented as more sexually desirable. Growing up watching movies, reading magazines, seeing clothing advertisements and anything that included women being sexualized caused me to see them in that manner, just as much as anyone else. I think people hide that too because some find it to be unnatural. When in fact it is partly our cultures creation. It has even caused the idea that there is a need to sexualize ones body to be viewed as beautiful. So people are constantly enforcing the sexualization of women, without even knowing it.
I think it is really interesting that men and women are both aroused by images of women’s bodies. It is even more interesting that we are all taught to find women’s bodies sexier than men’s bodies. This to me shows just how much misogyny affects us. Due to the sexualization of women in media, even heterosexual women find female bodies arousing. It highlights the impacts that images have on our society and the stigma surrounding female breasts and nipples. Instagram allows male nipples but if an image is posted of a female nipple, the image is immediately taken down for “sexual content”. This teaches girls and women that their bodies are unacceptable in society and should remain hidden. People would not see a male chest and automatically call it a sexual image because men are allowed to show their chests while women are not. It makes sense that even women find female breasts arousing because they are taught to cover-up at most times so if you see a naked female chest you automatically get excited to see something that you normally do not get to see.
I’ve got a bit of a catch-22 with my wife. I have a bit of a mental partition when it comes to attraction – there are certain body types I prefer when I’m viewing pictures, artwork, and adult content. But when it comes to actually having sex, if a woman is an adult, clean, sober, and enthusiastic about sexual contact with me then she’s 100% attractive, end of story.
So to my wife – the only person I actually have sex with – that should be liberating. She doesn’t have to worry about her body at all, all of her features are flawless. But often she views it as a negative – since I would be attracted anyway, when I tell her she’s beautiful it means nothing to her.
Here’s the problem: for women, being desired is the orgasm. Is there anything uniquely attractive about her that you can see and let her know about?
See these:
Women Making Love to Themselves
Is Your Partner’s Ogling a Turn-Off?
This reflects exactly my opinion. The million dollar question is how to undo this influence on the mind? how to recover and go back to the more natural female sexuality? this fetish and this sexualisation of women is at least for me damaging and unwanted and i would really like to get rid of it.
Yeah, about three quarters of my women’s students say that worries about their body gets in the way of enjoying sex, And about two thirds say it can be a very big problem. And about two-thirds of women worry about how their breasts look, other studies have found. (They also worry about being too fat.)
And that’s bad form men too since most men want their partners to be enjoying sex instead of worrying.
I’m not sure how we overcome this problem. Maybe education is a start.
I agree we are socially programed to find breasts more appealing. Show me a picture of a nude man and I won’t really know where to look. My eyes will probably bounce around but in the end settle on the face since it will possibly feel slightly uncomfortable to look at the nude body. It’s odd and out of place in our culture and society. Show me a nude women and I will spend more time looking at her and will be able to comfortably appreciate her with out feeling odd about it. This is interesting, as though I am female (though not identifying strictly as a women), I am pansexual, and what is most sexually attractive to me in women, is women with small breasts. This doesn’t stem from wishing she looked male, as I’m sure someone will wish to eagerly point out to me, but from a preference towards the androgynous. I will also be more attracted to the man who looks feminine. So though what I find attractive is women with small breasts, society and culture have taught me to appreciate and value larger breasts.
On a separate note I would like to point out that for a while in China, when foot binding was still around, men would be attractive to women’s naked feet that had been bound, as these were usually only seen by the women’s husbands and other females. Magazines were even made in later years. So it’s a good indicator that society can dictate what is found to be attractive.
Good points.
It’s crazy to think that I have similar thoughts as a lot of women. I guess the way we think really is due to society… But besides that I agree with the article. If I were to also look at a picture of video of a man and a women I’d probably take equal looks at each person. And yes probably more at the women, but because looking at men is boring. I think it’s kind of funny because I dislike looking at penises I think they are hideous things.. but looking at a vagina wouldnt be too bad. OR how seeing a shirtless man gives me no interest vs when a women is shirtless all eyes are on the boobies… And yes this has to do a lot with how women are portrayed on everything..every single little thing.
Thanks for sharing your experience with this.
Do you think the breast fetish can carry over into dreams?
I sometimes get dreams that start out pretty normal. Then I will suddenly see either a topless or nearly topless woman. It may be in an erotic picture or the woman is actually there in my environment. Other than looking at them, I do not interact with the woman. It never occurs to me to do so. But I do feel aroused just seeing breasts in the dream.
I have arousing dreams about men too. I am always interacting with the man in the dream. There is more of a plot, a background story. I find the man sexy but not just for one body part, he is sexy and appealing as a whole for his physique and personality. I feel romantically and sexually drawn to him and when physical intimacy occurs in the dreams with men, it is arousing and emotionally pleasurable.
What do you think about how these dreams compare? I am female.
Yes, the fetish can carry into dreams. In fact I have had the exact same experience. that’s because the breast fetish is not an indication of sexual orientation. Straight men in tribal societies don’t experience a breast fetish but many straight women in Western societies do. Humans can attach eroticism to pretty much anything, and as a culture we have attached eroticism to breasts, which both women and men can unconsciously internalize.
Humans also attach eroticism to things like bras and panties and spiked heels, and some even to doing things like stomping on rodents. In cultures that don’t have bras and panties and spiked heels none of those things would be considered at all erotic. But the culture still doesn’t eroticize those things to the level that they do breasts so fewer people get aroused by them even even though they are seen as sexual objects by most of us.
There isn’a biological reason for why women get aroused by female bodies these days. In the 1950s, women hardly ever got attracted to women the same way they do now. The stigma has been lifted on lesbianism and it’s glamorized in the media. Seems like you are in denial that men can be just as sexually fluid as women.
I personally don’t care whether men are as fluid as women. And for a while I believed that they were. But I have a hard time figuring out why gay men don’t get aroused by breasts, given the culture we live in.
And then there is this, which suggests a biological reason for the difference; Sexual Fluidity, Images & Biology https://broadblogs.com/2015/10/19/sexual-fluidity-images-biology/
Which isn’t to say that men don’t have any fluidity at all. They may well.
This theory suggests that women’s sexual fluidity is natural selection and not a cultural thing
http://www.medicaldaily.com/evolutionary-theory-sexual-fluidity-women-men-387194
Evolutionary psychology isn’t done very well. They take something seen in your society and come up with an explanation for why that might be. And that’s not hard to do. It just doesn’t mean it’s accurate. Often times we can show why evolutionary psychology is wrong by looking at cross-cultural differences. I don’t have an example to give as to why this theory could be wrong. All I can say is that things that sound reasonable often are proved wrong. Just because something sounds logical doesn’t mean it’s right. It could be. Or not.
You state that tribal men (in cultures where breasts are exposed) and men who excessively watch porn are not as aroused by breasts due to overexposure, and that does make sense. But say if in these cultures women’s breasts were covered, do you think it’s possible they still wouldn’t be arousing since they are not associated with sexual tension or are eroticized?
I feel like it could be a combination of both evoking curiosity but also neutrality. Possibly the same feeling we have of viewing male nudity or the exposure of certain male body parts. I have heard some women claim to be aroused by a shirtless man, while others are not (usually most). It makes me wonder how different that would be if men’s bodies were eroticized, if then more women would be aroused by a man shirtless (or anything else of course).
And I’ve seen you mention that it can be a mixture of biology and culture as well, so it makes sense why it can be either or when it comes to visual arousal, if that makes sense.
Just covering isn’t enough. And very few women probably masturbate just by looking at a picture of a shirtless man. Even though he can be plenty hot and sexy and get the fires going to bed. But a woman is more likely to masturbate if she has some fantasy about herself and the shirtless man. Especially a fantasy where he can’t resist her — Bringing the focus back to her.
A cultural fetish like this one is a social construction that is created in this way:
• Selectively hide and reveal — creating sexual tension
• Declare the body part sexy, and then say, “Don’t look at it!” — creating sexual tension
• Obsess over the body part: The camera zeros in on it. People talk about it incessantly… Because it is declared soooo sexy.
I would be interested to see Chiver’s research done across a variety of cultures. If what is said in this post about the breast fetish holds true (that it’s due to the hiding and selective reveal), then we would expect to see women in tribes and in parts of Europe have a lower level of arousal when exposed to images of female nudity. If this was studied and we received the same conclusion as Chiver’s original subjects, then I suppose we would be able to more confidently agree with the hypothesis that women are physically aroused by sexual signals, even if not feeling aroused.
While we have a widespread breast fetish, we certainly do not have a penis fetish. Most people are not particularly turned on by the site (or potential siting) of a penis. However, as mentioned, we keep penises hidden just like breasts! However, there is rarely a reveal, and I suppose that is the key that is lacking when it comes to the potential for a penis fetish.
Additionally, I’m not surprised that the majority of people find a naked woman more erotic than a naked man. Our culture is groomed to associate sensuality with females. When we look at a naked male body, we simply see a body. Our eyes do not excitedly dash to his penis to catch a glimpse. With a woman though, we have ideas around the body. We think about the softness, we notice the curves, our eyes feast upon what is normally hidden. Our society views women’s bodies (well, just women in general!) as sexual objects, whereas men are rarely viewed this way. I think there is a large difference between how we view male and female bodies. And I think this gets instilled into people of all genders, regardless of orientation. For example, I know many straight women who find themselves checking out females in leggings. At first it sounds odd, but in a generation that is obsessed with the female behind to the point where leggings are glorified, it’s easy to see a connection. Perhaps it is comparing some of the time, but most of the time I think it’s because of the fetish that is being created around leggings and rear ends.
First, you were wondering about cross-cultural research. Cross-cultural research can be done in a variety of ways, like replicating this study. But we already know that neither women nor men get aroused by breasts in some cultures without hooking them up to a machine: men don’t have a hard on 24-7 in tribal societies, even though they are surrounded by topless women. And both women and men stopped bothering to look at topless women in Europe. And men who have been over-exposed to nudity lose an ability to get aroused, as they have explained to therapists. It I’ll becomes ordinary when you see it all the time. (And our earliest peoples were tribal — seeing breasts all the time — so we know that this is a culturally created fetish.)
If something seems boring it’s not arousing. You don’t really need to hook people up in that situation.
There are three things that create a fetish, And I write about them in a subsequent post that I refer people to at the end of this post. We don’t do these three things with a penis:
1. selectively hide and reveal, creating tension
2. tell people that something is super sexy, And then tell them that they can’t look at it
3. culturally obsessive over the body part
We don’t do any of these things with a penis.
Regarding hair and ankles, sometimes hair or ankles were subtly revealed. And the culture was obsessed with covering them up in a way that we are not culturally obsessed with covering a penis.
Hi Georgia, I thought I read somewhere that you said that you no longer have the breast fetish. If that is true, do you think the breast fetish is gone because you accepted and understood it for what it was and not a desire for actual intimacy with a woman?
Even when I did experience it, it was simply an arousal that came when I would see images like a Playboy shot. No desire to be with her. That never occurred to me. And I never even felt arousal when I saw actual women. Not sure why it never happened in real life. I never saw an actual nude woman in real life other than briefly, and then all I could think about was averting my eyes. I didn’t find that exciting at all. So the fetish never had an affect on my real life experience. And it never provoked a desire for actual intimacy with a woman. That never even occurred to me. Actual women have always seemed kind of boring to me, other then as friends.
Also Let us forget all about ‘breast and butts’…Since I have a lot ‘Vasopressin’ in body, I interested in ‘cuddling’ than sex.. In my opinion there is nothing sweeter and satisfying than a ‘romantic cuddle’.. Sometimes when I see a random clothed women, I get an urge to kiss them on the neck, cheek etc.. I am sure ‘neck & cheek’ is not objectified like ‘breast and butts’… So my question is…Do women feel the same urge to cuddle or kiss, when they see a random men? Or it is only a Man’s problem?
I don’t know. I’ve never seen the question addressed.
But I’m thinking about gender roles and how men see themselves as protectors of women which could lead them to want to cuddle them; whereas women are more likely to see themselves as protectors of children, and want to cuddle them. I can’t say that I’ve ever seen a random guy and wanted to cuddle him. But I’m a big fan of cuddling in relationships with someone I love.
You wrote “Almost no women find it arousing to look at a penis”.. Is that mean women find it discussing and women don’t like oral?
Take a look at this:
What Women Want. What Men Think They Do
https://broadblogs.com/2015/06/01/no-way-an-actual-girl-reinforced-that/
You should blog sometime on why American women are so obsessed with PENIS SIZE and then try so hard to deny it and then in turn blame MEN and patriarchy,You could work in the angle that its a western phenomenon in general and how its not done in places like Asia,But that would require eating a lot of crow so it will never happen will it? Then one on height and income for the trifecta?
Women are obsessed with penis size? It only seems that way because of porn.
Which is written and directed by men. So it isn’t that all men are the problem, the problem is these men.
Women don’t really care much about the penis. Almost no women find it arousing to look at. And only around 20% of women think that a large penis feels better. In fact, a study of African women found that the bigger her husband’s penis was, the more likely she was to cheat. Because she wanted to have sex without it hurting. And only around 25% of women orgasm via intercourse. Almost all women are much better at climaxing via outercourse.
So it just isn’t that big a deal to most women.
Every now and then I hear a woman act like it’s a big deal. She’s probably just insecure and trying to put someone down to boost herself up. It’s a self-esteem issue.
I suspect the same is true of men who make a big deal about breast size.
I’ll be writing more on the topic, but see these.
Women Aren’t Visual? It Depends
Women and Gay, Hot Bods
And the issues of height and income are indeed due to patriarchy.
We have been taught that men should be superior, Which is symbolized by being taller than the woman and having a higher income than her. If women and men were considered equal it wouldn’t be an issue.
See this for instance:
Man Chops Off Wife’s Fingers Because She’s More Educated Than Him
Do you think that someone can be aroused by looking at someone for other reasons that have nothing to do with sexual attraction? When do you know that the arousal is actual sexual attraction? Is it when you would find sex appealing with that person?
I guess it depends. I know of an asexual guy who can have wet dreams while thinking about cereal, as he puts it.
I would also make a distinction between arousal and a fetish. So a guy or gal can get aroused in the dark, just because they know they’re going to have sex and they’re excited to be with her partner. That’s different from fetish.
A breast fetish is constructed — you don’t find it in every culture. So it will spark arousal, by which I mean an erection of the penis or clitoris, in some parts of the world but not in others.
When I talk about women experiencing it they may get an erection of the clitoris. On a much lesser scale they might just be very drawn to look at the bare breast as a result of our cultural obsession. So there are being affected by the fetish even if they aren’t getting aroused.
A person could also get aroused but have no desire to have sex with the owner of said breasts. Like a heterosexual woman who has managed to learn this fetish.
Hi Georgia, I adore this classical Venus. Thanks for sharing. xo
You’re welcome! I love it too.
You’re so kindly. Thanks for your answer. 😀
You’re welcome.
This is a very good article. I definitely think that we are learned to associate women with something sexual. Women are told that we have no skills and the only way we can get a man is to impress him with our looks. This is why women are always comparing themselves to other women. Also everywhere we go we see ads of women being portrayed as sex objects but not so with men…therefore we learn for females to be the sexier gender. One study I read found that both women and men look at women in parts but men as whole ppl(which is vey sad). We also see men in positions of power and women as their beautiful tokens. I think women’s arousal from other women has to do with empathy b/c media brainwashes us to think about our looks so much we connect how we look with our sexuality. This is why many women would rather have sex with a fat man(i read an article about this)because they will be less self conscious during sex. Females are always shown as the object to be viewed, and we learn to be the object, never the subject…so even if we’re with a man we find to be sexy the sex may be bad b/c we will be focusing on the guys perspective of us instead of our own pleasure. A woman may get turned on by looking at another women b/c she is thinking of herself looking that sexy for the male viewers. Men aren’t taught to look at themselves this way, and our told how “visual” they are. Dads give they’re sons playboy magazines so from a young age boys learn to look at females, not other men. Also being homosexual is more looked down up and not shown as much in media for men. I for one am very straight and find women’s bodies to be ugly when fully naked. I love the male body and although I have friends who do too, I wish more of society would see how beautiful a male’s body is. I love my husband and am very attracted to him, I always compliment him nut it seems he doesn’t know how to react when I do….I wish men could learn to “feel sexy” too….it would benefit them and their lover
I can agree that the changes in women’s bodies may be based on the biological need to protect themselves from pain, as that dos make sense to me. I do think however that the women who stared at the images of other naked women were not necessarily sexual in nature or even a breast fetish for that matter. Being a woman myself, I am constantly comparing myself to other women whether I meant to or not. I often times catch myself staring at other women, at their clothing, their bodies and faces and even the makeup they are wearing. I don’t necessarily think they are more or less attractive then myself, I just want to see how they styled their hair or makeup. I want to know what body type they have so if it’s similar to my own, I can judge how good or bad something may look on me.
Like I said in the post, if you are processing things that way, the fetish will not be present.
I asked if they are in denial because of this comment:
“Women may be more flexible in terms of their sexuality, but most women still don’t feel very lesbian or bisexual.”
This sexual flexibility applies to lesbian too, or only to straight women?
Isn’t a little weird that the media are always portray straight women experimenting with women but never lesbians experimenting with men?
On your second point. Yes.
On your first point I’m still not sure what you mean. If women have a biological flexibility but aren’t aware of wanting to have sex with women, Then they don’t seem to be in denial. They may be repressed such that they aren’t aware of their bisexuality, Or the potential for it.
“Here’s a paradox: I’ve learned the breast fetish, and if you ask me whether men or women occur to me as sexier I’d say women.
Yet I’m still attracted to men and not women, even though women come across as sexier.
I don’t really think about women much, and they seem boring to me in terms of relationships. And one very attractive bisexual woman propositioned me, and I was intrigued enough to give it some thought. But as I imagined being with her, the thought of genital contact nauseated me.”
It’s one thing if you didn’t know you are conditioned to think away about women, but its another thing with you knowing that women are pushed down your throat and yet you can’t think for yourself and not what is portrayed to you. You now can think about your attraction and men and think of say your thoughts and the way you look at a man in person who you find hot and his body vs a woman in person. I would think if you are checking out the man and just simply admiring the woman, than that action and reaction is evidence that you see men as sexier which a supposed straight woman should. There’s your answer, so why can’t you rationalize it in that context?
“I don’t really think about women much, and they seem boring to me in terms of relationships. And one very attractive bisexual woman propositioned me, and I was intrigued enough to give it some thought. But as I imagined being with her, the thought of genital contact nauseated me.”
What does relationship have to do with it. How about visual attraction and sexual attraction on a pure visual physical level? Perhaps you can be conditioned the same way to want and desire the things men provide and bring in a relationship and find it interesting compared to women as much. And you can be conditioned to while finding women sexy to find that sex with women to be unappealing. Because even though girl on girl is now celebrated more. It’s still in the context of fling, girls gone wild stuff and not in the relationship sense. Most chick flicks and movies are still of a man and woman and their romance and love. So women and girls who might be bisexual or bi curious still want or feel they don’t want or desire a relationship with a woman or it boring, while its men they want and the whole having a baby, picket fence desire.
And what does genital contact have to do with that? i noticed you left out or never answered when bringing up sexual play and contact elsewhere. Is necking gross, playing with a woman’s boobs? Is doing something sexual to breasts unappealing or gross? If not, there has to be some sexual attraction to women or bicuriosity. Straight men are grossed out not just by sex with a man but sexual contact i general. And gay men I know, while finding women or can find women beautiful, find not simply sex unappealing but being sexual with a woman’s body in general, boobs, ass, etc gross or unappealing.
It may be due to repression — which followed my initial social learning to find breasts arousing –– but boobs don’t do much of anything for me anymore. If I see a half-naked woman in a magazine, or something, I will tend to want to look, but I don’t notice the same genital sensation that I had when I was younger. So I look and then almost immediately lose interest. The thought of playing with a woman’s boobs sounds neither appealing nor gross to me. It just doesn’t sound very interesting. Even when I was younger, that thought never occurred to me.
You have wrote about a hetero woman saying she wanted to have sex with a woman with big breasts.
That proves that sexual behavior is learned. Even though she is hetero as she claimed, she wants to have sex with a woman. That means that she is influenced by the popularity of female bisexuality in the media and the lesbian porn.
Pop culture with songs videos and movies full of bisexual women and easy access to lesbian porn on the internet can explain why so many straight women want to “experiment” with women but don’t want to identify as bisexual.
Sure not all women want to experiment but many do.
It’s like advertising a product. Ads don’t make ALL people to want to buy that product but it certainly makes more people to buy it even if they didn’t want it or need it in the first place.
And that’s probably why men don’t experiment as much as women.
Female bisexuality is encouraged on the media and in the western society but male bisexuality is discouraged and it’s ridiculed.
Sure it’s socially constructed but not entirely. Some gay Christian men have tried and tried to like women but can’t.
Women may have more flexibility for some reason.
“Women may have more flexibility for some reason.”
yes but that reason is natural or is it conditioned?
Women are always portrayed as sex objects and that could probably be why women learned to be more flexible.
In ancient Greece, men had learned to be more flexible that now days. So if there was a study done at the time, the researches could have concluded that men are more flexible than women.
And of course now days, it could be that some men wouldn’t admit their same sex attraction or behavior due to male homosexuality homophobia.
Hard to say. Our sexuality is a mix.
We know that some people try and try to change but can’t. Others have clear flexibility.
“Women may have more flexibility for some reason.”
so women are less heterosexual and more bisexual than men are?
They definitely are. The question is how much has to do with biology and how much has to do with socialization. Maybe some women are as inflexible as some men (rooted in biology) but they are harder to find because of the socialization you so often talk about.
so the notion “women are bisexual (or lesbians)” has some basis.
Women are more likely to express bisexuality in our culture — although the rate isn’t all that high. Are they naturally more bisexual? Or is it because of our society? I don’t know. And Meredith Chivers’ research isn’t entirely clear. Socialization (the social objectification of women) is certainly playing a role in its expression. But some of her data may be registering fear rather than desire.
Are Women Sexually Ravenous?
You have written several posts arguing that women and men aren’t that different but they are pretty much the same.
But this bisexual behavior and/or bisexual attraction that women have is different than men’s rigid heterosexuality.
This alone proves that men and women are very much different.
First, there are very few things for which you can predict whether someone is male or female. See this Post for example:
Men, Women not from Mars, Venus
Women may be more flexible in terms of their sexuality, but most women still don’t feel very lesbian or bisexual.
They are in denial?
I guess you didn’t read “Sexy Wiener.”
I doubt they are in denial since plenty of women get nauseated at the sight at some random guy’s penis. Just like plenty of men get nauseated at the sight of a vagina. (I’m sure it’s different on both counts if it’s someone you’re into.)
But as I have said many times before, the male body is not socially constructed in the way the female body is. Culturally, we don’t selectively hide and reveal and obsess over any part of the male body.
I wonder how much of this natural and how much of this is socially learned
http://philly.barstoolsports.com/around-barstool/study-shows-that-over-50-of-women-are-bisexual/
At the least I would like to see the original research and there are no links.
As I’ve mentioned before, since some people seem to be unable to change their sexual orientation even though they desperately want to, not to mention other biological evidence, Biology seems to be the basis for sexual orientation. I suspect that in the continuum — that ranges from very straight to very gay — that plenty of people in the middle have repressed their bisexuality so that they aren’t aware of it. But with socialization’s message that women are sexy and men are not, Women may be more in touch with their bisexuality.
So women think that women are sexier than men and that has nothing to do with their sexual orientation.
I wonder if a straight man ever said that the male body is more sexy than the female body then those same women who think women are sexier than men, what would think of that men? More likely that he is gay.
Would women ever date a man who thought that men are sexier than women?
There are many straight women who would like to experiment with another woman and they still claim to be straight but they said they would never want another man that did something with another man and that they would consider that man to be gay even though they consider themselves to be straight.
It may or may not match sexual orientation.
As I’ve said before, if gender were switched and men lived in a culture that ignored women’s bodies and sexualized men’s bodies, it would make sense.
Are there real some shows on TV like this one?
Well this was a real segment on the Ellen show. I’ve seen stuff like this every now and then. Just a lot less than the reverse.
But I don’t think a TV show would have men sniffing half naked women. Showing half naked women, sure that happens all the time but sniffing or touching women wouldn’t be appropriate.
I have read some comments that men are disciplined in strip clubs with the female strippers, they are behaving themselves they wouldn’t touch a stripper unless they were allowed to and they never scream.
But women in strip clubs are allowed to scream and grab male strippers at free will
Maybe because 1) men are bigger than women so they feel less vulnerable? And 2) it’s not an erotic experience for women, so people aren’t worried about women taking advantage of men?
If there ever comes to be a problem, I imagine the rules will change.
Both women and men are disciplined in terms of the rules. They’re both following the rules. Neither one of them feel compelled to rape — like they have no other choice — in stripper settings.
I agree with what you said that hetero women may be socially “trained” to see breasts and women’s curves as titillating. This is something that I noticed but honestly don’t talk about often. We had a foreign exchange student from Germany one time. She really wanted to see this popular movie but it was rated R and she was underage. I let her know it had nudity and such and she wouldn’t be able to go. Her reaction intrigued me; she said that she had heard that Americans were too focused on nudity and that in Europe and Germany it wasn’t a big deal. So, I have often wondered why Americans- at least most of us- are trained to focus heavily on women’s bodies and to be ashamed of it as well. I find that your articles are eye-opening and with a surprisingly fair-minded. Thank you for that 🙂
You are very welcome. A lot of women have expressed relief to know that they aren’t alone in this.
It troubles me that you are talking about slightly sexuality and still don’t seem to understand “what difference it makes”. Maybe you should get out more to lgbt/queer meetings. I think you’d learn a lot.
It troubles me that you can’t explain “what difference it makes” since you propose (for some mysterious reason) that it does.
First things first, I saw a reply you had and I need to break the news that lesbians can have intercourse. That’s just heteronormative bullshit that says that they can’t unless you have a different definition of intercourse (not sex). Heck, they can even do the whole turkey baster ordeal and have kids of their own if they wanted to. The real problem of this is it’s filled with sexism which in turn fuels homophobia. The idea that sex is only when a man inserts his dick into some thing is unfortunately a common misconception and does a lot to in fact damper the lesbian sexuality. In fact, I do think this whole article is really about how patriarchal society has actually deluded women into being sexual objects of men only and denying their natural tendencies to be attracted to women. Why do I say that? The whole premise that a woman can do whatever the hell she wants and feel whatever the way she feels and still be called straight says a lot. So a women can be a flaming but heavily repressed lesbian or bisexual and still call herself straight just because “she likes her boyfriends personality”. She can lust and have sex with however many hot women she wants and still be called straight. Why would heterosexist patriarchal society want that? Well, for one labeling some one as straight more or less chooses a path for them to marry some one of the opp. gender in this situation; marry men. No matter what she thinks about the whole thing. Don’t find men attractive? Who cares! You’re “straight”! Marry one any way! So this ultimately forces women to be in the dating pool of heterosexual men whether they would prefer to be or not. Now add this brainwashing with the torture it is to come out and you have the majority of the female population closeted and under the label of heterosexual. Denial is bliss…it is a defense mechanism. Social ostracism has large implications on the behavior of people…so to me it is no surprise at all that so many women are under the false assumption that they “can’t” be attracted to women; when in reality they can’t get over their own homophobia and societies and intense sexual repression.
I’m all for the Kinsey scale but you have to agree that it is kind of ridiculous how much more of a preference straight women have for other women and still call themselves straight!
I am a lesbian because I find women physically, emotionally and mentally attractive. NOT men. Not because I have an obsession with their genitalia (if that’s the only thing stopping some one from making love to a woman then I’d find it hard to believe that person isn’t at least bisexual but just not a fan of the appearance of the vaj, which to be fair I don’t think it’s the most appealing thing on a women’s body)…it’s because I have an attraction to women. I find it incredibly unsettling that if a lesbian were to do as much as even comment that a man is attractive she would be hassled into the whole “well, you’re not really a lesbian ordeal” whereas a straight women can talk about how badly she lusts and desires women (heck even f**** a few women) and doesn’t find men attractive except for their personalities yet she’s “straight”. This is coupled to the fact that being straight is the path of least resistance unlike being a lesbian. It actually takes a lot of strength and honesty to be yourself when you are a lesbian so you better believe that when some one says they are lgbt that they probably are. Yet it’s still this completely idiotic mentality of straight girls vs. every one else.
Furthermore, I saw a couple replies referring to most women “not being bisexual” in your surverys. Asking some one if they will have a threesome is NOT the way to see if they are bisexual…there are plenty of bisexuals etc. who just don’t like threesomes.
Quoting Portis: ““If it were a consequence of social pressure, the findings would be just the opposite; with them saying that they find women better looking/more of a turn on but with biological indicators telling otherwise. However, objective measured arousal indicated women do have lesbian tendencies and there’s no evidence of heterosexuality beyond their subjective claims (different studies show this), it indicates the reason for women’s lesbianism is the opposite of the “is all due to cultural influence” paradigm, actually it seems heterosexuality is really the culturally-pushed attitude”.”
“Gays/lesbians just like hetero men more like have a “natural preference”.
Well, you have posted a research that indicated that people have a “natural preference” except for hetero women.
It seems that it’s the only “group” of people that actually learn their preference.”
So there’s no denying that Portis actually has some points here although is missing some thing. For the first paragraph Portis probably hasn’t taken into account that women have different reproductive response systems in terms of lubrication etc. which you have mentioned.
However, I find that you are dodging the second remark. Out (notice I said out) lesbians/gays/hetero men all seem to have dating patterns that coincide with who they think is sexier. I’ve never heard a gay man say women look sexier but I always without error find lesbians say that very thing. As an out lesbian, I certainly do think women are sexier and don’t see what the big deal is about men…I don’t even know where to look. I don’t think they’re attractive plain and simple. Pretty much all straight men verbalize the same feelings. But now, you have straight women who say oh women are sexier and I lust after them yet I’m “straight”. Not only that, straight women seem to have least interest in looking at men; instead they insist on looking at women.
My personal experiences with “straight” women and experimentation….what I read…..what I hear….all just painfully points to the conclusion that it is very LIKELY that the sexual orientation norm for women is some type of bisexuality/lesbianism. Not heterosexuality; Female heterosexuality just being the norm because it is reinforced by society.
Before you start quoting this bullshit about evolution supporting women to be ONLY heterosexua I’ll just jot down a few points as some one with a degree in biology 1) The evolutionary fitness of a population is determinant on the group’s ability to survive and reproduce not the individuals 2) one does not need to be heterosexual to have contact with sperm via intercourse…espacially considering the fact that women play the more passive role and our systems are wired differently down there 3) bisexuality STILL means you are at least attracted to the opp. gender some times…and so by doing the math…even though I said you don’t need to be super into it to reproduce….all you need to do is to have contact with men ONE time in your life and boom you have a baby..so you don’t need this all consuming daily desire for that
Last but not least, I don’t doubt that there are women out there that might only be attracted to men in every single way possible however it doesn’t discount the thousands (possibly millions) who seem to think the opposite
And this is why I think Portis was being persistant in responding; it’s because as a heterosexual man he probably finds it disappointing that a future love interest would not find him as attractive as he finds her..honestly, I don’t blame him for the concern
Thank you for your thoughts.
I just don’t see how someone could be bisexual when they have no desire to have sex with someone of the same-sex. That just doesn’t make sense to me.
I think it’s possible that someone could be naturally bisexual and so repressed that they have no desire to have sex with whomever – same-sex or opposite sex, for that matter. Say they are so repressed that they have no desire to have sex with an opposite sex partner. I would call that asexual, for instance.
I’m interested in the social construction of reality, and in Western culture reality has been constructed such that women become associated with the sexy sex, and their body parts can become fetishized by anyone. In other cultures that doesn’t occur, for women — or for men. That’s what I find interesting.
btw, I’ll post long comments from a respondent once. In future, they need to be shorter.
I see.
I’m still a bit concerned though that you evidently think and verbally state that women cannot have intercourse with women (refer to your reply post July 7, 2013 2:11 AM). Why do you say that? The idea that women can’t have sex with other women is indeed a social construct of patriarchal society which once again minimizes women’s sexuality (probably for the purpose once again to allocate the female population to exclusively heterosexual male control). Do you think men can have intercourse with each other? What do you define as intercourse? I don’t want to go in detail and be crude but let’s just say that women can do every thing to one another that a hetero couple can; maybe substituting the male part with hands etc.
I’d like to illustrate the equivalent of the above idea that women can’t have intercourse with each other because they “don’t have the part” in a different way that heterosexuals may understand. Women have breasts as this article talks much about….now imagine if some one were to say that men +men and women + men can’t have “real” sex because they can’t have breast on breast stimulation. You do think that sounds silly right considering all the activities the other cis-gender couples can have? It’s practically pushing down sexual variation within a population and labeling the others as “inferior” and indirectly putting pressure on all the other groups to have sex with women since “sex” in my imaginary society’s definition is not phallo-centric but breast-centric. I’m just illustrating a point here considering that I am a lesbian and I get tired of this “myth” being spread around that women can’t have sex with women and obvi need a man.Ugh.
Intercourse usually refers to vaginal/penis, but okay. I’m not sure what difference it makes.
Well yes, that research you posted said that lesbians have a “natural preference” just like gay men and hetero men do. But that doesn’t apply to ‘hetero’ women. Hetero women have no “natural preference”.
And that’s why there is a rise in female bisexuality nowdays.
“Straight men are strongly aroused by women and gay men are strongly aroused by men, but lesbians have relatively weaker arousal for females, and straight women have no preference at all, says Northwestern University psychologist, John Michael Bailey.”
Not every single hetero woman wants to have sex with women. So there could well be a bio limit. No one really knows.
I’m going to stop posting your comments on this topic because it’s so repetitive.
This blog post was written by a feminist. She indicates there is a female bisexuality fetish in the media that even girls learn.
http://www.thefword.org.uk/features/2013/01/bisexual_women_in_pop
“Being able to make out with hot girls is the ultimate extension of girls being able to equal guys in everything they do; nothing says “I don’t need a man” like getting your kicks with a girlfriend.”
So if guys can make out with girls,
then also girls should make out with girls in order to have equality?!
Apparently some folks think so. I don’t.
Women thinking that women are sexier is more cognitive than feeling?
But Meredith’s research proved it’s the opposite
from the above blog that does make some sense
“If it were a consequence of social pressure, the findings would be just the opposite; with them saying that they find women better looking/more of a turn on but with biological indicators telling otherwise. However, objective measured arousal indicated women do have lesbian tendencies and there’s no evidence of heterosexuality beyond their subjective claims (different studies show this), it indicates the reason for women’s lesbianism is the opposite of the “is all due to cultural influence” paradigm, actually it seems heterosexuality is really the culturally-pushed attitude”.
Straight women looking at a picture of a sexy woman and a sexy man will commonly identify the woman has the sexier of the two. If she’s wired up, her vagina will respond more to the girl as well. But emotionally, she would more likely rather be with the guy.
The man you’re quoting has absolutely no idea how women experience this.
So women find other women sexier than men on mental level and physical level but they prefer men only on emotional level?
that’s still only one out of three, whereas men prefer women on three out of three (mentally, physically and emotionally). – Men are more attracted to women than women are to men?
that explains why so many straight women have sex with other women and still identify themselves as straight. They believe that there has to be an emotional attraction to qualify as bisexual, and since they are only physically attracted to women but they are emotionally attracted only to men, they call themselves straight.
Like I said, I would like to see the male be eroticized more. But that makes sense.
At the same time, a woman could say that a woman appears sexier than the man and yet she’s still more sexually drawn to the man.
“But emotionally, she would more likely rather be with the guy.”
yes that could true but it doesn’t disprove (or prove) that “heterosexuality could really be the culturally-pushed attitude”
Why have, historically, there been people who are gay/lesbian when there has been so little in the culture that represents that? And when they are tortured for being gay/lesbian? All of the teaching should make them be straight.
Gays/lesbians just like hetero men more like have a “natural preference”.
Well, you have posted a research that indicated that people have a “natural preference” except for hetero women.
It seems that it’s the only “group” of people that actually learn their preference.
Fairy tales of prince charming etc. and that could explain why hetero women are emotionally attracted to men.
There were lesbians long before they were celebrated on the silver screen and porn, generally.
By the way thank you for your time and your patience.
Searching through the internet had got me a little paranoid. You easied my mind.
Happy to help.
by the way the survey you posted was done in 2002
“The data come from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth”
Fair enough.
Look out for this movie and the reaction from the public. It won the 1st prize in the Cannes. It’s going to be a huge movie. It will overshadow Brokeback mountain.
It’s a 3 hours romantic love story movie about two attractive female students with a 10 minute hardcore lesbian sex scene!
The reactions will be interesting. It will be one of these examples that proves everything is socially learned.
I bet there will be a rise in experimentation between females after this movie.
Forget about Disney movies about a prince and a princess. Girls will “learn” that they should fall in love with other girls thanks to the media.
You greatly exaggerate the teaching capability of one movie.
And I just read a first person account of one girl who had a sexual experience with a woman and learned that she’s not into girls. http://girlseule.wordpress.com/2013/09/09/a-first-date-a-threesome-and-things-getting-better/
“You greatly exaggerate the teaching capability of one movie.”
isn’t this the point of companies spending billions in advertisment? or political campaings?
the power of changing people’s minds through images and words.
If it it didn’t work they wouldn’t bother doing such a big effort.
But one movie won’t do it. Even as women are portyaed as the sexier sex, women generally experience it as more cognitive than emotional. AND most of the sexual messages directed at women are hetero. However, I would like to see the male body more eroticizes than it is. Which will only happen as we move out of patriarchy.
but what we get is more and more movies that eroticize lesbianism
But who watches them? If you look at the number of movies out there like this – or messages of any sort – the number of messages is hugely skewed toward straight.
But I also think that the LGBT community needs more movies that reflect their experience. So I certainly don’t have a problem with having more of this sort of thing out there.
And if bisexuality is a person’s natural inclination, I have no problem with more people becoming bisexual — overcoming repression and expressing who they really are. I just don’t think it’s any big deal – and I can’t figure out why it’s such a big deal to you. A person could be bisexual and choose to be committed to you. I don’t see much difference in finding other men attractive and finding other women attractive and still maintaining a commitment to you.
Apart from people who are natural bisexual, these movies most likely confuse many people, just like movies and books like 50 shades of grey confuse people and alter their sexuality.
I don’t have any problem with anyone’s sexuality, but media messing with people’s minds for what ever reason and creating confusion over their sexuality could be a problem (like 50 shades of grey and s&m porn do)
Well, children who are raised by gay or lesbian parents don’t become gay or lesbian it any higher rate than the rest of the population. And even though gays and lesbians are inundated with straight media they still end up gay or lesbian. And even though they’re pretty much tortured by the culture, too. That’s largely why I think that it’s more biologically-based. If people have the potential for both sides I do think that moving from a homophobic culture to one that is open would tend to make them be less repressed.
[I don’t see much difference in finding other men attractive and finding other women attractive and still maintaining a commitment to you.]
yes, I know, but still if you were dating a bi man, wouldn’t you sometimes feel inedaquate since you don’t have the male anatomy that he is attracted to?
what if he felt like he missed a male body
I’d worry if she were lesbian. But if she’s bisexual she likes both equally well. Or if she’s bi but has a preference for women I would assume she would make a commitment to a woman instead of you.
That said, men make commitments to women, and love women, all the time when they don’t fit their idealized images of what a woman should look like — which are fed by the culture. And that does tend to make women feel insecure. But if she feels like he really loves her that can help her to overcome her insecurity. But do you see that it’s a very similar situation? Women think that men only like women who have DD breasts and tiny waists and the perfect butt. In other words, they worry that men want body parts that are different from their own.
“Well, children who are raised by gay or lesbian parents don’t become gay or lesbian it any higher rate than the rest of the population”
I haven’t seen any data on this but I take your word for it.
I seriously didn’t want to start again but what makes me “suspicious” of these kind of movies and makes me believe that they are not trying to support LGBT rights is the ratio of lesbian – gay movies. There are so many movies and music videos with sexy lesbians but there are NONE music videos and only few movies with gay men as sexy.
It’s like everybody learns that lesbianism is sexy but at the same time gay men are ignored.
Girls learn to kiss each other to get men’s attention but do guys kiss each other to get girls’ attention?
Just like lesbian porn has become so popular because men enjoy it but gay porn isn’t popular because straight men don’t enjoy, we have so many sexy lesbian movies in the mainstream media but only few gay movies and even less that are sexy – like Philadelphia (1992). It’s like we are past the breast fetish and we “needed” something stronger, so the media moved from just showing female bodies to actually showing lesbian sex to create a stronger fetish.
Breast fetish is outdated, lesbian sex is the new fetish.
It’s like the media trying to “push” women to bisexuality and lesbianism for the amusement of men but at the same time the media ignore male bisexuality because it doesn’t appeal to straight men. I don’t know why men “wish” and lust for female bisexuality and lesbianism. If more and more women keep turning thus having many more bi women and lesbians than bi men and gay men and far less hetero women than hetero men that would create an off balance dynamic in the dating world.
“There are so many movies and music videos with sexy lesbians but there are NONE music videos and only few movies with gay men as sexy.”
I also don’t like how only women are eroticized and men are ignored. I would like to see men become more eroticized, too. That’s why I write many of the sorts of posts I write.
And the problem is patriarchy. A belief that women exist as sex objects for men’s desire. You know? Why would straight men want to bother looking at sexy men? So they don’t bother with it. Homophobia likely plays a role in not seeing much in the way of sexy men. And then women and men both internalize the notion that women are the sexy ones and keep things going in the same way.
Isn’t it odd that most of these women still identify themselves as “straight”?
I think that is what makes men thinking that most of the women are bisexual even if they don’t admit it. When a woman says she is straight, a man may think to himself “ok, is she straight-straight or is she straight-but sleeping with other women-straight?”
I don’t recall the original research, or even if it was research that you are referring to. What data are you talking about?
The one you posted above. It said that about 14% of the women that were asked had same sex experience but most of them still identified as straight!
I have found a lot of questions and forums on the internet about women saying that they are having sex with other women but still they claim to be heterosexual. Their logic is that bisexual is someone who wants to DATE both men and women. Having sex with women doesn’t mean they are bisexual since they don’t have romantic feelings for women.
A woman may believe she is straight because she is dating only men but she can sleep with men and women…!
So when a woman identifies herself as hetero doesn’t really mean much. She could well be one of the straight-sleeping with women but dating only men-straight.
And that’s why men believe that most of the women are bisexuals.
That “logic” makes no sense. Seems to me if theyre sexually attracted to, and enjoy having sex with women and men, that they are bisexual. But I also don’t care if they want to call themselves straight.
According to the study I linked to, 10% of women claim to be straight, yet have had sexual relations with women. Thats a pretty small percentage. The percentage of those women who enjoy having sex with other women is likely even lower. Some of my students have told me that they used bisexuality to attract guys, but were not into the girls. Others experimented, but weren’t into it. It was a one-time thing.
That said, I suspect that the potential for women to enjoy sex bisexualy is higher than 10%, if we were to live in a different culture that was very open to it. Could be true of men, too.
[But I also don’t care if they want to call themselves straight.]
They are misleading men.
If a man you were dating was calling himself straight but later on you found out that he had sex with other men would you still not care if he called himself straight?
[What GOOD data have you seen lately?]
http://www.youbeauty.com/relationships/can-love-make-you-bisexual?page=2
have you heard of this movie?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Life_of_Ad%C3%A8le
I bet even “straight” women will love it. That proves that sexuality is an acquired taste and it’s socially learned through the media.
Funny that you say my link wasn’t recent enough. It was 2009 whereas your research was 2001. And there was no link to the specific study cited. But let’s say that data is right. Here are my thoughts:
1) as I’ve always said, I would like to see the male body eroticizes as much as the female body
2)what’s important is whether someone is willing to commit. A bi woman chooses to marry you when she also finds girls attractive. But she finds you attractive too. It’s not like gay men who would RATHER be with men, but are marrying me as they try to pass. Even if your wife were totally straight, she would still be attracted to men other than you. So what’s important is 1) she’s attracted to you and 2) willing to commit.
Haven’t heard of that film.
I didn’t say anything about marrying a woman that I would know she is bisexual. In that case I would knew her sexual orientation and I would make the choice to “trust” her.
But I talked about women having sex with other women but still claiming to be straight.
In that case I would not know about her attraction to women and that would be misleading.
I said that because you said you didn’t care if they still call themselves straight.
And the paradigm I brought wasn’t about gay men trying to pass as straight but about bisexual men calling themselves straight.
So if you were dating a man who was calling himself straight but later on you found out that he had sex with other men – but he is also attracted to you too and chose to marry you, he is not gay, he is bi but he is still calling himself straight,
would you not care if he was calling himself straight?
and of course there is this double standard. Most men wouldn’t mind dating a bisexual woman, in matter of fact the media portrays bi women as desirable but most women wouldn’t date a bi man. Women can’t tolerate men ogling women, imagine if their boyfriends were also ogling men too, that would be way too much for them to handle.
So ask her if she she’s straight but also has sexual interest in women. Make clear that you’re not asking because you want a 3-some, or she may say yes, even though she’s not into it, to please you. See this post: https://broadblogs.com/2012/10/22/porn-fantasy-mistaken-for-reality/
Yet another example of a woman with sexual experience with women who isn’t into women.
You’re making a mountain out of nothing.
I think that I should have asked this from the beginning.
You as a socialogist have done your research and reached to the conclusion that women learn the breast fetish too. It’s not just your personal opinion, you have your research to back this up.
Also I realize that the breast fetish has nothing to do with the sexual orientation. Some men may confuse it, I can’t blame them though, no straight man would ever want to watch another naked man or gay porn. Men can not distinguish sexual arousal from attraction.
Aside from that, there are many men who claim that many (if not most of the) ‘straight’ women experiment into bisexuality and they say that ‘many women nowdays are going for other women’, yet you keep rejecting these notions. So my question is this:
You reject these notions because of your personal beliefs or as a sociologist you can back up the notion that the vast majority of women are heterosexual, with researches and evidences etc.?
These men are confused by the media and the porn and perharps by some girls who kiss girls to get men’s attention and that’s why they believe that most of the women are bisexuals?
I am still confused about this. Have you asked me a year ago it wouldn’t even have crossed my mind that ‘most of the women could possibly be bisexual’. But searching through the internet have got me puzzled. There are so many articles and surveys and questions about “straight” women experimenting with other women that make men believe that most of the women are actually bisexual. And movies and music videos show female bisexuality to be the norm.
There are even college girls who say that many, many girls are into bisexuality in colleges.
This is very confusing.
Researchers who have asked women whether they have had a sexual experience with another woman find fairly low numbers, about 14% http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/16/health/16iht-sex.html?_r=0
some observations
These numbers are more than double for women than it is for men. I guess social learning affects people’s behaviour.
That survey was done almost ten years ago. Things are different now, for example that was done before the song ‘I kissed a girl’. These numbers now are for sure much higher.
Most of these women still identify as “straight”. Isn’t that odd?
It’s like these women developed a “lesbian fetish” just like men do, and it’s so strong for them it “overcomes” their heterosexuality for the time being and they need to experience it without ever being trully bisexual.
What GOOD data have you seen lately?
I’ve surveyed my students on 3somes and hardly any are interested. Don’t recall if I’ve surveyed them on interest in same sex-play, and am on vacation now, so can’t check.
I suspect the rumors of lesbianism that you send are greatly exaggerated.
Perhaps my question wasn’t clear, english isn’t my first language.
I wasn’t wondering about men or women not feeling sexy enough about themselves.
I understand that women are feeling insecure chasing the high standards set by the media.
I was wondering how women feel about not lusting or craving the male body at the same level that men lust the female body.
Perhaps women are used to this dynamic, interested in men more on a “intellectual” level than phsyical attraction so they don’t feel that they are “missing” something by not lusting the male body.
Women are interested in men but they are not interested in seeing naked men or lusting the male body.
How does that make women feel?
do they feel that they are “missing out” because of they don’t lust the male body that much?
do they even care that they don’t lust male body that much?
“Perhaps women are used to this dynamic, interested in men more on a “intellectual” level than phsyical attraction so they don’t feel that they are “missing” something by not lusting the male body.”
Kind of. Except that they are physically attracted to men. They just don’t experience them in a fetish sort of way. As I said before, they experience a man the same way that a man experiences a woman if he’s already seen her naked a lot of times. She’s attractive, she’s sexy, but he doesn’t experience her in a fetish kind of way.
It’s extremely similar to a man who has been in a long-term relationship with a woman.
“Women are interested in men but they are not interested in seeing naked men or lusting the male body.
How does that make women feel? Do they feel that they are “missing out” because of they don’t lust the male body that much?”
I don’t think most of them even think about it, so there is no sense of missing out.
As a hetero man, experiencing the breast fetish makes it easier for me to be attracted to women and certainly more “enjoyable”. Of course I care about personality but the breast fetish gives me a motive to try to get her know better.
Experiencing the breast fetish it’s just enhancing the attraction to women.
(Perhaps that’s just “one” of the “many” reasons women don’t approach men – there isn’t anything about the male body to be attracted to and they don’t feel that urge?)
But if I wasn’t turned on by the female body, how would that make me feel?
For sure it would be more “boring”, less enjoyable, that would be like eating tasteless food. I would feel like I was “asexual”. And if on top of that I would instead being turned on by the male body that would make feel confused and probably “frustrated” like thinking “I DO want to feel attracted by the female body but I can’t! I do NOT want to feel turned on by the male body because I am not interested in men but I can not stop it’
Being hetero and not being able to turned on by what I am suppossedly interested in would be like being forced to do a job that I didn’t find it exciting or enjoyable
Do you have any idea how many women think men aren’t turned on by them despite having breasts? Why do you think so many women are mutilating themselves by getting breast implants? About a third of them will lose sensation in their breasts, and so enjoy sex less.
Only 30% of women are happy with their breasts. http://www.psychologytoday.com/em/34411
Only about 20% of women think that their bodies, generally, are attractive. http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2012/06/02/why-do-women-hate-their-bodies/
And regarding my concern with women find women sexier than men, I’m talking about the idealized image, not your average woman.
The only way things can change is if the culture changes. The whole reason I talk about these things is to be one voice trying to get the culture to change. Specifically, I would prefer if:
1) our society saw men as sexy so that women would be more likely to see them as sexy too, and
2) our society appreciated a variety of body types (among women and men) so that you don’t have just 10% of the population feeling attractive and sexy.
So yeah, just about everyone knows what it feels like to feel that they aren’t seen as sexy.
You know this blog
http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/bye-bye-binary/
Some (hetero) men choose to do that, others choose not to.
I’m not arguing with that. I’ve always said that there’s some flexibility for some people. But for others there doesn’t seem to be much flexibility.
But that doesn’t prove (or disprove) that the reasons for the lack of flexibility are biological.
It could well be because some can’t “unlearn” what they have already learned through social learning. Some people “learned” heterosexuality or homosexuality or bisexuality and now they are “stuck” with it. They can’t “learn” something new because that sexuality was ingrained deep in their brain.
Other people though seem to be more updatable and can learn new things.
Maybe. But there’s also evidence that people who are gay/lesbian are biologically constructed differently from others.
So everything is “social learned” – breast fetish, threesomes, girl on girl, monogamous, polyamorous, anal, dominance submisson etc. except sexual orientation?
that’s the ONLY “sexual trait” that is biological based?
Sociologists believe that almost everything is learned, but not everything. There is a biological basis for some things that are instinctual. So we have an instinct to eat food , for instance, but what sorts of food we enjoy is largely learned, and varies from culture to culture. Babies have an instinct to suck, which keeps them alive. It’s not learned. It’s the same of sex. There can be a biological floor, with learning constructed on top of that.
That’s what I am saying. There is a biological need for food, sex, etc.
But the tastes are learned. So people have natural urges to have sex, but with whom they would want to have could be learned. Some though are more “hard-headed” and can’t change what they have already learned.
Even if gay/lesbian people are biologically constructed different (note that the “gay gene” has been dismissed as evidence) it doesn’t neccesarily mean that it’s genetic. Outside factors could have “shaped” their sexual orientation. That doesn’t change the fact though that their sexual orientation is very real.
Just like outside factors like social learning, family, movies, videogames, diet can alter and shape children’s personalities to the core. Or like pesticides in food can change the level of hormones in the human body. It is said that the average male today has much lower testosterone levels than the males 50 years ago.
The male body nowdays is biologiacally constructed different than it was but it’s because outside factors have affected it.
There is a political party in Holland that supports the rights of those who want to have sex with minors. They say that’s a sexual orientation and it’s natural for them because it’s biolocigal based.
There actually are some biological differences between straight and gay. I’m not aware of biological differences between predators and non-. But even if there were you need to keep predators away from society and try to use therapy to help them to change. You don’t need to do that with gay people. Because they aren’t harming anyone.
If there are biological differences between gay and straight that prevents gay from changing to hetero, then why some gay do change?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1289652/How-I-went-committed-lesbian-happily-married-mother-four.html
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/election/de-blasio-wife-chirlane-mccray-talks-lesbian-article-1.1339398
As I said before, a lot of people have flexibility. They’re probably bisexual and alternatively label themselves straight or gay. I’m talking about the ones who aren’t bi and who don’t have flexibility.
is sexual orientation really biological?
We probably don’t have clear proof one way or the other. I used to think that our sexual orientation was purely based on socialization. But too much evidence suggested that I was wrong so I changed my mind. Nothing in the blog you link to suggests definitively that it’s not bio-based. Only that it has not been definitively established that it is.
Α link about these evidence? It would be interesting
is it about scientific research or pesonal observation?
Both.
I will be writing a couple of posts on this in the near future.
that would be great.
About the paradigm of gay men who are Christians that you have mentioned, that’s not any different than hetero Christian men. They may believe that premarital sex is a sin and they will go to hell, still they are doing it. They are enjoying it so even though they want to stop it, they don’t.
I just can see how gay sex is any different than all the acquirred tastes that men get through social learning. Men through porn they learn to like things that they didn’t like before like “unnatural” women, anal, threesomes, girl on girl, c#m in face, s&m, etc.
Women learn to like watching dominance and submission and lesbian sex.
I can’t see the difference between all these sexual acts and gay sex.
I have heard of many hetero men who were obsessed with brothels and prostittutes (in europe it’s not illegal) that after they had done almost everything they tried same sex acts and they still identify themselves as hetero.
I mean, people through media learn to tollerate and even enjoy movies with violence and crime. There are so many movies with murders and rapes. Why people want to watch these movies in the first place?
are they naturally attracted to enjoy watching crimes?
it may be fiction but that’s a reason that we should enjoy it and want to view it?
or we learned to like watching movies that people get hurt?
I am not comparing gay sex with movies with violence. On the contrirary, if we can learn to like watching movies with pain, wouldn’t be easier to learn to like sexual acts since they are trully enjoyable and not hurtfull?
So you are saying that people who learn to like sex in various ways is the same thing as men who cannot learn to like sex with women — even though they desperately want to?
If you are hetero, maybe you should try to enjoy having sex with men and see how well it works for you.
I don’t really think you should keep making these arguments until you have actually tried to do that.
And something about the gays who are christians and are feeling guilt.
I think that the reason they feel guilty and bad it’s not that they can not learn to like women – in matter of fact Christianity expects sexual absistenence so if a man or a woman doesn’t have heterosexual relationships that’s consider purity.
So I don’t believe that they are suffering because they desperetaly want to learn to love women and they can’t.
They are suffering because they suppress themselves and they are trying to stop themselves from having same-sex feelings.
Their guilt is because of homosexuality, not because of the lack of heterosexuality.
Maybe you think this because you are bisexual and so you can switch back-and-forth. That doesn’t mean that everyone can. But I’m getting tired of the same comments over and over again.
Here is a new but related topic: why is this such a big deal to you? No one is hurt by the existence of gays, so why do you care?
For the same reason you made a post about worrying marrying a man who might turned out to be gay. Wouldn’t you hurt by it?
But gay man can’t change.
And if they can’t change we shouldn’t try to make them feel like they should try to change and marry straight women. It’s not fair to anyone.
Best to let everyone be who they are.
and I never said that I or anyone else can change back and forth.
I said that I didn’t have that social learning so now I am not able to do that.
Now if I (or somebody else) had a different social learning would I still feel the same?
I will never know because it’s too late now.
You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
Then stop insisting that gay men can change.
You’re asking them to do something that you say you are incapable of doing yourself.
There is also the theory that people are attracted to female breasts because when they were children they were breast fed and so they learned to associate female breasts with feelings of comfort, safety and calm.
That explains why I get so sexually aroused by mashed peas.
But it doesn’t explain why 1) men in some other cultures (and for most of the human experience — that experience being tribal) have not, or do not, experience the fetish and 2) men lose the fetish with their partners.
Pretty dumb theory.
The fact that (most of the) straight women are uninterested or even think that the male genitals are ugly is very weird and nooned seemed to explained why is that happening.
Tha’ts the real question and not why women think that the female body is more sexy than the male – that’s because of the media.
But since there is a biological basis on straight women being attracted to men that means that they should be naturally attracted to the male genitals even though the media ignores them. But straight women instead think that male genitals are even ugly!
Men are much more likely to do a Google search for breasts than vagina.
I had a conversation with another guy about this because he doesn’t find vaginas all that arousing. We think that maybe there is some lack of aesthetic appeal in organs of any sort, including genitals. But who knows?
I didn’t want to come back on this subject, but I’d like to comment on a different basis.
Women can get aroused by anything, other naked women etc.
If straight women get so easily aroused by anything, even bonobos having sex, why then they don’t get aroused by the one thing that the’re supposeddly attracted to – (hot naked) men.
It could because the media focus on the female body and ignore the male body, that could explain why straight women think that the female body is more sexy than the male body.
But it doesn’t explain why straight women don’t aroused by looking at a naked man!
Our culture hasn’t tought straight women to view the male body as sexy,
nonetheless since their attraction to men is biological that means that they should get aroused by the naked body of man and the male genitals on a biological basis.
But straight women don’t get aroused by the image of a naked man and most of the straight women think that the male genitals are disturbing. There seems that for most of the women there isn’t a biological basis to find male genitals and/or body attractive.
Women thinking that other women is sexy, it’s understandable, it’s social learning.
But straight women thinking that male genitals are ugly is strange – shouldn’t there be a biological basis for that?
Well you have a misunderstanding. Women bodies may get aroused by bonobos having sex – meaning blood rushes to the vagina – but they have no mental awareness of it. They don’t FEEL turned on. Researchers think that women get aroused by any sex signal they see in order to protect their vaginas. (And they do get a greater blood rush to the vagina by seeing a naked man than by seeing bonobos having sex.)
btw, tomorrow’s post will include a quote from you. Since you recently asked a question I get a lot, I decided to address it in a post so that I could just give people a link when they ask that question. It has to do with guys misunderstanding what I mean when I say that women find women sexier.
This is a scientist who reached to a different conclusion on sexuality
“Rahman in quick to point out that research based on self-reporting or identification has its limitations”
……
“In other words, women can think of themselves as straight and act straight but deep down inside they are all capable of being attracted to other women”
http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/why-straight-women-and-bisexual-men-may-not-really-exist250912
I am not saying that he is right or wrong, I am just pointing out that there are scientists who reached to a different conclusion that the scientists you mentioned in your blog entry.
There are a variety of ways of understanding bisexuality. In my book if a woman has the potential to be bisexual but in present time has no interest in bisexuality then she is not bisexual. The term is meaningless. And I’m not going to keep commenting on this over and over again.
Ι’ll repost it as short as possible, I still don’t want to be misunderstood.
I believe that anyone, with no exceptions, can learn anything.
You mentioned the homosexual religious men that do want to change but they can’t.
Well, they can’t change NOW. But if they are given “enough time” and “learning” eventually they could change. How much time is needed it depends on the individual. It could be 1, 5, 50 years or more. Eventually anynone can change anything about themselves.
I read the story of a lesbian that in her 40s “turned to” hetero. She opened up to her heterosexuality? that makes no sense. It’s just that she had “enough time” to learn something new to her.
That explains why men get obsessed with porn like threesomes, anal, etc. They had “enough time” watching and learning to like it. That also explains why so many women like lesbian porn. It’s so popular that they had “enough time” to learn to like it. The rest of them “don’t care about it”. But only few people had “enough time” to learn to like ‘unpopular’ gay porn.
The biological limits is all about time. How much time is needed to learn something new it dependes on the individual. Given “enough time” anyone can learn anything.
But not every stimulus affects everyone in the same way. “Enough time” never comes for many people.
We are a mix of a natural personality/biology + culture + social interactions (which tend to be affected by the culture). So not everyone is alike. There’s always a cultural pattern that fits into a bell curve. Biology creates limits.
And thanks for edited you comment down.
note – if the previous post was too long, feel free to edit it –
I’d like to hear your opinion on this
what if the media told us that ‘bisexual men are sexy and manly and bisexual women are less feminine’ instead of what they are telling us now that ‘bisexual women are sexy and bisexual men are less masculine’
what if the media showed us daily music videos with men dancing with men and movies and images with men kissing men but never women with women?
I am not secretely bisexual that I wish that was case but I just wonder
am I naturally attracted to girl on girl or is it because I learned that from the media?
so I wonder if it was the other way round in the media, everyone would think that men on men is sexy?
that’s an interesting question that noone has thought of. Everyone assumes that female bisexuality is sexy and male bisexuality is disturbing because that’s supposed how things are.
I suspect all of this is socialized, since it’s a new thing that you don’t find it anywhere outside Western cultures.
And please, edit your last comment, yourself, and then I’ll respond.
I am just trying to figure out how sexuality works
This isn’t another question but my theory on how it works, after some thought, I am sorry if it’s long but I think it’s pretty solid.
I tend to believe that the biological basis of sexual orientation does’nt mean that someone would stop at a certain point but that he/she needs more time and “exposure” to learn something new. If there is enough time and “learning” anyone can fully change sexual orientation. Keywords are “enough time” and “enough learning”
Men are obssessed with lesbian porn. If that was “natural” then one would expect the same with women and gay male porn.
But many women think that gay porn is disturbing and don’t want to date a bisexual man.
Most of the women don’t like bisexual men.
Man on the other either want to date a bisexual woman or don’t care.
It’s unlikely that a man would turn a woman down because she is bisexual.
That’s because female bisexuality is so popular in the media and porn that men learned to like that, but male bisexuality isn’t popular so most of the women still think it’s disturbing.
There are even bisexual women that don’t date bisexual men!!!
but straight men like (or don’t mind) dating bisexual women
that’s ironic, isn’t it?
The same goes with same gender sex
Men think that gay porn is disturbing. There are few straight men though who learned to like it. That’s because they were “exposed” to it long enough to learn that.
On the other hand, most of the heterosexual women prefer lesbian porn and the rest of them don’t care. No woman thinks that lesbian porn is disturbing the same way that men think about gay porn. That’s because women get so “exposed” to female bisexuality through the media and porn that they learn to either like it or don’t care.
Men liking lesbians doesn’t make any sense on a biological base. They are lesbians, they don’t care for men, they are going to get rejected. But they are “exposed” to it and learned to like it, the same way they learned to like anything else in porn – threesomes, anal, etc.
If you think you are straight or possible a bisexual that “hasn’t opened up enough yet to the bisexuality” I think that’s not right.
You just weren’t “exposed” enough to female bisexuality and you still need more time to learn that.
Many homosexual men get married and sleep with women. They learn that and aren’t disturbed by having sex with women. The rest of the homosexual people that don’t want to have sex with people of the other gender just didn’t have enough time and “exposure” to learn that
So the biological limits don’t mean that someone stop at a certain point but how much time they need to change that.
Anyone can learn anything, some are fast learners, some are slow learners but eventually everyone can learn something new
Female bisexuality is so popular that females and males learn to like that and prefer it but still most of them don’t like gay porn and bisexual men.
If male bisexuality was popular then males and females would also learn to like that.
But that’s not the case.
I think that’s how it works and pretty much explains why women like (or don’t care about) female bisexuality and lesbian but they are disturbed by male bisexuality
whereas it’s the exact opposite with men – they don’t like male bisexuality and gay porn but they learned to like female bisexuality and lesbian porn.
You make an interesting argument.
I just believe that there are some biological limits to what can be learned. Particularly, given how difficult it is for a Christian men to change when they so desperately want to. However I believe that most of what humans experience is socially constructed rather than innate.
“Innate bisexuality (or predisposition to bisexuality) is a term introduced by Sigmund Freud (based on work by his associate Wilhelm Fliess), that expounds all humans are born bisexual but through psychological development (which includes both external and internal factors) most become monosexual while the bisexuality remains in a latent state.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innate_bisexuality
Have you seen this documentary?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bi_the_Way
1) Could be
2) No. Sounds interesting.
In ancient Greece all males were acting as bisexuals. They learned that at a young age.
That means that either all males are born bisexuals or they can learn to be bisexuals.
It’s not about repressing homosexuality or heterosexuality but expanding to bisexuality.
So which is it
males are born bisexuals or
males can learn to be bisexuals?
Those Greek men weren’t all acting as bisexuals – and there is no evidence I’m aware of that “most” men behaved bisexually at that time. If you have actual evidence that most men at that time were bisexual please send a link.
The term platonic love comes from Plato, who just couldn’t get into sex with other men.
As I’ve said before, sexuality is learned but within biological limits which seem to vary from person to person.
And I am not sure that female sexuality is any more fluid than male sexuality, although that is what most researchers are saying right now. (Some aren’t.) It could be that a culture that sexualizes women so much more than it sexualizes men creates greater fluidity and women.
I didn’t find a link about male bisexuality in ancient Greece but I found a link about female bisexuality in modern world.
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-01-19/man-woman/30310421_1_women-lisa-diamond-romantic-relationships
According to this study there are more bisexual women than straight women.
Are they really bisexuals or the “breast fetish” confuses them and make them act as bisexuals, or perharps a little of both.
I think that any woman who is attracted to women and wants to have sex with them is bisexual. I suspect our culture has played a role in opening these women up to their natural bisexuality.
I think that any woman who experiences the breast fetish but is not interested in having sex with women is not bisexual. She may or may not be confused. (If she reads my blog post on women experiencing the breast fetish she won’t be confused, otherwise she probably is.) Since the breast fetish is learned and has nothing to do with one’s natural sexuality, just learning the breast fetish will not make anyone bisexual.
I suspect that other women may experience the breast fetish without being interested in having sex with women despite some level of natural bisexuality. In that case she simply hasn’t opened up enough to her natural bisexuality. I think it is possible that that is the case for me. But I don’t know, because if I am actually bisexual I haven’t opened up enough yet. The thought of sex with women still holds no interest for me and actually makes me nauseous.
As I said before, I believe that sexuality can be learned but that this learning has biological limits.
I’m also tired of this same line of questioning over and over again and probably won’t continue answering questions I’ve already answered.
Ok, I understand, there won’t be any related questions
but you didn’t comment the results of that study that concluded that most of the women are attracted and/or are possibly bisexuals.
Even you, who as you say are heterosexual and not interested in another woman you say you may still have some doubts.
So the results of that study maybe true. Most of the women are bisexuals or at least latent bisexuals.
I did comment.
if “straight” women are trully straight and not bisexuals in denial, how can you explain this best-selling book?
the comments are unbelievable
“I am ‘straight’ woman sleeping with other women, still I am straight”
Oh, did every woman in the English speaking world buy this? Just because some so-called straight women want to sleep w/ women, and are then either bi or are trying to please a male partner, not all straight women want to have sex with women. A very sexy woman propositioned me and the thought nauseated me so it makes no sense to me to think of myself as bi.
Have you heard of Yaoi ?
It’s gay male romance and it’s very popular among straight females in Japan!
Females in Japan learn a “gay male fetish”
Are men hardwired to breasts? No, but they learn the “breast Fetish”
Why men enjoy “girl kissing girl” and lesbian porn, are they hardwired to it?
No, but they learn the “girl kissing giril Fetish” from the media and porn.
Ask any male if they like “girl kissing girl”. They experience the “female bisexuality fetish”
Ask straight women if they think that “girl kissing girl” is sexy.
Most of them would think that’s sexy.
Because many women learn the “girl kissing girl Fetish” and “female bisexuality Fetish” the same way they learned the “breast fetish”.
That’s why straight women watch lesbian porn. They learn the “female bisexuality Fetish”
just like straight women in Japan learn the “male bisexuality Fetish”
In ancient times, most of the males were bisexuals because that’s what they learned.
Sexual orientation can not be suppressed. But it can be expanded. That’s why so many “straight” women nowdays are “experimented” or “going through a phase”.
That’s their excuses.
Search for Yaoi.
Sexuality can be learned or repressed. But there are biological limits. Depends on where you fall on the continuum of straight —- bi —- gay.
on another post you wrote
“We often hear that women are less likely to admit having sex than men. Yet 80% of women aged 20 to 24 said they’d had intercourse in the last year, while only 62% of men said the same thing. I guess many women are having sex with older guys.”
Ηοw you reached to the conclusion that this difference was due to the fact that women had sex with older guys?
Was this survey specifically about heterosexual intercourse?
if it wasn’t specifically about heterosexual intercourse then the difference between 80% of women having intercourse and only 62% of men, could be because there are more bisexual women than men.
Just a guess based on research by IU researchers (That’s what they found.)
I may have mentioned it in this post. But you can get the IU link from this post:
Surprises in Indiana University Sex Survey
And women can’t have intercourse with women.
you said
“all of the socializing forces are hetero-oriented: Most movies, television, advertisement, books are all about heterosexuality.”
That’s not correct. The truth is that all of socializing forces are male hetero-oriented.
And lesbian acts is one the major fantasies for hetero males.
And movies, ads, songs, books, porn are changing and becoming obsessed with lesbian images because that’s what hetero males want to see.
You think that female sexuality is supressed. That’s not true anymore. The things nowdays are getting worse for female sexuality.
Females are encouraged, are trained, are expected by media to act as bisexuals for hetero males amusement.
Just take a look in the media, in the movies and in the music industry, almost all women are acting as bisexuals.
There is difference in that than the gay males who feel guilty being gay,
The gay male are trying to opprese their feelings towards other men, that’s almost impossible for them.
On the other hand, straight women nowdays they don’t suppress their natural feelings towards men. They learn to like both men and women. Women nowdays don’t suppress their sexuality, they expand it to women as well.
On the one hand, almost all of the lovemaking scenes in movies, TV, advertisements, magazines, literature, etc. are male+female, meaning “hetero-oriented.” But I agree that within that much more of the focus is male-oriented. See this for instance:
Sex Sells — To Women?
Men, Women React to Male/Female Nudity
Man as Object: Reversing the Gaze
Female sexuality is still very repressed. That’s why so many women need 3000 RPM in order to have an orgasm (via vibrators), and that’s why 43% of women have experienced sexual dysfunction — just to cite a couple examples of the effects of repression.
And your belief that all women act bisexual seems to come from porn. You need to stop getting your sex ed from porn.
“almost all of the lovemaking scenes in movies, TV, advertisements, magazines, literature, etc. are male+female”
that’s not the case anymore.
Lesbian images are on the rise, in movies, ads, music videos.
Every female pop star is identifying themselves as bisexuals and girls pick up on that.
Μοst movies and tv series have lesbian or bisexual female characters.
Most of the “straight” females prefer watching lesbian porn.
Lesbian images are what straight males want to see,
so that’s what the media are showing and women also learn that acting as bisexual is sexy.
Ask your male students what they experience in schools and colleges.
Have you wondered why there are no movies, music videos or ads with bisexual men?
have you ever seen a music video showing two men dancing and touching each other?
But all music videos are full with women dancing and touching each other.
that’s because straight men don’t want to watch bisexual men but they love watching bisexual women. That’s why the media prefer bisexual women and not bisexual men.
No wonder why female bisexuality has became the norm whereas male bisexuality is considered to be disturbing.
Perhaps I am overreacting, saying that all women are bisexual, but it’s very confusing and frustrating when all women (even those who claim they are straight) are saying they are more attracted to women, prefer lesbian porn and/or have kissed or would like to kiss another female.
So I guess it makes it easier believing that most of the women are bisexual (at least a little bit) and deal with it.
I am straight male and I would never watch gay porn or Broke back mountain,
I am not homophobic but I have no desire in watching gay images so it’s very confusing when straight women are watching and enjoying movies like Black Swan or watching lesbian porn.
First, I never said that women are more attracted to women. Just that women come across as the sexier half of the species — because that is rammed down our throats — all of our throats, men and women. We’re all bombarded by “sexy women” images, but a dearth of sexy man images. Body parts of the female have become fetishized, but no body parts of the male have.
I think it sucks. I would like to see more balance.
Here’s a paradox: I’ve learned the breast fetish, and if you ask me whether men or women occur to me as sexier I’d say women.
Yet I’m still attracted to men and not women, even though women come across as sexier.
I don’t really think about women much, and they seem boring to me in terms of relationships. And one very attractive bisexual woman propositioned me, and I was intrigued enough to give it some thought. But as I imagined being with her, the thought of genital contact nauseated me. So I told her I thought she was very sexy and attractive. But no thanks. I don’t get nauseated at the thought of genital contact with men, and they have been the source of my fantasies and my obsessions.
That may be confusing to you, but that’s my experience. Maybe it’s a relief to you?
Otherwise, looks like you haven’t done a content analysis. Outside of porn nearly all the couplings (holding hands, lovemaking or any indication of “togetherness” of any sort) from all sources are female+male.
Male bisexuality isn’t portrayed much because male homosexuality of any sort tends to be feared in patriarchal cultures. When men “act like women” that threatens the notion that men are superior.
One of the reasons I write my blog is to help men to stop getting their sex ed from porn.
The way you describe women is how they are portrayed in porn. It is not how they actually behave.
So a lot of men like you watch porn and think that women are into bisexuality and threesomes and giving men lots of sex, generally. And when some of these men aren’t able to get all this sex themselves, they get angry at women: A common riddle on campus: (What’s the difference between a slut and a bitch? A bitch has sex with everyone but me.) This isn’t healthy for male-female relationships.
You say that women behave bisexually because men like it. First, the fantasy for threesomes and bisexuality is a new fantasy for men. It’s a fantasy that keeps men coming back to porn. Why? Because most men can’t get it in real-life.
A great way for pornographers to make money is to create fantasies of things that women don’t want to do in real life. If men could get this in real life, they wouldn’t have to keep going back to porn.
So you asked what my students say about bisexuality and threesomes. I have actually surveyed my students on these questions. Hardly any of my students label themselves as bisexual. And hardly any of them have any interest in doing threesomes. I asked my students to list on a scale of 1 to 10 – 10 being very interested in 1 having no interest – how much they would like to have a threesome. Almost no one wanted to do it and 90% of the class put “1’s” — with one woman putting 0!!!!!!! (Yes – she added the!!!)
I also sent you a link, which you obviously didn’t read, that talked about how after four years of college the typical college student had sex only 4-7 times. That’s barely more than once a year! And since hooking up is pretty much the only thing on campus – despite the fact that over 70% of students would prefer committed relationships – hardly anyone is getting any sex. At all! Let alone women trying to please men they don’t know or care about by doing bisexual sex for them.
Most of that sex on campus is happening the first year, out of curiosity and experimentation, and then people drop out of having sex at all because they’re not into hookup culture. And while well over 70% of students would prefer committed relationships, they don’t pursue them because they think that no one else wants it except for them.
They are kind of like you – they have very skewed ideas of what sex is actually like – in reality – for most people. Here’s the link for that article: https://broadblogs.com/?s=hookup+culture
Also, most women want emotionally connected sex. Threesomes are not emotionally connected. https://broadblogs.com/2011/07/20/women-want-emotionally-connected-sex-why/
And finally, the biggest turn on for a woman is feeling like her man finds her really attractive. If he wants her to have sex with someone else she’s likely to be distracted and wonder why she isn’t enough.
And most relationships don’t survive a threesome.
Add it all up, and there’s very little incentive for women to behave the way you say they do.
For more, see these posts:
Ogling: A Turn-Off
Can Relationships Survive A Threesome?
That said, I don’t think that you are going to believe anything that I have to say, and I don’t think you’re going to believe anything that I just wrote. So it’s a waste of time for me to keep this discussion going.
It is important to you to believe that all women are bisexual, so fine believe it.
If the young women who nowdays can admit they bi/lesbians are doing it because they are not repressed anymore then we reach to the conclusion that the vast majority of women are naturally bi/lesbians, because the majority of females in schools and colleges are into bisexual and lesbian acts.
Nothing wrong with being bi or lesbian but we must realize that one of these statemetents is true:
a)Sexual orientaion can be learnd so young women nowdays learn to be bisexual
ΟR
b)All, or most women are naturally born bisexuals because sexual orientation can not be changed, so since most of the young women nowdays are into bisexual behaviours that means that most of the women are naturally born bisexuals.
So which is it?
sexual orientation can be learned just like the breast fetish can be learned
OR
the majority of the women are born bisexuals or lesbians ?
There’s no evidence that the majority of females in schools and colleges are into bisexual and lesbian acts. So none of the above.
Your notions of how women behave in real life are far from reality. You seem to be getting your ideas of what real women do from porn – which isn’t real. See these posts for instance:
Hookup Culture
What’s Wrong With Hooking Up?
Real Men Competing With Porn Stars
Why Don’t Women Like Sex As Much As Men?
Porn Fantasy Mistaken for Reality
Sexual orientation can be learned. For older people is harder (you can’t teach an old dog new tricks) but for younger people, especially females, is easy as a breeze.
Well yes, the media and the culture has turning girls into bisexuals because it’s trendy, it’s pictured as “sexy”.
And to prove that the sexual orientation can be learned, in my country (in europe) there is not a female bisexual trend in colleges and schools, because it’s not encouraged by the males and the society, at least not yet.
Female bisexuality it’s still pictured as “sexy” thanks to the movies and the magazines, but the males don’t ask from the females to perform bisexual acts, so there is not such a trend, at least not yet, but it will catch up eventually.
In a few years time, female bisexuality will be the norm because that’s how the people will be raised from the media and the culture. Everything and anything can be learned and be taught.
It’s just have to be done from a very young age.
http://www.newspitter.com/2012/12/12/uncovering-the-truth-why-are-so-many-straight-women-now-becoming-bisexual-or-gay
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sax-sex/201004/why-are-so-many-girls-lesbian-or-bisexual
Ahhh, I think I will blog on this sometime.
There does seem to be a biological basis for our sexuality. And my first blog post(s) will be on that.
So there are only theories as to why more young women are claiming to be bisexual or lesbian these days. Here’s mine:
First, because bisexuality and lesbian are more accepted these days some women who had been in denial are now admitting it.
Second, it may be that other women have the capacity to be lesbian or bisexual but have been repressing it, so that it was unknown even to themselves. (When you are sexually repressed you don’t feel sexual – you are not in touch with your sexuality.) With the lack of repression some women may be more in touch with their bisexuality or lesbianism these days.
You claim that the breast fetish can be learned, and it’s not hardwired.
I agree.
But you must realize just like the breast fetish can be learned, the same way exactly the sexual orientation can be learned.
Women learned that women are more sexy than men
And nowdays young women are “trained” to be experimenting in bisexual acts.
But you won’t see as many bisexual men as bisexual women because same sex acts for men are not encouraged.
And besides it’s more difficult for a straight man to change his sexual orientation that it is for a straight woman. Even so-called straight women are axperimenting with other women.
Everything can be learned. That includes breast fetish AND sexual orientation.
As a sociologist, I was trained in the “social construction of reality,” so I am open to perspectives on social influence. But evidence suggests that there is a biological basis to our orientation. I will be blogging on that later. Social learning can then have effects on top of that. I will also be blogging on that.
If the orientation were purely learned and easily flexible, how do you explain the fact that so many a Christian men feel horrible about their orientation and try to “unlearn it”? They are highly motivated because they fear they will go to hell, AND they are tormented in this world, as well, by all the homophobes out there. When they aren’t able to change their orientation, too many of them commit suicide.
Also, the notion that all women are bisexual comes from research that showed women becoming aroused by gay porn, straight porn, pretty much every sexual thing they saw. Including Bonobos (an ape species). Does that mean that women are all naturally into beastiality, too?
Researchers think women respond to every sexual stimulus in order to protect their vaginas from penetration, wherever the stimulus may come. At the same time, their minds are not aware of finding all of these things erotic. I seriously doubt that women seeing animals having sex on nature shows have ever felt the least bit aroused — at least consciously aroused — though blood may have rushed to their vaginas.
And since the link you sent was not informative, I won’t post it. If you find something substantive I will post that.
You said “But evidence suggests that there is a biological basis to our orientation. I will be blogging on that later. Social learning can then have effects on top of that. I will also be blogging on that.”
That’s exactly why I am talking about straight females who became bisexuals and not lesbians or gay males.
Most women are born straight and are naturally attracted to males but the “social learning” teaches them to be attracted to other women and even act upon on it.
So, straight women are attracted to men on a biologican basis and they learn to be attracted to women by the social learning, and that’s why they are bisexual. They are not straight and they are not lesbians, the stragiht women are taught to act as bisexuals.
The gay males you mantioned and the Chistianity paradigm.
The homosexuals are borned that way, it’s the hormones or whatever.
Just like for a straight man is very difficult to change his sexual orientation, the same applies for a homosexual man.
For women the sexuality is more fluid that’s why it’s easy for straight women to act as bisexuals.
And i don’t read these researches about female arousal from bonobos.
I am talking about everyday real life experience in schools and colleges. Even so-called straight women are into bisexuality and I am afraid that’s the worst kind of sexual oppression towards women. Bisexual women is a fantasy for straight men, that’s why men and media encourage women to act bisexual for ste straight men’s amusement.
There seems to be a biological basis with some men and women being very straight, and some men and women being very gay/lesbian, and some in-between. But when you live in a culture that eroticizes the female body so much more, those women who are biologically in-between would be much more in touch with their bisexuality.
It’s possible that men would have more flexibility in sexuality if we lived in a culture in which the male body was eroticized. If that happened, then you might get more men who were no longer repressing their bisexuality. So there could be a continuum for both men and women.
well you may not be bisexual, but most of the female students nowdays they have become bisexuals. Sexual orientation can be learned.
Female sexuality is now encouraged, it’s no longer suppresed
Read the first post
http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t960683/
Well, this post doesn’t really prove anything.
Oddly (or perhaps not), some of my female students have told me that they have engaged in bisexuality because it turns guys on – probably due to porn. So their intentions are actually hetero.
But I do believe that sex is socially constructed. Still, there are biological limits. For example, some gay Christian men try and try to not be gay because they think that God hates it and they have low self-esteem. But their efforts don’t work. Some commit suicide. If they could change, they would.
I suspect the social construction here comes in more in terms of repressing our natural sexuality is where there is some flexibility. If you are pretty straight, but have some flexibility — could be more bi (sexual orientation seems to lie on a continuum) all of the socializing forces are hetero-oriented: Most movies, television, advertisement, books are all about heterosexuality. Plus, people are tortured and shamed for being otherwise. So if you have the ability to express being straight, that’s more likely to show up.
Also oddly, the breast fetish can be used by women for very hetero purposes. For instance see this from my latest blog post:
“even as repression depresses a woman’s natural desire and ability to enjoy pure sexual sensation, we also fetishize women’s bodies and not men’s. All this leads to a convoluted way of getting aroused…
“Many women get turned on by sensing a man’s lust for her, and from feeling chosen because she’s so attractive. She kind of makes love to herself, vicariously through his eyes… his desire for her. But if she’s been with one man for a long time she may sense less lust as he grows used to her. And if it’s a committed relationship, she may feel like he simply has no choice but her. That’s no turn-on. And then there’s the “everydayness” of seeing the same guy all the time, morning and night. She cherishes him, she’s bonded to him, but the sexual magic is gone. UNLV psych professor, Marta Meana, says men don’t seem to experience this problem so much because they have a stronger sex drive – one that is less repressed.
btw, this is very common among women, and has been since way before lesbianism/bisexuality became more trendy.
Wow, fantastic weblog structure! How long have you ever been blogging for?
you make running a blog glance easy. The total look of your
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Thank you. Looks like you have an interesting blog, yourself.
This is a really interesting topic! I do agree with this article because women are always comparing themselves to other women so to me it sounds very true that most women would look at womens body over a mens body during sex due to the fact that they might be comparing themselves to the women. Also I believe that more women look at females body during sex since in our society a female is looked at as a sex object and eventhough a lot of women do not like that label they have a tendacy to look at another women and if they like a feature that they have they try to improve or work on their bodies as well.
I fully agree with the article and so relieved that there are people out there that have similar “feelings”. I am also, ‘straight’, but a woman’s body turns me on more than a man’s body and it doesn’t make me lesbian. Awesome article!
You’re welcome.
Oh, and by being safe, I mean if you’re someone whose heart opens up when you have sex, it’s just not safe to lust after men who have sex with women with their hearts closed. You will always get your heart battered by the one who has it closed.
I have a high sex drive and when I was younger I used to visually lust over men and their bodies. I catcalled hot men, and enjoyed commenting to them, I guess I was like a “guy” in that regard.
Over time, and getting my heart broken in dealing with guys and leaping into things to soon when I was sexually attracted (I didn’t know myself very well and what I needed), I learned to shut that completely off and to mentally assess them instead. The reason why is when I sleep with a man I get emotionally bonded and fall in love and they DO NOT do that with sex (though they might from cuddling) from what I’ve read in different studies. So, I’d have sex and think we were connected, and he’s still “just getting to know me”.. Ouch, that really hurt, and I was left devastated.
I will NOT let myself get aroused my the male body now, out of habit and retraining myself. It just doesn’t feel safe for me to do so emotionally or on a heart level. For me, it’s self-defense. When I lust, I want it too much, and if I go into my brain instead I have more control and can check the situation out before I become too emotionally invested.
Perhaps it is the same for women, sometimes it’s just safer to view other women erotically instead of men.
There are a number of ways by which women’s sexuality get repressed. Yours is one I haven’t specifically talked about so thanks for adding your voice. Men also aren’t nearly as sexualized as women so women don’t typically learn to see men’s bodies as sexy in the same intense way that men come to see women’s.
See this, for example https://broadblogs.com/2012/05/07/sexual-desire-sexism/
Thanks again for adding your perspective.
Now that I think about it, I seem to have ended in the opposite extreme regarding this issue. I explain:
Before, when I looked at the typical sexy image of a woman on advertisement, this had no effect on me. I largely ignored the image and didn’t feel neither appreciation nor aversion. However, I’ve noticed that recently my feelings are more and more negative when I see images like that. I don’t know how to explain it, it’s not jealousy or anything like that, since I’ve always been quite in shape, and never liked big breasts. It’s like some sort of angryness or repulsion.
The same happened to me regarding heterosexual erotica. I grew from being mildly aroused by it, to being indifferent, to being downright repulsed. In fact, the only erotica I can enjoy now is gay (male on male) erotica.
I wonder if, after so much over-exposure to sexy images of women, some people are developing negative feelings towards them. I’ve read on occasion in forums or internet sites the expression “het is eww” (that is, heterosexual sex is nasty). And it was usually straight girls that, not only liked gay male erotica (nothing strange there), but also HATED straight erotica, despite being straight themselves.
Interesting phenomenon. Wonder how widespread it is.
I’m so used to “sexy women” that I don’t pay that much attention. Sometimes it makes me angry, but because of the imbalance. If men and women were more equally portrayed as sexy it wouldn’t bother me, but I get annoyed that all the images are meant for males. Sex sells, they say, but only to men?
Yeah. And the few images of sexy men in media are also intended for men, for example in magazines like Men’s Health. They must think that women shouldn’t look at naked men, because that would mean that they’re “dirty”. They should look at images of sexy women and top models to imitate them, however.
I think society is changing as well. These days the male body is “sexually objectified as well”. I remember in college there were lots of women that had calendars of half naked muscular men on their dorm room walls. Many magazines these days discuss mens fashion. Most of the models in these magazines depict the ‘muscular adonis tKust like men many women desire a hadsome fit man-women can be superficial as men can be.
Also, mentioning the “hiddeness” of female body parts like breasts in popular culture. As you wrote on another thread it is actually the male penis that is hidden or not showed in popilar culture like films. In a way this shames men to regard their genitals or body as somehow”bad” or “unworthy: and best be kept hidden. I agree this needs to change in society.
I agree that things are changing but objectified female bodies far outnumber male objectification. The Super Bowl ad last year with Dave Beckham was major news, for instance.
Thanks for your thoughtful inputs.
@BroadBlog
“Please rephrase question in your last paragraph because I’m not sure what you’re asking.”
Sry, my english is not that good, Im from Germany.
Maybe you never heard the word androphile (a person (regardless of gender) who is turned on by men) and gynephile (a person (regardless of gender) who is turned on by women).
I mean do you think all women are gynephile (are aroused by women) just like 90% of men? Because if there are gay men (androphile men) and they are like 10 % of men, so their must be some androphile women. Im pretty sure that it is like that, but I dont know why, I never see that men are viewed as sexual attractive. Have you ever thought about that, I mean why are some people androphile (although they are really rare).
Data I’ve seen puts male androphiles (we call them gay men) at 5% and female gynephiles (we call them lesbians) at around 2% of population. Those may be understated as some may be “in the closet” as we say in the U.S.
I don’t think all women are gynephiles because hetero women seem to be aroused by breasts, without necessarily having any desire to have sex with a woman. (I don’t.) I guess that’s confusing. But biologically hetero women want sex with men. Women do seem to have greater flexibility of sex orientation, though. Maybe a culture that sexualizes women so much aids this.
Women dont have greater flexibility, in the Ancient Greece men and women were viewed as attractive and nearly all people were bisexual, both sexes have the same flexibility. And Gynephile does just mean you view women as sexual attractive, even if you only date men, so 90% of women and men gynephile. But there are gay men and very few really straight women. If our culture “forces” to be gynephile, because women are viewed as sexual attractive, why can somebody be androphile? Do you ever thought about that. For example 10% of the readers of the gay magazine “Playgirl” are women, so there are a few androphile women. But I never understood how that is possible when the male body is viewed as ugly? Do you have an idea how that is possibly?
I am aware of ancient Greek society and I am open to your notion that flexibility of sexual orientation might be as common among men as among women, but there is research that suggests that there is a biological reason why women’s sexuality is more flexible. And I remain curious to know whether culture could have an effect on biology since the brain, for instance, is affected by culture. So that is something that I would be interested to explore more. Lisa Diamond has written much on this, so you might want to google her.
The interesting thing about Playgirl is that it was originally created for women. Women just don’t seem to be very interested in it compared with men. I definitely think that women are capable of appreciating the male body but we have a culture that ignores it and orients the female brain toward appreciating the female, not the male body. I would like to see that change.
Re your last sentence: why do some women enjoy the male body when most don’t? AND keep in mind, women don’t see the male body as ugly. If the man’s body is fit, I’m sure they see it as beautiful. But it’s not fetished.
It’s like men buy porn, or scantily clad mags like Maxim, because women’s breasts and butts are fetished. But they don’t buy other magazines that are filled with beautiful women that don’t show off their bodies just to look at pretty women. Because then, the fetished parts aren’t on display but the women are beautiful and men can appreciate that. When it comes to men, the male body just isn’t fetished, even though it’s beautiful. So why pay to get aroused when looking at a naked/near-naked male won’t create arousal? [A man in bed, on the other hand, can cause arousal.]
Culture has widespread effects, but the personalities we’re born with also play a role and can go against culture. Social interactions also have effects. So women who are naturally super-androphile would likely still look. Women who’ve grown up in a social group where men’s bodies are appreciated could also be exceptions.
See these posts:
Men: Erotic Objects of Women’s Gaze
Why Aren’t Male Strippers Sexy?
Gays Find Strippers Sexy; Women Don’t?
Magic Mike Turns Tables on Objectification, Desire
Man as Object: Reversing the Gaze
Women Gazing At Men
David Beckham’s Sex Sells
You seem to confuse aesthetic appreciation with gynophilia (being attracted to women). Very few women are gynephile (either lesbian or bisexual), even if many of them find the female body beautiful. Most statistics I’ve seen say that only 1-2% women are gynephile. There are more androphyle men (gay or bi) than gynephile women.
You’re right, however, with the idea of men being no less fluid in sexuality than women. The few evidences of women being more fluid, like Lisa Diamond’s studies, seem to me very weak, when closely observed.
Your blog gave me a lot of answers I’ve been looking for since I was little girl.While I am attracted to both sexes
I’ve always found strange why women were the ”sexy” ones for me while I thought that if I was gay I would know it.
But it does make sense.Men get naked and stroll around for fun when they drink alcohol and women wear wet t shirts to attract sexual attention.
It should be noted though that I personally do not like sexy pictures of men because it makes them look ”gay” and generally feminized which perfectly connects to your writings.Do other women feel the same way?
Glad to help.
And you’re not alone in feeling that “I personally do not like sexy pictures of men because it makes them look ‘gay'”
See this post:
Why Aren’t Male Strippers Sexy?
Thank you for your reply Broadblogs, it doesn’t seem that women seek out other women’s breasts like us men do. i mean i would say its pretty close to an obsession among us men. also on the other side it seems that women seek men out with pretty much the same intensity as we do them. so my question is if breasts turn women on so much then why don’t they pursue them instead of men? what is it that women get out of seeing breasts? men want to touch. women are turned on by them? do the women want to touch them too, or does it make them want to pull out there own and have them touched? so confusing.
Yes, women pursue men, too, and are very interested in them, but it’s experienced differently. Women don’t see a male body part and crave touching it (or crave seeing it). They’re interested in the man, not his parts. Even if you look at erotica, women more are drawn to “relationship” stuff, not body parts. Men are more drawn to body parts. See “Men Watch Porn, Women Read Romance. Why?”
That said, it’s clear that plenty of men are interested in women, and not just body parts, too. So that’s a similarity between the sexes.
I seriously doubt that seeing breasts makes straight women want to touch them. I don’t. It’s more like you just have an awareness of their being erotic and something that’s hidden and sexual. So if you see a nude woman in a magazine, you would be drawn to look at the forbidden, erotic breasts. And two seconds later you’re bored and want to do something else.
I should probably add that the quickly bored reaction on my part came with age, likely from repressing what I wasn’t supposed to find erotic. When I was pre-pubescent and first saw a Playboy, I found the breasts quite arousing. Yet, as I said, even then I never found women or girls sexually interesting. I was always obsessed with boys/men and didn’t give any thought to girls/women, other than as friends. Breasts and women/girls were two completely different things. Probably because, living in this culture I had learned to eroticize breasts, given the strong focus the culture has on them. But because I was hetero, I wasn’t at all interested in girls or women. So that’s what was confusing for a time, but what I finally was able to make sense of.
Dear BroadBlog, while i admire that you have a well rounded argument in that this phenomena of women being the sex symbol is somehow due to how society views people, i think you have ignored the role that each of the sexes plays during “actual sex.” what I’m trying to say is simple.. as a man i enjoy doing the touching, squeezing, licking, sucking and whatever comes into my imagination at the time to the woman i am with. i primality do all of these things to the breast and butt area on a woman. they ALWAYS love it. and the more i do it, the more turned on they become. now reverse the rolls… if a woman fondels, squeezes, sucks, and licks me anywhere (except my dick when hard) i would find it very annoying and be like “what are you doing? thats my job!!” if we were equally obsessed with each others bodies it would more likely turn into a fight than a love making session. I’m just saying that we both have rolls and they are different but go together to get to the goal of sex.
my theory is more primal. i believe that the heterosexual female is going to innately be turned on by whatever makes a mans penis errect, which is in fact anything sexual that a woman can do! the more sexual the woman is, the more we men are going to want to have sex with her. no holds bars. the imagination can run wild and everyone here can say that girls want girls and whatnot but that is simply just one prop that women have that leads to the ultimate goal of sex with a man. sorry this is hard to explain i hope i got my point across. and i would also be very interested in your feedback.
Thank you for your comment.
What’s confusing in all this is that however we experience the world feels natural and normal to us, when actually the world is a mixture of natural meaning and “social construction.” By that I mean biology + learning from our culture.
To some extent our sexuality is biologically based. Natural. We have a natural sex drive, certain sensations naturally feel arousing and can bring us to climax. Hormones get going. Testosterone is related to how strong our sex drive is. Twice as much of the male brain is taken up with sex compared with women, and that part of the brain is more easily activated in men. All biological.
But there is also learning. You know something is learned when it’s not universal. The breast fetish is not found in every culture, therefore we know that it is learned. It is created by selectively revealing and hiding that part of women’s anatomy, and calling it sexual. We do so so strongly in this culture that women can even come to learn the fetish. And that certainly isn’t biological. There is no biological reason for heterosexual women to have a breast fetish. And yet when you wire women up, blood rushes to the vagina when they see that stimulus.
Other fetishes that aren’t natural include a shoe fetish (no one is born naturally finding shoes arousing – but when they come to be associated with sexy women they can take on a life of their own). Some people have fetishes for sexy women crushing insects or small rodents. Natural? Unlike the breast fetish, these are more idiosyncratic – the culture doesn’t support them in a big way. Instead, you find them in small subcultural enclaves.
So when you suck on a woman’s breast, that is actually a purely biological response in that there are erotic nerve endings in the breast (if they haven’t been destroyed by implants – nerve damage happens about 1/3 of the time w/implants).
But if a woman has learned the breast fetish and she is highly aware of her breasts as a sexual stimulus, that can be arousing too. Knowing how sexual the man is finding her breasts can be arousing for her. (She may even be vicariously making love to herself through the man as she gets aroused by knowing how aroused he is. But his arousal is a key component, so there’s a highly hetero component to her being aroused by her own breasts. She’s much less likely to get super aroused by her breasts just by herself.) It’s kind of a convoluted sexuality for women.
That is learned, not natural. Women who are bisexual tend to have a higher sex drive than women who are straight, and that might be in part due to a lack of repression toward the breast as a sexual stimulus. She gets aroused by the focus on the breast without repressing something that she’s not supposed to find stimulating, as a hetero women might.
Another confusing thing is that hetero women experience the breast fetish very differently from men. When a straight man sees an erotic breast everything is consistent. But when a hetero woman sees a breast there is an inconsistency. She naturally prefers sex with men, so the breast, while it can be stimulating, probably won’t cause her to want to have sex with the woman.
I wrote that if I’m shown a nude pinup of a man and woman I think the woman looks more erotic. Yet I don’t want to have sex with women. When I walk around in the world I never notice women in a sexual way. I’ve never had fantasies about women. Movies about lesbians bore me. I find myself wanting them to be with a guy. I did have an opportunity to have sex with an extremely attractive woman once, but the thought of genital contact made me want to vomit. At the same time if I see a nude breast, that breast does look erotic to me. Even though I don’t want to have sex with the woman, as a straight man would. I know, it’s very confusing.
It was confusing for me until I realized that while I’m hetero I have been strongly taught by the culture to see the breast in an erotic way. But wanting sex with women and seeing the breast as sexual are simply two different things.
If men’s bodies were sexualized then you probably wouldn’t feel weird about a woman’s attention toward your body. But because sexualization is so associated with women, men may feel uncomfortable: He might feel a bit like a woman, which could make him very uncomfortable, indeed. However, if we sexualized the male body then men wouldn’t have to feel like women when women found them sexy.
And plenty of men have complained to me that women don’t find them sexy. (Women do find them sexy, just not fetished.) Plenty of men crave that. (There are probably some comments on this point above. Also comments on this on this post: Women Seeing Women as Sexier than Men
If we each found the other’s body sexy I don’t think there’d be a fight, it would be taking turns so that each got plenty of attention. I wish I saw the male body in a more sexy way because it would heighten my sexual experience. I feel envious that you guys get to feel something that I don’t. And as I said, plenty of men do want do to feel sexy, too.
Wow this just admits my worse fears
BroadBlogs says:
February 29, 2012 at 2:16 am
“If it’s any consolation, women can still be totally in love with, and obsessed with men, even though they aren’t taught to see their bodies as being erotic in the same way that society teaches us to see the female form”.
So are you saying that it doesnt matter if my body is fit or not to attract a woman..
In the last 1yr 3 women have told me that im putting on weight..A majority of women dont find fat attractive as in noticeable fat..I have a cure for this all women should just stop looking good they should turn into fat lards and men will be kings of sex….
But my question is do women even care about the way a man looks since women are the #1 erotic thing…And if i make a girl fall for me will she get obsessed with my body and find things on my body that turn her on..
Is their nothing on a mans body that is masculine that women FInd attractive like really this shit is nothing but disturbing to me..be honest..
What parts of a mans body are hot..and i mean hotter than a Fat womans…matter of fact their has to be something women like on a mans body that makes them want to orgasmn on it..WHAT IS IT
I’m not sure that you get that I’m as unhappy about the situation as you. How do I benefit from this? I don’t. I’m often envious that men can get a level of excitement about women’s bodies that women seem to be denied when it comes to men.
And I’m not sure you get that sexism lies behind this. We live in a world in which men have decided what images we see, and so most of the erotic images we are presented with are about women (due to men being in positions of power over media/images and homophobia)
But even women can fail to feel attractive in that what’s considered erotic these days is so narrowly defined that most women feel they don’t fit the image and feel like men don’t find their bodies attractive.
So we all lose.
I would prefer a world in which men’s and women’s bodies are both appreciated and that neither have some narrow, impossible image they must live up to in order to gain that appreciation. Certainly, we’d all be better off.
“I would prefer a world in which men’s and women’s bodies are both appreciated and that neither have some narrow, impossible image they must live up to in order to gain that appreciation. Certainly, we’d all be better off.”
” So we all lose ” Not really, men have a shit deal, because every man would tell you that even a not that attractive women can turn him on, because females are general is viewed as attractive (except if there fat or really ugly) So women have a much better deal then men.
One Question: If in our society only the female body is viewed as attrictive, then why gay men exist? So there must be some straight girls, but there are really, really, really rare (5-10% of men and women are androphile, all others gynephile) Because it would be weird if only men could be androphile
The data shows that you are right about men finding most women at least somewhat sexy attractive. But that doesn’t translate into women having it really good, because hardly any women are aware of this. As I wrote in a recent post, by age 17, 78% of women are unhappy with their bodies. Check out my category “body image” to see how women experience themselves – it’s not pretty.
Please rephrase question in your last paragraph because I’m not sure what you’re asking.
I think it is interesting, growing up in the westurn culture as a straight male, I have no obsession over women’s breast at all. In fact, I could totally care less about the size or shape of a womans breast. I am repulsed by overly sized ones becuase they are usually on some fat chick. I can totally agree with Johns statement too as far as getting aroused by an image of another man…just watch Troy when brad pitt was laying down and the camera focuses on his physique or Sagi Kalev male bodybuilder… Just goes to show, there is ALWAYS an exception!
Definitely, we are so conditioned to find only the female form erotic that even hetero women are saying they find the female body more arousing. A foreign concept for the straight male. I believe this is a phenomena which is cultural and recent – maybe the past 30 years – and honestly, if MALES were presented in the same way I could see a change in male sexuality too. Although I agree female sexuality is a bit more fluid, male sexuality is more fluid than you think. I’m a straight male but when presented with EROTICIZED portrayals of men I do get a bit aroused, partly from the sexualization of the image. I find it disturbing that many women find the bodies of other women more sexy than my own – honestly I might as well go gay or bi if a woman isn’t lusting over me as I lust over her.
If it’s any consolation, women can still be totally in love with, and obsessed with men, even though they aren’t taught to see their bodies as being erotic in the same way that society teaches us to see the female form.
You dont have to become gay, there are a few androphile women 5-10% (as well as 5-10% of men are gay) of all women, 90% of Men and Women are gynephile, but if there are gay men there must be (really= straight women, I even knew a girl who said that she often masturbated to gay porn
One thing is that women find women more beautiful than men, in an aesthetic way, because that’s what media teach us. And another, completely different thing is that women are more “sexually fluid” than men. Most evidence points towards MEN being more sexually fluid. Almost all statistics show that same-sex experiences are more common in men than in women (compare Kinsey’s 37% of men who had homosexual experiences, with the 15% of women, and that in a time in which homphobia was all over the place). And think about Ancient Greece, muslim countries, or the bahaviour of men in prisons and all-male environments.
Compared with all this, examples of female sexual fluidity/same-sex behaviour are almost non-existent through history.
I was just discussing this with a friend, how our culture (read:media) has systematically eroticized the female body over the last several decades and how viewing it as such is a learned behavior. I remember a time when (at least in my mind) a woman’s body was just that, her body, some being judged prettier (and therefore more worthy) than others. But we hadn’t yet begun dissecting and dividing women up into various so-called erogenous zones, much like a cow or a pig is labeled for its most desirable cuts of meat.
I also remember the process by which my own mind became molded to this extreme way of thinking. I watched this happen almost as an outside observer, half knowing what was going on, but still sort of being in a fog about it. Where once I would look at a woman and see her beauty as a whole person, I now saw more of a collection of breasts and lips and butt/thigh combinations. The whole time my logical mind rejected the notion that women be objectified and reduced to the parts of her person and I put up mental resistance. But this campaign was gradual, blatant yet sneaky at the same time. Thankfully I was able to overcome the brainwashing, but I think that most people don’t even know it’s happening to them.
Also, having hung out with the clothing optional crowd for awhile, I definitely agree that extended exposer to total nudity, rather than the titillating peek-a-boo propaganda most of us in America have been subjected to, is a good way to move away from the objectifying of anyone’s body, man or woman. It just ceases to be a big deal.
How can you call yourself hetero if you are sexually attracted to the female body?!? Relationship wise you’ll choose a man because he provides you money and all the resources, but aren’t you just cheating him since you aren’t physically attracted to him?? Are all women in America who call themselves hetero just lesbian prostitutes??
While I would call the female body more erotic, I’ve never wanted to have sex with a woman. And I’ve had opportunities. One was very attractive. But the thought of having sex with her made me want to vomit. (I can appreciate the female form, yet the thought of sex with a woman grosses me out.) All of my fantasies have been about men, all of my obsessions have been about men. I’ve never been sexually drawn to a woman.
One other point. If I’m secretly lesbian because I’ve been bombarded with sexualized images of women that make me see sexually-dressed or posed women as sex objects (who I don’t want to have sex with) then pretty much all women are. All women in the study I cite were more aroused by a nude woman than a nude man. That doesn’t make sense biologically. Biologically most women are hetero. Seeing woman as sexier only makes sense in terms of socialization that comes on top of biological preferences.
A really interesting topic, and a great read. Now here’s an interesting twist:
From what I’ve read of Ancient Greek culture, that was a time and a place where social thinking went very much the “other way”. Men were considered beautiful, men’s bodies were considered an object of art. Women were also admired, but not to the same extent.
In that culture, it was not at all unusual for men to consider each other beautiful or to engage in sexual acts together. Whereas women in many accounts are seen as the “functional, boring” ones: the way men’s bodies are often seen today.
I’ve also read about other cultures that felt the same way at different. Does anyone reading this know more Ancient Greek sexual mores and attitudes than I do?
I’m not an expert on that time period. I do know that the highest form of love was considered to be between men in that culture. So men’s bodies were thought beautiful and objectified more than women’s. Men were encouraged to take male lovers. This usually took the form of a middle-aged man and a male youth. Often, a teacher/student relationship. (In fact, knowlege/wisdom was thought to be transmitted, in part, by transmitting semen from teacher to student). Some say the reason sexual love between men was considered a higher form (than love between men and women) was that women were thought so inferior. Aristotle, for instance, described women as a deformity, a misbegotten male. Plato is one of the few who felt differently. He suggested that lack of opportunity caused the supposed inferiority of women. He believed women and men equal. http://www.allfreeessays.com/topics/aristotle-and-women/0
Thanks!
Clearly, we’re on the same page. I think this lends a lot of credence to your theory that our attraction to feminine beauty (breast, for example) is largely socialized. It also helps explain the idea of “fluid female sexuality”: why is it that hetero women have a “fluid sexuality”, as do gay men (according to some, anyway), but hetero males and gay females seem pretty confident about what they find a turn-on?
Worth thinking about, anyhow.
Yes. I think the cultural breast fetish and focus on women’s sexuality goes some way toward explaining why women’s sexuality is more fluid than men’s. In addition, men have been more homophobic, so that would further lessen their fluidity (of expression, anyway). There also seems to be a continuum with some VERY straight or gay, and others more mixed. But the two points I just mentioned seem to go a long way to explaining women’s greater fluidity.
From the perspective of a male with a pretty strong breast obsession, who has a girlfriend who also admits being aroused by breasts, it is not surprising that women in general are visually attacted to breasts.
The sexes in any species are not mirror images of each other in their sexual attractions and behaviors. That is the false assumption that most people start with when analyzing sexual behavior. Sexual behavior is shared, but not opposite or reciprocal. In the same way preferences for food, work, and recreation are not reciprocal between men and women, neither is sexual behavior preference.
Regarding fetishism, all species evolve distinctive features which are attractive to the opposite sex, and which induce competition between same sexes to win access to sex with those who have particularly distinctive and attractive features.
Features may be attractive, envied, or vicariously fantasized to possess, or all 3. Both men and women have the envy/vicraous fantasy when looking at an attractive member of their own sex. In the case of women, I think a big percentage, if not most, have a significant attraction component to breasts, in the sense of curiousity to sexually touch or fondle, etc. My girlfriend looks at breasts in all 3 modes, and I don’t think that’s unusual. I think that women wanting to have sexual contact with another woman doesn’t make her a “lesbian” in the sense of a “butch” lesbian. By contrast, when I look at men’s penises in porn I do not want to touch them sexually, but I do experience the “envy” of big well shaped ones and the “vicarious” fantasy of having a good body.
It is natural for women to be attracted/aroused by well-shaped women’s bodies depicted in media. Breast size is another matter, and subject to the same analysis, with the primary difference being that some men and some women have a particular fetish for large breasts. As a large breast fetishist, I am unashamedly a big fan of breast impants, though I prefer a natural breast to a fake one if the size is the same, as long as the fake breast is not misshapen as some are (“overinflated” is the most common distortion..too spherical, too high…all natural DD women can trap a pencil under the breast, for example). That said, I think there are as just as many if not more men and women who prefer “normal” breast sizes than those who prefer D and above.
I only mention the size issue because a lot of unnecessary hot air is spent worrying about size. Bottom line is, when seeking a mate, be honest and match fetishes! There big boob men and big boob women who like a lot of tactile breast attention, and you need to find each other. There are women who actually are aroused by breast sex and rough fondling. Find each other! Same for normal/small boob men and normal/small boob women who like breast attention. Same for butt men/women and foot men/women, etc.
Ok, apologies for the long post, but this is my favorite subject outside work.
I remember Anne Frank admitted in her diary to being aroused by breasts.
“Once when I was spending the night at Jacque’s, I could no longer restrain my curiosity about her body, which she’d always hidden from me and which I’d never seen. I asked her whether, as proof of our friendship, we could touch each other’s breasts. Jacque refused.
I also had a terrible desire to kiss her, which I did. Every time I see a female nude,
such as the Venus in my art history book, I go into ecstasy. Sometimes I find them
so exquisite I have to struggle to hold back my tears. If only I had a girlfriend!”
I agree with this article but I want to mention this, as a 28 year old white american female I find the bodies of black men very attractive as well as erotic. The white american men I see have rather “straight up and down” bodies, they have small or non-existant behinds and appear frail. This isn’t ALL white males but many I see today are very effeminate.
Black males on the other hand have rather “cute behinds” nice strong shoulders and great legs. Me and some friends were watching a football game with our boyfriends and we couldn’t help but find the football players attractive especially when they were bent over in the huddle. I think a study of racial based attractiveness by women and men should be done, I think many would be surprised by how many women of all backgrounds would say they weren’t attracted to black males yet the test results would show otherwise.
Interesting observation and idea for a study.
But the more rounded behinds of black men actually reflect the more rounded behinds of women – what everyone’s been taught to see as more sexually attractive.
To further Platts’ argument, not only are male bodies not considered an erotic source in American culture, they are often referred to in a negative light, or to get a couple of laughs. For example, in the hit show Seinfeld, one of the main characters, Elane, refers to the male body as “utilitarian,” implying that the female body is much more erotic. Furthermore, comedy movies (like the “Jackass” series, and “Super Troopers”) exploit a naked male body for laughs. In the media, scenes of Johnny Knoxville running around in a thong, or George Costanza be spotted a victim of “shrinkage,” are used to get viewers to laugh. Whereas, it is quite rare to exploit a nude female body for the purpose of attempting to get laughs. Quite the contrary, a female body is seen in passionate love scenes, and as a luscious desired entity (and rightfully so). Yet the male body is rarely portrayed in such a flattering way to American Society (just ask Preston Lacey).
Therefore, I completely understand what Platts is saying. Men find the female body arousing because it is taboo to see. And females are also aroused by the female body because they too find it taboo to see. However, both find it taboo in a desirable way. Therefore, I completely agree with Platts, it’s not biology, it’s our culture.
That makes sense. The male body isn’t really depicted in a sexual context. The female body is only ever really shown in a sexual context. Conditioning, I guess.
In Ancient Rome, the male body was treasured. Of course, that was also due to the male gaze – being bisexual was accepted, even expected, back then (for men; women were required only to have men).
I enjoyed reading this because it is totally true in every way because most women do tend too look at their own sex not because they feel insecure about themselves but because they could see what the guys see from the other view. And also to recognize how they react in sexual situations like that. I don’t think that its a natural sex things because like I stated before that most women are just curious about how other females act in sex. And the reason why they don’t look at males having sex is because of the fact that it is not as of attractive as before and also because so many people talks about their spouses body in a negative way but as a joke.
I agree with most of what your saying. We all are obsessed with the female figure. We have learned from the media to associate a woman’s body with sex and sexual power. I think heterosexual women get more physically turned on by an attractive naked women both because they associate her with sexual pleasure and activity and because they imagine how much men would want them if they looked like that.
Yeah, and if you get the breast fetish – can expience it yourself on some level – then women really get how men would want them if they looked like that (or DO want them if they DO look like that).
I would really have to agree with kelly with this certain blog. Even though I’m not gay in any way..it’s out of pure habit that you have to look at other women’s breasts. Even though women are seen as the weak ones and as less dominante than men, but at the same time within this article it makes you proud to be a women because if you have breasts and are a woman either way your going to seduce either a man or a woman to look at you. You can never go unoticed which can be a good thing and a bad thing.
When you understand that sexual arousal is conditioned in both men and women to respond more to the female than the male you realize that even your physiological reactions are a reflection of male dominance. It is very disturbing to realize that the female oppression is as far reaching as to affect the chemical reactions of the body. It makes me wonder if this is designed to damper a woman’s sexual attraction to the heterosexual man. As I think more critically of my own experience, and as a female myself, most movies that do have sex scenes are going to show the female as completely nude but not the male. The few experiences of witnessing the penis on screen is either because the movie is pornographic or the naked man is exposed for some other reason than a sexual act. Looking through Elle magazine the other day, I noticed that adds where men posed for a high fashion designer products would portray the men in a more feminine style. The men were usually clean shaven, and had softer features; in one Calvin Klein add the man could have passed for a woman as he was underweight with a face that looked like he had make up on. These men posed in sexy ways with or without women in the adds, but even the male sexy seems to have a feminine flavor to it. This was just an observation but is another example of the emphasis sexualized femininity over the masculine; I’ll be keeping an eye out for the manly-man sex symbol.
Thanks so much for your comments.
Re: “I’ll be keeping an eye out for the manly-man sex symbol.” Let me now if you see much of anything.
RE: “It makes me wonder if this is designed to damper a woman’s sexual attraction to the heterosexual man.” I doubt it. But men’s ways of seeing have certainly overtaken women’s. Men, not trying to be mean an hurtful, have simply had more control over media, and portray their own interests far more than women’s interests. Makes sense. We all do this. But a good reason for women to be more involved. (Though, we’ve now learned to see women – more than men – as sex objects, too.)
We actually covered this topic in a psychology class I took a year ago and this doesn’t makes sense, but it proves to be true. I actually find women more attractive nude than men as well even though I am straight. I agree with you that it’s mainly because women are featured on the media, billboards and literate content that it makes us even more desirable. I just saw a picture on a magazine of a woman wearing a beautiful long dress with her cleavage showing and legs and I thought it was such a beautiful image. I was first admiring the dress, but then I caught myself admiring the woman as well and even hoping to mirror her image in pictures. It might be envy and females wanting to look the same as the sexy women on pictures that make us aroused toward nude women than men. Ever since I can remember, a women’s body parts were an asset that were treasured because their body was viewed as soft, pure and prohibited while the men’s body never got this attention. The men were and are seen as rugged, dirty, and their body parts were never viewed as “beautiful”. This is why a female’s body is found so attractive by male and females because of what we learned through the years and the fact that we want to resemble the beauty we see.
I enjoyed reading this blog. I agree with the hetero women in that I find the female body more sexy to look at than males. I am not attracted to women but I think the female body can be quite beautiful. Maybe the hetero women responded the way that they did because they typically don’t see other naked women – they see their husbands or boyfriends. I definitely appreciate the male body but I see my husband every day – I’m not looking at pictures of naked women every day.
I’ve actually asked many of my husband’s friends if they care if a woman has real or fake breasts. About one out of ten say that they don’t like fake breasts. The rest of them could care less – they just like breasts. I think breasts are a fetish because they are everywhere. And the women that buy them tend to dress to show them off – how could you not help but notice them whether you’re a male or a female?
Its funny how you discuss that breast fetish isn’t only learned by men but women also, as an Asian American I am surrounded by not so buxom women and surprisingly the ones who get breast augmentations all say they got it to impress other females. Its also comparable to the domino effect because of this breast fetish women are more fascinated with other woman’s body than men. Therefore women when exposed to female body get more aroused. I see more females observing other females more than males do in this society. Like you said in our society topless males is normal, in San Jose you can easily spot a young man walking down the street on a hot day topless, yet you wont see many girls topless.
I think that is a really interesting study and I agree with most of what you are saying. As I woman, I can see how other women would want to look at the bodies of their own kind simply because they are curious to see how they compare. I don’t necessarily think it is sexual in nature at all, more out of curiosity. I find that in this society, women are much more celebrated for their bodies than men are. Many married women joke about how they find their husband’s body unattractive. Therefore, the children of these women are growing up in a culture where they do not expect the man’s body to be like a work of art like they do a woman’s. There is so much pressure put on girls to look thin and pretty from a young age and I will argue with anyone who says otherwise. There is a competitive nature to this and going back to my first point, I think girls just want to see how they stack up.
I agree that when women are focused on how they stack up the erotic aspect is erased. And that’s likely many women’s experience. At the same time, I, and many straight women I know, do think that women’s nude bodies seem more erotic than men’s. And the female vaginal area responds more strongly to nude women than men.
I agree with both of you. It seems to me that women will often look at other women for competitive reasons. We want to see what we are supposed to look like and how we compare to that ideal. I also agree that a lot of women find the female body more erotic than the male’s. Whenever I look at ads that feature both a male and a female (and, let’s face it, most of these advertisements have a sexual nature to them, with the male being in the dominant position), I will glance at the featured male, but more of my time is spent analyzing the female. One reason for this is that I am comparing myself to her. She is the ideal beauty, and I want to see how I match up. This is often why advertisements of this nature are so effective — we buy the product because we connect the product to the ideal beauty, and consequently believe we will be able to achieve that beauty by wearing the product. On the other hand, in these advertisements, the woman is usually the one who appears to be in the middle of a sexual experience. The males often appear the dominant between the two and their features give away nothing. The female, on the other hand, through her facial expression and body position, often displays the passion and desire that contributes to the overall sexual nature of the image. As such, we link the female body to sexual pleasure, more than the male body. Consequently, it’s no wonder women find the female body more erotic than male’s in today’s society.
You wrote “And the female vaginal area responds more strongly to nude women than men.”– How come? Vulva is not fetished like breasts.. Right?
The vulva wasn’t the only thing the women saw. Or necessarily what they were paying attention to. Given the pattern of Internet searches, I doubt that that is what they were paying attention to.
See this:
Women Are More Sexually Fluid
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